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Legislative Council - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
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Resolutions

Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission

Consideration of Message No. 116 from the House of Assembly.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Employment, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation, Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for Science and Information Economy) (15:25): I move:

That this council concur with the resolution of the House of Assembly contained in Message No. 116 for the appointment of a joint committee on the findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission and that the council be represented on the joint committee by three members, of whom two shall form the quorum necessary to be present at all sittings of the committee, and that the members of the joint committee to represent the Legislative Council be the Hon. D.G.E. Hood, the Hon. R.I. Lucas and the Hon M.C. Parnell.

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission's final report was delivered to the Governor on Friday 6 May. The comprehensive report makes 12 key recommendations, the most significant being for us to pursue the establishment of a fuel and intermediate-level waste storage facility in South Australia. The royal commission has found that it is both safe and viable to pursue a used fuel waste storage facility and this would have significant economic benefits for South Australia. The commission found that without broad social and specific community consent, such a proposal would be difficult to achieve.

The royal commission has also identified political bipartisanship as a central feature in the potential for South Australia to increase our involvement in the nuclear fuel cycle. This reflects the long-term intergenerational impact of the royal commission's recommendations. Following the release of the royal commission's report, the Premier announced a detailed consultation process through which all South Australians will have the opportunity to forward their views over the coming months.

This motion proposes the establishment of a joint house select committee to consider the findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission, focusing on the issues associated with the establishment of a nuclear waste storage facility and to provide advice and report on any South Australian government legislative, regulatory or institutional arrangements and any other matters that the committee sees fit. The committee will enable the parliament to analyse and debate the royal commission's final report and in doing so contribute to the broader community's engagement process about the report.

Ultimately, the government is responsible for deciding if South Australia's role in the nuclear fuel cycle is expanded. The work of the joint house select committee will help inform the government's response to the report, which is intended to be delivered to parliament by the end of this year. The royal commission's final report provides a substantial evidence base for South Australians to consider and marks the start of a very important conversation about the future. We need an informed discussion leading to wise judgement on our state's role in the nuclear fuel cycle and the royal commission's report presents a substantial body of work which will assist us in doing just that. I encourage members to support the establishment of this committee and its work so it can make a valuable contribution to this important decision for our state's future.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:28): I rise on behalf of Liberal members to support the motion. The Liberal Party's position in relation to proposals for the establishment of committees of inquiry to seek information, provide further information or seek facts is generally to support them. It is not 100 per cent, but generally to support them. From that essential base, our party room has decided to support the proposal from the government for a parliamentary committee of inquiry.

I will not delay the debate on this occasion to further reflect upon what I label as the hypocrisy of the Labor Party and certain Labor members in relation to the whole nuclear issue. Those who are interested in those comments can see my contribution and others during the recent debate on the specific government legislation in relation to allowing public funding for public discussion of issues relating to the nuclear cycle royal commission debate.

I address therefore the specific issues raised by the motion that we have before us. We support the notion that the committee, or the structure of the committee, as has been outlined to us, essentially will be two Labor members, two Liberal members and two Independent or minor party members, giving a committee of six, which means that neither of the major parties, government or alternative government, will have a majority on the committee.

Given the strongly held views of some members who come to the committee—and I look to my far left, the Hon. Mr Parnell: I suspect that we are well aware of his views in relation to this issue, and he comes to the work of the committee with a very fixed view in relation to the issues that must be addressed—it is therefore my expectation that it is probably unlikely that there will be a unanimous view between the six members of the committee. I remain to be surprised, but that would be my political assessment as we entered it. That does not mean that the committee cannot still do useful work and hopefully highly productive work.

If members of the committee can accept that some have come to the table with fixed views on particular issues, fixed views both privately and publicly expressed on the issue, I am sure it is entirely possible for the committee still to work together and to provide useful information not only for themselves but, hopefully, for other members of parliament and for the community generally on this very important issue.

I noted the Leader of the Government's statements that this decision ultimately was to be a decision for the government, and that is an issue on which I would disagree with the minister. Certainly there has been some criticism that the government was going to outsource its views to the same construct that delivered cycling on footpaths and a variety of other issues, that is, the citizens' jury construct with which the government is so enamoured. The government in response to that has said, 'No, no, that's not the case; the decision is the government's'.

