Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendment) Bill 2005
Second Reading
Mr GARRETT (Kingsford Smith) (6.11 p.m.)—I am astonished that the member for Tangney can put a proposition to the House that the production of nuclear materials results in there being less radioactivity. I do note that he made a qualifying remark towards the end of his comments—‘within certain life spans’—but, if the member does actually believe, as he has been putting in the House, that radioactivity and radioactive processes are as safe and as harmless as he asserts, I invite him to go to any nuclear facility. We have at least one in Australia where I am sure that they would welcome him, and in fact he has probably been there. I would invite him to eschew all the necessary and quite stringent health and safety regimes that are in place—he clearly feels that they are there for no purpose other than for show—and come back and speak to us in the House a little later on if he so wishes.
I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 and the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management (Related Amendment) Bill 2005 as well. We can say that this has been a sorry and a sordid business driven by a licensing imperative for nuclear processes that no-one has consented to. This government continues to make a mockery of the principle of informed consent, of community participation and of respect for the wishes and interests of Aboriginal people in this country. This government has trampled Aboriginal people’s rights underfoot, unaware, it seems, that this is people’s country where these proposed radioactive waste sites would be—country that connects intimately and in a long and continuing strain to their culture. It is country that they have only recently been able to have access to or be around. It is country that is absolutely integral and critical to their sense of who they are as a people and to their confidence as a community to build and to plan their own futures.
I reject completely the assertion by the member for Tangney that there has been the opportunity for consultation in this process and that people have been listened to. Consultation perhaps; listened to, definitely not. As the member for Lingiari pointed out quite clearly, Aboriginal people in Central Australia, where these sites reside, are opposed to the siting of a radioactive nuclear dump in their country. To those who argue that this must go somewhere else, the rejoinder is straightforward enough: yes, but not without a process that accommodates all the relevant issues and requirements in siting of this kind. It is not only about safe siting and safe disposal but about sufficient environmental standards, full community consent, rigorous accountability, consideration of risk and, of course, appropriate consideration of alternative sites.
To those on the other side of the House who ask, ‘Are there any alternatives?’ the answer is yes, there are alternatives for Australia to meet its needs for radioactive medicines. But, more importantly, is there an alternative to the process that is being pursued by the federal government and the minister? The answer again is yes, by including a principal and thorough examination of the nuclear cycle itself in its entirety and to devise a site management process which has proper, informed community and state consent in its implementation.
During question time a few days ago, the House was reflecting on the recent comments by the Iranian President to the effect that Iran would attack the state of Israel. Earlier we considered the call by Mohamed ElBaradei from the International Atomic Energy Agency for there to be a much more considered implementation of safeguards for the transit of nuclear materials worldwide, particularly in relation to the obligations that member states have under the non-proliferation treaty.
The chain links at both ends, from the production of waste, to its transit, to its storage, to mining and so on. The impact on Aboriginal communities and the arguments that we are hearing in the House have a ring of familiarity to me, I have to say, particularly when compared to the proposals to mine uranium at Jabiluka, which is situated in the Kakadu region and is really within the borders of Kakadu National Park. It was a decision that the Prime Minister, if my memory serves me correctly, took a number of years ago, I think before cabinet had even met. The decision was opposed at that time by traditional owners and numbers of people in the community Australia-wide, and that opposition went to the heart of the process in question—that Indigenous people of the land would live with the consequences of a process like that imposed upon them so recently in our history of interaction with them.
The Aboriginal communities in question have power, but not as much as many. They live fruitfully within their community, but in some ways they are still on the margins. But these communities are the ones that will have to face the consequence of the siting of this dump on their land. I refer to a letter I received earlier in the week from William Brown Jampijinpa from the Central Land Council, which makes clear the concerns that traditional owners have with this proposal. The letter reads:
A primary concern is the need to keep their country safe and healthy for present and future generations and to be able to continue to use their country for hunting and getting bush tucker. Traditional owners in Central Australia are asking the federal Labor Party to pursue all avenues to support their fight against the imposition of a nuclear waste facility on their country. The Central Land Council is extremely concerned by the intent and implications of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005. Pushing this legislation, which limits traditional landowner rights, overrides territory government laws and pushes aside Commonwealth environment and heritage legislation at the site selection stage, is a deeply disturbing development.
The letter goes on to point out that, despite the Northern Land Council having made media statements calling for amendments to this bill to allow the land council to nominate an alternative site in the Northern Territory for a radioactive waste management facility, the Central Land Council itself is not a party to this proposal and does not support such an approach. According to the letter, the NLC did not discuss this proposal with the Central Land Council and the proposed amendment is not supported by the Central Land Council.
A group of senior traditional landowners representative of both sites will be visiting Canberra in the week commencing 7 November. They request to meet with members of the House. Naturally, I will meet them. I am sure that the member for Solomon will do likewise and I hope that the minister responsible will do the same. It is important to stress that, under formal consultation, the people in Central Australia have said ‘no’. They are very clear and very firm about that. Another meeting was held just last week at the Harts Range site and, again, people were exceptionally clear and exceptionally strong about not wanting a radioactive waste site located there. The fact is that this bill overrides existing legislation. It overrides the Native Title Act and the Lands Acquisition Act and really allows the Commonwealth to do whatever it likes to establish a nuclear waste dump. It also allows the Commonwealth to take any action to enable nuclear waste to be transported to the site.
