Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee’s report, incorporating a dissenting report, entitled Report 94—treaties tabled on 14 May 2008.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—Report 94 contains the committee’s findings on two treaty actions tabled on 14 May 2008.

After a careful and extensive sifting of evidence both for and against ratifying the treaty which would open up uranium sales to Russia, the treaties committee recommends that the Australian government not proceed with ratification of the treaty until:

(a)  Russia’s reform process to clearly separate its civilian nuclear and military nuclear facilities is completed and independently verified;

(b)  IAEA inspections are implemented for Russian facilities that will handle Australian obligated nuclear materials;

(c)  the government is satisfied that the Russian Federation is complying with its obligations under the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) noting that this treaty is scheduled for review in 2010;

(d)  the government is satisfied that Russia will not subsequently abandon this treaty or other nuclear treaties;

(e)  further consideration is given to the potential ramifications for this agreement of recent political events affecting Russia;

(f)  further consideration is given to article IX of the agreement, ‘State Secrets’, and the government is confident that this article will not undermine the intent of this agreement;

(g) further consideration is given to the justification for secrecy of ‘material unaccounted for’; and

(h)  the Australian government discusses with the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Canada and Japan, whether the problems of the past in relation to Russian nuclear material being stolen, have now been addressed satisfactorily.

Clearly we have set the bar high, but each of the conditions represents a considered response to the evidence before the committee. Some Liberal Party members of the committee have dissented from the committee majority, arguing that we should ratify the treaty now and that our conditions are unnecessary. They say we can have confidence in the International Atomic Energy Agency. But when we went to war in Iraq, the Liberal Party insisted that we were at risk from weapons of mass destruction and advanced the notion of preventive war. This was a massive vote of no confidence in the IAEA. But now this same Liberal Party says the IAEA will ensure that nothing goes wrong—and this despite the IAEA not having carried out any inspections in Russia since at least 2001, and probably longer.

The Liberal Party is so hungry for the uranium export dollars that they want to believe nothing can go wrong. They are prepared to turn a blind eye to what happens after we sell the uranium to Russia. If this sounds familiar, that is because it is. Remember the AWB scandal? Liberal and National Party ministers received numerous warnings that AWB was paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. They turned a blind eye to them. The present Leader of the National Party, for example, was warned by wheat grower Ray Brooks. His response was that the AWB blokes were good blokes who would not do a thing like that. They were hungry for the wheat export dollars. This hunger blinded them to the need to be thorough, the need to check things out properly. It is the same here. The Liberal Party’s hunger for the uranium export dollars blinds them to the need to be thorough, the need to check things out properly.

I suspect there are those who will seek to portray the committee’s recommendations as the product of left-wing, anti-uranium prejudice. Such a portrayal is without foundation. In the United States, both Republicans and Democrats alike have joined forces and withdrawn an agreement for civilian nuclear cooperation with Russia. It is in many respects a parallel treaty to this one. Are the United States Republicans and Democrats left-wing, anti-uranium zealots? No, they are simply reacting to the facts before them. That is what the treaties committee has done. We are not opposing the export of uranium. What we are saying is that uranium is an unusual product, dangerous to human health and the environment for thousands of years and capable of inflicting massive carnage in the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Accordingly, it requires great care.

So concerned was the Liberal Party about the risk to us all from weapons of mass destruction that they took us into war in Iraq, with its death toll of thousands of innocent lives and its never-ending misery. Yet they are now so unconcerned about the risk of materials being diverted, stolen or ending up in the hands of rogue states like Iran that they are not even prepared to sign up for a set of recommendations which guarantees inspections, which asks hard questions and which challenges secrecy provisions—in short, which accepts our responsibilities. If you sell uranium, there are responsibilities that come with that. The committee majority has accepted these responsibilities. The committee minority has abdicated them. They would take the money and run. We owe the world, and ourselves, better than that.

The committee has also recommended that binding treaty action be taken in relation to the treaty between Australia and the United States of America concerning defence trade cooperation. I thank the House.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Does the member for Wills wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39(c), the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.