Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of the Leader of the Australian Greens, pursuant to contingent notice, I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent Senator Bob Brown moving a motion relating to the conduct of the business of the Senate , namely a motion to give precedence to general business notice of motion No. 735.

I understand there will now be a debate for 30 minutes with five minutes allotted per speaker. I would like to say how shocked I am that a member of the government does not understand the current Australian legislation, especially since Senator Minchin, Senator Abetz—any number of government ministers—yesterday went to great lengths to reassure Australians that there was a ban on nuclear power stations and that there would need to be a change of the law. They tried to hose down the fact that all over the country people are worried that there is going to be a nuclear power station in their backyard.

Yesterday I indicated—and it is in the newspapers today—that the Greens will release a report today stating that the homes of all Australians are at risk because of what this government is doing. The Prime Minister is quite happy to allow people such as Hugh Morgan, Ron Walker and Robert de Crespigny to have insurance for their nuclear power facility, but all Australian homeowners have an exclusion clause in their home insurance stating, ‘Your house is not insured against damage from any accident or any explosion or any other thing at a nuclear power station.’ That means the homes of everyone around Lucas Heights are not insured at the moment. Now we find the government wants to run out with a report saying, ‘There will be 25 nuclear power stations around Australia.’ The Australia Institute has put out a list which considers the criteria. It includes Port Augusta, Townsville, Portland and the area all around Port Phillip Bay. What we do know from the Ziggy Switkowski report is that these power stations need to be sited within 100 kilometres of a built-up area and they will probably need to be on the coast because of water restrictions; nuclear power stations require a huge amount of water.

I thank Senator Watson for giving me this opportunity to stand up in the Senate and tell all Australians that their homes are not insured, and that they are not going to be insured under this government unless the government supports a private member’s bill, which the Greens are going to introduce, which makes it very clear that nuclear power facility operators will take absolute liability. That is what they have done everywhere else in the world where there are nuclear facilities. The US, Britain, Japan, Germany and the UK have all signed the Vienna Convention on Civilian Liability for Nuclear Damage because they recognise that nuclear damage will be nothing like the results of normal pollution and so on.

This government has not signed on to the Vienna Convention for Civilian Liability for Nuclear Damage. I ask every Australian to get out their house insurance policy today and check out the exclusion clause. They will find that the Prime Minister has put them in the situation where, if there is a nuclear accident, a nuclear explosion or whatever, they have no option but to take legal action. They will have to prove negligence against the operator. The Nuclear Energy Agency has said that it is inappropriate for civilians to have to do that. That is why other countries have signed on to the Vienna convention, the Paris Convention on Third Party Liability in the Field of Nuclear Energy and the joint protocol—so that this does not occur in their countries.

The government is very happy to run out its lines on nuclear power stations, but it is not happy to explain to Australians that they are totally vulnerable. Unlike Ron Walker and Hugh Morgan, for ordinary Australians the biggest asset they have is their home. They are going to find that their homes are not insured. This is an absolutely unacceptable situation. It is all very well to talk about interest rates. People out in the suburbs are going to be very focused not just on interest rates but also on the fact that the Prime Minister is happy to insure the rich against damage to their facility yet not happy to allow ordinary Australians to be insured against damage from his nuclear folly.

That is what this is—the Prime Minister’s nuclear folly, which does nothing about climate change. I am glad that those sceptics were here in Parliament House yesterday. Running along to support the sceptics and rubbing shoulders with them, we saw none other than members of parliament. We had Martin Ferguson, Dick Adams, Craig Emerson and Senator Minchin—the whole lot of them—rubbing shoulders with the sceptics, on the one hand supporting nuclear—(Time expired)