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

I thank members for their contribution and I express my disappointment that the government is not going to support a reference to the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade to investigate this agreement. I still did not get confirmation from the government that this process is not going to be assessed until the middle of next year through appropriate process. All we got was, ‘It depends on the sitting schedule’—and the worst thing that could happen, of course, is that the government decides to rush this through in the dying days of this administration.

Senator Payne sounds outraged about the fact that the government is not taking human rights into account—it is not. All she said was she is confident that the Russians will uphold the commitments they have made in this agreement. They have not made one commitment in this agreement to democracy or human rights—not one! To expect that they would uphold an agreement they have not made is just a ridiculous notion. It is about attempting to pretend that the government is doing anything other than entering into a pure and simple trade agreement to maximise profits—and not taking the opportunity to tie this to an additional protocol and additional clauses which would be consistent with Australia’s promotion of human rights on a global and regional level and send a clear signal to the Russian Federation that Australia expects its trade partners to adhere to certain standards. Closely linked would be the values of human rights and democracy and the rule of law, without which Australia cannot have any assurance that Russia will in good faith adhere to the principles of the agreement, which is central to the integrity of the safeguards and verification standards to which Australia gives such weight.

Why wouldn’t we include promotion and protection of, and respect for, human rights and democratic values in such an agreement? I put it to you, Mr Acting Deputy President Watson, that the reason we would not is that we have no confidence that the Russians would uphold it, and it would mean that, if they did not uphold it, we would have to suspend the agreement because a breach of the relevant conditions had taken place. They would not want to do that because they would not want to disrupt the profits flowing into those companies.

I think this is a really important issue. Australia ought to take into account the behaviour of the countries we do business with. How is the international community ever going to promote democracy and human rights unless we make our trade conditional upon them? Otherwise, we are saying: ‘We’ll turn a blind eye to what is going on in your country. We’ll just trade and let you get away with whatever you like in terms of human rights and democracy standards.’

Senator Payne also said that there was some confusion in the motion because I had talked about India and that this was about a deal with Russia—which just demonstrates why you need a Senate inquiry. Let me explain to Senator Payne and to Senator Brandis, who are not in the chamber, why this has relevance to the India deal. The India-Russia agreement and Australia’s declaration that it too would sell uranium to India is all very well until you get to the point where India has a nuclear test. Then the US agreement will be suspended and so too will any agreement by Australia to sell uranium to India. But India wants a guaranteed supply. What will it do? It will sign up to the Russian agreement as well and that means, in the event that its supply is cut off from Australia and the US, it can get the enriched uranium it needs from Russia. Furthermore, in the US-India agreement there is an arrangement whereby, if it is suspended, India has to return to the US a certain volume of nuclear fuel. Russia could provide that to India to give back to the US and continue exactly as it had planned. How will it get the uranium in Russia in order to give it back to India to give back to the US? It will get it because Australia will be supplying the uranium into Russia to have it enriched.

We have heard the government say, ‘It won’t be Australian uranium that goes to any other facility.’ Everybody knows you cannot trace uranium. Once it goes into a facility, it becomes part of the mass in that facility. The way uranium is measured is simply by volume—you have to prove you have displaced this much volume or sent this volume somewhere else. That is the link that Senator Payne did not understand. In fact, the Indians understand it very well, as do the Russians. I will cite a particular document I have here. It states:

The main assurance that the initiative should provide is that a country complying with its non-proliferation commitments must be sure that, whatever the turn of events, whatever changes take place in the international situation, it will receive the services guaranteed to it.

That is the Russians telling the Indians that part of the deal is that, whatever changes happen, they will guarantee the supply. The Indian interpretation in this particular document is this:

In the event of an Indian test, the US law banning nuclear exports would become operative and so would the domestic legislations of other potential suppliers such as France, Australia, Canada or the UK, as it happened after the 1998 Pokhran tests. However, if India becomes party to the Russian project, the IUEC could become the source for fuel to be returned to the US. For, the statute of the IUEC only says that its services would be available to any partnering country ‘complying with its non-proliferation commitments’. Further there is no Russian law that prevents nuclear exports in the event of a nuclear test as is evident from the Russian project ...

