Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (Senator Coonan) and the Minister for Justice and Customs (Senator Johnston) to questions without notice asked by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Evans) and Senator Carr today relating to nuclear energy.

I do so in the context that it has to be appreciated just how important nuclear research is in this country and what a magnificent chance we have to explore the opportunities for expansion of nuclear research in a range of medical developments and manufacturing industries and in engineering and other processes. What I find absolutely astounding though is the government’s irresponsibility when it comes to the selling of uranium to India in circumstances where India has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. India has something like 36 nuclear warheads, and the United States government has indicated that its position is to reprimand India over its nuclear weapons program because it has breached undertakings with regard to nuclear testing. In these circumstances I find it absolutely extraordinary that ministers in this government can claim that India has a strong record when it comes to honouring its commitments on nuclear testing and the military use of nuclear power. It is an extraordinary proposition that this government can seek to take a position of such blinding hypocrisy.

On the other hand there is the government’s position on local government. Just last year this government voted against a proposition, moved by me, to give constitutional recognition to local government. But this year, on the eve of an election, the government seeks to intervene in the electoral processes in Queensland with regard to the operations of the Local Government Act. We have a simple proposition: if that is to be the rule—this newfound commitment to concerns about local interests—it is important that that position be held in all regards. You would think that position would be held on the establishment of nuclear power plants. This government has received a commissioned report by the Prime Minister which indicates that it is the government’s desire to build 25 reactors in this country, yet there is no discussion about where those reactors are to go and no discussion about the consequences of building those reactors.

In that context, I think it is appropriate that we hear from this government about what legal advice they have sought about the capacity of the Commonwealth government in Canberra to override local communities when it comes to the expression of their desire not to have those reactors built in their localities. The Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources stated on 26 July that such legal advice would be sought. Where is it? It is time for the government to put that advice on the table. If it is appropriate to intervene in local government elections in Queensland, it is also appropriate to put a position with regard to people’s rights to have their say about where these new nuclear reactors go.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can you speak up a bit?

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are entitled to know the locations of the 25 reactors that this government intends to build. The people of the Hunter, and the people of the Queensland coast, for that matter. The senator across the chamber interjects. We are entitled to know what his attitude is on the building of nuclear reactors on coastal Queensland. We are entitled to know what the position is on the Hunter and Jervis Bay and on the Victorian coast. What is the situation in South Australia? Does the government intend to build reactors there? Why shouldn’t people have a say on whether or not such reactors are built in their backyards? If it is the case that the government now thinks it has the constitutional power to intervene in local government elections in Queensland, then it will also have the constitutional power to provide the AEC with the authority to conduct plebiscites on the issue of nuclear reactors right across Australia. That is simply the logic that has been put here today, and I would love to hear what this government has to say on that question.

Ross Lightfoot (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will first start by saying that I do not know what Senator Carr has been reading, but this country could not afford to build 25 nuclear reactors. This country does not need 25 nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors cost billions of dollars each and, multiplied by 25, you could easily see that we do not have that. We do have uranium in this country. We are not, as some people may think, the biggest developer and biggest seller of uranium in the world. Canada holds that position. However Australia does have the biggest reserves of uranium in the world. We export something like 11,000 tonnes of uranium each year now. Canada exports slightly more than that. With the expanding of the UO production, or yellowcake, in Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan will easily become the biggest exporter of uranium in the world, with 18,000 tonnes per annum beginning in 2008.

The point I want to make is this: if Australia does not sell its uranium, with guidelines, to India—the largest democracy in the world—then Kazakhstan will. India is a country with which we have historical ties. It is a country with which we have traded for almost a couple of centuries, if you include our British heritage. Many of India’s citizens live in Australia. India is a country that has shown the world what can happen when a country adopts the democratic process. This government, I know, will not expand its uranium sales unless there is agreement from India to our terms. And it is not just Kazakhstan that will sell uranium to India; there are places in Africa that will sell their uranium to India too. Plutonium is a very special by-product of uranium waste. It is not something that can be taken from used or spent fuel rods and put into a bomb. It takes years, sometimes, to develop enough uranium to make plutonium and enough to make a device that will explode. Also, it takes an immense amount of technology to do it.