My view is that the decision ultimately will be a decision for the parliament. I accept the fact that the government is one part of the parliament, but not the majority view in both houses. Certainly its view will hold sway in the House of Assembly (or it would be expected that that would be the case), but ultimately on something as critical as this it is a decision for the parliament, and I think that is why the government has constructed a tripartisan select committee.

The Leader of the Government has quoted the royal commissioner outlining the need for a social licence and importantly bipartisan support, because we are talking about decades and hundreds of years in terms of the decision that might be taken by the state of South Australia. I accept the view that the government has to take a decision, but the alternative government also has to take a decision, and those minor parties or Independent members who have not already taken a decision also have to take a decision as to what is to happen, and I am assuming that legislation that exists in South Australia will have to be either amended or repealed and new legislation will need to be passed, and that would require the support of a majority in both houses of parliament.

So, whilst I agree with most aspects of what the Leader of the Government in this chamber said, that is just one aspect on which I put a different view on the table in relation to ultimately where the final decision should be. The other aspect of the process of this, as I understand it, is that the government will be requiring this committee to undertake an intensive program of work, because the expectation or the requirement is that its work be completed no later than November.

We are at the end of May now and the committee is not going to be established until June. The expectation is that the committee's work is going to have to be concluded by no later than November. I think that is the timetable that the government representatives have outlined in terms of the citizens' juries and various other community consultation processes. The government has said that it is going to make its decision by the end of this year, and when one works that time line backwards, the members who are undertaking this task are going to be pretty significantly committed for an intense period of some four to five months, in terms of trying to do the work that has been asked of it.

Given that the royal commissioner has just spent $7 or $8 million over 12-plus months in producing a body of work, clearly the parliamentary committee—it is not able to work full-time, obviously, because the parliament will be sitting as well—is not going to be able to traverse all of those issues in the same degree of detail, in terms of the taking of evidence, etc., as the royal commission has done. So it is going to be important for the committee in its early stage to work out how on earth it is going to go about its task within the time frame and address the issues that various members of the committee want to be addressed during the four to five month period that we are going to have. It is not impossible that, once a decision is taken by the parliament, issues of detail and process and other things can still be explored by the parliament, and I am sure will be, post an initial decision, but most of the key work is obviously going to have to be concluded before the parliament takes an initial decision as to what particular path it wishes to go down.

I guess we have to bear this in mind, that just because a parliament takes a decision in 2016 does not mean that at some stage in the not too distant future a different parliament could not seek to unwind the whole thing. That is why, clearly, the royal commissioner is seeking bipartisan support for it, and that is why, I guess, the idiosyncratic position of the Labor Party on this issue in a short space of time bears scrutiny. It is entirely possible that having made one quantum shift in thinking, how sure can you be that there might not be at some stage in the future another quantum shift in thinking?

I am assuming the attempt is going to be that, having made a decision, and if ultimately that is supported by this parliament, it is in some way locked in to make it extremely difficult for that decision, at great cost at some stage in the future, to be unwound and changed in some way. That is an issue that the committee will need to consider as it looks at the specific terms of legislative, regulatory or institutional arrangements, and any other matter that the committee sees fit.

Clearly, there are very significant environmental and social questions, many of which have been addressed, and evidence has been taken by the royal commissioner and others. Some members of the committee will be relatively comfortable that that area has been thoroughly traversed; other members of the committee might wish to take or to gather further information in terms of those critical questions, in terms of what the parliament is being asked to consider and the state is being asked to consider as well. I hasten to say that, whilst I have an intense interest in clearly those issues, I do not profess to be an expert, as some of the members might profess to be in terms of the environmental issues of not only this project but some other projects as well.

The reason why I was asked by my party to serve on the committee—unlike perhaps some other members it was not something that I confess I was not clamouring to do—is that there were not a lot of bodies over which I climbed to win this particular position. The issues that I am being asked to look at, and I am very interested in looking at, are clearly what I would call the pot of gold arguments that have been used to argue in favour of supporting this. They are the significant economic and financial questions that need to be raised.

