Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

There have been a number of contributions to this debate and I have listened very carefully to what members opposite in particular have had to say, and, of course, to members on this side as well. I listened in particular to the comments made by the member for Lingiari, who is the member of this parliament whose constituents are most affected by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation Amendment Bill 2006, and the issues they face are addressed by the amendment that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition brought forward, to which I will speak today.

There is no doubt that the interests and rights of the people of the Northern Territory were both ignored and compromised by the Howard government in its recent legislative agenda on nuclear issues, including the bill that was forced through this parliament last year. There is a great deal at play here and a great deal of debate in relation to nuclear matters at present. The Howard government is pushing for a full-scale nuclear industry in Australia. It is enthusiastic about all aspects of the nuclear cycle itself, including expanding exports of uranium, possibly to India, although this would clearly compromise the terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It has launched an inquiry—a very narrow inquiry, it has to be said, without the involvement of a single environment expert or any person with sufficient expertise to make a judgement about environment issues—on nuclear energy. That inquiry was launched with a preliminary broadside from the Prime Minister, when he observed and endorsed the virtues of nuclear energy. I hope that all the members of the inquiry had their hands firmly over their ears when those comments were made by the Prime Minister.

There is no doubt that the Minister for Foreign Affairs is particularly keen on the prospect of Australia getting into nuclear enrichment. According to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, it is all about money and we should get on with it as quickly as we can. I note concerns that have been raised at high levels by the Indonesian government about the comments by the foreign affairs minister, but as well as that I suspect there are concerns further afield. As the International Atomic Energy Agency has already observed, there are so many substantial problems with the existing safeguard protocols and regime that the prospect of any other nation at this point in time entering into enrichment further jeopardises an already fairly shaky safeguards regime. Mohamed ElBaradei has been pretty clear in his comments that there ought to be a moratorium on enrichment. One would have hoped that the foreign affairs minister, who is very keen about enrichment, would have reflected on that international dimension before he actually spoke. The foreign affairs minister also does not point out to the Australian public that the enrichment process actually produces nine times as much waste on the way through. Very difficult, intractable toxic waste comes about as a result of that.

Additionally, the government has been willing to accommodate the idea of global nuclear energy partnerships as part of the increasing push, particularly by the United States, for nuclear energy to be ultimately considered as a replacement technology to coal to combat global warming. It is true that there is a continuing debate worldwide about the best means of safely managing and disposing of nuclear waste, but it is a debate that is not resolved. The disposal of waste remains the intractable problem—the most difficult problem—in this debate, particularly in terms of the production of waste. There are many in the community who question what technologies we ought to be embracing as we seek to move into a world which is clearly carbon constrained. In the event that we cannot come up with a prudent, long-term, economically and ecologically feasible means of disposing of nuclear waste, there is strong community interest, I think, in considering those alternatives.

The ANSTO Amendment Bill is supported by the opposition. I have referred to the second reading amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and I will come back to that. The primary purpose of the bill—namely to extend to the role of ANSTO in the difficult area of management of radioactive material, including where such material could be involved in terrorist or criminal incidents—is supported by Labor. It is the case that the present situation, namely, that ANSTO can only provide advice to Commonwealth, state or territory governments or authorities, needs to be addressed. In the case, for instance, of a group or individual gathering material for a dirty bomb, it is prudent that ANSTO has a role sufficient to enable that organisation to handle that material itself, organise and conduct the transport of the material in safe containers, store the material safely at an ANSTO facility and so on. This is something that previously ANSTO was unable to do.

That the organisation could have offered advice but not actually applied its expertise to engaging with any incident that arose in the handling of nuclear materials was a deficiency, and it is a deficiency in the operating procedures of handling radioactive waste which is probably the most critical handling issue that authorities face. So these are important matters and they need to be addressed. Labor well understands the significant dangers and risks that attach to the transport and storage of radioactive materials, and it supports measures which increase the capacity and expertise available to manage that task. This bill, by permitting ANSTO to handle and store nuclear waste from other Commonwealth sources, including the Department of Defence and CSIRO, further remedies some gaping holes that were present in previous legislation.

