David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulations 2025 be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 26 March 2026.

This motion refers the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulations 2025 to a Senate committee for much-needed inquiry, review and report. The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulations 2025 are the first set of regulations made under the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act 2024. Those regulations are indeed very extensive. For example, they deal with the managing, storing and disposing of radioactive waste from the AUKUS submarine project at Osborne and Stirling; they include detailed regulations for the handling of radioactive waste from Australian submarines but also from US and UK submarines; and they also put in place, for the first time, very clear maps delineating where the first two nuclear waste dumps and nuclear-waste-processing facilities have been established under AUKUS.

One of those is in HMAS Stirling, on Garden Island just off Perth, and the regulations include the whole of the island in the declared zone, opening up the entirety of the island to the storage and processing of nuclear waste and AUKUS related activities. Of course, the great bulk of Garden Island is actually, at the moment, open to public access for activities such as fishing and barbecuing. Indeed, it is in many ways one of the most beautiful places off the coast of Perth and Fremantle for the boating and fishing community to enjoy and access. But, under these regulations, the entirety of Garden Island, including the beaches and picnic grounds that pepper, in particular, the northern part of the island, is declared within the zone. Not only that, but the regulations also clearly delineate the Osborne designated zone in the Osborne naval shipyard in South Australia and set out the boundaries where nuclear waste can be stored and processed and where AUKUS activities can happen.

The map for HMAS Stirling covers not only all of the island but the access point for HMAS Stirling, and the map for Osborne is pretty much a huge arc of land and also stretches a significant way out into the water just outside the naval shipyard. What did the government do to alert the communities of Osborne and Perth that they'd made these declarations and maps and excluded so much of the waters surrounding Stirling and so much of the waters surrounding Osborne? What did they do to tell the public about it? Nothing. They published them in some regs where, even on the most accessible public register, you couldn't find the maps. Not only are the maps inaccessible but nobody was told that the regulations had been made; they were just quietly published on the legislative website with no prior notification.

How did the regulations come to be? The regulations came to be because this government decided to have, effectively, a secret inquiry into the proposed regulations. Submissions were sought and obtained from the public, but the government has refused to publish the submissions. They've just totally refused to publish the submissions. Not only have they refused to publish the submissions; they have refused in any way to deal with what we know were very substantial concerns raised by the community about the extent of these regulations. I know this because a number of entities have themselves publicly provided their submissions. A number of those entities are First Nations groups, environment groups, peace groups and antinuclear groups. They've pointed out how the government was proposing in its regulations to override not just laws to store nuclear waste in WA and South Australia, on the sides of Stirling and Osborne; the government was proposing in its initial draft for the regulations to override a raft of other state and territory laws that relate to radiation safety and radiation protection.

Obviously, communities in the Northern Territory which have been fighting nuclear waste dumps don't want to see the NT provisions and protections overridden. Communities in my home state of New South Wales don't want to see the laws protecting them from harmful radiation overridden. Communities in Queensland, Victoria, WA, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT all want their governments to have on the laws tough provisions to protect them from the dangers of radiation. But what do these regulations do? What do the regulations under this AUKUS bill do? In relation to nuclear waste and nuclear materials produced under the AUKUS project, they literally allow every existing state and territory law that regulates harmful radiation and nuclear activities to be just overridden.

I will give you a list of the laws that are overridden to allow the defence department to basically declare anywhere in the country a nuclear waste dump, ignore state and territory laws and dump the waste or do the processing there. The Labor government, with these regulations, has overridden the following state and territory laws on nuclear safety and protection from radiation. They have overridden the Protection from Harmful Radiation Act 1990 in New South Wales, the Radiation Act 2005 in Victoria, the Radiation Safety Act 1999 in Queensland, the Nuclear Activities Regulation Act 1978 in WA, the Nuclear Waste Storage and Transportation (Prohibition) Act 1999 in WA, the Radiation Safety Act 1975 in WA, the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000 in South Australia, the Radiation Protection and Control Act 2021 in South Australia, the Radiation Protection Act 2005 in Tasmania, the Radiation Protection Act 2006 in the ACT and the Northern Territory's Radiation Protection Act 2004. Labor is overriding all of these with, effectively, a secret set of regs that got published on a hard-to-find website with no public notification. All of these state and territory laws protecting their communities from radiation have just been overridden for the purpose of AUKUS nuclear waste and AUKUS nuclear storage. They've all been totally overridden. And did I mention that this government has refused to produce the public submissions that were made in relation to it? This is an extraordinary act of arrogance and hubris from the Albanese government.

