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

Not surprisingly, the residents of Port Adelaide are asking: What is the plan, Labor? What is the plan for the disposal of nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines? Apart from the monster spend—$365 billion—which could fix the cost-of-living crisis, put dental and mental into Medicare, wipe student debt and fund our schools properly, what is the plan for nuclear waste disposal out of AUKUS? Well, there is not one, as the residents of Port Adelaide learned this week. They have had no consultation despite Labor's legislation to allow nuclear waste to be stored at the Osborne shipyard, an area in which 30,000 residents live that is on a waterway. This week, the local council voted unanimously against it. They have not had any consultation, not so much as a letter.

South Australians know about being kept in the dark on nuclear issues. We lived through the fifties and sixties of the British atomic nuclear bomb testing, which cost too many First Nations people their health, their land and their lives. We have lived through the last two decades and two proposals to foist Australia's nuclear waste on our state and, in 2016, an outrageous proposal to take the world's high- and intermediate- level waste. We have said no, no and no again. AUKUS cannot be another nuclear Trojan horse to trick and con our community.

Margaret Brodie and her First Nations community say no. Eileen Darley and her local community say no. Claire Bowen, the Mayor of the City of Port Adelaide and Enfield, says no. South Australians say no again and again to AUKUS and its nuclear waste proposals, which have no proposals for waste disposal.