Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Science and Water) Share 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.