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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-05-13 Daily Xml
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Radiation Protection and Control Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 30 April 2020.)

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (16:47): I indicate that I am the lead (and I suspect the only) speaker on this bill for this side of the chamber. I was contemplating the awesome responsibility that is implied by regulating radiation in South Australia and indeed anywhere. I indicate that we, as an opposition, at this stage support the bill and do not intend to go into committee stage for it.

In considering the importance of this legislation, it made me consider that radiation itself is in some ways a metaphor for the power and risks of human ingenuity and scientific endeavour. There is the extraordinary power to unleash energy and to be able to manipulate the internal body environment in order to improve human health. Yet there is another side of human ingenuity and scientific capabilities, which is to risk both short and long-term harm.

We know that the management of radiation has been enormously significant in several areas, such as in human health, in the creation of atomic power, and of course through war, as evidenced in the awesome and terrible tragedy of unleashing nuclear weaponry onto cities in Japan. This is not an area that ought to be regulated and considered lightly. It reminds us of our power and of the limits to our power in the almost inevitable occasional harm that we do to the planet and to each other.

It is also the case that human endeavour, human ingenuity—particularly our culture's version of that—is capable of being used in order to turn a profit rather than necessarily always only for the greater good of humanity. While there is never anything wrong, in due course, with profits being made, that must be done in a way that does not compromise the greater good and indeed the planet.

That consideration is relevant to anything that we do. It is particularly relevant when we consider something that has the capacity to cause long-term harm such as radiation. We must show it the most utmost respect, and we do that through using our institutions as intelligently and wisely as we can. It is right and proper that there is a piece of legislation that regulates this. It is right and proper that the government has chosen to renew that legislation, to review whether it is sufficiently modern and whether it is sufficiently up to date with the requirements and our knowledge of radiation.

It is also important that we have an institution like the EPA that is not entirely beholden to the minister of the day, to the government of the day, but that it has its own act and its own obligations—an institution, the EPA, that employs scientists and listens to scientific advice. That is an important part of managing such an awesome responsibility as using the power of radiation. It is also important that we ensure that experts are able to have comment and views, experts who do not necessarily sit within the defined institutions of either parliament or the EPA.

I was pleased that there was an extensive consultation process undertaken in order to ensure that the expertise that sits outside these institutions had the possibility, the opportunity, to have an engagement in this discussion. I have worked tangentially with the EPA before, and I have the highest respect for it as an institution. I have carefully read not only the material it provided about the bill but also its consultation report, and I am pleased that it has done that diligently and appropriately, and on that basis I support this piece of legislation and do not intend to move amendments or, as I say, go into committee stage.

I do indicate, however, that there may be some amendments that come up in the Legislative Council. I have had a conversation with the Hon. Mark Parnell, as I believe the minister has also, and he has indicated that he may have some concerns that could be addressed through appropriate amendments. Without having seen those and without having any detail, I cannot indicate which side those on this side of the chamber may land. However, we will be taking those amendments, should they be forthcoming, seriously and with the full weight, as I have described, of the responsibility that this parliament has to appropriately and adequately regulate this extraordinary power that has been unleashed through scientific endeavour of being able to harness the atom.

I am particularly interested if there were to be amendments from the Hon. Mark Parnell that we might be persuaded to support if they are about ensuring that worker health is protected to the best possible capability of our institutions. We have workers who are more exposed to radiation than other workers, and we want to make sure that they are as protected as can be by the power of this legislation.

That said, I raise that only in order to be helpful to indicate that our acquiescence in support in this chamber does not necessarily imply that we will not be interested in amendments in the upper house. I indicate, again, the support of this side of the chamber, and I look forward to the interesting debate that may well occur in the upper house and then its return to this chamber.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (16:54): I rise to speak on the Radiation Protection and Control Bill 2019, and I start by commending the minister for supervising and initiating the enormous body of work that is necessary to undertake a review of legislation by the advance of this bill, which will significantly update and modernise the Radiation Protection and Control Act. It is an exercise that has not been undertaken since 1982, and clearly the world has changed; in fact, there are even a few people in our parliament who were born after that, including the minister. I think it is a commendable achievement. Even before he was a sparkle in his mother's eye, this project was being worked on. That is to be commended.

