Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We are debating the motion that the committee sit at a later hour. What I am saying is that with the change being mooted here—the motion that the committee sit later—we should take the opportunity to discuss the Prime Minister’s move overnight to breach international law and to make this world a less-safe place in terms of the future of this country and indeed the whole planet. President Putin has mooted the exchange of nuclear technology with Iran, of all places, and the military junta of Burma. John Howard is feeding uranium into that process. He wants 25 nuclear power stations in Australia. I note that he is not having referenda on those. But, to make some money for some of his mates in the mining industry, he is prepared to put the safety of Australia—and, indeed, this very fraught planet—on the line.

I remind the Senate of Professor Ian Lowe’s calculation that, even with the increased price of uranium, uranium exports from Australia will bring us less income than cheese exports. But the outcome can be much more dangerous—the outcome is that we will be facilitating the building of nuclear weapons in India. We free up their uranium for that. We will be facilitating the increasing arsenal—already standing at 200 nuclear weapons—of China. We free up their uranium for that. We will be facilitating the spread of nuclear technology from Russia. That is what President Putin is committed to doing. So we have this Prime Minister going into an arrangement with an increasingly dangerous suite of nuclear states. What is he going to do next? Will he be exporting uranium to Pakistan? They have requested it. This is a Prime Minister who takes his cue from President Bush every time. President Bush says, ‘I’ll sell $5 billion worth of nuclear technology to India.’ President Bush says, ‘And it’s okay for you, John Howard, to export uranium.’ There you go.