Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill, and I associate myself with the comments of my colleagues Senators Shoebridge, Cox, Rice, Whish-Wilson and Allman-Payne.

The safeguarding military secrets bill seeks to introduce harsher punishments and more ministerial powers to punish ADF personnel who train or work with certain foreign militaries and government entities. It is already illegal for defence personnel to disclose military secrets; however, this will require defence personnel and public servants to obtain authorisation before working for another government entity. Five Eyes nations are exempt.

The Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024 is intended by the Albanese government as part of a suite of AUKUS related legislation to align Australia's scientific community, national security controls and military with the US. This is a precondition for Australia to receive nuclear submarines under AUKUS Pillar I and to have greater access to US military technology under AUKUS Pillar II. Both bills are needed for the US to allow AUKUS to proceed. They are designed to integrate Australian regulation with US regulation. They have very important implications for the conduct of research and the independent work of so many Australian scientists.

The bill does not deal at all with a critical safeguard issue—that is, the tracking or potential regulation punishment of ADF personnel who take ADF information as they move to big consulting firms. Nothing is said about this issue. A hundred ex-ADF personnel have done so in the last five years, moving to KPMG specifically—100 of them! There is no tracking of what material they take and what their activities are after they leave Defence, as we affirmed in the recent round of estimates. As Mr Yannopoulos said to me in response to questions about this issue, Defence do not track staff once they leave Defence. All staff who hold a security clearance remain subject to individual responsibility requirements associated with holding a security clearance, including the Defence Security Principles Framework. What we have here is the possibility of a really significant use of materials which is unknown, untracked and unregulated by the Department of Defence. So there's a lot that we should be doing that we're not doing.

This bill is to enable AUKUS. However, as we have heard, AUKUS is all wrong, and it is a long way from being an assured reality. AUKUS makes us less safe. It should be opposed. Citizens want us to pay attention and get our defence right, and we Greens have opposed this all the way. It is a deal which makes us less safe. It was rushed through by the then PM Morrison and signed up to overnight by Labor. When AUKUS was announced, we Greens recognised it for what it is—a $365 billion nuclear powered raid on public education, on health, on housing, on First Nations justice and on the response to the climate crisis that will starve those core services for decades to come. As other senators have commented on in this debate, $365 billion is enough funds to solve any of the major crises that we currently face—any one of them. It's an enormous amount of money. It won't solve everything but it would allow us to have a front-footed response to the climate crisis. It would allow us to do the things that we need to do in our education and health systems. Instead, we are putting it into nuclear powered submarines.

And, needless to say, the big consultant spruikers are at the table, monetising every opportunity—KPMG, EY, PwC and Deloitte. Former politicians Christopher Pyne, Downer and Morrison are all at this table as well—or, in the case of Morrison, have tried very hard to get to it.

The list of what is wrong with AUKUS is long. It includes at the beginning that very, very big spend—$365 billion. This will crowd out spending on the things we need for decades ahead. For 40 years ahead, it will mean we'll hear 'no' to the pressing issues of raising the level of income support, for example, to the millions of Australians who live on it.

Secondly, there's the very significant question of sovereignty. The AUKUS deal hitches our defence more tightly to the US. It pivots us from our defence of our nation to an offensive posture in the region, and it escalates the chances of war. Every parent must quake at its possibilities for the children of our future.

Thirdly, it doesn't give citizens a say. It hasn't given our citizens a say. Australian citizens have not been presented with options, possibilities and full information about the AUKUS deal. They were presented with a hugely expensive submarine pathway. What are the alternatives, and why haven't Australians had the full opportunity to think about them, to respond to them and to have a say?

Fourthly, there's the question of technology. Today's technologies of war are not built for 40 years hence any more than our phones of today will look in 10 years time like they look today. We are locking in last century's submarines for 21st-century defence. This is a serious error, and many commentators point to it.

Fifthly, there's the question of jobs. We in South Australia have heard it all before. We have heard a promise of jobs out of defence projects which have come too late, too little and at great expense. We need investment in the clean, green jobs of our future, not the crumbs falling from the table of our greater integration in the US military industrial complex. These will be, if they come to fruition, the most expensive public jobs on the planet. We could create many more jobs which would help us deal with the crises in our health, education, and climate. These would be jobs that are much more socially useful, and we could develop the skills we need for the future for a lot less money. South Australians are appropriately cynical about the job offerings they have been promised, and they are right to be.

Sixthly, there is the question of waste. The nuke-spruikers are hard at work amongst us, already in the corridors of government and business, telling us, 'Nuclear waste is not a problem.' They are also selling a greater fantasy—that we could take the world's nuclear submarine waste and make money out of it. There is in fact no solution to the waste out of nuclear powered submarines anywhere on the planet. Australians have said no again and again to attempting to bury nuclear waste, and we say no again now. Nowhere on the planet is submarine waste permanently and safely disposed of.

