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Nuclear waste. AUKUS agency’s reckless indifference

by Rex Patrick | Feb 3, 2025 | Government, Latest Posts

The Australian Submarine Agency deals with high-level Defence secrets and fissile material, yet it has been caught ignoring security obligations while threatening Rex Patrick, who reports on their conduct.

Last Friday, government solicitors acting for the Australian Submarine Agency sent me a warning against publishing some embarrassing information about their conduct.

Neither I nor MWM will be subject to their bullying, however.

Nuclear fuel waste

The Australian Government has undertaken to accept responsibility for the spent nuclear fuel from our planned AUKUS submarines. This is no light undertaking. It’s more than a lifetime obligation; indeed,

it’s an obligation that will last tens of thousands of years.

The Government has announced that this high-level radioactive waste will be stored on Defence land.

As reported by MWM, in February 2023, the Australian Submarine Agency awarded a contract for nearly $400K to former Defence Department Deputy Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak to find a suitable Defence location.

The very expensive irony that lurked behind this contract was the fact that Grzeskowiak had, when he was inside Defence, looked for a location on Defence land to store low-level radioactive waste and had been unable to find a suitable site.

Nuclear waste. Fifty years of searching, still nowhere to dump it.

According to Grzeskowiak, there wasn’t a single spot anywhere across the vast Defence estate that was suitable for storing low-level radioactive material. Yet he was now the go-to person who would, through some miraculous divination, find the Australian Submarine Agency a location across the very same territory

where it would be safe to dump a pile of the highest level, most radioactive nuclear waste.

Go figure.

Document request

In December 2023, I requested Mr Grzeskowiak’s report under our Freedom of Information laws. I was refused access on the basis the report was a Cabinet document.

But here’s the interesting thing. I knew that the report had been being worked on by multiple agencies, so I requested related documents from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA), Geoscience Australia (GA), the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C).

What those documents showed me was the report was not, at least until after I made my FOI request, developed on the Government’s CabNet+ system.

I’m now in a legal fight at the Administrative Review Tribunal, pressing my case for the report to be made public.

CabNet rules

The Cabinet Handbook, the bible for Cabinet’s processes, makes it crystal clear that cabinet documents must be prepared on a special CabNet+ system.

CabNet rules

Cabinet Handbook Rules (Source: Australian Government)

The protective security framework of the Government also commands that Cabinet documents are stored on CabNet+.

Despite this, the Australian Submarine Agency didn’t do that.

Why? I can’t publish their evidence in the proceeding until the matter has been heard in the Tribunal, but what I can say is that it’s a case of reckless indifference to the rules.

It begs the question, will the Australian Submarine Agency also play fast and loose with the rules in relation to our highly classified data or our allies’ highly classified data?

The Australian Submarine Agency is under a great deal of pressure to “get the job done”.

There are unquestionably a lot of unrealistic expectations coming down from the top. Will they follow the rules when it comes to nuclear safety, or will they bend and break the rules when they find it expedient to meet a politically driven objective?

Legal arguments

In their legal submissions, the Australian Government asserts: “The fact that the document was not created within the ‘CabNet’ system is not indicative one way or the other as to the intention of the authors.”

Actually, the rules of Cabinet are very strict. A document must meet two tests to qualify as a cabinet document 1) it must have been bought into existence for the dominant purpose of submission for consideration by the Cabinet, and 2) it must have been submitted to Cabinet.

I am satisfied it meets the second test but not the first.

To meet the first test the Government has to present objective evidence to the Tribunal that a minister so commissioned the document for consideration by Cabinet.

They have not done so.

And the fact that the document, in breach of the rules,  just floated around on a government network not authorised to hold Cabinet documents for months on end will work against the Australian Submarine Agency in the end.

Hypocrisy

In response to insistence from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that Peter Dutton should disclose the intended location of seven nuclear power stations, the Opposition Leader did so.

But Albanese is refusing to be transparent about the intended location of a high-level radioactive waste dump. His government wants to block public debate for as long as possible and then present people with a fait accompli.

It’s yet to be seen whether the Government will win on its claim that the report I’m after is a Cabinet document. But in the end, if it were determined that the report is that, there would still be nothing to stop Albanese from being true to his past rhetoric about the importance of government transparency and releasing the report to inform public debate.

Australians have a right to know. The fact that the Prime Minister hasn’t already done this says a lot.

For me, given that the Government has cautioned me against publishing details that reveal security incompetence inside the Australian Submarine Agency, I’ll wait for the knock on the door from the Federal Police. I’m not going to be intimidated.

There’s a vital democratic principle to be defended – the right to publish embarrassing information about government. The only way to protect that right, especially in the face of Government bullying, is to publish.

AUKwardUS: Peter Dutton’s Albo nuclear wedge may cost us hundreds of billions

Rex Patrick

Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and earlier a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is running for the Senate on the Lambie Network ticket next year - www.transparencywarrior.com.au.

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