Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I want to join my friend and colleague the member for Berowra in speaking on this important bill before the House today—the Civil Nuclear Transfers to India Bill 2016. It is my pleasure to speak about this, having chaired the parliamentary friends of India group for the past three years here in Canberra, working very closely with the Indian diaspora in our major cities, Sydney and Melbourne, but also here in Canberra, to ensure that parliamentarians are across the important relationship that we have with India in the ongoing increase in trade, in volumes of migration and in the partnership that we share in our region to make sure that we have a safe, stable and economically prosperous region.

We do understand, I think, in this House now that this relationship between our two great nations is really finding its feet. For the first time in 30 years we saw the visit of Prime Minister Modi—one of the most significant modern leaders of India coming out of the Bharatiya Janata Party—with a real promise for economic reform and growth for India, having delivered that in the Gujarat province. We are seeing now, for the first time, the modernisation of the Indian economy. It is on the precipice of great growth and development, like we saw in China. This is a real opportunity for the great partnership between Australia and India to emerge in this century as one of the defining features of our bilateral relationship with India.

We see the relationship between our prime ministers. We see that the largest source country for migrants in my own portfolio is now India. Our largest student source country is variously India, with many foreign students now studying in Australia, and the skills need of India is one of the great export opportunities for our education sector here in Australia. It is the world's third largest and fastest-growing major economy, but, currently, exports to India are just about one-tenth of exports to China. That presents us with a significant potential and opportunity to expand and, hence, this bill before us presents us with a great opportunity to continue this strong economic relationship and provide the power to meet the real needs that an emerging and growing economy such as India will require.

We know that India is emerging as a stronger regional and global partner in our region with a great global role. It is a large democratic power in the Indo-Pacific. It means more outreach with us, it means more trade, it means more diplomacy and it means more cooperation between us. Our bilateral relationship has developed so fast over the last five years, and I think this is an important step in the right direction. It has had some misguided opposition in the past—I note this bill and the sale of uranium to India. I do not think there is any Australian, and I do not think there is anyone left in this House, who would want to see a return to the era under the Rudd government—I was here in this House then—where, to our detriment, a strain was placed on our relationship with this major strategic partner.

The access that India has sought to our uranium ore to meet the needs of its rapidly growing economy is important to understand from the psychological perspective of our Indian partners. We have so much in common with India: democracy, the use of the English language, a shared British heritage of colonialism—things that relate us so well with India. For Australia to have suggested at any point that we would deny our uranium to India, that there was no way of working out how we could arrange the provision of uranium to a country like India or that there was no way that we could form a bond of trust, an economic tie, a binding contract or a relationship with India which would ensure that we were satisfied we could meet our international obligations and that India could meet theirs was naive—and it was naive of the Labor Party at the time to think so. It was good to see the Gillard government reverse the Rudd government's error in this regard. It is good to see the opposition is supporting this bill because it is the right move for relations between our countries. It is the right move forward for our country and for India.

The rhetoric has to change. We must recognise that India is now a responsible nation and that strengthening our bilateral relationship is mutually beneficial. It is important to see the member for Melbourne and the member for Denison here. I know they are here pre-emptively, and I might pre-empt a little bit of what they will say. All members in this House should understand the modern nation that India is and represents and the good global and international citizen that it is. This government wants to ensure that our exports are properly managed and that they are dealt with in full confidence of the standards that we require—and that is what this bill provides for.

The bill provides guidance for the approval of uranium exports. It takes into account the particular safeguard arrangements that the IAEA applies in India and which India has committed to apply in respect of Australian exports of uranium through its nuclear cooperation agreement with Australia. I am confident these robust arrangements can assure the House, the parliament, the public and our two nations that Australian uranium will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. The design is specific to India, which, of course, is not a party to the NPT. The purpose of this bill is to clarify that decisions approving civil nuclear transfers to India are taken not to be inconsistent with, or have been made with due regard to, Australia's obligations relating to nuclear safeguards under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty if particular conditions are met. The conditions relate to the application of India's nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA, including its additional protocol, and the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of India on Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy—the Australia-India agreement.

Given the expansion of nuclear energy around the globe and its use in many modern countries like France, India and China, we have to have arrangements and treaties and the confidence that uranium is being used for peaceful civilian purposes like power generation. We should not allow blind ideology to get in the way of these important technological developments that allow for millions of people to escape poverty, better themselves, improve their lives and have access to cheaper power and better constant sources of power for industry and for their own endeavour. Also, significantly—and I know the member for Melbourne would agree—we should reduce our reliance on fossil-fuel-based power over time. We should take advantage of the technological solutions that are available to human beings to reduce our reliance on fossil fields and generate baseload energy in a reliable and cheap way for the vast expansions that economies like India will require.

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