I am a little surprised that this legislation has arrived so late in the day. It is a fact that the risk of terrorist attack has been with us for some time. It is certainly the case that it is more pronounced of late—that fact was recognised in the Gittus report. But there are a number of examples of earlier terrorist threats, including against the ANSTO facility at Lucas Heights itself. Serious questions have been raised, particularly by some parts of the media and the community who live in and around Lucas Heights, about the security of the Lucas Heights facility. It is the case that for a number of years it was simply something approaching a rather rickety old cyclone fence that surrounded this facility. I have been out to the facility and I am familiar with the fence. I am not being facetious or trying to make fun of the need for a facility like the reactor at Lucas Heights to be operated by ANSTO to be absolutely prudently and effectively secured. But it is clear that the institution itself has been vulnerable for some time, so why is this legislation only now making an appearance?

It seems that the legislation means that larger quantities of radioactive waste will be transported to Lucas Heights prior to eventually being stored at the Commonwealth’s planned nuclear waste dump, and that this is partly a result of the imminent return of reprocessed waste from overseas as well as waste stored in other Commonwealth facilities. It is a fact that in relation to the return of waste there may be, in that reimported waste after it has been reprocessed, waste which was not generated in Australia, so the legal capacity of ANSTO to handle that waste should not be subject to challenge. We on this side of the House accept that and support legislation which ensures ANSTO has the necessary powers to accept, manage and store the waste.

As the member for Jagajaga pointed out in her speech in the second reading debate, the government also needs to clarify whether the bill is aimed at expanding the Commonwealth’s defence of any possible future legal challenges to the nuclear waste dump decision contained in the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendments) Bill 2005. Immunity to legal challenge is already provided for in the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act. If briefings by the department to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition’s office staff indicate that the bill is intended to have that effect of buttressing legal challenge then it is absolutely essential that the minister comes into the House and makes that clear, and we call on the minister to do just that.

It is important that the minister is up front about this issue because the government has not been up front on any other part of the issue of the storage of nuclear waste. Labor supports prudent and effective management of radioactive waste; it does not support forcing a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory—on small and remote communities—in the absence of a proper, thorough, participatory, scientifically exhaustive and consent based process. The decision by the Howard government to dump nuclear waste in the Northern Territory was a clear breach of an existing election promise. The legislation was rammed through the parliament last year and it represented another glaring broken promise of the Howard government. The member for Solomon promised the people of the Northern Territory that there would not be a nuclear waste dump in the NT. He was elected on the basis of that promise, and the government promptly tore up his commitment to the people of the Northern Territory once they were re-elected.

The Commonwealth radioactive waste management acts that enabled that decision were a disgrace. There was no willingness to adopt a proper and consultative process; instead we had legislation which overrode existing laws that this parliament had passed previously to protect the environment and the cultural heritage of the people of the Northern Territory, particularly Indigenous communities who now face the prospects of a nuclear waste dump being forced on them in their country and against their wishes. This legislation overrode the EPBC Act, the Native Title Act and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act. We have witnessed previously an assault in this House on land rights legislation. This was yet another indication of the approach that the government takes to land rights and the rights of traditional owners in the Northern Territory. The legislation, by overriding so much existing Commonwealth legislation, sets an extraordinary and worrying precedent for the government’s plans for an expanded nuclear industry as well.

If amending legislation prevents legal challenges and overrides existing legislation that protects the environment and Indigenous heritage become the norm for this government, what will happen when it takes the logical next step in its embrace of all things nuclear, including enrichment and power plants, in Australia? It is clear that the government wants enrichment and nuclear power plants.

The Prime Minister’s vision is for Australia to produce greater volumes of nuclear waste, but he has an additional component to this vision—that is, to take the problems of nuclear waste disposal that other countries face, particularly in the United States, and offer up Australia as the world’s storage place for all long-lived radioactive waste—tonnes and tonnes of it. This is not a vision that we on this side of the House share. I certainly do not.

The principle of prior informed consent is one that for some time has been a yardstick by which decisions in relation to proposed developments—be they mining or construction developments—slated to take place on or around people’s land, including Indigenous people’s land, have been measured. In the case of nuclear waste, the United Kingdom’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, which reported on 31 July this year, stated:

There is a growing recognition that it is not ethically acceptable for a society to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community.

