Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006. ANSTO is Australia’s national nuclear research and development organisation and the centre of Australia’s nuclear expertise. This bill will enable ANSTO to handle, manage and store radioactive materials arising from a wider range of sources and circumstances than it can under its current legislative framework. The ANSTO Act limits the organisation to dealing only with its own radioactive material, including waste produced by the current HIFAR reactor and its replacement, the OPAL reactor.

It is both prudent and practical for ANSTO as an expert body to handle, manage and store radioactive materials from other sources. It is for this reason that Labor supports this bill. With this bill, ANSTO is able to be directly involved in managing radioactive material involving terrorist or criminal incidents. At the moment, ANSTO is limited in the assistance it can provide during emergencies to simply providing advice to Commonwealth, state and territory agencies.

There are many circumstances where this extension of ANSTO’s powers would be helpful. Let us say, for example, that a terrorist group is discovered to be gathering material or has a radioactive ‘dirty’ bomb. Under the current act, ANSTO could offer valuable advice to other Commonwealth and state officials about handling the radioactive material but would be prevented from handling the material itself. Given ANSTO’s expertise and the facilities which ANSTO has available, this legislative restriction should be removed. ANSTO ought to be able to manage, clean up, transport and store radioactive material in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal incident involving that radioactive material. As a result of this bill, ANSTO will be able to provide its expertise on waste management of all radioactive materials held by the Commonwealth.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Would honourable senators who want to conduct conversations please conduct them outside the chamber, or at least with more deference towards the senator who is speaking.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This includes transporting radioactive waste to Lucas Heights, conditioning or processing the material to make it safe and suitable for further storage, and the temporary storage of that treated material until a long-term repository is available. The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency’s Code of practice and safety guide will require all nuclear waste going to the dump being imposed on the Northern Territory to be conditioned and processed according to certain standards. This bill will mean that more Commonwealth waste will be transported to Lucas Heights for processing before it is suitable for long-term storage in the Northern Territory.

There may be community concern about more waste going to Lucas Heights, and federal Labor would be very concerned if the waste stayed there for a long period of time. Labor wants to make sure that the present ANSTO site at Lucas Heights does not become a long-term dump for Commonwealth nuclear waste. The Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, has stated that the government has no intention of storing other Commonwealth waste at Lucas Heights. I would like this reiterated by her counterpart in the Senate, because we need an absolute commitment from this government that it will not use this bill as a backdoor way to dump more waste at Lucas Heights.

I note also that this bill will bring Australia one step closer to the standards set out in the United Nations Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism. Labor urges that all necessary action to comply with this UN convention be taken so that Australia can agree to this important treaty. Whilst Labor support this bill, we remain concerned about the Howard government’s extreme approach to nuclear power and nuclear waste. We are in the middle of a so-called inquiry into nuclear power: ‘so-called’ because it is considering the viability of nuclear power in Australia without even looking at the locations of future power plants; ‘so-called’ because it is looking at the viability of Australia importing nuclear waste from other countries, becoming the world’s nuclear waste dump. Mr Howard’s so-called inquiries are only ever set up after he has made up his mind about what he is going to do. In this case that means nuclear power for Australia. This government has form for misleading the Australian public. We have already seen this with the nuclear waste debate.

Labor supports appropriate management of Australian nuclear waste, following proper community consultation. But the Howard government, as we all know, is determined to dump radioactive waste in the Northern Territory, despite massive community concern. Before the last election, the people of the Northern Territory were given an undertaking, a promise in fact, by this government that there would not be a dump in the Northern Territory. At the last election, for the sake of votes for Mr Tollner, the member for Solomon, this government was happy to reassure Territorians that there would be no nuclear waste dump in the Territory. The member for Solomon said on ABC radio only a year ago:

There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory ... That was the commitment undertaken in the lead up to the federal election and I haven’t heard anything apart from that view expressed since that election.

However, only a month after the member for Solomon’s guarantee, Brendan Nelson, the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, kicked Territorians in the teeth by announcing the government’s intention to dump nuclear waste in the Northern Territory. They did a complete backflip to force the nuclear waste dump onto the Territory. The member for Solomon has now changed his tune completely. In August 2006, he supported a motion to look at a uranium enrichment industry in the Northern Territory. He said:

I look forward to supporting the motion and for this analysis to be undertaken. If the review comes back with a potentially viable industry, I will be the first to put my weight of support behind getting the industry up and running.

