Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to take that on notice and get back to you when we resume the debate. But my layman's response is that, if those sites are continuing to produce waste, there will clearly be waste for some period of time on those sites. The issue then is storage and making sure we are not continuing to accumulate waste in those sites. But clearly the research activities will continue and therefore they will generate waste. One of the issues we are dealing with is the accumulation of waste in Australia, which will only grow—because of both the returns from France and England that are due in a couple of years time and what we continue to generate here. We are one of the leaders in many of these scientific pursuits, which is a great credit to Australia. We have some of the best people in many of the fields that use this material. That is a layman's off-the-cuff response, which is probably wrong. I will get you a more informed response when we come back on the other matter.