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

On behalf of the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the 122nd report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on treaties tabled on 23 August 2011, 13 and 20 September 2011 and 13 October 2011.

Ordered that the report be printed.

by leave—I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I am pleased to present this report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, report no. 122, which contains the committee's views on a series of treaties tabled in the parliament on 23 August, 13 and 20 September and 13 October 2011. This contains a range of agreements, as I indicated, and one of the more important agreements covered in this report is the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, of which the committee has approved.

This treaty will establish an international framework for criminalising certain conduct relating to nuclear material and other radioactive substances or devices. The convention lists a series of crimes specifically related to nuclear terrorism, including performing an act of terrorism with nuclear materials, planning or threatening such acts or acting in support of such acts. The convention encourages international cooperation to prevent such crimes, which I am sure all members of the Senate would agree come with enormous potential consequences, and encourages further international cooperation to ensure such crimes are investigated and prosecuted and ensure the extradition of persons who commit such crimes. Although Australian legislation largely covers the treaty's requirements, the treaty's provisions will strengthen our already existing legislation.

As all members of this place and indeed all Australians recognise, the issue of international terrorism has had a high profile over the last decade since the tragic terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September, 2001 and following attacks, particularly those in Bali, targeting many Australians. The idea that terrorists could get access to either nuclear weapons or nuclear material is of grave concern to the international community and, of course, to all Australians, hence Australia's strong support for all international efforts to ensure that this outcome does not occur and the welcoming of this treaty as a step to hopefully strengthening our resolve and actions in that regard.

On a related issue, the committee also examined and approved the agreement between the government of Australia and the European Atomic Energy Community, otherwise known as Euratom, for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The treaty governs cooperation on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and is consistent with Australia's other bilateral agreements. It is also Australia's first such agreement to include specific provisions on nuclear safety.

As I indicated, the treaty with Euratom for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy is consistent with our other bilateral agreements. It is part of the very high benchmark that Australia sets—one of the highest in the world—for the export of uranium for peaceful purposes with the countries to which we export. It is a benchmark that one would expect to be applied equally in any agreement that might be struck with India.

I cannot help but note the difficulty the government has got itself into over the export of uranium to India. The Labor Party has long been tied up in knots when it comes to uranium mining and the export of uranium. I well remember the early debates in my home state about whether uranium should be mined, whether Olympic Dam should be established and whether uranium should be mined from a site such as Olympic Dam. I remember that former Premier Mike Rann when he was but a backbencher strongly opposed the establishment of the Olympic Dam mine.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He's the hero of Olympic Dam; it's his mine!

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

Yet at the end of his career he was proclaiming it, as Senator Feeney rightly says, as his mine. It was quite a conversion that Premier Rann underwent during his time in public office. It was a not dissimilar conversion to that which the new South Australian Premier has undergone. He also is someone from the Left of the Labor Party who would always have opposed the export of uranium to India, but he was very quick, as the new Premier, to spruik Olympic Dam and its economic benefits to South Australia.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The power of common sense.

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray Darling Basin) Share this | Link to 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'.

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That sounds like a compliment!

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

Indeed, Senator Feeney would see it as a compliment to the Prime Minister. To a political tactician, as Senator Feeney is, I am sure it would be a compliment. I would like to think that public policy is made in a slightly wiser way. Indeed, on this side we are proud that we have shown a consistent approach to this issue—

David Feeney (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Consistent! How much uranium have you sold to India over the last 10 years?

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

Our policy position since we were in government has been clear: we were happy to embark on this process and to work with the countries in this direction when we could see it was possible to set in place a sensible framework. The sensible framework is one that is very similar to the EURATOM treaty that is being considered here. This will provide a model. I hope that we see further discussion at the international level, as the Treaties Committee has highlighted in other reports, on how we bring countries like India into a nuclear weapons convention framework, on how we actually ensure that we have responsible management of nuclear weapons in these non-NPT states. However, that does not mean that Australia should not provide uranium to a country like India, the world's largest democracy, for peaceful purposes under the same strict conditions that we impose for so many other countries.

This report covers a number of other treaties, including two providing for air services agreements between Australia and the Czech Republic and between Australia and Vietnam, as well as an exchange of notes between the government of the United States of America and the government of Australia concerning space vehicle tracking and communication facilities, which cover the centre located at Tidbinbilla here in the ACT. This agreement is a tangible expression of international cooperation in space exploration. Australia gets practical benefits from this arrangement, including overseas training for our personnel and investment in facilities in Australia. This exchange of notes will continue a productive and successful relationship that has lasted over 50 years. It is with pleasure for all of those, particularly in the ACT, who work in this facility or who have been to this facility that the committee recommends that binding treaty action be taken.

