Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020 on behalf of the Australian Greens and my constituents in South Australia, who, of course, are outraged that once again we see the two big parties working together to dump on our state. This is an example of what happens when Labor and Liberal get together: they've got more votes on the eastern seaboard than they do in South Australia, so they dump on SA. That's what they're doing here today.

South Australians are frustrated at this debate. It's gone on for so long. They're frustrated that, every time, rather than putting in the work and coming up with permanent solutions, Labor and Liberal gang up together to decide: 'We don't want the nuclear waste in our backyards, so we'll stick it in South Australia. We'll stick it in communities that don't want it.'

This process has been a shambles from the beginning. The consultation process in relation to these three listed sites has been a debacle, mishandled over and over again. There have been different ministers in charge over time, and, every time you get a new minister, you get new promises, only for them to be broken, and consultations that are rubbish, and the locals in South Australia get ignored once more. And what are we seeing today? Right now, as we're debating and voting on this legislation, we are seeing another rolling of leaders in the National Party. First of all, when Senator Canavan was in charge of this portfolio, he didn't care about where the waste went as long as it wasn't in his backyard in Queensland. 'Let's just dump on SA.' Then we had Mr Pitt. What did he do? 'Just dump on SA.' And you can bet your bottom dollar Mr Barnaby Joyce will do the exact same thing. Just like he wants to take all of South Australia's water, he thinks that we should have all the country's nuclear waste as well—not our Deputy Prime Minister, I'll have you know.

This bill is a disgrace. It is an affront to community consultation, it is an affront to the best available science and it is an affront to the promise, the long-held promise, that this country would get serious about a long-term permanent solution to dealing with the waste that we have. Of course we have a responsibility. We create nuclear waste; we need to store it properly. It is of course incredibly toxic. That's why it is difficult to do. It is also why you don't see the Prime Minister advocating that they build a nuclear waste dump in his electorate, where Lucas Heights actually is. Oh no, you couldn't have it in the Prime Minister's backyard! You've got to dump it in South Australia instead. Actually, the safest place to keep it, as the scientists have told us over and over again in the various inquiries that have been undertaken, is to leave it where it is, and, for the intermediate waste, that would be in the Prime Minister's backyard—in the shire, at Lucas Heights. But, of course, that's not what we're debating today, because the big parties and the big states think it's all very cute and easy to dump on little ol' South Australia.

As I mentioned at the outset, the consultation process that led up to this piece of legislation has been a debacle, an insult. If you want to run a community consultation, this is not the way to do it. The First Nations communities in all three of these selected sites have been treated appallingly. Thankfully, one of the amendments that is going to be moved is to at least restore some type of judicial review, because the process has been so bad. In their incompetence, the ministers under the National Party that have been managing this for a number of years now have treated the local South Australian First Nations communities terribly.

We were first told, in relation to the proposals to build a national nuclear waste dump, that this would be just for low-level waste. 'Don't worry, we'll put this facility in the outback where no-one will really notice. It'll be low level. It doesn't matter. Let's run a process to consult. It doesn't really matter what the response is; we'll still do it. We'll pay you off, too—millions of dollars.' Of course, as this process has gone on, it's now been acknowledged that it's not going to store just low-level nuclear waste. This is actually going to be storing—for a temporary period of 100 years!—intermediate-level waste, above ground.

To anyone who wants to stand in this place today and argue that it doesn't matter, that this is all about low-level waste—the type you find in basements in hospitals—I would say, that is just not true, because part of this proposal has now morphed into storing intermediate-level waste. And the best available science—world practice, international standards—says that this should not be happening, that you shouldn't be double-handling this level of waste in this manner. This is all because the government has been dragging its feet on establishing a properly independent and expert inquiry about the whole nuclear cycle in Australia that would give proper advice as to what to do with the more toxic and dangerous intermediate-level waste. But of course that hasn't happened, so now we have intermediate-level waste tacked onto this proposal—not permanently stored; it will be above ground—and no-one knows what will happen next.

International experts have warned Australia that this is not okay. International bodies have said that this is not best practice. Yet there is no plan from this government as to what to do with it. We all know what happens in these situations. You get approval for the project as it is now, you don't consult properly and you pay off the communities, hoping they'll forget and hoping everyone else will forget, too. Well, we won't forget. South Australians are sick and tired of being dumped on like this by the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals and the big states on the eastern seaboard.

If you wanted to do best practice, if you wanted to follow the science in relation to this, you'd put in place a proper plan for dealing with this intermediate waste. Yet that is just not happening. The other issue in relation to all this is: how is this dangerous toxic stuff going to get to South Australia in the first place? It's going to be driven on our roads, in big trucks, and shipped from Lucas Heights, in the Prime Minister's backyard, all the way around and into South Australia. And we're going to be doing that on boats. It's going to be loaded on and off in South Australia's port towns. But of course no-one in Whyalla, no-one in Port Augusta and no-one in Port Pirie has been consulted about having this toxic stuff arrive on their front doorstep. There's been no proper community consultation. No safety plan has been discussed as to how this toxic and dangerous waste is going to be transported to any of these three sites.

This has been a disgraceful process, and still the South Australian community are left in the dark. How is this going to be transported? How often are we going to have trucks and ships full of nuclear waste coming into our state, coming into our towns? What are the people of Whyalla meant to do—not to mention the towns and communities where this dump is built? One of the sites listed by the government in this piece of legislation, in their amendment, is in the heart of the Flinders Ranges—a jewel in the crown of our state. The Flinders Ranges are spectacular. They are beautiful—nature at its very finest. They are loved by South Australians. They are loved by the local First Nations people. They are loved by people right around the world, because of their special and unique characteristics. And today we're voting on a piece of legislation that suggests that this government could build a waste dump in the heart of the Flinders Ranges. And what do we see? Labor voting with the government. It's just a disgrace.

If it doesn't go to the Flinders Ranges, the other site is close to Kimba, in some of South Australia's best, finest, prime agricultural land. What happens with the product that's created and grown out there? It's shipped overseas, exported, with a superb reputation of being clean and green. Senators and members of parliament from Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria don't give two hoots about the reputation of South Australia's grain industry, our clean food and wine industry and our pristine environment. No, they don't want a dump in their backyard. Well, South Australians don't want it either, especially when you haven't even bothered to put in the legwork to run a proper process, to follow best available science, to do world's best practice. You just want a tick and flick, done, done, done—like the revolving door of the leadership of the National Party.

It's no surprise that the ministers—minister after minister after minister—responsible for this debacle have all been ministers of the National Party. They're far more interested in their own jobs, far more interested in being at the top of their party's ticket, far more interested in being Deputy Prime Minister than they are about making sure we handle this toxic and dangerous waste properly. Mr Joyce doesn't give two hoots about what happens to this waste, as long as it's not in his backyard. The Prime Minister, whose electorate is right where this nuclear waste is created, doesn't want it there—surprise, surprise!—so dump it in South Australia and everyone will forget about it.

We're not going to. We're going to fight this. We want a proper process. We want independent expert advice, not special favours from national ministers, and we want our state's reputation for having a clean, green, food, wine and tourism industry protected. It's only the Greens who are standing up for this in our state of South Australia.