The Albanese Government today teamed up with Peter Dutton\u2019s Coalition to push through a controversial AUKUS Bill that will allow the dumping of high-level naval nuclear waste anywhere in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Albanese Government, in alliance with the Coalition, rammed the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill through the Senate today without debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bill also created a new naval nuclear regulator as part of the AUKUS agreement with the UK and US on nuclear submarines. It initially allowed for all UK and US nuclear submarine waste to be dumped in Australia until the Albanese Government sheepishly amended it, due to growing public opposition, to prevent the dumping of UK or US \u2018spent nuclear fuel\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the amendments still allow the dumping of US and UK intermediate-level waste and other high-level nuclear waste from their nuclear submarines. The Greens moved amendments this afternoon that explicitly prevented this, and the major parties voted against these amendments and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bill immediately creates two nuclear dump \u2018zones\u2019, one off the coast of Perth and the other at Port Adelaide, without any community consultation or local support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bill also allows nuclear dump zones to be declared anywhere in Australia that the Defence Minister chooses with the flick of their pen, again without any consent from local communities or First Nations traditional owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens Spokesperson for Defence, said: \u201cAlbanese and Dutton have teamed up today to push this AUKUS nuclear waste legislation through the Senate without debate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday\u2019s actions see both Labor and the Coalition joining hands to ram through legislation that will let the UK and US dump their naval nuclear waste in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Albanese Labor Government initially tried to sneak through a law that would allow the UK and US to dump all types of nuclear waste in Australia. The Greens called the Government out on this, and then people around Australia pushed back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEven with last-minute Labor amendments, this legislation still allows the dumping of US and UK nuclear waste in Australia. Labor\u2019s amendments only prohibit the US and UK dumping ‘spent nuclear fuel’ from their submarines in Australia, but do not prohibit any other highly irradiated UK and US nuclear waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis legislation green-lights dumping of all Australian naval nuclear waste anywhere in Australia. To be clear, exposure to even intermediate-level waste is lethal to humans, and the risk lasts for hundreds of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEveryone can see AUKUS is sinking, the question is now becoming how much environmental and financial damage it will do before it hits rock bottom,\u201d Senator Shoebridge said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Albanese Government today teamed up with Peter Dutton\u2019s Coalition to push through a controversial AUKUS Bill that will allow the dumping of high-level naval nuclear waste anywhere in Australia. The Albanese Government, in alliance with the Coalition, rammed the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill through the Senate today without debate. The Bill also … Continue reading “Albanese and Dutton team up on toxic AUKUS nuclear waste deal”<\/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-29559","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\/29559","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=29559"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29559\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29560,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29559\/revisions\/29560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}