Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Hansard source

I do welcome the conversions of former Premier Rann and new Premier Weatherill to positions recognising the economic common sense of pursuing uranium mining and exporting it for safe and peaceful purposes to relevant countries. On 18 September 2008, the Hansard reminds me, I spoke about a Treaties Committee report about a very similar agreement on the export of uranium and nuclear materials to Russia for peaceful purposes. At that time, the Labor members, the government members, of the Treaties Committee opposed the ratification of that agreement. So we had the perverse situation where Australia had set in place an agreement to export uranium to China but the government was saying, 'We're not sure about Russia'. The leadership was saying, 'We're all for the export to Russia,' yet the Labor members of the Treaties Committee said no to ratification of the Russian agreement. Of course, the government was saying no outright to India then.

I welcome the conversion of the Prime Minister which led to her saying yes to India, but I do question the motives behind the conversion. I do not believe for a moment that the Prime Minister sat in her office going over a thorough analysis of whether we should put to one side the longstanding provision of the Labor Party about the nuclear non-proliferation treaty being a prerequisite. I do not think for a moment that the Prime Minister sat there studying the implications of this change. I do not think for a moment that she sat there studying what it would mean for India and what it might mean for greenhouse gas emissions. I think quite simply that the Prime Minister decided that she wanted to pick a fight, at the national conference of the Labor Party next month, on her terms rather than having a fight on everybody else's terms, as she was being shoehorned into. It was a case of 'Let's look down the list'.