Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance and Administration (Senator Minchin) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to the sale of uranium to Russia.

We know that Prime Minister Howard emulates all things done by Prime Minister Menzies, who of course was better known as ‘Pig Iron Bob’. It is quite clear that Prime Minister Howard wants to be ‘yellowcake John’. What is clearly happening is that, whilst the Prime Minister is talking up nuclear power in Australia, behind the scenes his real agenda is being enacted—that is, increasing uranium mining and exports and uranium enrichment in line with his desire for Australia to be a nuclear supply centre in President Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Senator Minchin did not come clean today. Whether he did not know what was going on or not remains to be seen. It has been widely reported that we have representatives of Russia’s state owned nuclear fuel maker in Australia this week and they are meeting with the Australian safeguards—