What we have here, clearly, is a mechanism by which the Russians will be the backstop for the Indians in the event that the Indians go ahead with their nuclear tests. They have said it is part of their undertaking that they will, that the US agreement and the Australian uranium will not subject them to not going ahead with nuclear tests. So all Australia is doing is not only promising to provide uranium to India but also, now with this Russian agreement, sending more uranium to Russia, where it will be enriched and sent on to third parties, as it is currently. President Putin has come out and not only said that the Russians provided the technology for the Iranian reactor but also, on the very weekend they were negotiating here in Australia, announced the timetable for the transfer of enriched fuel from Russia to Iran to that reactor.

As we stand here today, details are just emerging about the recent Israeli flyover of Syria—a hugely significant international incident that was played down because it was so serious. Why did the Israelis fly over Syria? Because a shipment from North Korea was heading to Syria. This was a major international incident just in the last couple of weeks. That is the kind of world into which Australia are saying we are happy to sell our uranium, and we are not even prepared to put a caveat on the deals saying they are conditional upon upholding laws pertaining to human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

If Australia does not stand for human rights, democracy and the rule of law, what do we stand for, apart from maximising profits to companies that donate heavily to political parties? What else do we stand for? Where is our standing globally? We have abandoned multilateralism. We have abandoned international conventions, it seems. We have given up on the Geneva convention, because we supported Guantanamo Bay. We have given up on the refugee convention. We trash the World Heritage convention when it suits us. Whichever way you look, you see multilateralism overturned. Last week, we saw Australia vote against a United Nations resolution in relation to indigenous rights. Week in, week out, Australia stands for less and less in the global community.

This agreement with Russia must be scrutinised appropriately by the parliament. Having heard from the government, I do not have any confidence that that is going to be the case. I hope that Senator Payne and Senator Brandis are listening to what I am saying. It may actually interest them that, when they voted against this last week, when they were busy supporting the Prime Minister’s arrangements, they did not even understand the link with the India deal. They did not understand that they are actually facilitating India moving full-on with its nuclear program. Yet they stand here and say that they are confident Russia will uphold the agreement. There is no provision in it for the rule of law, for human rights or for democracy. I feel ashamed that Australia is not taking the opportunity to be a global leader. As we watch so many countries retreat from democracy, why aren’t we making those conditions?

I hope that the Labor Party in government would see its way clear to have a really good look at this Australia-Russia uranium deal and repudiate it, and look at the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership that Australia signed up to last night. We had to find that one out through the Times of India. Prime Minister Howard is apparently ashamed to tell Australians that last night he signed up to President Bush’s deal. You have to read what goes on in nuclear countries in order to find out what he is up to. The Canadians did not sign because they are worried about having to become a global nuclear waste dump. What did Australia sign up to last night in Europe?

So I would like to hear not only that the Labor Party in government would repudiate both of these deals but that, at the very least, we would get a commitment that Australia reassert itself on the global stage as an upholder of human rights, of the rule of law and of decency in global and international negotiations; otherwise we are no better than a lot of the other states we condemn at various times. We are not taking the opportunities that we are afforded. How must it feel for the Russian dissidents to watch the Australian government shaking hands with President Putin, knowing that journalists have been murdered and that human rights campaigners are in psychiatric asylums as I speak? How must they feel when the news goes back into the state owned television and state owned newspapers that President Putin is legitimised and hailed as a great trading partner in Australia when they are asking for help to repudiate the deals and expose what President Putin is doing in Russia by suppressing freedom of speech and the political democracy movement?

That is what is going on in that country and, if the government do not know it, it is because they choose not to know it. Any cursory examination of what is going on in Russia today will tell you that President Putin is taking that country back to the KGB days and the FSB rules. I hope now we see Senator McGauran go back and start reading about those Russian apartment bombings and what is going on in Chechnya and find that President Putin’s hands are not clean in relation to fomenting uprisings in order to suppress freedom of speech, jail dissidents and return to punitive psychiatry. When we review the period of his presidency in Russia, we are going to see just how rapidly he took that country backwards and how Australia turned a blind eye, to our shame.

Question put:

That the motion (Senator Milne’s) be agreed to.