Clearly, the Premier in particular and others have changed, and even the Treasurer who at least publicly had said that he had been adamantly opposed to uranium mining over various parts of his career—not all parts of his career I might say—in recent years he has obviously changed his position on the nuclear fuel cycle in South Australia. However, the thing that appears to have won them over has been the pot of gold argument; that is, there is a financial nirvana to be won through, in essence, being one of the first movers in this particular area of storing medium and high-level nuclear waste here in South Australia. That is an issue that I am intensely interested in.

Clearly, the royal commissioner and the people who work for him have had to make significant assumptions about the nicely rounded billion dollar figures that are included in the final report. I think it is important that this parliament, before it makes a final decision, understands the nature of the assumptions that have been made. I believe in the time frame that we have it will be impossible—even if we had unlimited time—in essence, to say that the assumptions are wrong, because assumptions are assumptions made by genuine people with the information.

However, I think it will be important to understand the assumptions and perhaps to understand what the implications of different assumptions might be in terms of the pot of gold argument and, in particular, the issue of how thoroughly the notion of first mover advantage almost, or being one of the first movers in this particular area, has been considered.

That is, how reasonable are the assumptions that have been made that if the state of South Australia, after what will be a long period of time, ultimately commences storing medium and high-level waste in South Australia and that others in the world see or are convinced by the pot of gold argument, whether or not there will not be a reasonable number of other countries and other nations that will be convinced to move down this particular path and become competitors in the market for medium and high level waste?

Also, how reasonable are the assumptions that that potentially significant competition from a number of other countries can be prevented or whether the assumption that it is unlikely to occur to any great degree is reasonable or not, particularly if other countries do not go through what will surely be in the South Australian and Australian context significant regulatory oversight? My colleague the Hon. Mr Ridgway has been to England, and he has recounted to colleagues the time frames involved in that particular facility and their warnings in terms of what needs to be done. International treaties that need to be either renegotiated or unwound, planning and regulatory oversight, and all of that sort of thing will have to be done in the South Australian context, if we go down that path.

There might be other countries that perhaps might not be that worried about going for that same degree of regulatory oversight and play by the rules of international treaties in the future. What are the assumptions that the royal commissioner has made, or that this pot of gold argument has made, in relation to the possibility of competition from others who do not go to the same degree of regulatory oversight that we are likely to go through? They are just some of the issues in terms of the pot of gold argument, the economic and financial questions, that I believe the committee does need to provide further information on to the South Australian parliament and community. I think to do that the committee will need the assurance from the government, unlike other committees, as to access to significant human resource, in terms of staffing and/or consultancy support.

That means a separate budget with high-powered legal advice will be clearly required. With the greatest respect to other members of the committee, we do not want to rely on those amongst us who might be lawyers to provide us with legal advice on international treaties and the many other legal issues. Access to highly competent legal advice, but also access to highly competent economic and financial advice. Clearly, it cannot be from the same tribe or tribes that provided that advice with the same assumptions to the royal commissioner.

Clearly, the committee needs to have a fresh set of eyes, if it so determines. That is certainly the view that I will be putting to the committee; that is, if it so determines—and I accept it will be a decision of the committee. It needs a fresh set of eyes, a devil's advocate, to look at the assumptions and to, in the end, not say, 'Hey, you got it wrong' but 'The pot of gold argument, with this level of pot of gold, relies on these assumptions and these things to happen. However, there will be a slightly bigger or smaller pot of gold if those assumptions are different in this respect or if the competition in the marketplace is different in some other respect.'

If this committee is to do the work it needs to do, and I accept on face value that the government representatives and the government are genuine in wanting the committee to do a good body of work, and certainly some of the members on the committee I accept have accepted the position with that understanding from their viewpoint as well, but certainly there will need to be an early indication from the government that it is prepared to provide, in a short-term intensive way, an appropriate level of resourcing to ensure that these important issues can be canvassed.

There are lots of other issues. I have raised some issues in terms of administrative and structural that talk about the regulatory and institutional arrangements with government representatives already—not parliamentary members but the people within the bureaucracy who are evidently handling this—and I am particularly interested in the institutional arrangement, the supposedly independent agency, that will provide oversight if we are to proceed down this path; and I think there is going to be an agency from around about July whilst we consider this. If parliament decides not to go down the path, I presume that is the end of the independent agency, but if it decides to go further then I am assuming this independent agency will continue.

