Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006. Senator Lightfoot, there is a problem when you get up and read a brief and you do not understand what you are talking about. The last time I looked, there were more than 100,000 people in the Northern Territory. The fact that you are not sure how many people live there might be an indication of your lack of care about the nuclear dump we are about to have imposed on us up there, thanks to your government.

The purpose of this bill is to allow ANSTO to handle, manage or store radioactive materials from a broad range of sources and circumstances than is currently allowed under the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act of 1987. Predominantly this bill outlines three powers that will be extended to ANSTO in three broad circumstances. ANSTO will have the power to look at radioactive material and waste that might arise from incidents including terrorist or criminal acts. The bill allows ANSTO to manage or control waste that is currently not generated by ANSTO. The current act limits ANSTO’s capacity to deal with waste that is not theirs. Finally, the bill allows ANSTO to deal with the reprocessed spent fuel rods which are going to return to Australia and which we know will contain fuel that is reprocessed from the waste of other countries, not just Australia.

Let me go into the background of those three broad categories. ANSTO and New South Wales Emergency Waste Management presented submissions to the Senate inquiry into this bill. In 2005 the New South Wales State Emergency Management Committee sought ANSTO’s advice on the handling, storage and disposal of radioactive material that the Commonwealth may require in the event of an emergency or malicious situation. The Commonwealth noted that the New South Wales Police forensic services may need to take custody of radioactive material as part of investigations. However, they have no facilities to hold such material. The Australian Federal Police and the Victoria Police, in their submissions, raised similar issues with ANSTO.

It would make sense, with ANSTO being the pre-eminent body that would know the most about these materials, that their involvement in emergency situations such as dirty bombs was not envisaged during the drafting and the amendments of the original ANSTO Act. As I said, it would make common sense these days to extend ANSTO’s powers to enable it to become involved in these situations. Given their nuclear research and management expertise, it is appropriate that law enforcement or emergency and disaster agencies should be able to access ANSTO’s capabilities and facilities, including for terrorist events that may use radioactive materials. In its current form, the ANSTO Act limits the initial assistance ANSTO could provide in an emergency to little more than the provision of advice. ANSTO cannot take possession of any nuclear materials in the event of an incident. However, this bill will facilitate ANSTO’s involvement in emergencies.

It will also bring Australia into line with standards set out in the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. Australia has not ratified that convention, but these changes are intended to assist Australia’s consideration of its position in relation to ratification of the convention. In that sense, the Labor Party gives that section of the bill a tick. We think it is eminently sensible to provide ANSTO with its ability to take part and participate in any emergency waste management that might arise under those situations.

ANSTO and the management of Commonwealth nuclear waste is now directly linked to the situation in which we find ourselves in the Northern Territory. This government lied to the people of the Northern Territory prior to the last election and a nuclear waste dump is now to be imposed upon us without consultation, without agreement and without any recognition of the needs or concerns of the three communities which are to be involved. ANSTO is currently constrained to management and processing of its own waste alone. It does not have the power to process waste from other Commonwealth sources—defence forces or the CSIRO. ANSTO is licensed to operate a store for research reactor spent fuel prior to it being sent overseas for reprocessing. It is also licensed to operate a separate facility to condition—that is, handle and process waste for safe and secure disposal—and store other radioactive waste generated by the organisation.

Radioactive waste held at a variety of premises will require conditioning before it can be sent for long-term storage or disposal. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency, ARPANSA, is developing a code of practice and safety guide for the conditioning and management of radioactive waste prior to its disposal. Once developed, ARPANSA intends to apply these national requirements for predisposal management to all Commonwealth entities. ANSTO’s experience in managing its own waste makes it the only body suitable for and capable of conditioning Commonwealth waste to meet ARPANSA’s requirements.

As a consequence of this bill, ANSTO will be able to lend its expertise to waste management of all radioactive materials held by the Commonwealth. However, much larger quantities of waste will be transported to Lucas Heights for conditioning and held there during processing before eventual storage at the waste dump. In addition, ANSTO has the expertise and capability for the management of waste in Australia. As such, ANSTO should be able to lend its facilities and expertise to the conditioning and processing of nuclear waste.

The bill explicitly provides that materials and waste generated, possessed or controlled by a Commonwealth contractor are taken to be de facto generated, possessed or controlled by the Commonwealth itself, and as such contractors are covered by the same responsibilities and immunities as the Commonwealth. In a sense, this closes another loophole that was obviously missed when the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act was rammed through this parliament last year. We know that the passage of that act had extensive immunities and meant that there is currently very little, if any, chance of a successful state or territory challenge to the siting or operation of the waste dump on the grounds of the ANSTO Act or the bill. However, the department has identified this provision in its submission to the Senate legislation committee inquiry into this bill as limiting potential legal action against Commonwealth contractors by jurisdictions opposed to the Commonwealth’s radioactive waste management strategy.

As this government’s agenda for dumping nuclear waste in the Northern Territory unfolds, we see another tiny loophole where in fact legal action may well have been taken with respect to contractors transporting and generating or possessing waste generated by the Commonwealth itself. This, of course, is another mean and tricky way in which this government will ensure that there can be no legal challenge to what is transported, stored, held or maintained in the waste dump in the Northern Territory.