The government has shown time and again that its word cannot be trusted. This Prime Minister’s promise to keep interest rates at record lows has become worthless with three interest rate rises and creeping inflation. His commitment that no worker will be worse off under the Howard government means nothing for the employees at Radio Rentals or Spotlight.

Now that he has broken his promise to keep nuclear waste away from the Northern Territory, where does that leave his so-called ‘nuclear power inquiry’? The Prime Minister expects all of us to believe him this time when he says that he is interested in the views of the Australian community. Can he honestly look the Australian people in the eye anymore and say, `Trust me’? The Prime Minister has refused to come clean on the question of where he will put his nuclear power plants. Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, have refused to talk about locations—although I note that the science minister was quite happy to rule out her own electorate. So, if a debate about nuclear power is not an appropriate time to talk about power plant sites, when is the appropriate time?

Local communities have a right to know what this government’s intentions are and what to expect from it both on nuclear power sites and on the siting of future nuclear waste dumps. Make no mistake about it, the government is determined to bring nuclear power to Australia. It is determined to bring high-level waste dumps to Australia. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said earlier this year:

We need medium and we need high level storage as well.

More recently, on 27 August 2006, Alexander Downer courted more nuclear waste for Australia with his call for Australia to enrich uranium. I would like to draw the attention of the Senate to an anti-nuclear campaign called the ‘Beyond Initiative Symposium’, which was held in Melbourne last month. Topics covered at the symposium included the proposed Northern Territory radioactive waste dump, and one topic that was particularly intriguing was billed as ‘radioactive racism’. The history of radioactive racism is one of oppression but also one of struggle.

The problem for Australia, particularly Indigenous Australians, is that Mr Howard has not explained what his plans for nuclear enrichment mean for waste storage in Australia. It is obvious that, along with the foreign minister’s comments, this so-called inquiry is part of the government’s campaign to wear down Australians’ opposition to nuclear power. We all know that the Prime Minister’s call for a full-blooded debate on nuclear energy is just code for: ‘We are determined to have nuclear power in Australia.’

This year ANSTO commented publicly that at least three to five nuclear power plants would be needed for a viable Australian nuclear power industry. My question to the Prime Minister is: if we need up to five nuclear power plants to have a viable industry, why can’t the Australian people know where those sites might be located? My position and that of the Labor Party is clear. The Labor Party is fundamentally opposed to bringing nuclear power to this country. There will be no nuclear power plants in Australia under a Beazley Labor government. The economics for a nuclear industry simply do not stack up, and the public certainly does not support it.

The Prime Minister continues to talk up what is a phoney debate on nuclear power for Australia, because he wants to go down that path. It is a phoney debate. The nuclear power inquiry’s task force was hand-picked by the Prime Minister, without wider consultation. It will have no public hearings, and it will not look at where the nuclear power plants will go. So the Australian people will be none the wiser about these important questions when the task force produces its draft report for public consideration in November 2006. That report will have no scientific evidence or opinion regarding locations. Given that the final report is due in late 2006, the period for public consideration will be very brief indeed, particularly as we will have an election in 2007. How many Australians will be able to wade their way through the detailed scientific reports with ease? Very few, I suspect. If this is the Howard government’s idea of public consultation, government members should hang their heads in shame.

The Prime Minister should come clean with the Australian people and tell us all which towns and suburbs will house these nuclear reactors and where the high-level nuclear waste dumps will be located. If the Prime Minister were serious about this issue, he would have called an inquiry to address the concerns held by many Australians about global warming and climate change, instead of a committee of inquiry to undertake a very narrow investigation of nuclear power and energy.

A series of things that have been brought to our attention are incontrovertible evidence of global warming. They include the 10 hottest years on record having occurred in the last 14 years, the rapidly rising incidence of severe tropical storms and hurricanes, and changing rainfall patterns and temperature related habitat loss, leading to the extinction of some of the world’s wild creatures. All of these issues are critical matters for the Australian people but, as usual, we are not getting answers to these questions from the Howard government. It prefers to run a program of deception when it comes to nuclear power. It prefers to mislead people, to make promises to people, as it did in the Northern Territory before the last election over the nuclear waste dump. The government then did a backflip and imposed a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory after the election.