The question I have already put to the government representatives and to the government is: what is the true independence of this particular agency? Currently, it is a senior officer. I have asked: is that senior officer answerable to Mr Kym Winter-Dewhirst, as the chief executive of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet? Are all those officers within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet answerable to Mr Kym Winter-Dewhirst during this particular period? To whom do they report?

I am told they are going to report to the Premier, but they are the sort of detailed issues in terms of the institutional and oversight arrangements that the committee needs to think about as well. Some of those are subsidiary to the critical question about whether or not the parliament should be voting to proceed down this path, and I accept that.

Some of these issues do not need to be resolved absolutely before the parliament votes on the legislation; they are matters of secondary detail. Nevertheless, I think they are important issues as well. I have asked the question, for example: who is making the decisions about the government advertising for the nuclear fuel cycle discussion at the moment? Is that going through the PCAG Process, through the Department of the Premier and Cabinet? Does this mean that Kym Winter-Dewhirst, Paul Flanagan and Rik Morris, within the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, are the people making the decisions about how much money is going to be spent, and the nature of that advertising during this particular period? How can we be assured that this independent agency is truly independent in relation to the taxpayers' money that is going to be spent on advertising and those sorts of issues?

There are a lot of issues like that, and I have detailed questions. I do not propose to delay discussion at this particular stage, but I at least canvass some of the issues which need to be addressed. Some are at what I would call the high level—the critical issues as to whether or not we are going to recommend to go down the path—and then there are the secondary level issues which relate to, 'If we do that, how are we going to manage the process from 2017 onwards?' With that, I indicate that the Liberal Party will be supporting the motion that is before us.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (15:52): The Greens support the establishment of this joint select committee, and I indicated to the Premier a week or two ago that I was happy to serve on that committee. I do not propose to take a lot of the time of the Legislative Council tonight to go through a detailed critique of the royal commission, its processes and its findings.

As much as I know members would be eager to hear my views on this topic, I will in fact only speak for a short period tonight. But, I do want to cover three or four things: I want to talk a little about the subject matter of the select committee, the processes of the select committee, the standing orders that will guide the work of the select committee, and also to reflect on the likely outcome of the select committee.

In terms of the subject matter, I believe that this committee is necessary to be a counterbalance to the royal commission process, because that process was deeply flawed. I have done my best to summarise the royal commission's findings into a sentence or two. In my view, the royal commission's tentative findings, as confirmed in their final findings, were that the international nuclear waste dump was a good idea for South Australia.

My view, and the view of many experts, is that those findings were based on dubious economics, heroic assumptions and a big dose of guesswork. The commission identified a problem that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years and then proposed a solution with income that lasts just a few decades, but with costs lasting virtually forever. If anything were to go wrong in the future, then we would be on our own.

The problem with the royal commission I think starts from the fact that it was the wrong vehicle. When I discussed this with the Premier, well over a year ago now, and I asked the question, 'Why a royal commission?' his response, which was no different to the response he has given publicly—there are no secrets out of school here—was that he was keen for the inquiry to have a status and that the best vehicle, in the government's mind, to give it status was a royal commission.

We have had royal commissions on very important topics. People automatically think, 'That must be important. They've declared a royal commission.' But I think it was the wrong vehicle for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the royal commission is a particular creature that has particular powers that are incredibly useful in a range of inquiries, but not necessarily (and in fact I think not at all) in relation to the inquiry that was before them. We have seen royal commissions dragging reluctant witnesses before it to answer questions that they would rather not have to answer. That was not the situation with this royal commission. There was no George Pell being encouraged to give evidence to this royal commission. Those who came, came willingly; many who were willing were rejected. It was completely the wrong way around.

It was an elitist process. I have mentioned before that my submission was rejected on the grounds that I refused to have it sworn before a JP. In my professional life, I witness everyone else's declarations, but I just could not see that it was at all relevant to the task that was before them. As a result, a large number of people were disenfranchised. They saw the rules, they saw how hard and complicated it was going to be, and they did not do it. It would be interesting to look at the submissions that were made to see how many were made by young people. The importance of young people is that the project that the royal commission is now advancing is one that is going to possibly not start until many of us are dead and certainly will not finish until all of us are dead. Therefore, I think it was interesting that so few young people engaged in the royal commission process.