We were reminded by the member for Grayndler that the Minister for the Environment and Heritage said previously that the Commonwealth was not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland. I believe he made those comments in the lead-up to the last election. The environment minister clearly misled the people of the Northern Territory when he said that, because the Northern Territory is on the mainland. The fact that the environment minister stated that the Commonwealth was not pursuing any options anywhere on the mainland, and yet a list has been produced showing quite clearly that it was, puts paid to his comment.
Additionally, in June last year, the member for Solomon said, ‘There’s not going to be a national nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory.’ That was a very clear and unambiguous statement by the member for Solomon. My very strong feeling and recollection, having been in Darwin at the time and having spent time with people in the shopping centres and streets of that city, is that members of the public took the member for Solomon at his word. They believed what he said to them as he sought to be elected. They may even have voted for him as a consequence of it. What is the member going to say now that there is going to be a national nuclear waste dump and it is clearly going to be in the Northern Territory? The fact is that the member misled his constituents and the people of the Northern Territory.
Who could forget the idea that a nuclear waste facility could be located offshore? What a farce it was to float the idea that we transport nuclear waste by ship to some unidentified offshore island—as I recall, this proposal came from Dr Nelson and others—as a way of taking the heat off the National Party and Country Liberal Party members in the run up to the election! People were rightly concerned that the Northern Territory would be the guinea pig for a process that was improper. We should not blame Dr Nelson too much for making a claim of that kind, because he has recently floated the idea that we should meet our electricity requirements in various cities around Australia with nuclear power. I invite the minister to come into the House at any time and indicate to us in which cities and in which electorates those nuclear power plants will be built to pursue the dream that he clearly has.
The fact is that there was a deliberate misleading of citizens of the Northern Territory. As members in the House have already acknowledged, the Northern Territory government went to an election this year and its position was to oppose the siting of a nuclear waste dump. And it won—the people had spoken. But this government is clearly deaf to the people of the Top End. This government is unable to listen to the voices of those who speak. All it can do now is impose its wishes upon people who do not have the capacity to challenge, the capacity to oppose.
This legislation does what opponents of the existing process, including me, always said it would. It overrides important laws that already exist, such as the Environment Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act, which this parliament has passed in order to ensure proper safeguarding of the environment. The EPBC Act makes it clear that the Commonwealth must not take a nuclear action that has, or will have, or is likely to have a significant impact on the environment. That action includes building a nuclear waste storage and disposal facility. Yet this bill will be overridden.
It is a question of credibility and, in some ways, of cooperative federalism. The states do not want it—in South Australia’s case, who can blame them? The member for Tangney made much of a French example in which tourist numbers went even higher in a place where radioactive waste was sited. The South Australian site was opposed by the majority of South Australians—and, I think, by the majority of right-thinking Australians—who saw the shoddy and completely insubstantial management methods that were designed for that particular facility. So: to what, how, when and where do we go, now that this dump is heading towards the Northern Territory? Dr Nelson, when asked about environment impacts, said they would be very limited. On what basis does the minister make this assertion? On what basis did the minister issue a press release concerning the Northern Land Council’s resolution—which I and, more importantly, the Central Land Council disagree with—without at the same time making reference to the Central Land Council’s position and the views of those people who were most affected by the Commonwealth’s decision to impose on them a nuclear waste site?
In his second reading speech, Dr Nelson, referring to the relevant legislation—the EPBC Act and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act—merely said that it would be overridden. One must ask: if it can be so easily overridden, or if there is a need to override this legislation, then what is it that the Commonwealth has to fear? If we are going to have an act of parliament which refers specifically to environment protection, and if one of the conditions for siting a site of this kind is to ensure that the environment is properly protected, then why is Dr Nelson intent on overriding the very legislation that provides that protection? The answer is that Dr Nelson is in a no-win situation. If he were to look at the other sites that have been identified, he would find that they are in electorates that are not amenable to his political persuasion. Dr Nelson calls out that—
Interjection
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Baldwin)—Order! The member will refer to members by their appropriate title, not by their names.
Continue
Mr GARRETT—I beg your pardon, Mr Deputy Speaker. The minister refers to politically motivated obstruction of the Commonwealth’s activities. For ‘politically motivated obstruction’ read ‘the will of the people, as expressed by their elected representatives in the state parliament’. The minister labels this as political motivation, but we prefer to call it democracy. I guess that explains why we are over here and he is over there.
On the occasion of the imposition of the waste facility in South Australia, the Commonwealth wanted to place the waste in trenches in the outback—I did hear one member of the government refer to it as ‘a place where nothing was alive’—the so-called dead heart; I can assure members present that it is very much alive—in the vicinity of the Woomera rocket and weapons testing range. It is true that waste needs to be stored above ground, but it needs to be stored with the full consent of the communities affected by both its storage and transit. It is also important that the tap be turned off—not, as the federal government’s ambition increasingly seems to be, turned on. Certainly the minister made clear his own views about that recently.
We have reached a situation where what we suspected may happen indeed has. The people of the Northern Territory have been faced with a government intent on overriding legislation which would provide adequate and proper protection for them in some circumstances, but in this case that will not happen. The federal government is intent on imposing its will on the people and the government of the Northern Territory, even though that government has been recently elected and had made it very clear that its mandate for re-election was that a site of that kind would not be located in the Northern Territory.
Most importantly, I refer to the people whose country this is. These people have borne to some extent the burden of activities and actions of the past. They are people who struggle very much with the situation that they find themselves in. They have exercised and do exercise a capacity not only to build communities and sustainable livelihoods for themselves but also to maintain connections to country and culture. The land is crucial to their way of life. They must protect their stories and their dreaming, and their opportunity to do that with this federal government imposing a nuclear waste dump upon them has been severely reduced. (Time expired)