They considered the issue of safe storage of radioactive waste and made a number of recommendations that are pertinent for this House to consider. They recommended that community involvement for any proposal for the siting of a long-term radioactive waste facility be based on the principle of volunteerism. I would argue in this House that this is the bedrock of democracy. Communities, wherever they are located, should be involved in decisions of this magnitude, and even more so when there is a distinct possibility that a proposed facility will, at a later stage, be under consideration as a storage location for even greater volumes of waste generated in Australia and possibly overseas. Yet we have not had that debate in this House.

Further, if community involvement in the proposal for siting the location of a radioactive waste dump is the bedrock of democracy and given that the sites chosen by the government in an ad hoc process are either on or near Aboriginal land, then equally such community involvement and consent is the bedrock of reconciliation. How can we reconcile ourselves with the Indigenous people of the Northern Territory when the government insists on imposing a nuclear waste dump in the country of Indigenous people against their wishes?

The experiences of the United Kingdom and other places abroad clearly demonstrate that there are many failures with what might be described as the ‘top down’ approach to implementing long-term radioactive waste management facilities. There is the example of Yucca Mountain in the United States, which has been an extremely long, drawn out saga of waste disposal. There is also ample evidence from the way in which the Japanese government and authorities are approaching the issue of long-term storage of waste. A voluntary process is essential—and communities will demand it—to ensure equity, efficiency and the likelihood of successfully completing any process. The UK committee simply asserts that it is not ethically acceptable for society to impose a radioactive waste facility on an unwilling community. I think that applies in this case more than in any other. There is no indication in this legislation that the potential host community would be afforded any of these measures.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I draw your attention to the history of identifying sites. A number of proposals and processes have been undertaken over time. In 1997, there was a list of 14 sites, including some in New South Wales, in Western Australia—the electorates of O’Connor, Pearce, Brand and Canning—and in South Australia—the Mount Lofty Ranges and, of course, Woomera. A number of sites were identified but kept secret from the public. The former Minister for Science, Mr McGauran, said that the short-listed sites should be kept secret because ‘release of information about alternate sites may unnecessarily alarm communities in the broad areas under consideration’.

The original site selection process for low-level waste facilities went for 10 years. It followed criteria established by the National Health and Medical Research Council. Woomera was the first site chosen, and no Central Australian sites were nominated. The National Store Advisory Committee siting process identified a further 22 sites but, again, no sites were identified in or around Central Australia. The fact is that Aboriginal people are the closest to the proposed new low- and intermediate-level sites being imposed by the Howard government on the people of the Northern Territory. Even though the Commonwealth has already called for tenderers for a contract to manage, coordinate and undertake the technical assessments of the site identified in the bill, there has been no requirement that I am aware of to survey Aboriginal social and cultural interests in relation to the site.

No consideration has been given to the fact that the proposed site near Alcoota and Harts Range is only 16 kilometres from the community at Engawala. Mount Everard is only four kilometres from the community at Werre Therre, 16 kilometres from Athengehere, 22 kilometres to Jay Creek and other Aboriginal communities, and 23 kilometres from Alice Springs. Additionally, and of most concern, is the prospect of significant flooding in some of the proposed sites, particularly at the Harts Range site, where there is ground water. The site is located between two active waterways—the Engawala and Anarama Creek.

For any government process that involves the introduction of a radioactive waste site to be fair, it has become increasingly acknowledged that the local community should be better off after the siting than before. This reflects and acknowledges that the community provides a service to society at large. In any process of this kind, community involvement needs to be developed through a partnership approach, where there is an open and equal relationship between the host communities and those—in this case the government—responsible for the implementation of a project.

In a democratic nation, there can be no more glaring example of the failure to implement the processes so necessary for something like this proposal to take place than those that led to the government imposing a nuclear waste dump on the people of the Northern Territory. Once this stuff gets in you cannot get it out, at least not without enormous difficulty and cost. Any problem experienced, such as faulty storage techniques, accidents, climate change induced extreme weather variations, disturbance of the site or political instability, means that the government’s action of imposing sites on the people of the Northern Territory is completely unacceptable. (Time expired)

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