Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Democrats support the Non-Proliferation Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 [2007]. It implements the new requirements of the amendments to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, agreed in July 2005. It regulates, with respect to nuclear safeguards, the decommissioning of a nuclear facility to ensure Australia is able to meet its international obligations to the IAEA under the additional protocol, and it makes penalties for the most serious offences consistent with penalties under comparable Commonwealth non-proliferation legislation and provides a significant deterrent to the commission of such offences.

I want to talk briefly about what it does not do. It does not salvage the nuclear non-proliferation treaty negotiations, which failed in New York more than a year ago, particularly on disarmament. It is not likely to stop uranium sales to India, currently prohibited by the NPT. It is not likely to deliver a nuclear-free zone in the Southern Hemisphere, nor is it likely to stop the government going down the nuclear power plant path.

I will be moving some amendments on that latter point. We think this would make this bill worth debating, were it supported by the ALP, and I understand that is unlikely. The amendments are twofold in nature. Before a nuclear facility could be established anywhere in the country, consultation would need to take place between the Commonwealth and state and local governments. A plebiscite would follow if there were majority support and consent for a nuclear facility by those agencies. We define the facilities that would require this action to be: a mill for the production of uranium, lithium or concentrates; a facility for conversion or enrichment of any nuclear material; a facility for the fabrication of fuels for use in nuclear reactors; a nuclear reactor or a nuclear power reactor; a facility for reprocessing spent fuel; or a facility for the storage or disposal of any nuclear material, including any nuclear waste material.

We live in uncertain times when it comes to nuclear power. We have, as has been demonstrated in the chamber today, a lack of understanding on the part of the government as to what is and what is not prohibited in this country by Commonwealth and state laws with regard to nuclear power. We have a government keen to encourage it. The Prime Minister has on numerous occasions said that nuclear power is the answer, and in the last few days we have had the disclosure that the objective of the Prime Minister may have been discussed with mining giants and others with close connections to the Liberal Party before the Prime Minister announced that this was the way forward. So it is a very topical issue.

I expect that the Labor Party will say that this is all covered by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, which makes a nuclear facility illegal, and that to put in another process would undermine that legislation in some way. But we would argue that, having a government which so freely ignores its own laws and can—because it has the numbers in this place—freely pass changes to those laws, it is worth having a discussion at this point in time about what ought to be in place before we make such a decision. The government is strong on choice and supposedly strong on democracy. It would be interesting to ask the people of Australia, in a plebiscite, to help us make a decision on such a matter. It should not be up to Mr Ron Walker, Sir Arvi Parbo and others who see the future in nuclear energy as opposed to other—cleaner and safer—forms of energy in this country.

This bill does in fact talk about safeguarding nuclear facilities, including the decommissioning of those nuclear facilities, so it is relevant to what the Democrats are hoping the Senate will agree to by way of process before such decisions are made. It is my guess, based on polling that has been done so far, that you would not get majority support for nuclear facilities. It might just be useful to put this to the test, even without a proposal to go ahead with a nuclear power station, so that we could, for once and for all, drop this idea instead of going through the agonising business of costing something we know to be terribly expensive and proceeding down this path when we need to take action now, not in 10, 15 or 20 years time, and look at what is going on in the rest of the world. Perhaps a few reactors are being established in Asia, but if you look to Europe there are no major proposals for building new power stations in the UK, or even in the United States. The decommissioning of those reactors is, in fact, the biggest problem that those countries have—when to start doing it, how to do it and who will pay the cost of it, which is very substantial. I will move those amendments when we proceed to the committee stage.