If Australia does not use its uranium wisely, someone else will fill the void and Australia will miss out. My home state of Western Australia, for instance, has missed out on tens of billions of dollars over the past 20 years by not developing the known uranium sources in that state, the biggest mining state in the world, the state that has an excellent record for mining. If Australia does not contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases, when we do have the devices here to do it, we will be left wanting. We will have the finger pointed at us saying: ‘You had the means to stop production of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, and you failed to do it. Instead, you have kept on exporting coal.’ There is nothing wrong with exporting coal, particularly if that coal is adapted to the clean coal process.

Other countries in the world that we respect, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Sweden and France—80 per cent of France’s power is nuclear power—are developing and expanding their nuclear power stations and building new stations. China, our biggest trading partner now, is expanding its nuclear power plants across China. Why shouldn’t China expand its nuclear power plants and buy uranium from Australia? China loses up to 10,000 people a year in its coalmines, largely in small coalmines that are owned by individuals in China. This will obviate the necessity for the rush to coal to create energy for the massive industrialisation of China.

If we do not do that, I think that we would have the finger pointed at us. People from various parts of the world will say to us: ‘You have the means to reduce the deaths in China by exporting your uranium there. You have the means to reduce the occurrence of millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases per year and you’ve failed to do it, you’ve failed to take note.’ We should grasp the opportunity and embrace nuclear power, provided—and only provided—that it is a safe issue for us to embrace. (Time expired)

Dana Wortley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Less than three months ago the federal Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources, Ian Macfarlane, said that Australia will not sell uranium to India until India signs the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Today in this chamber we have government senators’ responses to questions telling us that it is not necessary for India to sign the NPT for Australia to sell uranium to it. Minister Macfarlane spoke to the Age newspaper about the sale of uranium to India in May this year. The article said:

“The answer is no,” Mr Macfarlane said. “The Australian uranium industry can prosper without India, that’s my answer.

“We have a prohibition on the basis they have not signed the NPT.”

But it does not end there. The article goes on to say:

Asked about the contradiction with Mr Howard’s comments over uranium sales to India, Mr Macfarlane said he was simply stating the Government’s policy. “There has certainly been no discussion with me, and I’m the guy who signs the export permits, about the potential to supply India,” he said.

We are three months down the track and we have Mr Downer telling us that selling uranium to India without its signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty would make the world safer, because its nuclear plant would be subject to international inspections for the first time. According to today’s Age newspaper, Mr Downer also said that there was no way that uranium could be used for military purposes. But the question really is: what level of safety and what level of assurances would we have about the uranium from Australia going to a country that has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty? India’s chief scientific adviser has his own views about this. In an interview in the Hindu newspaper he is quoted as saying:

Whatever reactors we put under safeguards will be decided at India’s discretion.

He went on to say:

We are not firewalling between the civil and military programs in terms of manpower or personnel. That’s not on.

The foreign minister does not ‘think there is a risk’. But how can we be sure? Is it a risk we really want to take?

The development by the Howard government of a shift in Australia’s policy from no sale of uranium to countries that have not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, a policy that to date has served us well, to the possible sale of uranium to countries outside of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty will not be a decision welcomed by the Australian people. India is a nation that will not rule out nuclear testing and it will not put its name to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Labor believes that selling uranium to a country that will not sign onto the NPT is not only a risk we do not want or need to take but also a move that will undermine the delicate nuclear non-proliferation regime. Labor believes Australia has an obligation to make sure the International Atomic Energy Agency fulfils its role through the non-proliferation treaty. Yesterday, Mr Rudd said:

Nuclear weapons proliferation is not a laughing matter, it’s a serious matter ... And it is a very bad development indeed when we have the possibility of the Government of Australia stepping outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty and saying it’s OK to sell uranium to a country which isn’t a signatory to the NPT. This is a significant breach from the consensus of Australian governments in the past and I believe sends a bad message to the international community.

By committing to uranium sales to India, Australia would also be forced to cross its collective fingers that none of this nuclear material falls into the wrong hands. Pakistan cricketer Imran Khan has said that the Howard government’s decision to sell uranium to India will now spark a new arms race on the subcontinent. He told SBS television that Australia’s decision to export uranium would encourage generals in his country to spend more on weapons to counter India’s access to nuclear fuel.