As I said, there are good reasons for supporting the bill that is before the Senate but I urge senators to look at Labor’s very serious concerns, which are set out in the second reading amendment circulated in my name. The amendment indicates our extreme concerns about the heavy-handed way in which the government is going about the debate on nuclear power and the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory, as well as its lack of action on climate change. Our concerns form the basis of the second reading amendment. I move:

At the end of the motion add “but the Senate condemns the Government for:

     (a)     its extreme and arrogant imposition of a nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory;

     (b)     breaking a specific promise made before the last election to not locate a waste dump in the Northern Territory;

     (c)     its heavy-handed disregard for the legal and other rights of Northern Territorians and other communities, by overriding any existing or future state or territory law or regulation that prohibits or interferes with the selection of Commonwealth land as a site, the establishment of a waste dump and the transportation of waste across Australia;

     (d)     destroying any recourse to procedural fairness provisions for anyone wishing to challenge the Minister’s decision to impose a waste dump on the Northern Territory;

     (e)            establishing a hand-picked committee of inquiry into the economics of nuclear power in Australia, while disregarding the economic case for all alternative sources of energy; and

      (f)            keeping secret all plans for the siting of nuclear power stations and related nuclear waste dumps”.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting that we are debating the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 giving ANSTO increased powers on the same day that North Korea has exploded a nuclear weapon. There are two issues that make the nuclear cycle completely unacceptable. The first is weapons; the second is waste. Today we are hearing of both those issues. Only a few months ago, we heard from the Prime Minister about those people who were concerned about proliferation of nuclear weapons because Australia was both planning to export a huge increase in uranium to China and toying with the idea for India. The Prime Minister ridiculed people, suggesting that the safeguards would be such that it would not be a problem—that the world could contain the problem of weapons. Today, we have had a salient lesson in the fact that that is just not possible, and tonight we are talking about the other major problem with the nuclear cycle—that is, waste. There is no safe storage for nuclear waste. That is a fact. Nowhere in the world has anyone perfected a capacity to safely store nuclear waste.

Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No-one in the world has ever been hurt by the storage of nuclear waste. Of course it’s been safe.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very interested in the interjection, especially since the Russian navy, as a matter of course, uses disposal at sea as its main method of disposal of nuclear waste. We have heard from the senator that nobody has been hurt by the storage of nuclear waste. I suggest that the senator pay attention to what is happening in Russia, as thousands of people die from exposure to illegal dumps of nuclear materials. It is happening right across eastern Europe because of completely unsafe storage, and that is quite apart from what happened at Chernobyl and other places. If you care to look into what is going on in eastern Europe, you will find that there are people today dying because of exposure to radioactive waste not put into so-called safe storage facilities.

I cite the words of the 1970 Nobel laureate in physics, Hannes Alfven, who said: ‘We want to use the energy now and leave the radioactive waste for our children and grandchildren to take care of. This is against the ecological imperative: thou shalt not leave a polluted and poisoned world to future generations.’ I would suggest that the government consider that very carefully. In the context of what we are doing this evening, the purpose of the legislation we have before us is to allow the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation to prepare, manage or store radioactive materials from a much wider range of sources and circumstances than presently permitted under the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Act 1987. So we are expanding the power of ANSTO to deal with nuclear waste.

The context in which we are doing that is a world which I would suggest is less safe than I can remember for many decades. In 1953 President Eisenhower wrote in his diary that he had a clear conviction that the world was racing towards catastrophe. You only have to look at what has been going on with global warming, nuclear proliferation, the nuclear weapons test today and global insecurity to know that in fact that is where we are going again: a clear conviction that the world is racing towards catastrophe. But apparently the government does not think so in relation to global warming and it does not think so in relation to proliferation. In fact, the government’s statements would suggest that it thinks the IAEA has things under control.

Both Liberal and Labor support the expansion of uranium mining and the putting into the global nuclear cycle of increased quantities of uranium, which will leak into weapons programs and which will come to the attention of nuclear terrorists. The government acknowledges that itself, because in its ANSTO bill this evening it is trying to give ANSTO the power to deal with waste arising from a relevant incident, including a terrorist or criminal act.

