Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I address my comments to the answers to questions given today by government senators relating to the sale of uranium to India. If anybody was looking for another reason not to vote for this government in the forthcoming election, they certainly heard it today. Not only is this government arrogant, out of control, reckless, presiding over interest rate rises and interminably racked by leadership divisions, it is now downright dangerous. This government is intent on dragging Australia down the nuclear path. We already know it wants to build nuclear reactors because that is the only answer it has to the nation’s future energy needs. Never mind all the clean, green, cheap and safe energy technologies that we should be exploring; this government wants dangerous, expensive and polluting nuclear reactors. Of course, it will not tell us where it wants to put them. But we will keep asking that question, and I am sure the people of Australia will keep asking that question too.

Now this government wants to sell uranium to a country that refuses to sign the treaty on nuclear non-proliferation—a country that has nuclear weapons and, as late as this week, is saying it wants to conduct more nuclear weapons testing; a country that abuts another country, Pakistan, which also has nuclear weapons, which has not signed the treaty and which has a long history of friction with its neighbouring country, India. What kind of reckless, dangerous behaviour is this from a federal government that is supposed to protect its citizens and keep them safe and is a signatory to international laws intended to prevent nuclear non-proliferation?

In this very week, we remembered the end of World War II. Who can forget how that war ended? It ended when the Americans dropped atomic bombs—nuclear weapons—on Japanese cities. Seventy-thousand people in Hiroshima were killed instantly and a similar number were killed in Nagasaki. Tens of thousands more died in the months following. The vast majority of them were civilians. That is what nuclear weapons do—kill lots and lots of innocent people. Some of us took the time this week to remember World War II and we hope that it never happens again. But it sounds like some of the people on the government side of this chamber do not learn from past tragedies.

The whole point of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty is to prevent another Hiroshima or another Nagasaki. If you undermine the NPT by condoning exceptions and exemptions and special arrangements for your friends, that weakens the treaty. Other countries then come along and say: ‘Me too! I want some of that special treatment too.’ Australia is, thank goodness, a signatory to the treaty, so we should be committed to it and to strengthening it, not trying to wreck it. The very suggestion that we sell uranium to a country that is not a signatory makes it look like we are not truly committed to the NPT—that it is not important and it is not necessary. The very suggestion that we want to sell uranium to India makes us appear to the rest of the world as though we are more concerned with playing ‘follow the leader’ with the United States than we are about global security.

Instead of flogging uranium to India and hoping it does the right thing, we should be encouraging that nation to join most of the rest of the world by becoming a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty. We heard vague comments today from Senator Coonan about how India’s use of the uranium that we will export to it will be managed and curtailed and restricted to civilian use. We are certainly not convinced on this side of the chamber that anything is in place to ensure that that happens. The government says that the exporting of uranium to India would have to be preceded by a nuclear safeguards agreement, but it cannot tell us how it will work and how it will be enforced. We know anyway that such an agreement will not provide much protection because it would be with a nation that does not support the nuclear non-proliferation regime. We know that providing uranium to India for civilian purposes will have the effect of freeing up its existing fuel stocks to be used on its nuclear weapons projects.

This government is blinded by everything nuclear and is prepared to put at risk global security and the fight against terrorism. If we sell to countries that will not sign the treaty, why stop there? Other countries could be well within their rights to ask, ‘What about us?’ Why should Pakistan feel constrained if its neighbour is given the green light by the United States and Australia? When I came into this place, I thought ‘the arms race’ was terminology from a previous decade that I would never have to use again. But it seems that this government wants to reopen the arms race. What a devastating thing that will be for world peace and world security. (Time expired)