I would also like to say that because historically in South Australia we are a very significant miner, extractor and exporter of uranium, which is a very significant income-producing product for this state, the question of the protection, security and transportation regulations surrounding any radioactive product is one that we need to be acutely aware of. I think we have a responsibility to make sure that we are a voice in leadership in relation to the management of products stemming from a core product such as uranium.

We are a proud producer of this product. It serves in science, medicine and industry across the world. We should be proud of that, but we have a responsibility to be part of the regulation of it. In relation to the development of that industry, I am particularly aware of the transportation of uranium out of South Australia, which of course comes down to Port Adelaide and is exported. I do not think there is any uranium at present that goes out of Australia via Darwin, but I might be wrong. I think all of it goes through our own port. Again, we have a responsibility to make sure that whatever measures are in place are adequate and necessary to protect the interests of those who may be at risk.

Whilst my parents' era was in that category of watching the Hiroshima bomb and being afraid in relation to nuclear armament, warfare and human destruction as a result of it, I think most of us in this chamber are pleased that we live in a time when there has largely been disarmament around the world. That is not to say there has not been threat in our lifetime, but I think there has been a much more mature approach, particularly since Hiroshima. Full credit to the scientists who have learned how to split atoms but, at the end of the day, we need to responsibly manage it.

Nothing is more important than the safety of those who live in South Australia. We have come from an era when my mother would say that radioactive products caused her great concern and any kind of nuclear development would cause babies to be born disfigured and all sorts of things of that nature. My father used to go around saying that, for cattle that eat grass in these areas, it is likely to make their eyes glow in the dark. The point is that it is a different era. We understand the benefit of these products, properly secure and properly protected in those circumstances.

It brings me to the many hospital sites around South Australia, even in the metropolitan area, where there has been significant storage of radioactive waste. It is largely from very important medical procedures, X-rays and things of this nature, where there is an accumulated product that needs to be stored. For a long time, when I first came into the parliament, I asked the former government about their relocation of products, particularly as they had announced the build of the new Royal Adelaide Hospital and the basement of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital was a major approved regulated repository of this waste. I asked what was going to happen to it.

For a long time, the former government promised that they were going to build a centre in South Australia for the storage of waste. Meanwhile, they were highly derisive and critical of the then federal government and their intention to look at a suitable radioactive waste repository for Australia's waste from the work that they were doing. It never transpired, they never did it—they promised it—but nevertheless it still needs to be managed. The repository has not been built. There is no single waste place. We still need to do this if we are going to have the benefits of medical advances. Of course, I am reminded in looking at you, sir, Acting Deputy Speaker—is that what you actually are?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Dr Harvey): I think so.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: Anyway, you are an important scientist in your other life, and you would understand probably more than most people in this chamber the significance of the advances from research and the benefits of these products. But they still need to be securely stored and they still need to be safely disposed of. So I again thank the minister for undertaking this review.

I do note there are significant offences, in our obligation under the national directory commitments, for a registered owner to cause, suffer or permit an unlicensed person to operate radiation apparatus, and an offence for a responsible person to cause, suffer or permit an unlicensed person to use or handle radioactive substances. As Attorney-General, obviously I take some interest when we are introducing new offences. There are obligations under this act that we will take note of and obviously need to supervise, to the extent that it may call upon the Crown Solicitor's Office to be involved in the prosecution, as they often are in relation to other environmental breaches.

I am also reminded in this legislation of the upgrade to the whistleblower law, as it was known, the public interest disclosure legislation we passed on coming into government. That needed some major repair and upgrade as well. I remind members that, although we have strengthened that very strongly to ensure that people who wish to report a breach of conduct, whether that is at the criminal level or otherwise, secure immunity in whistleblowing—in the sense of reporting it to the relevant body—that whole legislation, that whole level of protection, was born out of that need of a person who was going to speak up about an environmental or health circumstance that was going to create a public risk to others. That was really the trigger for establishing that legislation.

That is why it is so important that under public health we have a process to protect those who speak up, and that, in tandem with this type of legislation, is critical to being able to ensure that we are doing everything we can not only to enjoy the benefits of these products and processes but also to ensure that we deal with those—mostly by enforcement through civil penalties—in an appropriate and effective way; so I thank the minister for that upgrade.

