Kimba radioactive waste plans faces challenge in parliament following release of Senate inquiry report
Plans for a nuclear waste dump in the South Australian outback could still be derailed as opposition against laws clearing its path run into opposition from multiple political players.
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The Federal Government faces a challenge to pass its radioactive waste bill through Parliament, amid dissent from a Labor Senator, the Greens and Independent Senator Rex Patrick.
A Senate committee probe into the draft legislation paving way for a radioactive waste site at Napandee farm, near Kimba, has recommended it be passed. However, dissenting reports from Labor’s Jenny McAllister, Greens Senator Sarah-Hanson Young and Mr Patrick have raised a raft of concerns, including it preventing the community from seeking a judicial review of the site selection process.
Under the plans, the Government will store low-level waste at Napandee permanently, and intermediate level waste for several decades.
Senator McAllister said the traditional landowners, the Barngarla people, were worried the new legislation specifying the site would override their right to a judicial review that would normally apply if Resources Minister Keith Pitt declared the location.
She said the Government had given “no compelling reason” for the change.
Senator Patrick said the bill emerged because “the Government botched its own site selection process to such a degree that it would almost certainly have seen a site selected through a ministerial decision overturned on judicial review”.
The Government wanted the Senate to “fix up its mistake”, he said, but it could not do that “without serving up the majority of the stakeholders … with a plate of Government-cooked injustice”. A Kimba Council-run ballot found 62 per cent of respondents supported the waste facility in their region.
The Barngarla people lost a court battle to be included, later holding their own vote, which rejected the plans.
While many in the community have welcomed nuclear storage as a new industry, providing more than 40 jobs and a $31 million community funding package, others are staunchly opposed.
They have cited worries including the impact on agricultural land, and double-handling of intermediate level waste.
Senator Hanson-Young’s report said most of the 105 submissions the committee received opposed the bill and the broader SA community deserved a say in the project.
Mr Pitt said the committee’s report put the Government “one step closer” to a storage site for nuclear waste – “a process which has been ongoing for four decades”.
“The individual dissenting report by Senator McAllister aside, I would like to acknowledge the largely bipartisan approach to the location and construction of this facility,” he said.
Conservation SA chief executive Craig Wilkins and Australian Conservation Foundation campaigner Dave Sweeney said the Senate split over the issue reflected broader community division.
“This is completely at odds with Federal Government rhetoric of only proceeding with facility if there is clear majority community support,” Mr Wilkins said.
Senator Hanson-Young said the Senate inquiry showed the draft legislation was “a highly flawed bill”.
“There are deep concerns that this bill blatantly seeks to prevent any right to judicial review of this process and sets in stone Kimba as the dump site against strong community opposition,” she said.
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