The exploration of space, while led by larger countries such as the United States, is an international endeavour. On occasion it can unite humanity in common purpose and achievement, as happened with the first moon landing. Australia has been very proud to play its role in assisting these endeavours, and such facilities are critical to them. The committee concludes that this and the other treaties covered in report No. 122 should all be supported with binding action. I thank the secretariat very much for their assistance throughout these inquiries. On behalf of the committee, I commend the report to the Senate.

Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add my comments to those of Senator Birmingham, to thank him for his work and, as ever, thank the secretariat and staff of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties for their work. Unfortunately, in this instance, the committee has let us down and missed a very important opportunity to reassess the sale of uranium to countries in Europe where most Australians, I believe, think it is going to safe pairs of hands where nothing can possibly go wrong and where meaningful safeguards are in place. In the wake of the horrific disaster in Japan earlier this year, the tabling of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties report No. 122 this afternoon gives us an opportunity to pause, take breath and look at what actually happens. We do not agree that this treaty should simply be uncritically renewed, as essentially the majority report indicates.

What is happening here demonstrates a fundamental denial of the risk of the uranium trade. It glosses over the steep decline in nuclear capacity in Europe. The industry there has been in decline literally for decades—since the early 1980s—and it perpetuates the delusion that the safeguards regime actually provides meaningful safeguards. It provides political safeguards. The safeguards regime that is spoken of at such length in this report is political safeguards. It allows the Prime Minister to wave her hand and say: 'We have accounted for Australian obligated uranium in nuclear material. Their safeguard system is in place.' I suspect that very few people who get up in this place and talk with such confidence about the safeguards regime have the foggiest idea of what is involved at both an accounting and an enforcement level.

Key European players like Germany and Switzerland are pulling out of the nuclear industry, Austria and other European countries have formed an anti-nuclear block to push for a nuclear-free Europe, and nuclear energy has been in decline in the eurozone for many decades. This treaty says that it is the first agreement to include specific provisions on nuclear safety. So we thought that was interesting and that it was good that the treaties committee had dug into that a bit as the first agreement of its kind to include provisions on nuclear safety. We dug into it to work out exactly what it was invoking, and it turns out that it simply notes the existence of four pre-existing treaties. That is all it does—it invokes four pieces of paper that already existed. As demonstrated by the events at Windscale—now known as Sellafield, because after the fire there they had to change the name of the place—Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and now Fukushima, you cannot do nuclear safety by simply cross-referencing bits of paper. Senior officials have now admitted that Australian obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site—probably in all of the destroyed reactors. That does not seem to have sunk in with this government.

Renegotiating this treaty was an opportunity for Australia to demonstrate that it has learned something from the disaster in Japan, but after the glib and rather dismissive comments of Senator Birmingham just now we will wait and see if anything of sense is put on the record by the government. I find it difficult to imagine how bad a nuclear disaster has to get for Australian policy makers to wake up. Although many people think having a triple or quadruple full-scale meltdown on Japan's Pacific Coast is a worst-case scenario, it is not. These things can get worse, and Japanese authorities are now reporting what they believe may be continuing fission events inside the melted fuel at the base of one or more of the reactors in Japan, which are throwing out certain types of isotopes that occur only when fission is operating. In other words, these reactors, in some uncontrolled form, could start up again because the moderators that keep these plants from blowing themselves all across the landscape have melted along with the fuel and are now lying in a puddle at the base of the reactors, having gone right through the floor.

The Japanese authorities and the IAEA are now starting to report hints that occasional criticality or fission events may still be occurring. We may not yet have seen the worst of a disaster. Authorities there now freely admit they are not sure how they are going to bring those plants under control. How do you do that when you have got in the order of 1,000 tonnes of melted uranium fuel lying in a blazing heap that has gone part way through the floor of the reactor buildings on an earthquake-prone coast? What are they supposed to do, when human beings will never go inside those containment vessels or inside the core of those plants again? What exactly is the proposal? Yet the Australian government, with the full and uncritical support of the opposition, intends through instruments like this treaty to just keep shovelling the stuff out the door.

Now there is the madness of India. If we thought the Japanese run a tight ship, and they do—I would say they probably run one of the safest nuclear industries in the world, yet they have lost control of a complex of six plants—how much do senators in this place know about the Indian civil nuclear industry? Obviously, they know very little; otherwise, the proposal of the Prime Minister on the weekend would have sent up, at least from the opposition, some whimpers of opposition. We are used to Tony Abbott saying no and this would have been one opportunity when it would have been handy—but no, Senator Birmingham has rubber stamped that as well.

