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

We are resuming the debate on the National Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2010 after a period of a couple of months. I had mistakenly come to believe that the government had delayed debate on the bill—stopped listing it—towards the end of last year because they were waiting on the outcome of Federal Court proceedings, which are still afoot. I do not need to remind the government or the opposition that the very land which the government has offered up as a target for the country's first national radioactive waste dump is in dispute. This is not a mystery to the minister; it is very well known. A number of parties in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory hotly contest that Australia should be dumping radioactive waste in their backyard. They do not understand why they have been targeted, and they dispute the nomination of the Northern Land Council to the federal government of that particular bit of land on Muckaty Station outside Tennant Creek. There is a large number of amendments to get through, so I do not propose to delay us unduly, but I have a couple of general questions about the bill before we start moving through the amendments. My first question to the minister is: why on earth are we debating this today when you do not even know if you are dealing with the people who are appropriate to speak for the land in question? The action that has been brought in the Federal Court is not frivolous or vexatious; it is absolutely deadly serious for the people who are involved. I understand that Senator Evans is here in a representative capacity and this is not his portfolio, but this afternoon it is his problem. Are you able to describe why we are even here debating this bill when you do not even know if the land in question was the Northern Land Council's to nominate?