Since 2002 the IAEA says there have been 300 interceptions of terrorists trying to take nuclear materials across borders et cetera—300 since 2002. But, no, the government thinks that the best way of dealing with the fact that there have been 300 arrests—the IAEA site says it quite clearly—from terrorist activities related to nuclear materials is not to prevent the nuclear materials in the first place. The government’s response is to say: ‘Well, let’s give ANSTO the capacity to deal with that in the event that we arrest someone and take it from them.’ What if they use it rather than be arrested and have it taken from them?

The third point of the legislation is with regard to taking waste from overseas. Currently that is prohibited, but the government acknowledges in this bill that, technically, returned waste is not exclusively from ANSTO’s reactors. It wants to clarify that ANSTO can receive materials not generated from ANSTO’s activities in the first place. What a coincidence that earlier this year Prime Minister Howard talked to President Bush, who has a grand plan—the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. The nuclear energy partnership undermines the non-proliferation treaty. It allows for the United States to decide which countries in the world will be allowed to have nuclear power and which will not and it sets up a series of nuclear supplier groups or centres around the world.

Prime Minister Howard was clearly impressed by the notion that Australia could become one of George Bush’s nuclear fuel supply centres. The problem with that is that as part of the nuclear fuel supply centre we would be obliged to take back the waste under the leasing arrangements. A bill has come into this chamber that provides the capacity for ANSTO to handle waste not generated in Australia. Am I being too cynical in suggesting that the two are in some way connected? When Prime Minister Howard came back from speaking with President Bush he said:

If we are not a nuclear fuel supplier then that shuts us out of certain gatherings.

We know that the Prime Minister could not bear to be shut out of a gathering with President Bush and his associates in the partnership of the willing. It was after the Prime Minister came back from visiting the US and speaking about the global nuclear energy partnership that he suddenly had a burst of enthusiasm for investigating enrichment, leasing and taking back nuclear waste.

He had a cheerleader in the Labor member Martin Ferguson, who immediately got on the bandwagon and said it was a fabulous idea. That followed former Prime Minister Hawke saying that Australia should become a repository for the world’s nuclear waste and that, in fact, it was a moral imperative that we did so. Minister Abbott said that was a visionary suggestion and then along came Labor’s Martin Ferguson saying that he believed that we should have a ‘cradle to grave’ plan, which is precisely what President Bush wants with his global nuclear energy partnership. What he is not saying is that the United States has terrible problems storing its waste because its proposal to build a new waste dump at Yucca Mountain has met with enormous opposition and they have not been able to get it through. What could be more desirable for the United States than to find a lackey somewhere in the world prepared to hand over land for a high-level nuclear waste dump to take nuclear waste from elsewhere? The ANSTO bill provides for precisely that—it creates that loophole.

Let me look at the three provisions of the bill. It extends ANSTO’s functions to handle radioactive materials in three broad scenarios. The first is that it will allow ANSTO to manage the proposed Northern Territory facility, which we totally oppose. We remind the Senate that this entirely overrules and is against the wishes of the Northern Territory. As the Chief Minister said, we have been lied to, bullied and treated like second-class Australians since the prospect of building the dump in the Territory was first raised. She went on to say that it is no surprise that CLP senator Nigel Scullion supported the prospect of the short inquiry and acknowledged the Territory had been lied to and treated appallingly but failed to stand up against Canberra. That is the fact of the matter.

This bill provides for ANSTO to manage the nuclear waste dump proposed for the Northern Territory, which is opposed in the Northern Territory and imposed on the Northern Territory without its consent and imposed on Aboriginal communities without their consent. I visited the Mount Everard community and they are horrified by the prospect of having a nuclear waste dump imposed upon them. It is outrageous that the government is supporting the notion of imposing such a dump against the wishes of the traditional owners and the wishes of the Northern Territory.

Not only that, it is allowing a fallback position, a contingency plan, in the event that plans to dump waste in the Northern Territory are protracted or defeated. It makes way for Lucas Heights to fulfil that function. On countless occasions the government has insisted that waste arising from overseas reprocessing of Lucas Heights’s spent fuels will not be returned to Lucas Heights. Here we are again seeing weasel words concerning the difference between disposal of waste and storage of waste. It is quite clear that this is a recognition that the disposal of radioactive waste at Lucas Heights is legally prohibited but long-term storage is not. When you have a look at the way this bill is worded, you see that it provides for storage. We have two contingencies covered by giving ANSTO control of the Northern Territory waste dump and, if that is prevented, allowing storage at Lucas Heights. It would be very interesting to hear what the minister had to say in relation to that.

