David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

Without foreshadowing in too great detail, because I want to discuss this, in some respect, in context, in the scheme that is proposed, the closure certificate would be granted within five years after the end of the useful life of the repository, or earlier. The company would take its advice, the minister would take his own advice, geophysical et cetera, and then the minister would grant the site closure certificate. Thereafter, there would be a period of 15 years, called the closure assurance period. So we are talking about a period of 20 years, technically, wherein the proponent would monitor it, with the exclusive supervision of the departments, all of the data would be referred, and all of the measurements and detections would be done. It would only be after that that the minister could say the site was safe. When he did say that, and was satisfied on all the empirical data, liability would shift to the Commonwealth.