But it gets worse, because even this citizens' jury that we are now going to have—a number of us went to the briefing the other day, and what we discovered was that under 18s are ineligible to serve on this citizens' jury. There are going to be 350 randomly selected South Australians, and none of them will be under 18—the very generation that will ultimately have to live with the consequences of the decisions that this generation makes. I think that is a huge hole in the process.

I think the royal commission process was ill-conceived in that it was approached in some ways as if it was a court of law: that there would be findings of facts, the facts would be agreed, and they would then form the basis of recommendations. But the thing is the facts are all contested, and the boundaries between facts, myths and aspirations are blurred. Aside from stating the obvious fact that I think everyone agrees with, and that is that a nuclear waste dump is not going anywhere unless we have community consensus, I think that the ultimate findings of the royal commission are little more than a repackaging of the views of vested interests in the nuclear industry, as spruiked by their various consultants and others in the nuclear fan club.

I agree with the Hon. Rob Lucas that we will need to explore the pot of gold, because when you unpackage this issue, the pot of gold is the only rationale for doing this. It is not as if we have a domestic problem with high-level nuclear waste that we somehow have to deal with ourselves. The pot of gold argument is the only argument. If the pot of gold turns out to be an illusion or a mirage, then the whole rationale for this project evaporates. That is why I think the select committee will have important work to do picking through the economics.

I will come to witnesses shortly, but certainly one witness I think it would be good to get before the select committee would be Professor Dick Blandy. He has been out in the media, he has written a number of articles, and his view is that he continues to be opposed to locating a high-level nuclear waste dump in South Australia on both safety and economic grounds. To quote the professor, he says:

It is unlikely that there will be an economic bonanza for South Australia from the proposed dump.

As they say: 'If it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.'

I think a fair bit of the committee's work will be unpackaging the economics.

I want to refer briefly to the process of the select committee, and one advantage that this committee has over the royal commission is that the royal commission was effectively a one-way process. People said things to the royal commission, and only the royal commission could examine witnesses and ask them questions, and seek clarification, so from the public's perspective, it was a one-way process.

The parliamentary select committee, on the other hand, should allow for more rigour. It will be the first time that people outside of the royal commission staff can ask their own questions and can explore the integrity and the veracity of the various positions that were put. So we will certainly need to hear from economic witnesses, but also it is important to note that there were a number of important stakeholders who made written submissions to the royal commission, asked to give verbal evidence and were denied, and that includes all of the main conservation groups. They were denied the ability to eyeball the commission and to give testimony in person.

So, whilst you will see written submissions from the Conservation Council of South Australia, Friends of the Earth and the Australian Conservation Foundation, you will not find transcripts of their evidence because they were denied the ability to give evidence to the royal commission. The select committee, on the other hand, I think if it is going to do its job of looking at all sides of the argument, will have to invite these people in. They cannot be ignored in both the royal commission and the parliamentary select committee.

I want to refer briefly to the standing orders of this parliament because there have not been too many joint select committees, and when you look up the standing orders you will find that there are nine paragraphs related to joint committees. In a nutshell, it is what we are doing, it is three members from each house. The government and the opposition have agreed that neither of them will be in a majority so it is two Liberal, two Labor and two crossbench. Importantly, the chairperson of the committee is entitled to a vote, but not a casting vote, and, where the votes are equal, the result is in the negative.

I do not think that will cause this particular select committee any grief, looking at the make-up of the committee and the pre-existing positions that people have taken; I do not think that will cause grief. But in the end, I am fairly sanguine about it and I am here for the ride, and for the process, to make sure that that is as thorough as we can get it rather than putting a lot of faith in the outcomes, but I will come to that shortly. Interestingly, the joint committee standing orders say in paragraph 9:

The procedure of every Joint Committee shall, except where herein otherwise ordered, be regulated by the Standing Orders of the Legislative Council relating to Select Committees.

We then have to look at the select committee standing orders for the Legislative Council. Most of us are familiar with these; we have served on many select committees. But, of course, the one standing order that we have had to tiptoe around over many years, an ancient old standing order, and one of these days I will get round to getting rid of it, or will be suggesting to this honourable place that we collectively get rid of it, is the old 398. I will read standing order 398:

The Evidence taken by any Committee and Documents presented to such Committee, which have not been reported to the Council, shall not be disclosed or published by any Member of such Committee or by any other person, without the permission of the Council.

