Australia raring to join nuclear club
Wednesday, 29 August, 2007
by Steve Lewis
The Herald Sun
Despite concerns Australia will be forced to take back nuclear waste from overseas, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says it "makes very good sense" to be involved in the fledgling Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
With nuclear power shaping as a key election battleground, Mr Downer's enthusiasm to take part in the global process will further expose the Government to Labor's scare campaign.
Labor claims the Government is committed to building up to 25 nuclear reactors and is running a marginal seats campaign in the lead-up to the poll.
In an interview ahead of the APEC summit next week, Mr Downer spoke positively of Australia joining the nuclear group but said the Government would not be "verballed" into accepting other countries' nuclear waste.
The US President, who plans to raise the nuclear issue during his visit to Sydney next week, first raised the prospect of a global partnership in 2004.
"It makes a lot of sense for Australia to be involved," Mr Downer said.
Australia has been invited to attend a GNEP meeting in Vienna on September 16, along with Russia, Japan, China and Britain.
The minister was also hopeful of APEC achieving some breakthrough on a way forward for climate change, although the 21 leaders would not embrace binding targets to cut carbon emissions.
"If we can get a consensus on a commitment to action by all of the 21 economies on climate change . . . that will be an enormous achievement because that has not been achieved before," he said.
"I think we will get some agreement."
APEC may also herald a breakthrough on other critical issues, including agreement from China to embrace more robust energy efficiency standards.
This would involve China -- which will overtake the US as the world's biggest emitter within a year -- adopting more eco-friendly standards for refrigerators, airconditioners and other energy-guzzling appliances.