Bob Day (SA, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Family First Party I move amendment (1), circulated in my name:

(1) Schedule 1, page 3 (before line 4), before item 1, insert:

1A Section 10

  Repeal the section.

My home state of South Australia—I like starting a speech with 'My home state of South Australia'; it just gets me off on the right foot—amongst other things, is blessed with significant uranium deposits. On a per capita basis we have, perhaps, the most in the world.

Let me mention a former state Labor MP, the late Mr Norm Foster. He was one of the first members in the other place for the electorate of Sturt. He then became a member of the South Australian Legislative Council. In 1982 Norm Foster crossed the floor in the state parliament to get uranium mining underway at Olympic Dam, in South Australia. In expressing his conscience in support of that state, Norm Foster resigned from the Labor Party, to perhaps avoid being expelled for going against party policy. Thankfully, history and the Labor Party were kinder to him in later years and he is now hailed as a hero in South Australia. It just goes to show, though, that sometimes groupthink has to be taken head-on, no matter what the cost. When this legislation was created in 1998, a provision was inserted by the Greens, to automatically ban certain types of nuclear activity and installations.

Senator Ludlam interjecting—

I thank Senator Ludlam for his interjection; he still holds to that view 20 years later. I want to highlight that this is not the end of the debate, if the amendment is defeated. It is not even the beginning of the end. I accept that the government was perhaps housekeeping in this particular legislative area and then along I came, opportunistically, with an amendment about nuclear installations. And when you come from South Australia you take every opportunity that you can. I get that. I also want colleagues to get that, when it comes to a nuclear future for South Australia—and my South Australian colleague Senator Edwards and indeed a number of other coalition senators have offered encouraging words to me in support of this amendment—I and others from South Australia and no doubt other senators from other states support that, and breaking down the barriers to get on with the nuclear fuel cycle and industry for South Australia.

A royal commission into the nuclear fuel cycle has been instituted in South Australia and, to its great credit, state Labor got this underway. My party, the Family First Party, has welcomed and supported that. I note that it has been reported that the South Australian government's Attorney-General's Department is already preparing tenders for consultants to bid for the work in preparing business cases for the very things that are described and banned outright in section 10 of the act. This move is designed to clear and improve the business case for South Australia participating more broadly in the nuclear fuel cycle.

I want to also make it clear that a nuclear spent fuel facility is already permissible at law, although the Greens also tried to stop that in 1998. We need and already have low-level facilities, but these are presently licensed by the authority.

I also want to talk about nuclear submarines. I want to emphasise, again, that I support nuclear-powered submarines, not nuclear-armed submarines. Some of our major allies have nuclear-powered submarines, not least of which are the UK and the United States. The generation of submarines currently under the competitive evaluation process will of course be conventional submarines. But I hope that the next generation after that will be nuclear, because there is no doubt that these provide the tactical superiority and particular range that a large and relatively remote nation such as Australia needs. Informed opinion tells us that Australia's defence needs are for 12 submarines, six conventional and six nuclear powered.

Having a nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear industry will greatly improve the prospects of us establishing a nuclear submarine industry and, indeed, developing local talent. We could work, for example, in partnership with, say, the United Kingdom or the United States and progress towards having our own nuclear industry, supporting nuclear-powered submarines.

With respect to international comparisons, let me just outline for the benefit of senators where Australia presently sits in comparison with its major trading partners when it comes to the types of facilities described in section 10 of the act. Thirty-three nations have nuclear power and 19 of those nations have nuclear fuel fabrication. Eleven nations have nuclear enrichment plants. There are seven nations with reprocessing facilities. Australia is one of just four out the 20 G20 nations that does not have nuclear power. Eighteen of the 34 OECD nations have nuclear power, and Australia of course is not one of them. So nuclear energy and its fuel cycle is not an international pariah as some might suggest; in fact, far from it.

I want to move on to consider small, modular reactors, which Senator Leyonhjelm mentioned a short time ago. I have learnt a little bit about this aspect of nuclear energy. Let me tell you about small modular reactors, SMRs for short. In brief, they are small, economically efficient, reliable nuclear energy sources—