Submarine boasts, yet nuclear waste dumps submersed in secrecy
· Michael West
As the SA Premier basks in the campaign glory of a $3.9 billion downpayment on shipyard for nuclear subs, the Federal Government is kicking the nuclear waste can down the road. Rex Patrick reports.
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With much fanfare, last week, Peter Malinauskas and Anthony Albanese announced a down payment on the $30B shipyard being built for the AUKUS nuclear submarines, which will begin construction in Port Adelaide in 2040.
Meanwhile, two senior government officials have told the Administrative Review Tribunal that the public they serve need to be kept in the dark on plans to deal with civil and AUKUS nuclear waste.
They argued ‘narrative control’ was essential.
For over 40 years, Australian governments of various flavours have been trying, and failing, to work out what to do with the nation’s growing medical and industrial nuclear waste. That problem has become harder as the need to deal with AUKUS’s high-level reactor waste has been added to the task.
Australia’s 3,700m3 of low-level and 1,300m3 of intermediate-level radioactive waste is stored in over 100 locations nationwide, including at hospitals, science facilities and at universities.
Since July 2023, when the Federal Court set aside the decision of the Morrison Government to locate a civil National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at Kimba, there’s been radio silence from Prime Minister Albanese’s Government on what the next steps will be.
There has been a similar silence about the plans for AUKUS high-level waste, despite the Government already having a plan for selecting a dump site.
Follow the money. A radioactive farce of failed land purchases
Narrative control
As MWM tried to use Freedom of Information (FOI) laws to squeeze some information from the Government about on what’s going on, what was instead revealed was a conscious plan to keep the public in the dark.
In order to try to keep everything secret the CEO of the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency (ARWA), Mr Sam Usher, give evidence to the Tribunal explaining the dangers of letting what he described as a “nuclear illiterate” Australian public know what’s going on. The Government’s remedy to public illiteracy, it seems, is to keep the public illiterate.
In an 18th-century approach to winning over the public, he affirmed in an affidavit that
“The release of information (requested by MWM) in these circumstances does not align with current messaging or status on (redacted) – which heavily relies on public approval – could negatively impact trust, and the building and sustaining of the social license that ARWA and the Australian Government will need to deliver (redacted).”
And indeed, CEO Usher asked the Tribunal to keep that statement secret. MWM challenged the secrecy, and the Tribunal ordered the statement to be released; trust and social licence, all to be obtained from the public by narrative control.
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Thou shalt not debate!
Alex Kelton, Deputy Director General of Strategy at the Australian Submarine Agency, gave similar evidence. The public should not know – it’s too dangerous for government.
Kelton testified that transparency would cause the diversion of Government resources “by inviting [public] discussion about early contemplative thinking on a matter which Australia does not have a long-standing policy position”.
Transparency would, she said:
provide signalling about the advice to Government which may result in commentary
“that places pressure on government to rule in or out particular options, ideas or strategies, or effectively forecloses approaches to issues, by reason of adverse public sentiment that is not fully informed and which it is premature for the government to engage publicly on until it has done further work to develop its view of the options and the position.”
The Australian Government has never run a successful program to obtain social licence for a nuclear waste facility. A fact that flows from that is that Deputy Director General Kelton has no experience in such an endeavour either. She was the Chief of Staff to Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, so she does have political experience.
Important or urgent?
The argument adopted by Usher and Kelton on behalf of the Government is that there will be a public consultation, but until that occurs, nothing should be made public.
The evidence in the Administrative Review Tribunal paints a disturbing picture.
In the middle of Usher’s evidence was a sentence with unusual quotation marks around the words “important” and “urgent”.
Redacted evidence from Kelton, which the Government was later forced to reveal the gist of under challenge from MWM, explained that the Government was sitting on its hands, not doing anything. A brief on how to choose a location for AUKUS nuclear waste was provided to Defence Minister Richard Marles in December 2023, and nothing has happened.
Under cross examination it was clear that Usher was frustrated by the Government’s failure to deal with an “important” issue with the necessary “urgency”,.
No consultation
MWM was at pains to point out to the Tribunal that there is no legal requirement for the Government to conduct consultation. Section 10 of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act allows the Defence Minister to issue a regulation declaring any site in Australia as a nuclear facility for the purposes of AUKUS.
No consultation is required, and any future Government, faced with delays caused by inaction by today’s Government, can just announce a site – and in those circumstances, the Government is asking for no information to be released under FOI.
Any place in Australia is on the cards.
Kelton also put in her affidavit that (this) Government has announced the AUKUS nuclear waste site will be on current or Defence land.
However, during cross-examination, Kelton conceded that any location in Australia can be selected and then turned into Defence land by way of compulsory acquisition. She confirmed that all the Defence Minister’s announcement means is that whatever land is used, it will be a “Commonwealth Facility”.
Along with an announcement that any decision on a future nuclear submarine will now not be made until the 2030’s, it is clear that from the Administrative Review Tribunal proceedings that, against the advice of the ARWA, the Government are not interested in advancing work on a future high-level radioactive waste dump. Again, starting from scratch, that project might take at least a decade, probably longer, but Marles and Albanese appear to have no interest in getting things underway.
Living in the moment
Marles gets to jump on a private jet and head to Washington to meet with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. He gets to strut around and talk tough on Defence. Meanwhile, Albanese clings to AUKUS like a political lifebuoy, hoping to avoid a hostile social media post from President Trump and any suggestion Labor is “soft on defence”.
But in a gross act of maladministration, they’re avoiding the tough political decisions needed now if AUKUS nuclear waste, and indeed all our other radioactive waste, is to be properly tackled.
Albanese and Marles clearly don’t think they’ll be around in politics when the radioactive mess hits the fan. For them, that’s a future Government’s problem to solve.