Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I will make a couple of comments about this bill, the National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020. Labor will support this bill, subject to the adoption by this chamber of a series of amendments. We're here at this time, because this process has been entirely mismanaged by a succession of National Party ministers. The government should not be afraid of judicial review, of proper scrutiny or of proper community engagement over this issue.

As has been commented on by a number of the other speakers, this facility will principally be to deal with waste produced at Lucas Heights by ANSTO, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. That facility is a core part of Australia's technological, science, research and medical infrastructure, but it's also a core part of what should be our growing industrial capability. The facility at Lucas Heights can deliver over 10,000 patient doses a week of nuclear medicine, to more than 250 medical centres right around Australia. Australians rely upon nuclear medicine for all sorts of conditions. It is instrumental for diagnosing heart disease, for skeletal injuries and for a range of cancers. It's estimated there are about 650,000 of these procedures every year. One in two Australians will benefit from nuclear medicine produced at ANSTO in Lucas Heights. As an official of the AMWU, I saw this important and skilled work up very close, through members of the AMWU and a series of other unions—over 1,000 people from tradespeople to skilled technicians, scientists and administrative workers operate that facility. I was actually appointed by Senator Carr, the former minister, to a panel that reviewed the safety of that facility and saw up close just how vital that facility is to Australia's future not just in a medical sense but also for the build capability in this country for our science, our technology and the future of our industries. That is a vital facility, and its safety, security and future viability are critical.

The waste from that facility has been building up for the past 60 years. At the moment, that waste is stored in more than 100 facilities around the country, with most of it stored in drums at the ANSTO facility in Lucas Heights. That is not a sustainable position. ANSTO believes the storage capacity will be filled by 2030. They have an arrangement until much later than that. There are certainly more productive uses of space at that nuclear facility than creating further storage capacity. A permanent and specific nuclear waste facility is a core recommendation from ARPANSA, the nuclear safety regulator. It's consistent with our international obligations under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management. It is clearly the most sensible approach. However, the establishment of a world-class nuclear waste facility is obviously difficult and complicated. It requires leadership, deft management, a commitment to transparency, to community engagement and to technical assessment, but, more than that, it requires trust, competence and a capacity to follow through on the promises that are made to particular communities. That's why it was Labor that legislated the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Act 2012. It was to outline a process for the establishment and operation of the Australian National Radioactive Waste Management Facility. The existing act gives the resources minister the power to nominate a site that has been volunteered by a land owner through a process subject to judicial review. This bill, as originally drafted, would have obviated judicial review. It would change the mechanism of selection from a ministerial declaration to being specified through legislation, and that of itself excludes judicial review. We don't support the removal of judicial review from this process. It's critical to building community support. It's critical to legitimacy. A decision as permanent and controversial as the establishment of a nuclear waste facility has to be properly scrutinised. So the amendments will reinstate judicial review, and they will strengthen existing rights to compensation.

We on this side have been consistent. We've said that we won't support the passage of legislation unless the traditional owners are confident that those rights in terms of judicial review are restored. Those amendments are the product of consultation with the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, who are confident that the revised bill gives them the legal recourse they need to ensure their voices are heard. That is what has developed the position within the Labor Party that we ought to support this legislation.

The fact that this bill has been presented in the way that it has, with the sort of shambolic approach that there has been, is entirely a product of the mismanagement of this portfolio by the National Party. They are entirely focused on themselves—and we've seen more evidence of that today—and unable to distinguish between the national interest and the interests of the National Party. How we manage our natural resources and how we ensure that their benefits are felt by the entire Australian community requires careful judgement and effective policymaking, and that is beyond the succession of National Party ministers that we've had from this place and from over in the other chamber. The National Party has delivered a series of resources ministers who simply aren't up to the challenges of their portfolio and are unable to balance the competing interests that go with the resources portfolio and with the agriculture portfolio. They are interested only in posing in interviews with 'Sky after dark', going for the most reactionary audience that they can find, rather than in the complex challenges of running a government that makes decisions in the interests of all Australians, including South Australians.

