Nuclear Plebiscite Bill: Labor playing politics with a serious issue

Hansard: 14 March 2007 ASSEMBLY

Mr CLARK (Box Hill) — This bill and the plebiscite it proposes are a political stunt, a waste of time and money, and a stacked and manipulated abuse of the democratic process. The bill will be strongly opposed by the opposition. The bill is a political stunt because there is absolutely no suggestion that the commonwealth has any intention whatsoever of overriding existing legislated Victorian prohibitions on nuclear facilities.

It is a waste of time and money because it will cost millions of dollars to hold a plebiscite on what is likely to be a hypothetical question set by the government for partisan political purposes. It is a stacked and manipulated abuse of democracy because the bill gives complete control over the entire plebiscite process to a single minister in the Bracks government, the Minister for Energy and Resources. The minister can determine whether or not a plebiscite is called, what the timing of the plebiscite will be, what the wording of the question will be, what the method of voting will be and what the wording of the cases both for and against the plebiscite will be.

To add insult to injury, we must ask ourselves who is the minister who has been given such sweeping powers to manipulate this supposedly democratic process. It is a man whose greatest claim to fame as a champion of democracy was the Nunawading how-to-vote card scandal. The minister, when secretary of the Victorian division of the Australian Labor Party, deliberately designed — —

Mr Wynne — On a point of order, Speaker, clearly the honourable member is straying well outside the remit of this bill. I ask you to bring him back to the bill at hand.

The SPEAKER — Order! I do not uphold the point of order.

Mr CLARK — The point I was making, which the minister sought to stop me from making, was that the man who has been given these sweeping powers under this bill is the man who was secretary of the Victorian ALP. He instigated the designing of a how-to-vote card that was intended to mislead and deceive the voters — something that led to dramatic changes to the law to prevent any similar abuses in future — in circumstances that took the Premier of the day, John Cain, multiple attempts to get a legal opinion that finally said the secretary of the ALP should not be charged with a criminal offence.
This is the man to whom this bill proposes to give total authority to set every aspect of the plebiscite that is being proposed. On top of that, as the ultimate in hypocrisy, this bill proposes to require a plebiscite if the commonwealth government makes even a suggestion that there might be a nuclear facility in Victoria, whether or not it takes any steps to implement that facility.

In contrast, if the Bracks government were to decide to proceed to build a nuclear facility in Victoria, no plebiscite whatsoever would be required. If that is not enough to demonstrate the sham of this proposal, I do not know what is.

The Bracks government has demonstrated to date its ability to turn on a sixpence in terms of policy reversals. We recall before the 2006 election the ridiculing of proposals by the opposition for the speedy construction of a desalination plant in Victoria to meet our emerging water crisis. Subsequent to the election the Deputy Premier — —

The SPEAKER — Order! I bring the member back to the bill.

Mr CLARK — I will certainly direct my remarks to the bill.

The point I am making is that this is a government that is prepared to change its policies on various issues very quickly. It is therefore highly relevant that this government leaves open in this bill the ability itself to introduce a nuclear facility in Victoria without holding a plebiscite. I mentioned a desalination plant as one instance; I mention the no-tolls policy prior to the 2002 election as another example. So it is certainly not hypothetical that the Bracks government, which now claims to be opposed to a nuclear facility, could suddenly turn around and decide to construct a nuclear facility.

Should it do so, it puts itself or any other future Victorian government under no obligation whatsoever to conduct a plebiscite. This is a bill directed solely at the federal government in an election context. In essence, it is simply a giant taxpayer funded push-polling exercise designed to be held in the run-up to the federal election.

Let me put on record some of the mechanics of the bill. What the bill does is require the Minister for Energy and Resources to initiate a plebiscite of Victorian electors if the minister is satisfied the commonwealth government has taken, or is likely to take, any step supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited facility in Victoria.

The bill amends the Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983, which I point out to the house is one that contains a comprehensive range of prohibitions on nuclear activities in Victoria, including the construction of nuclear facilities.

The bill amends this 1983 act to apply the new provisions relating to a plebiscite if the minister is satisfied that the commonwealth has taken, or is likely to take, any steps supporting or allowing the construction of a prohibited nuclear facility in Victoria, including steps to make or amend the commonwealth law or exercise a power under commonwealth law to facilitate construction of such a facility, or has adopted a policy position supporting or allowing the construction of such a facility.

