Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

I invite Senator Chapman to indicate whether he is willing, as a South Australian senator, to rule out supporting the establishment of a nuclear power facility in his home state and I ask Senator Watson in which of the seats of Bass, Braddon, Denison, Franklin and Lyons he is happy to see a nuclear power facility established. Let us be clear. We have a government that does not know which way is up, does not know what it is doing on nuclear power and is entirely equivocal about it. The government clearly has people within its ranks who are quite happy to establish nuclear power facilities in various places in Australia.

Do you know what is really bad? The government are not prepared to come clean with the Australian public. They are not prepared to be honest and say: ‘Yes, we want to do it—and this is how we are going to do it. This is the process for consultation and this is the process for establishment.’ They have a go at us because, they say, we are shutting down the debate, but what do they want? They want a debate on their terms. They want to be able to debate it theoretically—to support nuclear power—but not have to front up to the Australian people and say where it is going to be and what the process for putting it in place will be.