Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Hansard source

This includes transporting radioactive waste to Lucas Heights, conditioning or processing the material to make it safe and suitable for further storage, and the temporary storage of that treated material until a long-term repository is available. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency’s Code of practice and safety guide will require all nuclear waste going to the dump being imposed on the Northern Territory to be conditioned and processed according to certain standards. This bill will mean that more Commonwealth waste will be transported to Lucas Heights for processing before it is suitable for long-term storage in the Northern Territory.

There may be community concern about more waste going to Lucas Heights, and federal Labor would be very concerned if the waste stayed there for a long period of time. Labor wants to make sure that the present ANSTO site at Lucas Heights does not become a long-term dump for Commonwealth nuclear waste. The Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, has stated that the government has no intention of storing other Commonwealth waste at Lucas Heights. I would like this reiterated by her counterpart in the Senate, because we need an absolute commitment from this government that it will not use this bill as a backdoor way to dump more waste at Lucas Heights.

I note also that this bill will bring Australia one step closer to the standards set out in the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. Labor urges that all necessary action to comply with this UN convention be taken so that Australia can agree to this important treaty. Whilst Labor support this bill, we remain concerned about the Howard government’s extreme approach to nuclear power and nuclear waste. We are in the middle of a so-called inquiry into nuclear power: ‘so-called’ because it is considering the viability of nuclear power in Australia without even looking at the locations of future power plants; ‘so-called’ because it is looking at the viability of Australia importing nuclear waste from other countries, becoming the world’s nuclear waste dump. Mr Howard’s so-called inquiries are only ever set up after he has made up his mind about what he is going to do. In this case that means nuclear power for Australia. This government has form for misleading the Australian public. We have already seen this with the nuclear waste debate.

Labor supports appropriate management of Australian nuclear waste, following proper community consultation. But the Howard government, as we all know, is determined to dump radioactive waste in the Northern Territory, despite massive community concern. Before the last election, the people of the Northern Territory were given an undertaking, a promise in fact, by this government that there would not be a dump in the Northern Territory. At the last election, for the sake of votes for Mr Tollner, the member for Solomon, this government was happy to reassure Territorians that there would be no nuclear waste dump in the Territory. The member for Solomon said on ABC radio only a year ago:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory ... That was the commitment undertaken in the lead up to the federal election and I haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

However, only a month after the member for Solomon’s guarantee, Brendan Nelson, the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, kicked Territorians in the teeth by announcing the government’s intention to dump nuclear waste in the Northern Territory. They did a complete backflip to force the nuclear waste dump onto the Territory. The member for Solomon has now changed his tune completely. In August 2006, he supported a motion to look at a uranium enrichment industry in the Northern Territory. He said:

I look forward to supporting the motion and for this analysis to be undertaken. If the review comes back with a potentially viable industry, I will be the first to put my weight of support behind getting the industry up and running.

The government has shown time and again that its word cannot be trusted. This Prime Minister’s promise to keep interest rates at record lows has become worthless with three interest rate rises and creeping inflation. His commitment that no worker will be worse off under the Howard government means nothing for the employees at Radio Rentals or Spotlight.

Now that he has broken his promise to keep nuclear waste away from the Northern Territory, where does that leave his so-called ‘nuclear power inquiry’? The Prime Minister expects all of us to believe him this time when he says that he is interested in the views of the Australian community. Can he honestly look the Australian people in the eye anymore and say, `Trust me’? The Prime Minister has refused to come clean on the question of where he will put his nuclear power plants. Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, have refused to talk about locations—although I note that the science minister was quite happy to rule out her own electorate. So, if a debate about nuclear power is not an appropriate time to talk about power plant sites, when is the appropriate time?

Local communities have a right to know what this government’s intentions are and what to expect from it both on nuclear power sites and on the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. Make no mistake about it, the government is determined to bring nuclear power to Australia. It is determined to bring high-level waste dumps to Australia. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said earlier this year:

We need medium and we need high level storage as well.

