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

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister. On 6 July the Prime Minister told ABC radio:

I am not going to have this country used as some kind of repository for other people’s nuclear problems … waste problems.

On 19 July Minister Campbell told Mr Laurie Oakes on the Sunday program:

The Prime Minister has made it quite clear that we won’t be storing other people’s waste in Australia.

Minister, today the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources report on Australia’s uranium says ‘a waste management industry could be of immense economic value to the nation’, suggesting a ‘role for Australia in the back-end of the fuel cycle’. It also wants Australia to adopt a licensing and regulatory framework to establish a fuel cycle service in Australia—in other words, to store other countries’ nuclear waste. Can the minister tell the chamber exactly what is the policy of the coalition government on the storage of the nuclear waste of other countries?

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In response to Senator Allison’s question, I can assure you that the government’s policy is very clear. We believe that each country should be responsible for its own radioactive waste. Indeed, it was during the period that I was Minister for Industry, Science and Resources that we enacted appropriate legislation to ensure that that was the case—that we will not receive the waste of other countries. We accept our responsibility to look after our waste and we expect every other country to accept responsibility for looking after their waste and not expect Australia to do so. We are opposed to the importation of other countries’ waste, and that is now a matter of law, for which we are responsible. So whatever the House of Reps committee may say on that—and I know that there are others around the world who think that Australia would be a good place to store other countries’ nuclear waste—we reject that proposition.

Our position is quite clear on this matter. Indeed, we have taken our responsibility to store our waste very seriously, unlike other parties in this parliament who have not supported the former Labor policy, enacted by Mr Crean when he was the responsible minister, to make sure that Australia had its own purpose-built low-level radioactive waste repository—a policy that we inherited from the former Labor government and which we have endeavoured to put in place to ensure that Australia does responsibly look after its own low-level radioactive waste, a policy continuously sabotaged by parties on the other side of the chamber in this place and by state Labor governments. So we continue to have the ridiculous situation where Australia’s low-level radioactive waste is stored in basements and safes all over the country, in hospitals and research institutes. It is a ridiculous situation. We do take seriously our responsibilities to look after our own waste. We wish other parties would join us in ensuring that we can do so.

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

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Minister, the House of Reps report also unanimously recommends an expansion of uranium mining and export. Is the minister aware that there are almost as many nuclear weapons around the world now as there were when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed some 30 years ago and that the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency has called for greater action and strengthening of nuclear proliferation safeguards, specifically to tighten controls for access to nuclear fuel cycle technology and to accelerate global efforts to protect nuclear material? Minister, shouldn’t Australia wait until the safeguards are strengthened before we put more uranium on the market?

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia has probably the most stringent safeguards in the world on the export of its uranium, developed in a very sophisticated and comprehensive fashion over many years, primarily by coalition governments, to ensure the safety and security of uranium exports from this country, which, as I said in my previous answer, go to ensuring that the 31 countries around the world who are reliant on nuclear power—including, for example, France, which I think generates some 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power—have the capacity to do so. We will continue to ensure those safeguards are maintained at the absolute highest standard that we are capable of delivering. I would point out to Senator Allison, as I said in my previous answer—as she professes to be extremely concerned about emissions of carbon dioxide—that the nuclear power plants that are in operation around the world, which rely on exports of uranium from our country, save the world some 2½ billion tonnes in CO emissions every year. (Time expired)