In 2015 there was a call for nominations of potential sites, with 28 applications received and six sites short-listed. A revised process was established in late 2016, and a suitable site was volunteered, near Kimba. It fell to Senator Canavan, a sort of cosplay coalminer, Mr Maybelline himself, to oversee the delicate process of nominating a repository under the provisions of the act. The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation, which holds native title over the adjacent Pinkawillinie national park—

Senator Ruston interjecting—

claims that it was unable to perform an adequate heritage assessment ahead of Napandee being nominated. And I'm very grateful to Senator Ruston for her correction of my very poor South Australian pronunciation. They claim that Minister Canavan assured traditional owners that land neighbouring the site would not be excluded from a ballot of the local government area to determine whether the proposal had community support. But, when the ballot came, it effectively did exclude native title holders on the basis that they weren't residents of the local government area. Strangely, somehow it did include 36 nonresidents who had property interests that were in the local government area. The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation challenged the ballot right through to the Federal Court, but ultimately they were unsuccessful. They held their own ballot: 100 per cent against the proposal.

So, when the government claims that this proposition has broad community support, it's worth considering who the government means by such a term. It is a stretch to call a 62 per cent 'yes' vote 'broad community support'. The facility now has unanimous opposition from traditional owners in the region. It's not hard to see why an Aboriginal community in South Australia would be sceptical about a nuclear facility.

Managing these concerns requires careful judgement, thoughtful consideration and a commitment to engaging with the community, at the very least a process that doesn't exclude sections of the community. But, then, in Minister Canavan's final act in his portfolio, on his last day before resigning from cabinet because of his baffling support for the member for New England in the last National Party leadership spill, which occurred on the day that the parliament convened to commemorate the victims of the 2019-20 bushfires—remember the National Party spent that day focused on themselves in a leadership spill that was ultimately fruitless; they've done it again today—he formally chose the Napandee site. In a reshuffle his job was handed to Minister Pitt, whose views about nuclear energy have been consistently out of step with the broader Australian community. He is one of those guys who is so reactionary on energy policy, so opposed to advances in renewable energy, so opposed to lower power prices, to lower emissions and to more jobs that would flow from investment in renewable energy, that he's committed to taxpayer funding for coal-fired power. He's a bloke who's so reactionary that, when he's challenged about renewable energy, he goes to the comfortable recourse of the old Australian reactionary, which is to start talking about nuclear power, which would make our electricity more expensive; more waste challenges. So this portfolio's been left in Minister Pitt's hands.

I welcome the decision by the government to support new amendments to the bill that will restore judicial review. The intended outcome of the government's original legislation would have removed procedural fairness for the government's critics. Those on the other side who drafted this bill should reflect on how removing those basic rights correlates with a long history of dispossession and exclusion. In their own report, government senators recommended that the government repair their relationship with the Barngarla with the assistance of a mediator. That's a sensible recommendation. It should have occurred in 2016.

The bill before us really is a sum of the government's mistakes over the long eight years it's had the capacity to fix this set of issues. The original legislation put the country on a path to resolving it. The government has bungled this every step of the way, all because Senator Canavan was too busy getting measured up for his monogramed hi-vis, performing to the Sky NewsAfter Dark audience, than actually taking the job of ministerial responsibility seriously and building the broad community support that he promised. When it comes to the resources portfolio in this country, it is clear whose interests are being served, who gets listened to and who doesn't, whose concerns are considered and whose are ignored.

Finally, the decision by the government to adopt the amendments recommended by the Labor Party is a welcome development. Australia clearly needs this facility to be built. It needs to be built in an environment where there is proper judicial review, consultation, transparency and commitment to the national interest that is served by maintaining our capacity, particularly at ANSTO, and trying to return to a proper, orderly process of ministerial responsibility.