In relation to terrorist attacks, there is very clear evidence around the world that they are occurring. As I pointed out earlier, al-Qaeda is now calling on terrorists to come to Iraq and help them to make dirty bombs to be used against the US. I remind senators that that will effectively mean the US and its allies in its war in Iraq.

We also have the situation where seizures of smuggled radioactive material capable of making terrorist dirty bombs have been doubling in recent years. Smugglers have been caught trying to traffic radioactive materials more than 300 times and we know that Western security services cannot cope. That situation is recognition of the probability that a terrorist attack will happen somewhere in the world, and instead of preventing it from happening by ruling out expanded mining of uranium, by ruling out enrichment and by ruling out waste dumps, the government is moving legislation to facilitate all three.

Finally, there is the issue of bringing back the waste from overseas and expanding, again with weasel words, the capacity for Australia to accept waste not exclusively from ANSTO’s reactors. Of course that is a preparatory opening of the door to take waste in the context of President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. In the light of what has happened in North Korea today, I would be very interested to hear whether the Prime Minister is quite as gung-ho as he has been in recent months in condemning those who are concerned about proliferation around the world and whether he is quite as gung-ho as he has been about President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership because that undermines the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

We have watched the Prime Minister’s soft-shoe shuffle in recent weeks on selling uranium to India. Here we have a country prepared to wag its finger at North Korea whilst at the same time prepared to sell uranium to India, which is not a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and to wag its finger at Iran, which is exercising its right as it sees it under the provisions of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to have nuclear power. I believe, as most other people do, that Iran is using that as an excuse, but that is the whole point of what is going on: how can Australia, when it is prepared to support the US in undermining the nuclear non-proliferation treaty with the deal it has done with India and when it is actively looking at selling uranium to India, turn around and wag its finger at other countries?

I utterly condemn what has happened in North Korea, I condemn the nuclear fuel cycle, I condemn expanded uranium mining, I condemn enrichment and I condemn taking back the waste. If you do not want to take back the waste, if you do not want the problems with waste and weapons, then do not dig up uranium in the first place. That is why we have taken the stand we have. We think it is hypocritical to be complaining about waste dumps if you are prepared to support uranium mining in the first place and send uranium overseas, as indeed Martin Ferguson and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Kim Beazley, have done when they have said that they want to overturn the three mines policy.

In the case of Martin Ferguson, he wants to support cradle to grave, saying it is what industry wants and it is what the Labor Party wants. He argues it is what the community wants, but in fact he is absolutely wrong. The community does not want that. It does not want the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. It does not want nuclear waste returned to Australia. It does not want nuclear waste generated in the first place. Most Australians are horrified by the way this government has been hurtling down the US deputy sheriff’s path of supporting an expansion of the nuclear fuel cycle globally.

Having read of the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan over the last 30 years, and having looked at the unstable international security environment that has been caused because of the amount of illicit nuclear material around the world, it is utter madness to be coming in here with legislation expanding ANSTO’s role in those three areas and, in fact, making contingency plans for the dump in the Northern Territory and, in the event that that fails, making contingency plans for Lucas Heights to become a storage area. It is utter madness to be making contingency plans for dealing with a terrorist attack in terms of radioactive material when we should be preventing that material from going out in the first place, and it is utter madness to be making contingency plans for Australia to become the world’s nuclear waste dump, as is planned by President Bush.

The Greens will be totally opposing this legislation. As I said, our view is that you should not dig up uranium in the first place. We need a world which is supported by renewable energy. It is achievable, but it is not going to be achievable as long as this government is wedded to the notion of profit above principle, profit above the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Anyone looking at this bill can see that it will lead to a worsening nuclear situation, not an improved one.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006 is designed to extend the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation’s functions to handle radioactive material in three broad additional scenarios: firstly, to participate in the management of radioactive material and waste in the possession or under the control of any Commonwealth entity, including material designated to be stored at the proposed Commonwealth radioactive waste management facility in the Northern Territory; secondly, where requested by a Commonwealth, state or territory law enforcement or emergency response agency, to deal with radioactive material and waste arising from a relevant incident, including a terrorist or criminal action; and, thirdly, to deal with intermediate level waste originating from spent nuclear fuel from ANSTO’s nuclear reactors that is returned to Australia from overseas reprocessing facilities for storage and/or disposal.

