Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

I feel somewhat constrained to comment on that question in any detail, given my lack of a brief and the sorts of issues that that question raises—and certainly, as Minister for Finance, I do not want to cause any diplomatic offence to anybody. I am not sure where Senator Milne is coming from, but I suspect that she may be talking about Chernobyl; I suspect that is the basis of her question.

Many of us have read and studied the circumstances surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster. I have certainly read a very instructive book by a Russian journalist and have seen a documentary on that particular episode. The matter has been exhaustively studied and looked at by world authorities. I think it was a great tragedy. Indeed, it really was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it exposed the shortcomings of due diligence, transparency and good governance in the Soviet Union in that a reactor could be built in that fashion without any of the proper safeguards and checks that would be normal in Western democracies. That is in stark contrast with the proud record of nuclear power station operation and construction that is the norm in Western countries. France gets most of its power from nuclear power. There are nuclear power reactors operating around the world very satisfactorily. There is no doubt and no denying that Chernobyl was a complete and utter disaster with dreadful consequences for Western Europe.

I am sure that Senator Milne, if she is interested in this subject, will have studied the particular causes of that disaster, the disasters and the tragedies surrounding the construction and operation of that reactor and the nature of the type of reactor that was involved and that is no longer built and/or operated in any other country in the world, as I am advised. I am not an expert on the current situation with Russian management of the construction and operation of nuclear reactors and I do not want to make glib comments on the run about that subject, but I think one should draw a very big distinction between what occurred in the then Soviet Union with the construction and operation of nuclear reactors and the very proud record that is the case in most Western democracies, where the governance, transparency and safety standards that apply to reactors are exemplary.