Basically, taken at face value, you cannot talk about the evidence you have received, and you cannot distribute the documents you have received until the committee has reported to the council. We get around that by having additional provisions when we set up select committees, which is to say, and I have not got the exact words but, notwithstanding what I just read—

The ACTING PRESIDENT (Hon. G.A. Kandelaars): The Hon. Mark Parnell, I do have to bring to your attention that there is a message here—message No. 116—in terms of requesting the committee that the minister will move a number of resolutions to deal with the very issue you are talking about.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL: Thank you, Mr Acting President. I fully expected we would be dealing with it, but I just wanted to make the point that my advice to the Premier, when invited to be part of this, was that I did not want this committee to be constrained by this standing order. It was not in the message that we received—it's on its way, is the message we have just got, so that is great.

We do want the media to be present; we do want the ability to be able to circulate the documents as they are received by the committee; and, we certainly want to have the ability to be able to talk about the evidence. The one thing that I think everybody agrees with is that this project is going nowhere without broad community consensus, and that consensus depends on having a full debate, and a full debate depends on all the information being out there and disclosed.

Let us look at the possible outcome of the select committee. I note the point of the Hon. Rob Lucas that, in the very short amount of time that the committee apparently will be given, it will be difficult to do as comprehensive a body of work as this task requires. My expectation is that the formal outcome of the select committee will probably be along the lines of: 'The select committee finds that the proposal for a high level international nuclear waste dump in South Australia is well founded, will make us all rich, has few risks and should be proceeded with forthwith.' That is my prediction. It will not be something that I expect to be signing up to, but I expect that, looking at the process, very likely that could be the outcome.

I do not think the committee will apologise for the government's wasting of $9 million of taxpayers' money on, ultimately, stuff that we already knew. We knew that nuclear power was not economic: it was never going to be an option for South Australia. We knew that the market for processing nuclear fuel is already saturated: there was never going to be a role for South Australia in that. In terms of uranium mining, there have been very few restrictions on the number of mines or the amount that can be mined, so I do not think any value at all was added.

So, there are three of four of the terms of the royal commission where we got no value from $9 million. I could have given this parliament that advice for free. So, we are just down to the dump. From day one of the royal commission being announced, certainly the conservation community was out there saying, 'Don't be fooled by the comprehensive terms of reference; this is all about the dump.' As it has transpired, it is all about the dump.

I hope that the select committee will provide more rigour than did the royal commission, that it will not just cherrypick evidence that is favourable to a predetermined outcome. I hope that this select committee will not be elitist, and I hope it will hear from those who have so far been denied a voice. I hope it will give far more weight to the voices of traditional Aboriginal owners, on whose land ultimately a project like this will be targeted. In particular it would be good for the select committee to hear from Aboriginal groups that have become part of the No Dump Alliance of South Australia.

My intention is to participate in good faith, but to not resile from criticising aspects that deserve criticism. I think it is clear that there will be members on this committee who have put their views publicly, but nevertheless that does not mean that we cannot collaboratively and collectively work to explore the evidence with rigour. I was hoping to start with profound agreement with the Hon. Rob Lucas, but I will finish by disagreeing with him. He said that, ultimately, it will be the decision of the Parliament of South Australia. Well, he is only partly right: the Parliament of South Australia is one part of it; the national parliament is another part of it, but, ultimately, given the scale of this project, the magnitude of this project, the constitutional provisions that exist, this is a decision for all of Australia, and it is a particular decision for South Australia.

So, yes, parliament is a big part of that, but I think we need to recognise that this is the biggest thing that has ever been proposed for this state, with consequences that last longer than anything else that has ever been proposed. It is not just going to be a simple resolution in November or December, or even next year, of this parliament that determines whether this state's future is tied to taking the worst of the world's dangerous radioactive waste.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (16:10): My contribution to this debate will be rather brief today, as the real work, I think, on this issue will be done by the committee, and then ultimately by the parliament after that. Members would be well aware that Family First has been quite public in its position of in principle support at least for our state pursuing the nuclear fuel cycle. For that reason, it goes without saying that we will support a committee to investigate the royal commission's findings. We do; we do so wholeheartedly.