While the Democrats understand that the provision to give ANSTO authority to handle radioactive waste material returned to Australia fulfils a contractual obligation, we are very concerned indeed that this opens the door to the importation and disposal of foreign nuclear waste, particularly given that there is no legislative prohibition against this. More specifically, the legislation allows the government to impose an international high-level nuclear waste dump on unwilling communities and states and territories.

Call me cynical, but I think it is most unlikely that the government’s push for a radioactive store is a genuine attempt to address a growing environmental issue. More likely, I think it is a move to facilitate an industry expansion that would result in the creation of even more radioactive waste in this country. Our suspicions have been heightened by the recent deal to sell uranium to China and the possibility of selling uranium even to India, which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and which has nuclear weapons.

We are concerned that the Australian government intends or is under increasing pressure for Australia to be a repository for high-level waste generated by countries to which we export uranium. The uranium industry framework established by the government in August last year to examine uranium mining expansion has very quietly expanded its terms of reference to include so-called nuclear stewardship. The interim report to the federal government is reported to recommend that the government and mining industry should start planning for broader engagement in the nuclear fuel cycle from mining to processing, enrichment, domestic nuclear energy, export and reimportation of waste for storage, recycling and disposal. That is a massive step in the wrong direction. It is hard to believe that the government would even contemplate that without much more debate on this issue and without taking into account the objections of the vast majority of Australians.

The plan was, by all accounts, outlined to the Prime Minister during his visit to the United States in May this year. The news in August that the United States supports Australia developing a uranium enrichment industry, previously a concern for them, adds further weight to the prospect of nuclear stewardship in Australia. The proposal by the US to lease nuclear fuel and return the spent fuel to the supplier for reprocessing and storage would mean that Australia would be forced to store highly radioactive waste. No doubt that would be a relief to the United States. It is a huge political and environmental problem there. Yucca Mountain was supposed to be the great hope for nuclear waste storage but has turned out to be a dud. It has been discovered that radioactive material will leak from that facility, and it is a huge problem for George Bush and others there who need to deal with the massive quantities that America has.

Not a single repository exists anywhere in the world for the lifetime of storage of high-level waste from nuclear power because that technology just does not exist. High-level waste, particularly in centralised storage, as the government proposes, creates a dangerous legacy for future generations. These concerns of ours form the basis of the second reading amendment which has been circulated in my name. I will move my second reading amendment after we have dealt with Senator Stephens’s amendment. I will go through the motion at this point to foreshadow it. It says:

... the Senate:

  (a)     notes that there is growing evidence that the Prime Minister and Coalition Government want to make Australia the nuclear waste dump of the world and store high-level waste;

  (b)     notes that high-level waste is radioactive for hundreds and thousands of years and that no single repository exists anywhere in the world for the disposal of high-level waste from nuclear power; and

  (c)     calls on the Government to rule out a high level waste dump in Australia.

Further, the government should use the current legislative process to give legal weight to its previously stated view of opposition to Australia’s hosting of a high-level international nuclear dump. I will, on behalf of the Democrats, also move an amendment in the committee stage that would prohibit ANSTO and any health or medical facility operating within Australia from being able to deal with high-level waste that is not generated by or associated with the Lucas Heights operations.

I think it is fair to say that Australians have well-founded doubts about nuclear waste material disposal in Australia—doubts that it can ever be made safe. This government and those before it have not really instilled in the community a great deal of confidence in their ability or willingness to take this issue seriously. The management of waste at uranium mines—whether at Ranger, more recently at Beverley or in the long-overdue clean-up of Maralinga after the British tests, where plutonium contaminated waste has been disposed of in simple earth trenches covered by just a few metres of soil—is hardly reassuring. The Prime Minister’s plans to expand a nuclear mining and possibly enrichment operation in Australia make them even more nervous.

I also think it is very hypocritical of the government to call for a national code for the siting and development of wind farms to make sure community concerns have been taken into consideration, having just overridden, with the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005, Territory government opposition and huge community opposition to a dump in the Northern Territory.

Debate interrupted.