The federal resources minister has revealed that the Australian government spent more than $100 million on the now abandoned plan to build a nuclear waste dump near Kimba in regional South Australia.
Key points:
- The Federal Resources Minister said the government had spent $108.6 million
- The Commonwealth abandoned plans to build the facility after a Federal Court ruling
- Former SA senator Rex Patrick said the “waste” of taxpayer money could have been avoided
In response to a question from Liberal Senator Gerard Rennick in August, Resources Minister Madeleine King said the Commonwealth had spent approximately $108.6 million towards establishing the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) between July 2014 and August 2023.
The federal government formally abandoned plans to build the facility after the Federal Court ruled in favour of the area’s traditional owners — the Barngarla people — who argued they were not properly consulted by the former Coalition government about the decision to choose the site.
Senator Rennick also questioned whether the government would find a new location for the NRWMF before May 17, 2025 and if the government would consider placing the facility within the Woomera Prohibited Area.
Ms King said that information about a future site and any further spending would be available once the government had “considered options and made decisions in due course”.
Former South Australian senator Rex Patrick, who advocated for a Senate inquiry into the site selection process for the facility in February 2018, said that the “waste” of taxpayer money could have been avoided.
“This is an extraordinary amount of money that’s been wasted and wasted because the former government simply didn’t consult properly,” he said.
The Commonwealth acquired the site at Napandee, near Kimba, in November 2021 with plans to make it a low and intermediate-level nuclear waste storage facility.
The Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation (BDAC) launched a challenge in the Federal Court in December 2021, in a bid to stop the site from going ahead altogether.
Former resources minister had ‘foreclosed mind’
Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth found there had been apprehended bias in the decision-making process under then-resources minister Keith Pitt.
Justice Charlesworth found that Mr Pitt — who formally declared the site in 2021 — could be seen to have had a “foreclosed mind” on the issue “simply because his statements strongly conveyed the impression that his mind was made up”.
The court set aside the declaration from 2021 that the site at Napandee, a 211-hectare property, be used for the facility.
Following the Federal Court ruling, Ms King told federal parliament in August that Australia still needed a nuclear storage facility and that the government remained committed to finding a solution that did not involve the Napandee site.
In a statement, shadow resources minister Susan McDonald defended the former Coalition government’s consultation process for selecting the site near Kimba.
“The former Coalition government engaged with the Kimba community and Barngarla people and underwent a significant consultation process over a number of years, including ballots which demonstrated strong community support,” Ms McDonald said.
“After 50 years of planning for a centralised storage site, and the more recent work of successive governments and resources ministers to develop this particular facility, this Labor government has erased this progress and now has no plan.”
Mr Patrick said he was concerned that the current Labor government had not learnt any lessons from the recent Federal Court ruling.
“The lesson that needs to be learned, in relation to this, is you need to properly engage [with] a community to get a social licence,” he said.
He said it was clear the government “has their eye on” the Woomera Prohibited Area as a potential location for the facility, which is a military testing range more than 400 kilometres north of Adelaide.
“They are simply not being transparent — they’re not talking about it and that’s going to end up in tears in several years’ time.”
A spokesperson for Ms King said she has instructed her department to develop “policy options” for managing Commonwealth radioactive waste into the future.