I make the point that this wording is so broad that simply a proposal by the commonwealth government to repeal the existing commonwealth-level prohibitions on nuclear facilities, which of course apply across Australia, could satisfy the trigger point in this bill for a plebiscite.

Even if the commonwealth did nothing and said nothing about either the Victorian legislation or a nuclear facility in Victoria and therefore was making no attempt whatsoever to override Victorian legislation, this bill is drawn so broadly that in those circumstances the minister would be entitled or, by the wording of the bill, required to hold a plebiscite of Victorians.

As I said earlier, the bill empowers the Minister for Energy and Resources to determine what question is going to be asked at the plebiscite. It requires the minister to conduct the plebiscite at the time the minister considers, as the bill puts it, to be the most advantageous to the health, welfare and safety of the people of Victoria, which in practical terms means whenever the minister feels like it.

The bill applies the provisions of the Electoral Act 2002 on constitutional amendment referenda to the plebiscite with various modifications and provides for the distribution of an argument of up to 2000 words against the proposal approved by the minister and a 2000-word argument in favour of the proposal approved by the minister after consultation with the commonwealth minister or, if the commonwealth minister declines to be consulted, after a reasonable opportunity.

As I said earlier, this means that the Minister for Energy and Resources will determine what the case on the one side is going to be and what the case on the other side is going to be. I also make the point in passing that, given the way the provision in the bill about the wording of the arguments for and against the proposal is phrased, it clearly considers that the question is going to be worded so that the affirmative is in favour of what is alleged to be the commonwealth-supported position while the negative will be against that position, which of course gives the minister enormous scope to set up a straw man for the purpose of conducting this charade, which the government is seeking authorisation to undertake.

The bill authorises the minister to decide that voting will be by postal voting, in which case the Local Government (Electoral) Regulations 2005 are applied with various modifications. The bill also allows the registered officers of registered political parties to appoint scrutineers.

As I said at the outset, this proposal is an abuse of democracy. If you are going to have a plebiscite, you should have it on a specific question which is openly debated and set by a public process, preferably by the Parliament. Under this bill one could imagine the sort of distorted questions and propositions that the minister could dream up for the question to go to voters which, he is going to allege, represents the commonwealth position, with no opportunity for anybody else to gainsay his assertions.

Again as I said, this is a man who has a past record of careful devising of electoral documentation in order to mislead and deceive voters, in this previous instance into misleading and deceiving them into thinking that a how-to-vote card issued by the Labor Party in fact was a how-to-vote card issued by another party giving preferences to Labor. This is a charade, and the view of the opposition is that if the Labor Party wants to spend millions of dollars campaigning against the Howard government, then it should do so using ALP funds, not taxpayer funds.

The government cites two prior votes which it claims as precedents for the measure that is currently before the house, the first being a referendum that was held on 1 June 1904 on the subject of scripture lessons in state schools, and the second being a referendum held on 24 March 1956 on hotel trading hours, and specifically on the question of 6 o’clock closing.

It might also be mentioned that there has been at least one other series of similar votes across Melbourne in the form of the so-called local options polls, as to whether or not various parts of the city should be declared dry areas, which was held in 1928. The minister at the table will know that that led to the then cities of Camberwell and Box Hill voting in favour.

But let us look at the two precedents that the minister cites, because they are illustrative of the flaws, abuses and potential consequences of the proposal in the way that the government is seeking authorisation. The first example, on scripture lessons in state schools, is one in respect of which I would refer interested members to the Hansard of 5 July 1904, at pages 39 and following, in which there is a speech by the Honourable J. Balfour, a member of the other place, which sets out an account of that referendum.

The referendum was held in conjunction with a general election, and Mr Balfour, who was a supporter of a referendum being held, outlines the history, which is that the referendum was offered by the Premier on condition that those who supported the introduction of the teaching of scripture in public schools would refrain from heckling candidates at public meetings. The deal was done and then Mr Balfour pointed out:

It is quite clear that a referendum should always be a very clear and distinct issue. This house has always objected to the referendum, and it has done so on the ground that it was afraid that the referendum would come to mean a referendum of legislation. I voted twice in favour of the referendum — once on the question of female suffrage, and next on this same question — to ascertain the views of the public on the introduction of the scriptures into the state schools.

