Mark Bishop (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Coonan, representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Can the minister confirm that, this week, the government signed Australia up to the US-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, joining the great and glorious Kazakhstan in this group? Hasn’t the government committed Australia to joining a group that will see nuclear fuel leased to countries, then returned to fuel suppliers for reprocessing and then potentially stored in other members’ countries? Isn’t that why Canada, another major uranium supplier, declined the invitation to join the group? Can the minister also confirm that the Liberal Party Federal Council, in June this year, overwhelmingly voted in support of establishing a nuclear waste dump in Australia to take spent fuel from other countries? How can voters trust the government on this issue, when its own party members strongly support Australia taking spent nuclear fuel from other countries to be stored at a high-level waste dump? (Time expired)