Follow the money. A radioactive farce of failed land purchases

The Federal Government refuses to disclose any details regarding the purchase of land for radioactive waste management. Rex Patrick He follows the money trail.

In 2023, the current Resources Minister admitted to the Senate that the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) had spent $108.6 million trying to find space for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).

In July 2023, Federal Court Judge Natalie Charlesworth set aside then Minister Keith Pitt’s November 2021 declaration that Napandee, a 211-acre property near Kimba in SA, would be the future site of the NRWMF. Pitt’s declaration for the site was nine years in the making, but he and the Ministry had botched the site selection process.

Not the way to choose a facility

If you want to choose a site for a national facility to store radioactive waste, you look at the storage requirements, including technical, environmental, geological (such as earthquake proneness), social and local cultural and heritage considerations. You then look for sites that meet all these requirements.

That’s not what DISR did.

In September 2012, the Government issued a notification intending to issue a nationwide request for landowners to nominate land to the NRWMF. The official call for nominations was made between 2 March and 5 May 2015.

A sweetener was added to persuade landowners; the successful land seller would receive four times the market value. This was a rather unusual proposition; The government did not necessarily intend to purchase land from an unwilling seller.

But why not? The geniuses who came up with the plan at DISR knew full well that the extra money was just taxpayers’ money.

Buy and then sell back

On November 26, 2021, the Government announced that land owned by the Baldock family* in Napandee would be the site of the facility.

Three days later the Minister issued a press release stating that the Government had purchased the land.

MWM Trying to access the land sales contract and purchase price using FOI. However, access to this was denied. You paid the money but you’re not allowed to know.

FOI Disclaimer (Source: DISR)

The FOI decision is currently under appeal, with the Information Commissioner to be the arbitrator.

Last week the Resources Minister also refused to answer the official “how much” question posed by Senator Lambie.

What we do know is that after the Federal Court overturned the Pitt site selection decision, the Government sold the land back To the Baldock family for $1.27 million.

The local controversy is that the Department spent $10 million of taxpayers’ money to purchase this land, almost 8 times its market value. The refusal of the Department and the Minister to provide sales price responses under FOI or to the Senate respectively raises doubts that this is true.

Given the previous examples, when you look at other problematic procurements by Ministries under the Coalition Government, it does not take much effort to believe that something of this sort could happen; such as Eastern Australia Agriculture Pty Ltd insisting on an optimistic price of $2,000 per megalitre for Murray-Darling water reclamation and the Government negotiating prices of up to $2,745 per megalitre.

Or when the Department of Infrastructure purchased the Western Sydney Airport ‘Leppington Triangle’ land for $30 million when it was only valued at $3 million.

Leppington Triangle scandal: taxpayers collect $30 million for land worth $3 million

Poor management or something worse?

It is unheard of for the Senate to reject historical spending information on land in Napandee.

The government certainly overpaid $4 million for the site, even after meeting its own inexplicable ‘4x price’ rule, but possibly $9 million if this claim is true.

At best, the Government has embarked on a farce. The Department knew that the way they chose Napandee was flawed.

On February 1, 2020, Senator Matt Canavan, Pitt’s predecessor as Minister for Resources, announced Napandee was the site to host Australia’s NRWMF. However, Canavan’s decision was unofficial.

“I just looked back”: A letter to my grandchildren

Realizing that the process would be found inadequate by the Court, the Government changed its stance and on February 13, 2020 introduced legislation to the House of Representatives that would enable Parliament to select Napandee as the location.

On March 6, 2020, a senior ministry official, Sam Chard, met with the Mayor of Kimba, during which he said the following (as recorded in Judge Charlesworth’s ruling):

parliamentary review will replace the legal appeal mechanism under the NRWM Act.

(Disclosure: Ms. Chard and the author confronted each other over a related argument in September of the same year. MWM For legal reasons I can’t publish it – but you can read about it Here).

DISR and the Government thought they were on to a winning solution because the proposed legislation would remove the option of challenging the decision in court (Courts cannot overturn Parliament’s decisions unless they are unconstitutional). The problem was that the Senate refused to pass the legislation. So they returned to the original plan and Minister Pitt officially made the ministerial location decision on November 26, 2021.

What the FOI revealed is an extraordinary fact: the land was actually purchased on 11 November 2021, 15 days before Pitt decided it was the Minister’s chosen location.

*Editor’s note: MWM makes no allegation of wrongdoing by the Baldock family. They are just taking advantage of DISR’s mismanagement or nonsense.

Government hides “transparent” Radioactive Waste Plan

Rex Patrick is a former South Australian Senator and formerly a submariner in the armed forces. Known as an anti-corruption and transparency warrior, Rex is also known as “Transparency Warrior.”