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (17:03): I rise in support of the bill, and I will have only a few words to say. I thought it was important that I do rise, given that I have the largest uranium mine in the country, and one of the largest in the world, in my electorate. It is essentially a copper mine that has uranium, plus gold, silver and the other stuff you do not actually exploit. The mine has made an enormous contribution to the South Australian economy over the years and it has employed thousands of people, and it is incredibly important that people who work in these industries are fully protected.

Many years ago, back in the 1990s, was the first time I went underground at Olympic Dam in order to carry out worksite assessments. I visited Olympic Dam on a number of occasions to do that in the job I was in at the time, and the mine was a Western Mining operation. The process you had to go through back in those days was that when you went underground or when you came back to the surface you had new gear on and you had on the tags that monitored radioactivity. When you came out of the mine, you put your clothing in a bin, you had a shower, you had the whole works and you had a Geiger counter run over you as well. It was a fairly rigorous process, as it should be.

The mine at Olympic Dam was unlike underground operations that existed back in the fifties and sixties in other parts of the world, where there was a fairly horrendous legacy of lung cancer and a few other illnesses when it came to exposure in those mines. Those underground mines in other parts of the world were incredibly poorly ventilated, unlike the operation at Olympic Dam, where all sorts of practices are put in place to ensure the safety of workers. However, we should always be mindful of the potential hazard and we should always be looking at the evidence and at how we can improve things.

As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, the mining of uranium, and the export of yellowcake from this country and from this state, has a range of benefits, that is, medical benefits and scientific benefits. For some countries that have sunk capital in that particular way, there were energy benefits, generating energy in years past. Of course, the military applications have been mentioned and they are certainly the most scary, given what happened at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and thank God that has not been repeated.

It is worth reflecting that a number of those international agreements that were in place in relation to disarming or reducing nuclear weapons are coming to a close, which is concerning given the leadership of the United States, given the leadership of Russia and given the leadership of China. It is not a good combination of leadership when international treaties are coming up for renewal. Hopefully, wise heads will prevail, as they have in the past, even though we have come close on a number of occasions, but wise heads did prevail and there has not been a nuclear weapon incident, if that is not too light a word, in the years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I will touch on the waste being stored at hospitals and elsewhere because a lot has been made of that in relation to South Australia again being selected for a national repository. I have spoken on the national repository before. I think it was an absolutely appalling process that was entered into by the federal government. In fact, I have called it 'the sports rort process' applied to the selection of a nuclear repository. There are some deeply concerning things about the site selection process when the starting point for site selection is an individual landowner nominating the site and that then kicks off a process. In my view, that is deeply concerning. It was a recipe for division in communities in both the Flinders Ranges and Kimba.

There is something really bizarre about this process. We are taking long-lived intermediate waste from Lucas Heights, where it is surrounded by expertise and it has been looked after, and we are shipping it halfway across the country to another interim site until we come up with a proposal that will take care of that long-lived intermediate waste for the next 10,000-plus years.

It has been a very poor process, a very divisive process, and I have called upon the federal government to go back to the beginning—which might be quite frustrating—and get everyone in the tent nationally because we do have a responsibility to manage the more serious end of our domestic nuclear waste, and we do have a responsibility to do that properly for the long term, and the process entered into is not the process you would use. Having said that, clearly we support the bill. It will be interesting to see whether the Greens' amendments are sensible and an improvement, or whether they do not improve things, but time will tell, so let's see. But it is an important bill, and anything that improves what we have in place should be supported.

In concluding, I do not just have the largest uranium mine in the country in my electorate but I also have what was the very disturbing legacy when we bent over to the English—I will not say the British; I will say the English, given my Irish and Scottish blood—and said, 'Of course you can let off some nuclear bombs in this country.' The legacy of the impact upon the Aboriginal communities in that country is still with them today both in an emotional sense and potentially in a physical sense.

The management of Maralinga is not exactly something that we can hang our hat on and say, 'That was a great job.' It was a very middling job, and when we look at what happened with the waste stored in Woomera, once again it was not a great job. We need to get this stuff right and we need to take time when it comes to establishing a national repository for the more serious end of the scale. A lot of the other stuff that people have been talking about is relatively innocuous. In a number of cases, it has a relatively short half-life and it does not need to come all the way into South Australia from all around the nation to a national repository. Let's look at that but, as I said, we support the bill.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (17:12): I believe that all the second reading contributions have been made to this important bill, and I would like to thank all members of both the government and the opposition for their contributions to the debate. I would also like to thank the deputy leader and the shadow minister for regional development for indicating that the opposition will provide support through the House of Assembly for the bill and will presumably support it in the upper house as well, notwithstanding their desire to consider amendments that may or may not come from Mr Parnell.