But these two matters could be put in each instance as a simple yea or nay, and when the campaign council decided to accept a referendum, and to abstain from active interference with the election, it was on the promise that the question framed would be satisfactory to them.

Mr Balfour went on to outline that in fact three different questions were put to voters. They were put in a tortuous and complex way, and a whole series of disputes followed the referendum about what the vote meant, as the results were ambiguous because the questions were very poorly phrased. I think that is a striking example of the risks that we would run if the house were to support this legislation and give the Minister for Energy and Resources total power and entrust to him the setting of the question, with this house having no say whatsoever on the question.

The second referendum that the minister cites as a precedent was the 1956 vote on 6 o’clock closing of hotels. From the research that I have been able to do, this referendum took place in the run-up to the Melbourne Olympic Games of 1956, and it has been said that the referendum was conducted on the basis that there was a fear that Melbourne would look ridiculous to international visitors if it were not possible to get a beer or other drink in Melbourne after 6 o’clock, and accordingly the government put this referendum to the people. In this instance the question was framed in a clear, simple and straightforward way. It was:

Are you in favour of the extension of hotel trading hours on weekdays until 10 o’clock in the evening?
From the government’s point of view, the only trouble with that straightforward question was that members of the public were then in a position to express their views, and they did. From the report I have they voted down the referendum, with only 6 out of 66 Victorian electorates voting to move to 10 o’clock closing.

So on the one hand we can see the consequences of the 1904 referendum and on the other hand the consequences of the one conducted in 1956 — and both provide very useful lessons in relation to this bill and to the importance of making sure there is a clear and open question for voters rather than one that is manipulated by the government of the day, as happened in 1904 and as would happen under this legislation before the house. It also sends a timely reminder to the government that citizens can speak their minds very loudly and clearly when the result is not manipulated the way this bill seeks to do.

More broadly, on top of the flaws and abuses that I have referred to, there is the cost of conducting this plebiscite — a cost which as far as I am aware the government has not made public an estimate for, but which is sure to run to many millions of dollars.

Indeed my understanding is that the commonwealth republic referendum, which was conducted on a much larger scale and covered the whole of the nation, ran to tens of millions of dollars, so certainly a plebiscite as proposed under this bill would run into multiple millions of dollars. I would certainly challenge government speakers in this debate or the minister in closing the debate to put on the public record what it is expected any plebiscite under this legislation would cost. Whatever it is, it would be money being wasted and misused for partisan political purposes, for the reasons that I have stated.

That money would be better spent on directly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and the government would be much better off focusing on the critical greenhouse issues confronting Victoria and the world, rather than abusing the greenhouse issue for partisan political purposes. If the accepted bulk of scientific opinion is correct, Victoria and the rest of the world face one of the biggest environmental challenges ever faced by humanity.

We face, according to the scientific predictions, the potential transformation of many aspects of the world’s environment beyond what we have ever seen, beyond the range of human experience at least dating back many thousands of years, and likely to a point at which, if it gets to a certain level, it will be incapable of being restored.

This change, according to the bulk of scientific opinion, is likely to take place within the lifetimes of many of us here today and certainly within the lifetimes of our children. This scientific opinion is repeatedly and increasingly identifying the need for urgent and sustained action across the world to avert what scientists identify as a looming crisis. It is a crisis in terms of magnitude, according to that evidence, which the state government has failed to inform the community about. We hear the experts talking about reductions in the level of greenhouse gas emissions on a global basis of the order of 70 or 80 per cent compared with the level of emissions in 1990.

That is a global average, and for developed nations like Australia the reduction required to meet that target is likely to be even greater. On the one hand we are confronted with this task which the government talks about a lot, but at the same time as talking about it, it is on the other hand engaging in the hypocritical sham of calling for federal government action but failing to exercise its own responsibilities for emission control to actually specify emission reductions.

As we know, Victoria has vast deposits of brown coal. The best long-term outcome for Victoria will be if we can develop genuinely clean brown coal technology that results in emission levels that are vastly lower than they are at present and compatible with globally sustainable greenhouse emission level reductions of the sort I have referred to and of the sort identified as needing to be achieved.

There is bipartisan agreement on trying to achieve this sort of brown coal technology. Both state and federal governments are supporting carbon capture and storage (CCS), otherwise referred to as geosequestration, and supporting the trial that is currently being undertaken. The Liberal opposition is also strongly supporting research into CCS and other low-emission technologies, and indeed support for that research was one of the key aspects of our greenhouse reduction policy at the last election.