Learn a little bit about the history of civil nuclear energy in India before we race down this path of shovelling this material to plants all across the Indian subcontinent, because the long and honourable history of the anti-nuclear movement in India will tell you there are very good reasons why people are staging sit-ins and hunger strikes at the moment at the site of a plant that is under construction by, of all people, the Russian government. There is a reason that people are putting their bodies on the line and it is that they are sick of being showered in radioactive fallout from the normal operating practices of nuclear plants in India. The reason we do not have nuclear plants in Australia is that people do not want them in their backyard. I do not want them in other people's backyards either. It is long past the time that Australia took some responsibility for what happens to these concentrates when we put them on boats, wave them goodbye and count the meagre export revenues that, for some reason, MPs in both the major parties seem to think are so much more than they actually are. Less than a third of one per cent of our export revenue comes from this toxic, destructive and obsolete trade. Yet somehow it has been painted as some sort of economic saviour, even as the mining boom is warping and damaging other parts of our economy. Why do we not take a proper look at the lessons that could be learnt from the horrific suffering in Japan, right across eastern and western Europe in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster and in the various and numerous other parts of the world where near misses have almost depopulated huge areas and huge population centres? So this report on trade to Europe is a mistake. It is a brazen illustration that the government and the opposition are determined not to learn the lessons of the industry. I have to ask: how bad does it have to get? How many areas need to become radiation sacrifice zones? How many Aboriginal elders do you need to hear from about the destructive impact on country, on culture and on water here in Australia? How bad does it need to get? All I am asking before we rubber-stamp this thing and push this treaty through the parliament is that people simply learn the lessons not just of history but of what is going on right around us right now in the countries to which we export this material.

Senator Birmingham was teasing Senator Feeney across the chamber before about Labor's inconsistent position. I say to the coalition: the ALP may be in the process of selling their principles out, but at least they had them to begin with. I wish Labor well for its conference in December because I think there is still a chance to rescue some sanity from the dangerous turn that this debate has taken.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is important to have a look at the steps that Australia has taken to deal with the uranium that we trade with other nations. Yes, it has been pointed out we do not have a nuclear industry as such. In fact, there is only one place where we have anything to do with nuclear products in the context we are talking about today and we have to purchase those materials from other parts of the world as part of the non-proliferation treaty and return those rods. They leave the country. Of course, that place is our research facility at Lucas Heights.

As I have said often in this place, we need to remind ourselves what the consequences would be of not having such a place. We enjoy a wonderful health system in this country, and a fundamental part of that health system is access to radiopharmaceuticals for detecting and ameliorating as much as we can within our technology the effects of cancer. Many lives are saved by its detection and removal. I do not believe that many Australians understand the full context of what we are asked to do by those people who say that we should not mine uranium, we should not use it, we should not store it and we should not be responsible for the material that we send away and return. But that has been the consistent approach of the Greens—very consistent, and at least for that I will commend them.

I will turn to the ex-Premier of South Australia, Mike Rann, and his sudden embrace of the sale of uranium to India. I can recall very well what happened at the last minute, after Australia had spent so much time ensuring we had the very best possible science, after we had looked around our nation together as Australians in a project that invested millions of dollars in finding out the very best place to meet our international obligations relating to waste from the materials used in our health system. That was a very responsible approach, an approach that was not only agreed to by the Commonwealth at the time, under Labor, but also agreed to by all the states and territories. The place chosen was section 52a in South Australia. But Mike Rann at the time, with great hypocrisy, decided that he would then say, 'I agreed to all that, but now I'm changing my mind.'

Sadly, we have now wasted taxpayers' dollars. We could have invested them in other things like hospitals and schools, but instead we had to spend millions of dollars finding another place. That place is now Muckaty, in the Northern Territory. It appears that the waste will be going there. I agree that is a good place to put it—I have no problems with that—but as a Territorian I think we would all have preferred that it had gone to the best place available according to the science. We are always talking in this place about the best scientific evidence. Those are the sorts of things that we could look to.

I commend the committee on their comments on the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for Co-Operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. There are a lot of safety issues in Europe and I commend the sort of work that we are doing as a nation in that area. We have got to be in this game. If we want to ensure safety, we have to be a part of those negotiations. I think there has been reasonable bipartisanship in that aspect. As a Territorian I certainly think it is terrific to see that we are now going to be selling uranium to India—no doubt just for stark political reasons, but I am not necessarily here today to question motives. It is a terrific thing.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern and Remote Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and also congratulate the acting chair, Senator Birmingham, on the role that he played in the committee. I agree that the treaties considered by the committee should be adopted, as recommended by the committee. I also want to make some comments on the treaty relating to uranium and the peaceful use and sale of uranium. It is important that Australia joins the international arrangements in relation to nuclear fuel.

