Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

As a member of the treaties committee I would also like to speak to this report. I have a dissenting report contained in this which I will address in a moment. The treaties committee, as senators would know, is made up of people from both the Senate and the House of Representatives. There are 16 members all told. Apart from me, no other member of the committee dissented from the key recommendations. The key recommendations are that the treaties between the Australian and Chinese governments on the transfer of nuclear material and for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy go ahead. My opposition would not come as a great surprise. For nearly 30 years the Democrats as a party have strongly opposed all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. So exporting uranium and expanding the uranium industry—which would be a likely consequence of these treaties being adopted, as Senator Trood said—is something that we as a party do not support.

I also indicate that this is not just a party line type of view that I have put forward. There are genuine concerns that we have specifically about the sale of uranium to China. Some of them are actually acknowledged—I do not think they are adequately addressed, but at least they are acknowledged—by the majority report. One of the recommendations was that Australia call for an urgent review of the IAEA’s funding requirements, increase our voluntary contributions and encourage other governments to do likewise. Another recommendation was that Australia lobby the International Atomic Energy Agency and the five declared nuclear weapons states to make the safeguarding of all conversion facilities mandatory. Another recommendation was that we increase the funding allocated to the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office’s safeguards support and international outreach programs to ensure that effective safeguards are being applied in regard to the treaties.

All of those suggestions are positive recommendations that have been put forward. I think they also contain within them an inherent recognition that things are not as secure as we like to believe—that the safeguards that are in place are not as strong and not as fully enforced or enforceable as we would like to think. I must say that I was somewhat surprised during the hearings and in looking at some of the evidence provided to the inquiry that it was not as strong as I expected it to be. So whilst I would have an in-principle concern with expanding the uranium industry and expanding nuclear power generation and the potential consequences of all that, I did expect that the nuclear safeguards in place would be stronger than they seem to be from the evidence provided to the committee—and, I would suggest, from some of the commentary contained in the majority report. That to me is a serious concern in regard to not only the specifics of what might happen in China but also the broader problem of non-proliferation in general.

I acknowledge that Senator Trood has been a consistent advocate of expanding uranium production in Australia. He has a different view from the Democrats in regard to that. From memory, I think he has, nonetheless, also spoken about issues to do with the non-proliferation treaty and the progress or otherwise of that. I do think that, whatever we might think about the export of uranium to China, we need to take this opportunity to consider once again just where the world is at with nuclear non-proliferation treaties and the general proliferation of weaponry as a whole.

I am perplexed, I must say. It seems to me that, compared to even 10 years ago, the whole notion of disarmament and pushing for greater disarmament seems to have gone off the boil quite significantly. There seems to be far less global attention being paid to an issue that I think is just as important now as it was then—in fact I think it is more important now than it was then—that is, really moving towards non-proliferation.

It seems like the task of containing the number of nuclear weapons states, with the goal of eventually reducing them and ending up with zero nuclear weapons states, has been almost put to one side and is now seen as unachievable. I do not think we should put this to one side. I recognise that there are problems in how things have developed, not least with countries such as India, Pakistan and Israel, as well as states like Iran and North Korea and what they appear to be trying to do at the moment. There are clearly problems with the approach that the planet has tried to take to nuclear non-proliferation. We need to revisit that and take a look at it. I am not convinced that expanding China’s supply of uranium is going to be a positive contribution in that regard, but either way I think that all of us from all sides need to redouble our efforts on proliferation and look at what we can do on that.

I would also like to emphasise that, as I think senators across the board broadly acknowledge, there are problems with human rights in China. I am not one of those who suggest that we should prohibit all trade with China until they fix up their human rights record or anything absolutist like that. I do not think that would be helpful for anybody. But I do think that, when we are looking at expanding trade in an important and very sensitive commodity like uranium, we cannot just ignore what are without question very serious human rights questions and human rights issues with China. The committee does mention in one of its recommendations that Australia will continue its dialogue with the Chinese government about governance and transparency issues. I realise that does not necessarily go to the whole area of human rights. As evidence to the inquiry did indicate, there are issues with accountability and transparency in China. It is beyond dispute that it is a seriously undemocratic nation, and that always presents extra problems in regard to transparency, accountability and reliability.

I do not think we can sweep those concerns to one side just because there is a good trade opportunity here. There is no doubt that there are many great trade opportunities with China, a lot of money to be made and lots of export dollars. I do not dispute that, and I do not even dismiss it as irrelevant—of course, we need to ensure that we have a prosperous economy. But we cannot use that as a reason to push issues of transparency and accountability, let alone human rights, to one side. I have a concern that we are doing that.

I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that there was not wider opposition on the committee to the adoption of these treaties. It shows that strong momentum is building for expansion of uranium mining and exploitation in Australia. As that debate continues to develop in Australia, we find it is very hard to uncouple that proposal from debates about where nuclear waste goes and about nuclear power generation within Australia. It is hard to just have a bit of the debate and not the whole debate.

Certainly, I have a wider concern that, in what seems to be a growing momentum and push for using uranium and expanding the uranium industry and the nuclear cycle, there will be an attempt to create a sense of inevitability that this should also be considered and expanded in Australia. I do not want to go beyond the scope of this report, which is just about exporting uranium to China, but I would signal that sometimes it is hard to just stop a debate at a certain point. The sense of inevitability that, I think, permeated a lot of the inquiry and permeates this report is one we need to guard against. It is not inevitable; it is not essential that we go down the nuclear path or expand nuclear power generation as part of addressing climate change. I believe the facts stack up quite clearly to show that we can deal with climate change without going down that path. It can be part of it; I do not dispute that, but it does not need to be. That is the position that the Democrats take, and we obviously take it, doubly so, when it comes to any sort of nuclear power generation in Australia.