This calls for rational debate: Mr Ferguson told parliament there needed to be a debate about whether Australia was "mature enough to select a site where we should store our low-level and intermediate-level nuclear waste".
Party divided: The Labor frontbencher’s comments come only weeks after the deputy Labor leader Jenny Macklin, used an accident at the Lucas Height reactor in Sydney to campaign against nuclear reactors. "This accident is a stark reminder that things can go wrong with nuclear reactors," Ms Macklin said.
Nuclear medicine needs fair hearing: But on 7 September, Mr Ferguson said in a debate about radioactive waste sites in the Northern Territory that the Australia, Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, which runs Lucas Heights, played a vital role in nuclear medicine. "ANSTO is too often pilloried for their own political purposes by those who should know better," Mr Feguson said.
No place for "fearmongering": "It is one thing to run an anti-nuclear campaign under-pinned by sound science logic and belief. It is quite another to stoop to ludicrous fearmongering about ANSTO and the Lucas Heights nuclear facility." He said the amendments dealing with ANSTO dealt with "the unavoidable consequences of nuclear medicine and nuclear technology in industry".
Long running issue: The federal, state and territory governments have long debated the site of a low- to medium-level nuclear waste facility for radioactive material from medicine and research.
"It’s time," says Ferguson: "It is time the games stopped at a state, territory and national level and at a political level," Mr Ferguson said.