by A federal Labor MP has raised concerns about the $368 billion AUKUS submarines deal, questioning whether Australia can safely manage the waste from the nuclear-powered vessels.
Fremantle MP Josh Wilson told Parliament last night he supported the work of the Albanese government over the past months on the AUKUS agreement that it had inherited from the former Coalition government.
But he said MPs had a duty to debate the plan on its merits.
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“It should be a statement of the obvious to say that with an undertaking of this scale, complexity, cost and duration there remain considerable risks and uncertainty – that is the plain, hard reality,” Wilson said.
“If we’re not able to have a mature and sensible conversation about those risks, there is very little chance we will manage them effectively.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced last week in San Diego a three-step plan for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines.
It will open with Australia hosting US and British nuclear-power submarines, then purchase three to five US Virginia-class vessels before constructing a new submarine based on a UK design.
Wilson said he was concerned about how Australia would safely manage the high-grade nuclear waste from the submarines, a problem no country has solved.
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“It’s worth noting the UK has 13 out-of-service nuclear submarines that, for decades, have awaited defueling and decommissioning.
“None have yet been decommissioned. Nuclear waste from US submarines is also currently held in temporary storage, after 30 years and $7 billion, without arriving at a permanent storage solution.”
The Albanese government said last week it was committed to finding defence land for the disposal of the nuclear waste.
Wilson’s breaking of ranks with the Albanese government came after former Labor prime minister Paul Keating decried the AUKUS submarine announcement as the “worst international decision by an Australian Labor government” since World War I.
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“The Albanese government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War I,” Keating told a National Press Club event in Canberra last week.
“Every Labor Party branch member will wince when they realise that the party we all fight for is returning to our former colonial master, Britain, to find our security in Asia – 236 years after Europeans first grabbed the continent from its Indigenous people.”
