Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I raise the reason for the urgency at an early point to cut to the chase in relation to this whole business. The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 amends the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005 and provides for the failure to comply with the site nomination rules in section 3B, and does not affect the validity of the minister’s approval under section 3C of a nomination. It amends it to remove any entitlement of procedural fairness in relation to a nomination made under section 3A and provides, should a nominated site ultimately be chosen for the Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility, for the Commonwealth to return the nominated site to its original owners when it is no longer required. The bill also amends the Administrative Decisions Act to exclude the application of the act to a site nomination under section 3A of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act to ensure consistency with existing provisions of the act relating to sections 3C and 7 of that act.

The bill is therefore a rather technical one but important nonetheless. It addresses concerns raised by the Northern Land Council in relation to nominating a site under the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act. If these concerns are not addressed, the Northern Land Council may be unwilling to nominate a site should a community within its jurisdiction wish to volunteer its land. Any nominated site needs to be included in the current site characterisation under the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act program as soon as possible to ensure that such a site is given adequate consideration within the current project schedule. So, if there is any nominated site, we need to deal with that as quickly as possible. If this reporting date is extended, as proposed by the Democrats, we will be taking this into early next year. We are able to deal with this act with sufficient Senate committee scrutiny and we can then deal with it in the final sitting fortnight, which is coming up. For those reasons, the government considers this to be urgent, and that is why I moved my amendment for an earlier date for reporting.