Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister. In signing up to the AUKUS deal, the Labor government has agreed to establish a domestic nuclear industry and dispose of nuclear waste from nuclear submarines. Is there any state or territory the Deputy Prime Minister can rule out from servicing AUKUS nuclear submarines or storing their nuclear waste?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We've made a couple of things clear in relation to how Australia will move down the optimal pathway of acquiring a nuclear powered submarine capability that will see Australia develop an industrial capacity to build a nuclear powered submarine—not the nuclear reactor, but the rest of the submarine—based at Osborne in South Australia. It will see us evolve the capacity to operate a nuclear powered submarine out of HMAS Stirling in Rockingham in Western Australia. So, obviously, those two states will have a particular connection with the enterprise of Australia having a nuclear powered submarine capability. It's also fair to say, though, that it will be a huge national effort to achieve this, and we will need to rely on the industrial base and the capacities of the entire nation in order to do that. That is relevant in the context of your specific question around what happens with the nuclear waste.

We've made it clear that, as part of being a responsible nuclear steward, Australia will take responsibility for the disposal of the nuclear waste which comes from operating nuclear powered submarines, which is both the low-level waste associated with things such as cleaning the submarines and, ultimately, the high-level waste, which will be the reactor itself. We have made clear that the high-level nuclear waste will be disposed or dealt with finally on a Defence site, current or future, and we have said nothing more or less than that. I guess, in addition to that, we've made it clear that the process by which we will determine how that all occurs is underway right now, and we will complete it within 12 months—to be clear on that. That is not to say that in 12 months time there will be a place, but it is to say that within 12 months time we will identify what the road will be to determining where.