Mr MARTYN EVANS —My question is addressed to the Minister for Science and Technology. I refer to reports that the government is giving serious consideration to the establishment of a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Lucas Heights in Sydney. Is it not a fact that this would expose thousands of suburban residents of Sutherland Shire who live in the vicinity of Lucas Heights to serious risk arising from the transport of nuclear material through their suburb and to risk from the massive amounts of radioactive waste that would be generated by the plant? Minister, for the sake of these people and our environment, will you now categorically rule out the construction of a reprocessing plant at Lucas Heights?

Mr McGAURAN —I notice the shadow minister has taken his lead from a front page story in today's Sydney Morning Herald which reports only what I have been saying for several weeks. There is nothing new, no variation whatever, in the Sydney Morning Herald . If I were uncharitable, I would say the Herald was playing catch-up, as a number of news organisations, as I say, for several weeks have been reporting the government position on this, to the point where the Age had the front page story almost in the same terms three weeks ago. So you are well behind the ball.

This is a Labor inheritance. For 13 years you did nothing, so much so that the Sydney Morning Herald, which you are fond of quoting, on 22 August 1994, in a feature article by Leigh Dayton had a headline `Lack of Policy puts Radioactive Hot Rods on Road to Madness.' The first line of that article says:

Australia's policy on the disposal of radioactive waste is definitely not a shambles. Far worse—it doesn't even exist.

For 13 years you did absolutely nothing to the point now where 1,600 spent fuel rods will reach the point of storage exhaustion next year and the government must take action.

As I said to you to the same type of question, to all intents and purposes the exact question you asked on 28 February, the government has a number of options available to it. It has not decided on one of those options. The question of sites does not arise because we have not decided on the Synroc technology option. Why wouldn't we consider the Synroc technology option? You spent $40 million over the last 13 years developing it up. And what? We spend $40 million of taxpayers' funds and suddenly we are not meant to consider it as an option in the best interests of the Australian community to dispose of this problem of spent fuel rods. Get real!

Mr MARTYN EVANS —Mr Speaker, I have a supplementary question. To elucidate that answer, will the minister now rule out the option of Lucas Heights?

Mr SPEAKER —That was part of the first part of the question. It is technically within the guidelines. I call the minister to address the question.

Mr McGAURAN —I will repeat what I said in the answer and that is simply that the question of sites does not arise because we have not settled on one option over another.