Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to 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—

Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Deputy President. There was an unfortunate reflection by Senator Milne on Senator Minchin suggesting that he did not come clean. To be quite frank, I do not think that is fair to Senator Minchin and I think Senator Milne should withdraw that most unfortunate comment.

John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hear what you are saying, Senator Kemp, but I do not think that comment has crossed the line. Senator Milne, you should be careful in the language that you do use.

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

Certainly, Mr Deputy President, and I take on board Senator Kemp’s remark. If Senator Minchin did not know the answer then that is due to a lack of a brief and I acknowledge that. What I want to say here is that it has been widely reported that Russian nuclear agencies will be meeting with officials from the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office and they will be meeting with the Prime Minister’s task force on nuclear energy. The deal is to develop an agreement to sell Australian uranium to Russia. Currently that cannot happen because Australia and Russia do not have an agreement to facilitate that occurring—and that is precisely what the Russians are doing here this week: trying to expand uranium mining.

We all know that the agenda the Prime Minister has, as a result of his visit to the US earlier this year, is to be part of the gatherings at George Bush’s table. President Bush has said that unless Australia has an enrichment industry it will not have a place at the table of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership—and that is clearly where Prime Minister Howard is going. We all know that nuclear power is not economically viable in Australia. It certainly is not economically viable without massive government subsidies, and several ministers have already said that there will be no subsidies. They have said that there will be no price on carbon and they have said that, indeed, they will not be subsidising other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. The fact is that without subsidies this industry cannot fly.

So why are we having the distraction this week of a discussion about nuclear power in Australia when behind the scenes in government agencies we have the Russians here talking about accessing uranium from BHP Billiton and from Rio Tinto? They have both said that they cannot proceed in driving this uranium push into Russia without the government facilitating this agreement. We have already had the government facilitate an expansion of uranium mining through selling uranium to China. We have heard the Prime Minister’s shift in recent times to consider selling Australian uranium to India even though it is outside the non-proliferation treaty and now we find that the Russian officials are here organising an agreement with Australia to sell Australian uranium into Russia in spite of Russia’s appalling safety record on uranium. There is the issue not only of Chernobyl but also of the Russian waste facilities, which are shocking. The Russians have a terrible record of dumping nuclear waste into the Arctic. The Russians also have a shocking record in terms of proliferation and facilitating the spread of nuclear technology, particularly into Iran.

So I think the Australian government has a fair bit of answering to do on what is actually going on. How advanced are the discussions with the Russians about an agreement to export Australian uranium to Russia? Which countries will access Australian uranium via Russian enrichment programs? Just how widely will Australia be spreading uranium? Just how much risk are we increasing in terms of proliferation and dirty bombs by expanding uranium sales into China, possibly India and now possibly Russia? This comes at a time when North Korea has had a nuclear test only this week. That nuclear test came about from plutonium from the reprocessing of fuel rods from nuclear power. If ever there was an example of the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons, it is the fact that the North Korean bomb came from plutonium. I think the Prime Minister owes Australians an explanation. Why is he talking up something he knows is unviable?

Question agreed to.