Amongst the contributions that have been made during this debate, there has been mention of various radiation matters, a strong community interest beyond what this bill is designed or able to regulate. It is important that I address these in my closing remarks to ensure that further stages of passage of this legislation in this place and the other place are suitably informed. Firstly, the bill does not and cannot have any application to the proposed national radioactive waste management facility. The national radioactive waste management facility is being established under commonwealth law that strictly prevents state laws from applying in every facet of its establishment and operation, including transport of waste to and from the site.

To be very clear, this bill has no application to the establishment or operation of the national radioactive waste management facility. Similarly, the radiation associated with telecommunications infrastructure, including the rollout of the new 5G network, is regulated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority under commonwealth legislation and subject to standards set by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). Commonwealth law prevails in the regulation of this technology.

Finally, nuclear power is something that is completely prohibited throughout Australia under commonwealth legislation. The establishment of a nuclear fuel fabrication plant, a nuclear power plant, an enrichment plant or a processing facility are all prohibited under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998. This bill continues the prohibition in South Australia of the enrichment or conversion of uranium; the bill has no application to nuclear power.

The types of radiation sources and activities that this legislation does regulate provide benefits to all South Australians in one way or another. This may be through the jobs provided in the areas of mining, petroleum, industrial processing and analysis, and health care, or it may be through the improved health outcomes of having access to modern medical imagery, radiotherapy and other nuclear medicine therapies.

A variety of medical imaging technologies use radiation, such as X-rays, CT scans and PET scans. These are critical tools used in the diagnosis and treatment of a range of serious medical conditions. Improved treatments for many cancers have been made possible by advancements to diagnostic imaging, as well as advancements in radiotherapy technology. This legislation supports the safe and regulated introduction of these new technologies.

The legislation also supports the safe introduction of world-leading technologies into the state, which is putting South Australia at the forefront of medical treatment and research globally. One example of this is the cyclotron that was constructed in 2013 and is housed at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, commonly known as SAHMRI. The cyclotron produces radionuclides that are supplied to South Australian and interstate medical imaging facilities to aid in the identification and assessment of cancers and heart disease.

Other radionuclides produced at the facility are used for direct treatment of patients as part of nuclear medicine therapies. SAHMRI also uses the cyclotron to develop radioactive tracers that have shown promise in neurology in the early detection and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. The legislation will also support the safe construction of a proton therapy unit in South Australia, likely to be operational by 2022. This technology will be the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere and will greatly enhance cancer treatment options for South Australians, as well as interstate patients. Currently, patients seeking this treatment must go overseas.

As you can see from the examples provided, there are exciting advancements in nuclear technology, and it is critical that our legislation is modern and agile to ensure that new technology is able to be adopted quickly and safely and, more generally, that the community remains protected from unnecessary radiation exposure. Again, I thank members for their contributions to the second reading debate. In particular, I would like to thank the officers within the Environment Protection Authority for their contribution to this important body of work.

I would like to reiterate the comments of the deputy leader in terms of discussing the value of the EPA in South Australia. I particularly note that the EPA has just celebrated its 25th anniversary as an authority in South Australia, having been instituted in 1995. Legislation for the EPA was initiated under the Arnold government in 1993 and then passed under the ministry of David Wotton as environment minister in 1995. The legislation had phenomenal bipartisan support at the time and I think we have seen, during the 25 years of the EPA, a significant level of bipartisan support, as indicated today with this legislation and the comments from both the deputy leader and the member for Giles.

I will have more to say in the house later in the week on the 25th anniversary of the EPA, but I would like to draw members' attention to the role that that authority has in keeping South Australia safe and ensuring that we have the laws and frameworks in place to govern a whole range of things. But for those laws and the existence of good government and the contribution of a skilled and insightful Public Service, South Australia would not be as safe as it otherwise is today.

Bill read a second time.

Third Reading

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Minister for Environment and Water) (17:20): I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Bill read a third time and passed.

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