Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Edwards might want to enlighten us either now or at another time on what he proposes happen to the other 56,000 tonnes, because we have no idea. Apparently it is just left in some kind of outdoor car park in remote South Australia, sitting on the surface. The costs of a secure, dedicated port are not included. The costs of a dedicated rail corridor to inland South Australia are not included. The costs of the radical increases in security that you would need to safeguard this material from mishandling or misadventure are not included. The cost of safeguarding it for 300,000 years is not included. The costs of dropping it a mile below the desert in South Australia in 100 years time are not included.

How on earth has the debate come to this, where the best the major parties appear to be able to offer up for the people of South Australia as the economy slowly caves in is hosting the world's radiotoxic waste? How on earth has it come to this?

This parliament and the South Australian parliament should have ruled this out. Mr Scarce has done us something of a favour. I must admit that I was a sceptic. I did not think that using a royal commission for something like this was the right vehicle to do some taxpayer funded industry research. Nonetheless, they have come back and said: 'The industry is stuffed. It's barely viable, but why don't we—on the basis of completely imaginary fabricated economics—take the world's most lethal garbage and stick it in a parking lot out the back of South Australia?' Instead of repudiating that proposal, Mr Shorten is entertaining it. Mr Weatherill is entertaining it. Mr Turnbull is entertaining it. This debate should have been closed at the point at which the industry admitted that the reason it wants remote sites is that its engineered containment barriers will leak.

Surely we can do better than that for the people of South Australia. I look forward to getting some answers from the minister on the questions that I have raised.