This is a very significant opportunity for South Australia, and especially in the current economic climate that our state finds itself in, it is something that I believe we would be negligent not to fully scrutinise. We do support the committee; we support it strongly. I would like to also, if I may, offer some credit to the government for the way that it has handled this issue thus far. The Premier called me personally about this a couple of weeks ago and informed me that they were looking at forming a joint select committee and asked me if I would be willing to serve on the committee, which I said I would. I understand it sounds like exactly the same thing happened to the Hon. Mark Parnell as well, and presumably some other members.

I think it is credible that the Premier in particular has decided to have a two plus two plus two; it is in line with our standing orders. He probably did not have a lot of choice— I think his choice was not to have a committee at all—but the fact that he is determined to do that I think is noteworthy and credible. Also, as we all know, if you serve in this place long enough, it is the make-up of committees that essentially determines their outcome. You can have a committee on any given topic, and if you give me a list of the members who are on it, I will tell you which way that committee will come out before it starts sitting, just about. I do not think it takes a genius to be able to do that.

Yet on this committee we have members who will have very divergent views. Obviously, the Greens have a very strong position on this; they have had that for a very long time. We are probably newer players to this arena, but we have put in the public arena our general position, at least our in principle position. I understand that certainly within the Labor Party, the left traditionally would have been in opposition to something like this, although obviously we now have a premier from the left who seems to be much more open to it. The Liberal Party has been mixed on it in the past as well.

I think it is going to be a very interesting committee. I look forward to some genuine debate. I look forward to educating myself on some of these issues and getting into some of the detail. I look forward to hearing from the conservation groups, for example. What are their positions and, more importantly, why do they hold the positions they hold? I am very much looking forward to that.

I think the crux of all this is, as pointed out by the Hon. Mr Lucas in his contribution earlier today, that I am really interested in finding out about this so-called pot of gold. What exactly is this pot of gold? We have heard extraordinary numbers thrown around, in the billions, even tens of billions. I have even heard on occasion hundreds of billions of dollars quoted as being potential revenue for South Australia in the longer term if we go down this path. These are extraordinary numbers. I guess in the colloquial one would call them game-changers.

Really the key task of this committee as I see it at this stage—certainly my key motivation for being on this committee at all—is to examine the legitimacy of that proposition. How likely is it that these numbers are going to turn into reality, this enormous pot of gold, so-called? What are the risks? What would prevent other players from entering the market and undercutting South Australia, for example? What are the risks of this pot of gold turning into a legitimate pile of money for South Australia?

I cannot help but think that if it is true, if the committee is satisfied that it is true that there is legitimately a so-called pot of gold at the end of all this, then what a potential boon it will be for South Australia. The most common figure that is thrown around at the moment is round about $5 billion a year in revenue. If that is true, in a budget of roughly $15 billion that is a third of our state budget per year, which would in theory mean that taxes could be reduced by a third in South Australia. Now that would be just a wonderful thing for the state of South Australia.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: These are the things to be debated, and I look forward to that. If there is an opportunity to be exploited then it should be, but that said I think we are long way from that yet. Obviously, the message before us today is: do we form this committee or not? Family First supports the formation of the committee and I am happy to serve on it.

The Hon. J.A. DARLEY (16:15): I rise to indicate my support for this message and the establishment of a joint committee charged with considering the findings of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission with respect to the establishment of a nuclear waste storage facility and reporting on other related matters. I do not intend to speak to this matter in any detail at this stage. There will, no doubt, be plenty of opportunity to do so once the committee has reported and, just as importantly, following broader community consultation. Suffice to say, this matter is likely to generate more interest and more conversation than any other matter that has been considered by this place in recent times.

Indeed, given that the establishment of a nuclear waste storage facility is such a divisive issue, it is absolutely critical that we hear from a wide cross-section of the community and as many stakeholder representatives as possible. Hopefully, this committee will go some way towards assisting in that process. With those few words, I support this most important matter.

Motion carried.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I move:

That it be an instruction to the joint committee that the joint committee be authorised to disclose or publish as it thinks fit any evidence or documents presented to the joint committee prior to such evidence or documents being reported to the parliament.

Motion carried.

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER: I move:

That the Legislative Council standing order 396 be suspended to enable strangers to be admitted when the joint committee is examining witnesses unless the joint committee otherwise resolves, but they shall be excluded when the joint committee is deliberating.

Motion carried.

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