Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Obviously, I disagree with the proposition that this is not the right place or time to consider these matters. I certainly would not qualify Senator Minchin’s comments as support, but at least there was a willingness to consider the possibility, down the track, of expanded OSS oversight of uranium mining companies in the Territory. I would welcome the expansion of that oversight to proposed mines in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland, but I suspect here is certainly not the place to do it.

I wonder, Parliamentary Secretary Stephens, whether you would be able to put on the record for us whether the government would consider or is considering, if not in this bill then at another place or time, an expanded role for the OSS. This is not an academic or a hypothetical question, because there are mines in various stages of environmental assessment and approval in the Territory right now. There is the Angela-Pamela site on the outskirts, within the water catchment of Alice Springs, for example, where Paladin Energy and Cameco are finishing a drilling campaign today, I believe, to prove up the resource there. Cameco is certainly a very serious global player in this industry. That is not a hypothetical development.

If we are not expanding the position of the Office of the Supervising Scientist to review the way that these very real proposals are being established, then I wonder when that would happen, given that—as we have just been through in this part of the debate—the office was set up at the same time as and was part of the assessment of the Ranger operations. It was not set up as some sort of afterthought; it was actually an implicit part of uranium mining being allowed to occur in the Kakadu region in the first place. So I just wonder if the parliamentary secretary can provide us with any information at all that would indicate whether an expanded role for the office is being contemplated, because Senator Minchin certainly seemed to indicate that he would at least consider those ideas on their merit if they were brought before us.