Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be able to continue my contribution, which was interrupted by the adjournment last evening. As I was saying then, the US industry currently has a problem disposing of nuclear waste, with one company, Silex, lamenting that it has a hole in the ground in Nevada, 63,000 tonnes of waste to fill it and a mountain of regulations to climb over to do it. Perkovich, whom I referred to earlier, describes it as an intractable waste problem. The US President may also be offering Australia membership of the exclusive GNEP club, and the Prime Minister appears to be highly receptive. He believes, apparently, that we should have a look at all the angles, including enrichment, if it is viable and safe. Should we supply raw fuel to overseas buyers as a member of GNEP? Should we be expected to take back their waste, and where would it go?

I would submit that this places further pressure upon the community of the Northern Territory to be the waste receptacle for not only Australia’s nuclear waste but potentially the world’s nuclear waste, and I can tell you that that is not a prospect which the people of the Northern Territory would look forward to. That is why, as I said in the earlier part of my contribution, I am surprised at the audacity of the member for Solomon—whose electorate, after all, is Darwin and Palmerston, 333 square kilometres—in trying to speak on behalf of the rest of the residents of the Northern Territory, whose country would have these waste repositories in it. He has no right to claim that he speaks on behalf of the people of the Northern Territory, particularly those people on whose country these waste sites would be. I know that the concern I have expressed in this place on a number of occasions now, over almost 12 months, about the prospect of these waste repository sites being in the Northern Territory is endorsed by the community which I serve, unlike the view expressed by the member for Solomon.

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