Labor and the Coalition are seeking to pass legislation that can make anywhere in Australia a nuclear waste dumping ground with no public consultation, no First Nations input and no warning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Senate report released today into the Australian Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 highlights the lack of protections for communities as Labor seeks to create a new defence nuclear regulator as part of their deal on AUKUS nuclear submarines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today\u2019s majority Senate report supports giving the Defence Minister the power to designate anywhere in Australia a high-level nuclear-dumping ground with no public consultation needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report highlights, but does not recommend addressing, the conflict of interest at the core of this new nuclear submarine regulator, due to it answering to the Minister of Defence who is also the Minister responsible for the operation of nuclear submarines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Senate committee report acknowledged that this Bill was drafted by the Albanese Government to allow the dumping of UK and US high-level nuclear waste in Australia. Since this Bill was introduced the Greens have been calling for this to be removed and, while it is positive to see this recommended as a change, the Albanese Government is yet to accept this amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senator David Shoebrdige, Greens spokesperson for Defence said: <\/strong>\u201cThis just shows the lengths the Albanese Government will go to try and keep the failing AUKUS nuclear submarine deal sputtering along.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLabor is more than happy to team up with the Coalition and start opening up nuclear waste dumps around Australia without any public consultation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf this Bill becomes law you could wake up tomorrow and have a nuclear waste dump as a neighbour, simply because the Defence Minister singled your suburb out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis runs roughshod not just over local communities, but also First Nations peoples who have a long history of protecting their land from nuclear waste from Muckaty to Kimba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUntil the Greens pointed it out last year the Government was trying to quietly push this bill through Parliament and allow the US and UK to dump high-level nuclear waste here. With this nuclear-powered cat out of the bag, the question is will Labor amend the Bill to protect Australia from this toxic future?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Greens issued a dissenting report opposing the Bill that highlighted the dangers of international nuclear waste dumping in Australia and the multiple failures in the structure that undermine the proposed new regulator\u2019s independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUnder this Bill, the supposed \u2018independent regulator\u2019 of Defence can be run by someone who the day before was in the Defence, staffed by the Defence, and reporting to the Minister of Defence. It is absurd,\u201d Senator Shoebridge said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the Greens Dissenting report here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Labor and the Coalition are seeking to pass legislation that can make anywhere in Australia a nuclear waste dumping ground with no public consultation, no First Nations input and no warning. The Senate report released today into the Australian Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 highlights the lack of protections for communities as Labor seeks to … Continue reading “ALP AND COALITION GREEN LIGHT AUKUS NUCLEAR WASTE DUMPS WITHOUT PUBLIC CONSULTATION”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26645,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26644\/revisions\/26645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}