Daniel Hurst Foreign affairs and defence correspondent
Tue 10 September 2024
Aukus legislation before parliament covers the way Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program will be regulated, with Labor insisting it ensures nuclear waste from US and UK submarines will not be permitted to be dumped in Australia.Photograph: Richard Wainwright/AAP
The Albanese government has bowed to pressure to close an Aukus loophole, insisting newly revealed changes will ensure Australia will not become a dumping ground for nuclear waste from US and UK submarines.
But the Greens argued the government’s latest amendments did not go far enough and it was becoming increasingly clear the Aukus security pact was “sinking”.
The legislation before the Australian parliament covers the way the country’s nuclear-powered submarine program will be regulated. It includes the creation of a new statutory agency, the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulator.
The bill – in its original form – talked about “managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an Aukus submarine”, which it defined broadly as Australian, UK or US submarines.
Related: Australia risks being ‘world’s nuclear waste dump’ unless Aukus laws changed, critics say
This prompted concerns from critics the bill could pave the way for Australia to eventually nuclear store waste from other countries, regardless of a political commitment from the incumbent government not to do so.
In May, a Labor-chaired inquiry called for a legislative safeguard to specifically rule out accepting high-level nuclear waste from the US and the UK.
New amendments circulated by the government on Wednesday include a “prohibition on storage and disposal of spent nuclear fuel that is not from an Australian submarine”.
The wording says the regulator “must not issue a licence” for the storage or disposal in Australia “of spent nuclear fuel that is not from an Australian submarine”.
The government is also amending the bill to prevent appearances of conflicts of interest at the new naval nuclear safety regulator.
The legislation will ensure anyone who has worked in the Australian defence force or the Department of Defence in the previous 12 months cannot be appointed to be the director general or deputy of the new regulator.
The defence minister, Richard Marles, said the amendments would “reaffirm the government’s already-established commitment that Australia will not be responsible for the storage or disposal of high-level radioactive waste from the US, UK or other countries”.
He said the government would “continue to build the foundations to safely and securely build, maintain and operate conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines”.
But the Greens defence spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said the amendments were “far from clear”.
“The Albanese Labor government tried to sneak through a loophole that would allow the UK and US to dump their nuclear waste in Australia,” Shoebridge said.
“We called the government out and people around Australia pushed back, now Albanese is quickly putting through a half-measure to shut everyone up.”
Shoebridge said the amendment did not specifically mention “high-level radioactive waste” and it “still allows the US and UK to dump intermediate-level waste, and Australian high-level waste, anywhere in Australia”.
“Everyone can see Aukus is sinking,” he said.
One of the members of a Senate committee that reviewed the draft laws, the independent senator Lidia Thorpe, said in May the legislation “should be setting off alarm bells” because “it could mean that Australia becomes the world’s nuclear waste dump”.
On Wednesday, a government source familiar with the amendments said the new wording was intended to “put the matter beyond doubt”.
“Since announcing the Aukus pathway, the government has stated that Australia will not be responsible for the storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel from the US, UK or other countries (that is, the part of the submarine that generates high-level radioactive waste),” the source said.
“As responsible nuclear stewards, we will only be responsible for high-level radioactive waste from our own, sovereign nuclear-powered submarines.”
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