Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and Administration (Senator Minchin) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to nuclear reactors.

It has been a mystery to those of us who have followed the climate change and energy security debate that the government has suddenly discovered nuclear energy as the answer to both. I note that Senator Minchin, whilst he said that the Prime Minister has enunciated clearly why we are having the inquiry, failed to say what those reasons were.

Those of us who follow the debate on climate change know, for a start, that only 39 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity generation; the rest come from transport and other sources, and nuclear energy does nothing to deal with transport emissions. Nuclear energy would not come on stream for between 10 and 15 years; therefore it cannot address the urgency of climate change. It is dangerous and there can be accidents—and that was the point of the reference to the Lucas Heights reactor. Even in a country like Australia, accidents do happen in nuclear facilities. It is no use saying: ‘Chernobyl would never happen again. New facilities do not have accidents.’ At the Ranger Uranium Mine and Lucas Heights accidents do occur and have adverse consequences for both human health and the environment to varying degrees.

We recently heard Senator Ellison tell us that nuclear power plants are not terrorist targets. I noticed that Senator Minchin carefully avoided the discussion of the notion of a terrorist attack on nuclear reactors—because, of course, it is a complete nonsense to say that a nuclear power plant is not more of a target than the electricity grid or a rail network. Why did the government just spend $10.6 million on securing the entrance to Lucas Heights if it is no more of a concern as a reactor than Central Station in Sydney? Where is the $10.6 million on security around there? It is a nonsense, and we all know it is, especially given that overseas reports—every single one of them—into the feasibility of nuclear power state a terrorism attack as one of the significant risks associated with nuclear. The question is: is a country prepared to take those risks?

More importantly, we get to the economics—and this is where Senator Minchin is absolutely correct. He knows—as do I and anyone following the nuclear debate—that nuclear power in Australia is not economically feasible and never will be. Even if you do put a price on carbon—and the Greens advocate that we should be putting a price on carbon, we should be capping emissions, we should be going to an emissions trading system and we should be examining carbon taxes—nuclear is still not going to make it into feasibility. So why we are having the debate?

I welcomed Senator Minchin saying straight up that the government is interested in expanding uranium mining and it is interested in downstream processing with enrichment. That is precisely what the Prime Minister discussed with President Bush when he was in the United States recently. President Bush wants to set up a number of nuclear fuel supply centres around the world to supply enriched uranium to a series of countries as a lease and take back the waste. This follows quite clearly from yesterday’s vote in here when the government did not support my motion to ban the construction of high-level nuclear waste repositories in Australia.

The real reason for this inquiry has nothing to do with climate change or energy. It has everything to do with downstreaming uranium into enrichment and taking back high-level nuclear waste—as dictated by President Bush and his global nuclear energy plan, the GNEP. The Prime Minister, John Howard, sees Australia as being George Bush’s nuclear supply centre in this region—and with the capacity to take back waste, including from the United States. President Bush cannot get agreement in America to have Yucca Mountain be the repository for high-level waste, so he would welcome the Prime Minister of Australia taking back high-level waste. I appreciated Senator Minchin’s honesty today, reaffirming what everybody knows: nuclear power is not economically viable in Australia. There is another agenda running here. It is expanded uranium mining and enrichment. It was good to see the Minister representing the Prime Minister getting that on the record.

Question agreed to.