The Department of Defence has engaged a former Defence Deputy Secretary as a highly paid consultant to find a place on Defence land to store submarine nuclear waste. Rex Patrick takes a look at a search for the impossible.
In his role as a Defence Department Deputy Secretary, he was tasked with finding a place on the same lands to store low-level nuclear waste, and he couldn’t find any, so why would he have more luck as a consultant? Was he not paid enough?
Assuming the US Congress shortly approves the transfer of Virginia Class submarines from the US Navy to the Royal Australian Navy, Australia won’t get its first nuclear submarine until sometime around 2033. According to evidence provided to the Australian Senate by our Defence Department, the first nuclear-powered submarine will be second-hand and have a remaining reactor life of 20 years.
That means the first Australian reactor will be decommissioned around 2053; 30 years from today.
One might think that three decades is plenty of time to sort this problem out. But if past experience is anything to go by, the search for a suitable high-level nuclear waste site is already running late.
Australia has been searching for a site for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF) site since the 1970s;
and after 50 years, it still hasn’t found a spot on which to safely establish such a repository.
In 2012, the Parliament tried to kick the whole low-level waste site selection process along by passing the National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012. Since July 2014, the Commonwealth has spent approximately $109 million (ex GST) trying to find a site, only to have the Federal Court, in July this year, set aside the Minister’s decision to locate the NRWMF at Kimba in South Australia.
Low-level radioactive material remains scattered at more than 100 sites across the country, with many of the sites not constructed for long-term waste management.
It’s a half-century-long saga of public policy and administrative failure with no resolution in sight.
The search for a high-level waste site
In March this year, Deputy Prime Minister Marles (please don’t call him Defence Minister – he likes the DPM title better) announced that the Albanese Government were looking at a Defence site for the storage of AUKUS waste.
What wasn’t detailed then, and is only public now through Freedom of Information, is that in February this year, the Government set up an integrated site review team, led by former Deputy Defence Secretary Steve Grzeskowiak.
Mr Grzeskowiak assigned (Source: 2023 FOI)
The Review team includes Defence representatives from the Australian Submarine Agency, Security and Estate Group and Joint Logistics Command. It will be supported by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency and Geoscience Australia.
For his work in leading the Review, Grzeskowiak’s company SG Advice Pty Ltd has been awarded a $396,000 contract that commenced on 27 February 2023 and runs through to 31 December 2023.
It is not clear why Defence does not have this capability within its own organisations (as you will see shortly, it has done these activities internally in the past).
So, the outcomes of the review are expected around now.
No room at Woomera
The Defence Department manages a vast and complex Defence Estate of over 2.8 million hectares. It’s claimed to be the largest landholding in the Commonwealth with 70 major bases, 100 plus training ranges, and more than 1000 leased or owned properties.
Yet when the Morrison Government were looking for a site for low-level waste, Defence was adamant that the Defence Estate was not the right place. According to Defence, not a single hectare was suitable or available for such a facility.
Back in February 2020, with the Government knowing it had botched the NRWMF site selection process, further legislation, the National Radioactive Waste Management Amendment (Site Specification, Community Fund and Other Measures) Bill 2020, was introduced into Parliament.
The dominant purpose of the Bill was to have the Parliament select Kimba as the NRWMF site because if the Parliament selected the site, the Courts couldn’t intervene. The Senate wasn’t buying into it – it didn’t want to be the fix-it place for the then Government’s screw-ups. It wasn’t going to take away the rights of indigenous to appeal the site decision to the Federal Court.
Tasmania overlaid on the Woomera Prohibited Area (source Parliamentary Library)
During the Senate Inquiry into the Bill, when Defence was asked if there was a suitable place on Defence land for a site, for example, the vast Woomera missile test range, they gave evidence that they had no land whatsoever on which to locate a low-level waste site:
“In May 2017, the then Department of Industry, Innovation and Science sought Defence’s advice to determine if a suitable location for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility could be found within the Defence estate.
“The request identified four Defence owned sites, which comprise a collection of separate parcels of land as potential locations for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility. Two of those sites lie within the Woomera Prohibited Area. One site lies outside of but in proximity to the Woomera Prohibited Area. Based on the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science’s site selection criteria, the Defence assessment determined that the siting of the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility at any of the four sites identified in the request could not be achieved.”
In short, Defence couldn’t find anywhere in the 122,188 square kilometres of the Woomera Prohibited Area, an area twice the size of Tasmania, to put a low-level waste facility.
If at first you don’t succeed …
The origin of Defence’s position was a study carried out in 2017. The results of the study, which looked at four sites in detail, were communicated by letter stating:
“My department has also undertaken a review of 223 additional Defence-owned sites (not identified in the report, in consultation with key stakeholders at Defence, to ascertain whether any other sites could be considered for the NRWMF. The outcome of the review and broad consultation is that there are no Defence-owned land sites, (greater than 100 hectares) that would be suitable for this purpose.”
The letter was signed off by the then Deputy Secretary of Estates and Infrastructure, Steve Grzeskowiak.
That’s the same bloke who Defence has now to find a location on Defence sites for high level nuclear waste.
In 2017 Grzeskowiak was adamant there were no suitable Defence sites for hosting nuclear waste, but is now being paid a $396K to come up with a different view.
If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again, or so the saying goes.
Maybe it’s all okay though. Defence might have suddenly become warm to the idea that they can host a facility, and a well-paid independent contractor might just be the person to come up with the answer they want.
Former secretaries never retire, they just go on contract
But how did Defence find their retired Deputy Secretary to give a sole source contract to?
It was easier than you could imagine.
It turns out Grzeskowiak was already working for Defence. He retired from the Department in August 2021, but a year later, he picked up not one but two lucrative sole-sourced contracts; one for professional services at $230K and another for ‘External Member’ services at $341K. Those contracts will keep him on Defence’s books until the middle of 2024.
With the addition of the nuclear waste site review contract, SG Advice, with Grzeskowiak the sole owner, has picked up a total of $967K worth of consultancy work from the Department he so recently ‘retired’ from.
No one in the Senior Executive Service ever really retires (Kathryn Campbell and Mike Pezzullo might be the rare exceptions), they just go on contract. Ka-Ching!
Marles Mauled: Rex Patrick demolishes Defence sophistry on AUKUS, submarines, nuclear
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 - www.transparencywarrior.com.au.