Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is relevant. In his letter of 22 September 2006, Senator Lightfoot wrote:

... the outcome of this issue could have been vastly different had it not been for the overwhelming silence of your local state members of the Carpenter government.

Apparently, according to Senator Lightfoot, even Labor members of the Western Australian state parliament stood a better chance of being listened to by the Howard government than poor old Mr Henry. But do not get me wrong. I am happy for Senator Lightfoot to waste his postage entitlement on long, rambling and defensive letters that make ridiculous claims this far out from an election. It reeks of desperation, and the people of Hasluck know it.

Just like the member for Solomon and the member for Hasluck, Mr Barry Haase, the member for Kalgoorlie, could be a co-convenor of the ‘left right out’ faction. For years, Mr Haase has been banging on about his one and only idea—changes to the zone tax rebate. As we all know, the Howard government last week again rejected Mr Haase’s proposal to increase the zone tax rebate. In a recent article in the Kalgoorlie Miner, reporting on Mr Haase’s most recent failure, I made the comment that he was a tiger in his electorate but that when he got to Canberra he was a kitten, because he did not have the guts to put up a private member’s bill on the matter. I was astounded by Mr Haase’s response. He was quoted in that article as saying:

It would be an absolutely time-wasting effort, less than futile ...

He went on to say—and this is my favourite part:

When you go to a capital city, the party room or the parliament your voice is just one more among the chatter.

What a shocking admission of failure. If the member for Kalgoorlie joined forces with the member for Hasluck and the member for Solomon to form the ‘left right out’ faction, their chances of being heard in the government party room chatter might just increase—but I doubt it.

Like the people of Solomon, Hasluck and Kalgoorlie, I know that the only way they stand a chance of having their voice carried with the weight it deserves is if they were to elect Labor members in a Beazley Labor government at the next election. However, there seems to be one Liberal backbencher who does not have any trouble getting his voice heard in the party room. I refer here to the member for Tangney. I congratulate Dr Dennis Jensen, the member for Tangney, on successfully overturning the decision of the WA branch of the Liberal Party to dump him from his safe seat after only one term.

The wishes of the Liberal Party preselectors were recently overturned after an intervention by none other than the Prime Minister. Not only does the Prime Minister listen to Dr Jensen; he runs to his rescue! We can only speculate why it is that the Prime Minister intervened to get the decision to dump Dr Jensen overturned. It could have something to do with Dr Jensen’s stated desire to have a nuclear power plant in his own electorate. Dr Jensen has been the biggest supporter of nuclear energy in the Howard government, and he is the only Liberal backbencher to put up his hand and volunteer his constituents as human shields for Australia’s first nuclear power station.

But there is a hitch. In my home state of Western Australia, the former Liberal Court government, with the Labor opposition’s active support, enacted legislation preventing the establishment of a nuclear facility. In spite of this, under the Australian Constitution this legislation is not binding on the decisions of the Howard government on Commonwealth land. Unfortunately, once again for Mr Stuart Henry, the closest piece of Commonwealth land to the electorate of Tangney is the Perth airport site where the BGC Brickworks are currently being built.

If the Howard government minister for transport can see clear to have a brickworks with a massive smokestack built near the flight path of Perth airport against the express wishes of the local member from his own government party room, it is easy to imagine that he would also grant approval for the member for Tangney’s nuclear facility on airport land. The minister and the Howard government certainly have not ruled it out. Given the Howard government’s form—backflips and betrayal over the Northern Territory nuclear waste dump—who would believe them if they ruled it out anyway? The Howard government have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted on such issues.

Why would anybody trust the Prime Minister when he breaks his promise to keep interest rates at record lows, when he smashes his promise that no worker will be worse off under the Howard government and when he dumps his promise to keep nuclear waste out of the Northern Territory? We can only say that broken promises are the debris left after 10 long years of the Prime Minister taking a wrecking ball to the foundations of our fair and decent society.

The waste dump legislation gave the government total power to site, construct and operate a Commonwealth radioactive waste dump at one of three sites in the Northern Territory. The government overrode all existing and future state and territory law and regulation that got in the way. In addition, many federal laws have been overridden, including the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act, and the Native Title Act. Given this form, it is easy to imagine the Howard government setting up a nuclear facility on the land next to the BGC brickworks.

The Prime Minister has consistently refused to rule out any part of Australia for a nuclear power station. Local communities have a right to know what the government’s intentions are and what to expect from it on both nuclear power sites and the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. Make no mistake about it: this government is determined to bring nuclear power to Australia.

The Howard government knows that local communities will not cop it, which is why it is refusing to talk about the most important thing: where the power plants and the resulting high-level waste dumps will be. At a Senate estimates hearing this year, ANSTO told Labor and later ABC radio that at least three to five nuclear power plants would be needed for a viable Australian nuclear power industry. If the Prime Minister is serious about nuclear power, he should come clean and tell us where these three to five sites might be.

We also know that the coalition has form when it comes to the location of nuclear facilities. It certainly knows how to keep them secret. In 1997 the government considered a short list of 14 possible sites for nuclear research reactors but kept the list secret from the public. The confidential briefing—signed with ‘good work’ by the former science minister, Mr Peter McGauran—said that the short list should be kept secret because:

... release of information about alternate sites may unnecessarily alarm communities in the broad areas under consideration.

If the government are in fact planning to introduce nuclear power—and it seems that they are—or uranium enrichment plants, they must answer some questions that the Australian people want to ask. Which suburbs or towns will be home to the new nuclear reactors and enrichment plants? What will the government do to make sure that local residents and schools are safe? Where will we see nuclear reactors in our major cities? Will they be in any cities other than Sydney? What will be done with the nuclear waste? Will there be nuclear waste dumps other than in the Northern Territory?