We all desperately hope that this technology and/or other technologies will be proven to work so that we can continue to make full use of our brown coal reserves while also pulling our weight in global greenhouse emission reductions. We should also continue to give our support to promising lines of research into other technologies — in particular into solar power, through projects such as solar concentrators or the design that I refer to as the tower of power, which relies on channelling rising air into a generator that would run possibly kilometres into the air. If we can achieve a breakthrough in research in those areas, we may solve all our greenhouse problems by combining these various lines of innovation.

That of course is not to disregard other potential sources of clean energy which at present seem to have a more limited role but which have the potential to be valuable if properly planned and implemented, such as wind power. It is important to keep those technology options as open as possible, and it is important to bear in mind and give full rein to the scope for human ingenuity to achieve results, particularly when that ingenuity is given liberation and the potential to achieve under a free market system.

Time and again humanity has shown itself able to come up with all sorts of unexpected solutions and to achieve remarkable progress. Although at a lower level than the current greenhouse challenge, we can look back to the situation in the United Kingdom, for example, with the notorious pea-soup fogs of London and the polluted Thames River. They were challenges which might have seemed insurmountable but which have been overcome. In Victoria we can look at the great successes achieved by the Environment Protection Authority, which was set up by the Hamer Liberal government.

We have to give free rein to technology possibilities. We need to keep the technology options as open as possible to support all promising lines of research in the hope that human ingenuity will come up with solutions to our current huge challenges, as it has to the challenges of previous generations.

The need to keep technology options open is something that has come through time and again from various studies. One that I have referred to previously in this house is the study by the National Generators Forum, but a similar conclusion was reached in a report of the energy futures forum of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation that is dated December 2006 and entitled The Heat is On — The Future of Energy in Australia. I will quote just one paragraph from page 8 of that report:

The cost of addressing climate change is lowest for Australia when it can choose from all available technologies, in partnership with energy efficiency improvements and demand management.
What flows from this is that we need to keep open considerations about whether or not nuclear power should be a future option for Australia.

We have had very strange arguments coming from the Premier which seem to me to be internally contradictory. We have had the Premier not directing himself to environmental issues but on the one hand maintaining simply that nuclear energy is too expensive and on the other hand saying that we have to put a price on carbon, which of course will increase the price of alternative sources of energy, in order to reduce greenhouse emissions and encourage renewable technologies. If you put that price on carbon, depending on where you put it, that will change the economics of nuclear as well. But it is not just up to us as a Parliament to try to second-guess what the most suitable form of technology should be. What we need to do is consider and have the discussion about the pros and cons of the potential use of nuclear energy in Australia. We need to keep our options open, and we need to carry the debate and the investigation much further forward.

It may well prove that nuclear technology is not a viable option for Australia, either because of the results of a more intensive investigation of the science relating to it and the environmental implications of it or because it may be superseded by the technology which is being supported by state and federal governments or by other technological breakthroughs. Certainly the nuclear industry argues strongly that, with current technology, the concerns about mining operational facilities and waste storage can be laid to rest. What we need to do is the research and an assessment of the facts and not get sidetracked into an argument that is based simply on hysterical assertions.

We may well conclude that there are problems with nuclear power, but we cannot reach that conclusion until we have done a thorough investigation in the first place. We may well find that technological solutions supersede any need for nuclear power while avoiding all possible concerns.

But we have not found that technology yet, notwithstanding all the efforts that we are all committed to putting into finding it.

In the meantime, as I said, we need to have a discussion about the nuclear option for Australia, free of the manipulation and the partisan-political distortions that Labor is trying to introduce into the debate at the same time as it is moving to amend its platform to support the mining and export of uranium. Only when this discussion has progressed and there is some form of concrete and specific proposition out there in the public arena that is relevant and applicable to Victoria can it even begin to be worthwhile considering holding a plebiscite. We are certainly nowhere near that position as yet.

As I said at the outset, this bill shows yet again that the Labor Party is not seriously interested in tackling greenhouse gas problems. It is interested only in political positioning and in using the greenhouse gas issue for partisan ends. This bill is a particularly blatant example of Labor’s willingness to distort and manipulate the forms of democracy, and it should be rejected by this house.