Finally, there is the question of First Nations voice. Free, prior, informed consent for First Nations people around where waste is placed is vital, especially in South Australia, with our history of nuclear weapons testing at Maralinga and Emu Fields, and all of the intergenerational consequences and tragedies that it has imposed on First Nations people in our state. South Australia's First Nations people deserve a clear voice around waste disposal, the right to full information and the right to a veto around the placement of nuclear waste, which has been so damaging to those First Nations people in our history.

In the fine print of the AUKUS agreement the Australian government has agreed to manage the radioactive waste from nuclear submarine sources from the UK and the US. The truth about our nuclear waste disposal systems is that finding a permanent solution for the safe storage of the world's nuclear waste remains a big, dangerous challenge everywhere. It is a very expensive problem and challenge. The UK has 70 years worth of waste from its nuclear power plants, 260,000 tonnes of it, in unsafe temporary storage. It is a major problem for their government and their citizens. In the US, nuclear disposal has plagued by dangerous leaks and failures. No long-term solution exists in the US, not for waste from power generation or from nuclear powered submarines. No country on earth has safely disposed of its high-level nuclear waste for the long term. After many decades, Finland is approaching completion of its waste proposal. But the process there has been long and complex, and it is still not operating. Any senator in this place who wants to propose anything nuclear, including nuclear powered submarines, has to give citizens a proposal for waste disposal. They cannot kick the can down the road to future generations and budgets, and they need to not leave highly toxic waste in dangerous temporary storage, often against the wishes of local communities, including First Nations communities.

The AUKUS submarine deal, if it went ahead, would take us to a whole new country. It would lock Australia into managing large quantities of high-level radioactive waste. The fuel from decommissioned submarines is nuclear weapons grade. It would require military security, and it must be safely stored, not for 300 years, not for 10,000 years, but for at least 100,000 years. Neither the UK nor the US have been able to find permanent storage solutions for their submarine waste. Given successive governments have continuously failed to manage much less dangerous radioactive waste in Australia—low-level waste, medium-level waste—any government will find it very hard to find a solution to dispose of nuclear waste arising from the AUKUS submarines.

Traditional owners of any future site should have a say and a veto about any such proposal. That is a basic requirement if there is to be a true voice for First Nations people around this incredible deal. The AUKUS deal has sparked a new conversation about nuclear waste storage, and this is a threshold issue that the AUKUS deal must deal with if it is going to proceed.

The long and devastating history behind the proposal for a nuclear waste dump in my own state is well known. We cannot forget the impacts of the nine devastating British atomic tests at Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s. Those impacts still persist, and we're coming up to the 70th anniversary of the tests. It wasn't our enemies who let off those bombs; it was our allies. Atomic bombs were tested on the Aboriginal land of the Anangu people, many of whom were forcibly removed from their traditional lands in the lead-up to the tests. However, about 1,200 First Nations people were exposed to radiation during the testing, and the explosion and radioactive fallout caused incredible long-term consequences to their bodies, to their children and to subsequent generations. It certainly led to the deaths of entire families.

Veterans of the nuclear tests and First Nations people living near the sites suffer high cancer mortality rates and more cancers than the general population. The Royal Commission into the British Nuclear Tests in Australia found that attempts to ensure the safety of Aboriginal people were riddled with ignorance, incompetence and cynicism. It is no wonder that so many South Australians are asking: What is the solution for AUKUS around the disposal of nuclear waste? How do we manage something which no other country has been able to manage? How do we assure our First Nations communities that they will be safe and that they will truly have informed consent?

South Australians spoke loudly and clearly when they opposed South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill's proposed nuclear dump in 2017, and I'm proud to have been part of the group of economists and community members who contributed to the discussion around that dump and addressed the citizens' jury. However, attempts at nuclear colonisation persist in South Australia. For the fourth time in 23 years, South Australia was targeted for a nuclear waste dump—this time at Napandee, a property near Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula. The Barngarla people spoke loudly and firmly. They are not to be messed with. They said no. They opposed the dump, and they won their challenge in the Federal Court last year, with a court ruling that the Barngarla people were not properly consulted. So the push towards AUKUS must deal with the reality of disposal of waste and appropriate, respectful treatment of First Nations people.

AUKUS ensures a greater primary alliance and dependence on the US and its technology, and many Australians are concerned about that dependence. Hitching our wagon to the US will drag us into their future wars and result in bad political decisions, as our past defence policy has at times. AUKUS is a whole new ball game. Engaging in AUKUS and strengthening our defence, research and technology ties with the US buys a future with more of that dependence. The US and the UK see Australia as a sucker who will give them their military's money and allow them to keep their nuclear submarines here—half parking lot and half nuclear dump, under the guise of AUKUS. Just look at the $5 billion so recently given directly to Rolls-Royce. What a scandal!

There is a long list of reasons why AUKUS is a bad idea. Most important amongst them is that there is no sensible solution for waste, and this is not a small problem. The bill currently before parliament is part of a suite of AUKUS related legislation to ensure Australia's military export systems align with the US. It will cut Australia off from the rest of the world and tie us to the US. The Greens will not support it.