I am delighted to see that the Prime Minister has adopted this position—although I am not sure whether this means the government or the Labor Party have adopted it. I read in the paper that many in the Labor Party are totally opposed, so who knows whether this is government policy or just the Prime Minister's policy or whose policy it is. I see Senator Feeney there, smiling away. Perhaps he knows the Labor Party are going to change their longstanding opposition to uranium sales to India when it comes up at the national conference. But good luck to Senator Cameron and his at least committed colleagues, who will try and maintain the Labor Party on their former path—not a path I agree with, I might say. I am delighted that Ms Gillard has now adopted the coalition's policy in relation to the sale of uranium to India.

What I really want to comment on, as a Queensland senator, naturally enough, is how this treaty might affect my state of Queensland, which, I would say with some parochial enthusiasm, has vast deposits of good quality uranium. But the Queensland Labor Party is all over the shop in relation to uranium. Premier Bligh has just made yet another commitment that she will not be mining or exporting uranium from Queensland no matter what Ms Gillard or the Labor Party national conference says. So, clearly, the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party are at odds with our current Prime Minister, notwithstanding that Ms Bligh has just recently retired as the national chair of the ALP. So it is very difficult for us Queenslanders to understand just what is Australian Labor Party policy when it comes to uranium.

I am more concerned up my way in the north of Queensland with the electorate of Kennedy, where there are a lot of uranium deposits. In the state seat of Mt Isa, Ms Betty Kiernan is the Labor member for that seat. It is an area which contains a lot of the reserves of uranium in our state. Ms Kiernan is very much in favour of uranium mining and uranium exporting, yet she is in a government led by a Premier and by a party that opposes uranium. This is made more interesting because the former minister for mines and energy in Queensland, Mr Tony McGrady, was the former member for the state seat of Mt Isa in the Queensland parliament. As minister for mines and energy, he opposed uranium and went along with Labor Party policy in Queensland. But, now, Mr McGrady is a lobbyist for the uranium industry. So he is actively supporting the mining and export of uranium in Queensland. I welcome Mr McGrady's conversion to the understanding of the clean and peaceful use of uranium. It is a clean fuel. If we are worried about carbon emissions, why wouldn't we be looking at clean uranium energy around the world? I am delighted that the Labor Party seem to be moving towards the selling of uranium to the biggest democracy in the world.

Getting back to the uranium debate in my state of Queensland, which is relevant to this treaty, which the committee has reported upon, it is fascinating that I hear that Mr McGrady, the former state Labor member for Mt Isa and a former mines minister, is now an advocate for uranium and is on the same wavelength, one would think, as Ms Kiernan, the current state Labor member for Mt Isa. But I understand from my friends in the Labor Party that Mr McGrady and Ms Kiernan are sworn enemies, that Mr McGrady is doing everything possible to ensure that Ms Kiernan is not the member for Mt Isa after the next state election. I am not sure whether his enthusiasm to see the sitting Labor member defeated is due to his support for uranium these days or whether it is due to something else. But it does make it rather confusing for those of us in Queensland when trying to understand what the Australian Labor Party's view is on uranium in Queensland. I must ensure there is some time in case any Queensland Labor Party senator might want to participate in the debate and tell the rest of us exactly what Queenslanders can expect from a state government in future should it be that the Labor state government is returned at the next state election. According to all the polls, the chances of that happening are very, very slight—but you never know.

As a voter in the state election, as a Queenslander and as one who is interested in the north of Australia and the wealth that mining has brought to Northern Australia and to North Queensland, I would be interested to know just what the Labor Party policy is in relation to uranium in Queensland. I will watch with great interest and some fascination as to how the party that is the government of Australia, which has a firm and written policy against the sale of uranium to India, treat their Prime Minister and their leader at the national conference, after Ms Gillard, unilaterally I assume, announced that she was going to change sides on the export of uranium to India. So that is interesting and it will be a fascination for all of us in Australia. But as a Queenslander, I am particularly interested in what the Queensland Labor Party policy is in relation to this, what Ms Kiernan's view is and what Mr McGrady's view is. I again congratulate the committee on their work on these treaties. As the acting chairman has recommended, I will certainly be supporting the adoption of this report.

Question agreed to.