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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-04-12 Daily Xml
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Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) (Public Money) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading (resumed on motion).

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (17:28): I take the floor today to express strong reservations on behalf of Dignity for Disability about the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) (Public Money) Amendment Bill 2016. While I think this is an important conversation to have, and one that it is important to keep going, I do have very strong concerns about the particular way in which this conversation has been carried out so far.

I thank the Premier's office for providing my office with a briefing on this matter, but I continue to question the need for this particular bill in the first place. Dignity for Disability has great concern that this state is being considered as a potential nuclear waste dump—because, let's be honest, what is being discussed and what is being proposed is not really a solution but a waste dump for the rest of the world.

I see no evidence to suggest in any strong case that a nuclear waste dump will solve this state's high unemployment and job woes, but what it may well do, however, is destroy our reputation as a premium clean food and wine producing state. I am not sure what point a 300-person trade mission to China will achieve when the Chinese markets learn that the food bowl producing the products we have been promoting to them has the potential to be contaminated by a waste product with a 24,000-year half-life.

I am confused about how the Premier can announce in one breath the premium food and wine industry as a key priority, and then a royal commission investigating a potential nuclear waste dump in another. However, that is precisely what has been done, and we now have a bill in front of us that wants to knock out a very worthy feature of the Nuclear Waste Storage Facility (Prohibition) Act 2000, to, apparently, enable moneys to be spent on public consultation.

I am told the royal commission thus far has broken no laws, and I make that clear: to date, it has broken no laws. Yet, we also see it as necessary, or the government sees it as necessary, to put in place retrospectivity in this bill. I think retrospectivity is something that we need to be very careful about and very selective about, when we put it into our statute book.

I am concerned that, on the one hand, the government seeks to make clear that it has broken no laws thus far, yet we need retrospectivity to say, 'Well, the times that we may or may not have done things that might be interpreted as breaking laws, well, that was okay too.' So, I am concerned about the retrospective aspect of this bill in particular.

If crown law advice says we did not need this bill until now, why do we need to make it retrospective to cover the period when, apparently, we did not need it anyway? If all we are doing is consulting, why do we need to amend this particular act, as other members, particularly the Hon. Mr Parnell, have already mentioned? As former minister and MP John Hill passionately said in this parliament in 2000, this nuclear waste dump concept is a poor idea socially, economically and environmentally.

At this stage, I can indicate that Dignity for Disability will be supporting Mr Parnell's amendments to this bill. I understand the government is also now supporting these amendments, after yesterday expressing it was concerned that these same amendments were not legally watertight. I am not sure what has changed overnight, but I look forward to hearing debate in this place throughout the committee stage that will, hopefully, provide some clarity on exactly what has caused that change of heart.

I also remain somewhat confused about the exact intent or purpose of the opposition's amendments, but again look forward to getting some clarity around that and hearing the reasoning for them at the committee stage in due course. During the second reading summing up, I also hope to hear some more sound reasoning from the minister responsible as to why the government has decided this bill is necessary in the first place, including, as I have said, the retrospectivity clause in particular and why they will not table, nor reveal, the crown law advice that has led to this particular bill being before us.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.W. Ridgway.

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