More recently, on 27 August 2006, Alexander Downer courted more nuclear waste for Australia with his call for Australia to enrich uranium. I would like to draw the attention of the Senate to an anti-nuclear campaign called the ‘Beyond Initiative Symposium’, which was held in Melbourne last month. Topics covered at the symposium included the proposed Northern Territory radioactive waste dump, and one topic that was particularly intriguing was billed as ‘radioactive racism’. The history of radioactive racism is one of oppression but also one of struggle.

The problem for Australia, particularly Indigenous Australians, is that Mr Howard has not explained what his plans for nuclear enrichment mean for waste storage in Australia. It is obvious that, along with the foreign minister’s comments, this so-called inquiry is part of the government’s campaign to wear down Australians’ opposition to nuclear power. We all know that the Prime Minister’s call for a full-blooded debate on nuclear energy is just code for: ‘We are determined to have nuclear power in Australia.’

This year ANSTO commented publicly that at least three to five nuclear power plants would be needed for a viable Australian nuclear power industry. My question to the Prime Minister is: if we need up to five nuclear power plants to have a viable industry, why can’t the Australian people know where those sites might be located? My position and that of the Labor Party is clear. The Labor Party is fundamentally opposed to bringing nuclear power to this country. There will be no nuclear power plants in Australia under a Beazley Labor government. The economics for a nuclear industry simply do not stack up, and the public certainly does not support it.

The Prime Minister continues to talk up what is a phoney debate on nuclear power for Australia, because he wants to go down that path. It is a phoney debate. The nuclear power inquiry’s task force was hand-picked by the Prime Minister, without wider consultation. It will have no public hearings, and it will not look at where the nuclear power plants will go. So the Australian people will be none the wiser about these important questions when the task force produces its draft report for public consideration in November 2006. That report will have no scientific evidence or opinion regarding locations. Given that the final report is due in late 2006, the period for public consideration will be very brief indeed, particularly as we will have an election in 2007. How many Australians will be able to wade their way through the detailed scientific reports with ease? Very few, I suspect. If this is the Howard government’s idea of public consultation, government members should hang their heads in shame.

The Prime Minister should come clean with the Australian people and tell us all which towns and suburbs will house these nuclear reactors and where the high-level nuclear waste dumps will be located. If the Prime Minister were serious about this issue, he would have called an inquiry to address the concerns held by many Australians about global warming and climate change, instead of a committee of inquiry to undertake a very narrow investigation of nuclear power and energy.

A series of things that have been brought to our attention are incontrovertible evidence of global warming. They include the 10 hottest years on record having occurred in the last 14 years, the rapidly rising incidence of severe tropical storms and hurricanes, and changing rainfall patterns and temperature related habitat loss, leading to the extinction of some of the world’s wild creatures. All of these issues are critical matters for the Australian people but, as usual, we are not getting answers to these questions from the Howard government. It prefers to run a program of deception when it comes to nuclear power. It prefers to mislead people, to make promises to people, as it did in the Northern Territory before the last election over the nuclear waste dump. The government then did a backflip and imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory after the election.

As I said, there are good reasons for supporting the bill that is before the Senate but I urge senators to look at Labor’s very serious concerns, which are set out in the second reading amendment circulated in my name. The amendment indicates our extreme concerns about the heavy-handed way in which the government is going about the debate on nuclear power and the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory, as well as its lack of action on climate change. Our concerns form the basis of the second reading amendment. I move:

At the end of the motion add “but the Senate condemns the Government for:

     (a)     its extreme and arrogant imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory;

     (b)     breaking a specific promise made before the last election to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

     (c)     its heavy-handed disregard for the legal and other rights of Northern Territorians and other communities, by overriding any existing or future state or territory law or regulation that prohibits or interferes with the selection of Commonwealth land as a site, the establishment of a waste dump and the transportation of waste across Australia;

     (d)     destroying any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory;

     (e)            establishing a hand-picked committee of inquiry into the economics of nuclear power in Australia, while disregarding the economic case for all alternative sources of energy; and

      (f)            keeping secret all plans for the siting of nuclear power stations and related nuclear waste dumps”.