Government Bungling On Nuclear Waste Continues Kelvin Thomson - Shadow Minister for Sustainability and the Environment

Media Statement - 15 April 2003

Leaked Ministerial correspondence has revealed the Government's process for the establishment of a low-level radioactive waste dump is deeply flawed and must be scrapped.

The letter, from Environment Minister Kemp to relevant Ministers, has rejected the Department of Science's preferred location – site 52a – due to the risk of a missile strike from the adjacent Woomera missile testing range and the associated impact on aerospace industries.

The letter also details 11 additional conditions that must be met before construction of the dump can commence at one of two sites in South Australia's far north.

Clearly the Government has bungled the process and it is time to start again.

A new process would exclude South Australia from further consideration of sites for either a repository or a store, and Federal Labor will not impose any nuclear waste dump facility on that state.

Labor believes there should be a national repository for low-level waste, and in Government would initiate a new process to ascertain international best practice in storing low and intermediate level waste.

However Labor rejects the use of Commonwealth powers to override South Australian Government and community concerns about the dump, and condemns the Howard Government for its failure to engage in genuine consultation.