So of course the Greens are asking that these regulations be referred for an inquiry—an open, public Senate inquiry—so that the people of Victoria can have a say about whether or not they think it's right that the Radiation Act in Victoria has been overridden to allow AUKUS waste to be dumped anywhere in Victoria and so that the people in my home state of New South Wales can have a say about whether or not the important Protection from Harmful Radiation Act can be overridden to dump nuclear waste in Port Kembla, Newcastle or wherever the Albanese government wants to dump its waste and open another new nuclear facility.

I can tell you right now that the people in Port Kembla, in the Illawarra, are close to an open revolt against this government because of its plans to whack an east coast nuclear submarine base in their country, in Port Kembla. So we now understand that the Albanese government are looking for a second target site and are thinking that maybe they can squeeze it into Newcastle, and that beautiful Awabakal and Worimi land, in Newcastle, is now being sized up and measured for a US nuclear submarine base and US, UK and Australian nuclear waste. I can tell you now that the people of the Hunter don't want the Albanese government suspending the New South Wales Protection from Harmful Radiation Act so that they can have a nuclear waste dump foisted on them, and they want to have a say in that.

But this government—the Labor Party—and the coalition, the war parties in this place, don't want the public to have a say on AUKUS. They don't want the public to have a say on whether or not their community should be saddled with a nuclear waste dump jam packed with Donald Trump's nuclear waste. So they push it through in some secret regs. Well, we're saying: give people around the country a right to a fair hearing, at least on this aspect of AUKUS. Let's have a proper hearing into these so-called nuclear power safety regulations, which are really just nuclear waste facilitation regs. Have a proper say.

What is the government afraid of—that people around the country will actually say what they think about AUKUS and that they'll say they actually think Donald Trump is one of the least trustworthy leaders on the planet? They'll probably point out that he is right now ratting out Ukraine, which the US government encouraged in their resistance—now, when the going gets tough, he's going to just rat out Ukraine—that he is pulling away from European allies, that he is threatening to go to war with and invade NATO allies and that he is a totally untrustworthy security partner. Are you afraid you're going to hear the people of Australia say that and say, 'Why on earth are you entering into a five-decade-long agreement with a totally erratic, increasingly dictatorial and undemocratic regime like the Trump regime?' Are you afraid that they're going to tell you that? Because they probably will, and they'll probably tell you that they think it's absolutely bonkers to spend $375 billion on a handful of nuclear submarines whose main purpose is to draw us into the next US war with China and that they'd rather you didn't do that and that they'd rather you spent $375 billion on schools, hospitals, dealing with the climate crisis and engaging with our neighbours openly.

That's probably why the war parties don't want an inquiry into these regs—because the public, when they get a chance to tell you what they think, will say that they think this AUKUS thing is a bloody big scam where we give billions of dollars to the US and UK and get nothing in return, that they think it's dangerous to go down war paths with Donald Trump, that they don't want to go to war with our major trading partner, that they can't work out why Labor has taken us down that path and that they want the money to be spent not on a handful of submarines, which we probably won't even get, but rather on their absolute material needs right now, including schools, hospitals and public housing. That's probably why this government, the Labor Party, doesn't want an inquiry into these regulations. It's because they're scared of what the public will tell them. The Greens aren't scared of what the public will tell us. Bring it on. Bring on at least this inquiry into AUKUS.