Nuclear power is not the answer. It is not the answer to Australia’s future energy needs either. It will be at least 2020 before nuclear—(Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

From time immemorial in our country, local councils have had the ability to question and poll their constituents on issues of importance to those local constituents. Nowhere in the democratic world have I ever been aware of a state government demanding by legislation that councils should not conduct a poll, yet this is what is happening in Queensland at the present time. Why there is not outrage in this chamber from all sides, I cannot comprehend. This is the greatest attack on freedom of speech that Australia has ever seen.

Whilst the opposition talk about conducting polls on nuclear power plants—and my colleague Senator Lightfoot has very clearly answered that—there is nothing to stop a council conducting a poll on a nuclear power plant or on anything else, except if you happen to live in Queensland. If you happen to live in Queensland, you cannot conduct a poll on a particular matter. And what is that matter? It is a matter of governance and whether the way you are democratically governed in your particular locality should or should not continue. A Queensland Labor government has determined by legislation that, if any councillor should dare to suggest that their constituents have a say, they will be in breach of an act and will be fined a maximum penalty of 15 penalty units, which is a substantial sum of money. The Queensland act goes on to say that any councillor who should have the temerity to ask his constituents for an opinion will face having to pay personally any costs incurred in doing that.

This sort of antidemocratic, un-Australian legislation is unbelievable in a country like Australia. I am disappointed the Labor Party in this place have not demanded some protection of freedom of speech. The union movement in Queensland—and of course all of my colleagues sitting opposite me are only in this chamber because of the union movement—were initially totally opposed to this because they knew that it would mean a loss of jobs in rural and regional Queensland. Mr Bill Ludwig, from the Australian Workers Union and father of Senator Joe Ludwig, was totally opposed to it. Suddenly, he has gone all quiet and we wonder why. As Senator Johnston said in answer to Senator Carr’s question, it is because the AWU in Queensland have been made part of the Queensland local government system in the transition process. That is why the unions have been bought off.

Australians must not contemplate having another Labor government in this country so that we have wall-to-wall Labor governments—eight Labor state and territory governments and a federal Labor government—because the arrogance of Mr Beattie, the arrogance that the Queensland state Labor government demonstrate, would be palpable and would consume and continue on into a federal Labor government. Mr Beattie demonstrates the arrogance that Labor governments exude. You can imagine if there were a Labor government in Canberra, unaffected and unable to be dealt with by an opposition here, the arrogance that Mr Beattie displays would roll over into a Rudd Labor government. Mr Beattie’s actions demonstrate very clearly to all Australians just how undemocratic Labor governments can be. The outrageous approach of the Queensland Labor government in not allowing Queenslanders to have a say on a matter of governance cannot be left to pass without outrage.

There were opportunities for Queenslanders themselves to demonstrate in the street, but Mr Beattie told the SES workers that if they put up any barricades they too would be sacked. And this is a supposedly democratic government. There is not an upper house in Queensland so its Labor government rules as it wishes. (Time expired)

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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)

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make a contribution to this debate on the Queensland amalgamations because I think it opens a couple of areas—

George Campbell (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I understand that the motion before the chair is to take note of answers to questions today relating to the sale of uranium to India, the nuclear safeguards and the issue of nuclear reactors in this country. There has been no proposition to take note of the proposal about ballots or plebiscites in Queensland. Senator Macdonald got away with it; he took a bit of liberty and we let it go. But I think Senator Boswell is stretching a long bow by seeking to speak on this issue.

Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, on the point of order: I would point out that Senator Carr in particular drew the direct analogy between referenda in Queensland on the issue of local government elections and referenda on the siting of nuclear power reactors. The two have been melded throughout this question time and throughout the debate in taking note. It is perfectly reasonable to give Senator Boswell the opportunity to make his remarks relevant to the general debate about the question of referenda on the siting of nuclear reactors and the relevance of that question to the issue of local government. He has not been given that opportunity yet.

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

On the points of order: Senator Boswell there is really a choice. You can make yourself relevant to the question that is before the chair, which is in respect of nuclear reactors, or I can put that question and then you can move to take note of the other answer. If you go down the other path you run the risk that I will rule that you are out of order. It is up to you.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I was responding to some of the remarks that Senator Carr made in his contribution when he brought forward the amalgamations debate and linked it with the other question. I believe that gives me the right to respond, as Senator Carr has, and I would like to proceed to do so.

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

You have to make your remarks relevant to the question that is before the chair; you just cannot reconstruct the question. Let me put the question first. The question is that the motion moved by Senator Carr be agreed to.

Question agreed to.