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

Just briefly—and I will not rise to the bait of constantly referring to the nuclear waste repository as 'the shed'—I just make the overall point that we have been dealing with this since, I think, the 1980s to try to find a long-term storage facility. It is not Lucas Heights, which I think is actually proscribed from being a nuclear repository in the ANSTO Act, but we have made it very clear that there are a range of reasons why we think we need to have a repository that deals with both the waste coming back and the accumulated waste that has been generated in Australia.

I think that those arguments are fairly clear. We do not think that the amendment moved by Senator Ludlam should be supported. We do not think that it improves the situation; in fact we think that it fundamentally undermines the key purpose of the bill, which is the selection of a site for a facility on voluntarily nominated land.