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

The government does not support the amend­ments. The site selection process is guided by procedural fairness. That is a requirement that applies to all government decision making. It is also the case that the Administrative Review Council, a statutory body which was established to advise the Commonwealth Attorney-General on a broad range of matters related to the Common­wealth system of administrative law, made a submission on the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill and recommended that, rather than excluding procedural fairness, the bill should extend procedural fairness to parties with a specified interest in the decision to select the site for a facility. Those recommendations have now been incorporated into the decision-making processes under the bill. We do not believe the Greens' proposed amendments are consistent with how procedural fairness has been interpreted by the courts and therefore we will not be supporting the amendments.