Despite the Commonwealth’s intention to use this bill to limit any residual capacity for legal challenges to the nuclear waste dump, it is generally preferable for ANSTO to be able to lend its expertise, facilities and qualified staff to waste processing and management. Although ANSTO will in a sense be responsible for waste generated by a contractor, this bill ensures one further step, that any loophole for legal challenge will be closed to ensure that the waste dump proceeds.

The final area that this bill covers is to ensure that ANSTO has the responsibility for all spent nuclear fuel that is coming back to this country. We know that at present spent fuel from the research reactor at Lucas Heights has been sent to France and Scotland for reprocessing. Reprocessing involves the spent fuel waste being held in storage for a considerable period in order to reduce its radioactivity. The reprocessed spent fuel is due to return some time between 2011 and 2015. Hence the need for this government to move fairly quickly to establish a national nuclear waste dump. Without consultation, it will impose that nuclear waste dump on the Territory.

We know that ANSTO has entered into contractual arrangements for the reprocessing and eventual return of the waste. The intermediate-level waste will return first to Lucas Heights before it is taken to the proposed dump in the Northern Territory. This bill ensures that the waste that is coming back to Australia will cover not only Australia’s waste but waste from other countries, because, when we send spent fuel over to France or Scotland, they do not just process our waste into any spent fuel rods; it is mixed with the fuel from right around the world, and the spent fuel rod that comes back to us will be a mixture of whatever it is from other countries that has been put together, if I can say it as simply as that. So there is no guarantee that a spent fuel rod coming back to Australia will solely contain material that was generated from Australia. So it is not ‘probable’; we know that waste returning to Australia will contain wastes not generated by the Australian research reactor, and this government believes it is not clear that a court would regard such wastes as wastes arriving from ANSTO’s activity. Therefore this is another loophole for a legal challenge that anyone may want to undertake in taking on this government about what could or could not be stored at the waste dump or what could or could not be handled by ANSTO.

The proposed amendments in this bill would ensure that ANSTO has the necessary powers to accept all waste, any waste, from any of the countries under its contractual agreement and manage and store such wastes. There is, I think, some question over whether it is intermediate-level waste. ANSTO and ARPANSA have told me at estimates that there is no way that it is high-level waste. Material I have read through any French website, their nuclear atomic energy agencies or similar agencies to ANSTO assures me that in fact there is only high-level or low-level waste in France. One would have to believe that perhaps they are right and our people are pulling the wool over our eyes. I am certainly now of the view, after the extensive reading I have done, that in fact what we will be getting back from France is nothing but high-level waste.

That leads me to make some final comments in the remaining minutes about this whole sorry saga of where we are going with the storage of this nuclear waste. We know, of course, that this government has tried to tell Territorians, who have to face the threat of the imposition of a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory, that the nuclear waste dump will be safe. But in fact this bill is an acknowledgment of the grave security risks involved in handling, holding and transporting radioactive materials. The bill contains provisions that recognise the potential for terrorists to use nuclear wastes in a dirty bomb.

The Australian Labor Party concede that the storage of nuclear radioactive waste is important, but we do not believe that the way in which this government has gone about it is the way to go. There are still grave concerns for Territorians over the risks of having the waste in their backyard, and for the coalition government to pass legislation to establish a waste dump and then pass legislation some months later about the safety and security of that waste clearly shows that this government really thinks that security on this issue is only a secondary concern.

While this government likes to talk tough on security issues, it has been sadly lacking in substance. You only need to look at the report in the Weekend Australian on 19 November last year which said:

The back door to one of the nation’s prime terrorist targets—

that is, the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor—

is protected by a cheap padlock and a stern warning against trespassing or blocking the driveway.

This level of security may have been deemed as broadly adequate by the then Acting Prime Minister, John Anderson; however, this standard of security is deemed simply unacceptable by just about everyone else. But we know that this government is still playing catch-up in terms of security and safe handling of radioactive materials. It is only now, with this bill, that the federal government will give ANSTO the power to deal with radioactive material and waste arising from a relevant incident, including a terrorist or a criminal act.

I listened with interest, of course, to Mr Tollner’s speech in the other place on this legislation. I notice that my Senate colleague Senator Scullion is not down to defend his actions or record in relation to dumping nuclear waste in the Territory, but Mr Tollner went to some pains to ‘clarify the record’, he said, in relation to how the whole sorry saga about the proposed nuclear waste dump in the Territory unfolded. I have to say that I think Territorians have already made up their minds on this issue, and they know that the member for Solomon misled them. He said:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory ...

We have heard that many times echoed in the House of Representatives and in the Senate chamber in the last year. That is the promise that Mr Tollner gave to Territorians prior to the last federal election. Again, trying to convince Territorians otherwise is merely wasted breath, but Mr Tollner has demonstrated that he is still back-pedalling following his broken promise during his contribution to parliament on this bill. I just want to read into Hansard the comments he made during his speech only a couple of weeks ago. He actually said:

Our environment minister, Senator Ian Campbell, I believe, shot off his mouth a bit early and said that there would be no waste facility located on mainland Australia.

I probably would have to agree with David Tollner—there probably are instances where Senator Ian Campbell has shot off his mouth a bit—but I am a bit surprised that Dave has only just realised what the minister is really like. I think the minister should have listened to Mr Tollner. After all, Dave would probably have to be the absolute authority on shooting off his mouth. Just have a look at the next sentence in Mr Tollner’s contribution to that speech.