Australia should seriously consider becoming the world’s nuclear garbage collector because the geology of the nation makes it an ideal place to store deadly radioactive waste, a former Prime Minister for the Opposition Labour Party has said. Bob Hawke, Australia’s longest-serving Labour Prime Minister, told a gathering of Oxford University graduates in Sydney late on Monday that Australia could generate substantial income by promoting itself as a secure site for nuclear waste. "Australia has the geologically safest places in the world for the storage of waste," Mr Hawke told a meeting. "What Australia should do in my judgement, as an act of economic sanity and environmental responsibility (is) say we will take the world’s nuclear waste," he further added.