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

Again Senator Webber points to this issue. It is going to be important to develop consensus on this issue, and this is where I find the Labor Party quite extraordinary. Mr Mike Rann, the Premier of South Australia, fought us all the way in our attempts to implement Simon Crean’s policy to have a national radioactive waste repository in the best place in Australia—the best place in Australia having been determined by scientific evidence as South Australia. He fought that all the way. But now he is the great champion of maximising uranium mining in this country, to his credit. We think Mr Rann did the right thing trying to persuade the troglodytes in the Labor Party and the extreme greenies in the Labor Party that uranium mining is important to this country. He is now the one championing Roxby Downs as a great uranium mine—and good luck to him. But he is the one, hypocritically, who opposed us all the way in our endeavours to implement Mr Simon Crean’s policy on the storage of radioactive waste. You people cannot be believed on anything.

Mr President, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.