Wednesday, 2 August, 2006

by Zoe Kenny
Green Left Weekly

In a July 24 speech to the Sydney Institute, federal ALP leader Kim Beazley threw his weight behind the pro-uranium wing in his party, which is itching to scrap the party's "no new mines" policy at next year's Labor Party national conference. The overturning of the policy would roll back one of the last remaining gains of the anti-nuclear movement in Australia, which was strongest in the 1970s and early '80s.

While current Labor Party policy is contradictory — it opposes new uranium mines but allows continued, and expanded, mining at existing sites — it at least stops short of supporting an open slather on uranium mining.

Australia has 40% of the world's low-cost uranium reserves. The current push by big business, the federal government and some ALP state governments to open new mines is held back only by the Labor's national "no new mines" policy, which is binding on ALP state and territory governments. (However, the South Australian Labor government recently jumped the gun on the next ALP national conference by approving the new Honeymoon uranium mine.)

Environmentalists have condemned Beazley's announcement. A July 25 Greenpeace statement, for example, pointed out that, although nuclear power is touted by some as a solution to global climate change, "even if nuclear power output was doubled by 2050 it would still only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5% — less than one-tenth of the reductions needed to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases".

The ALP, said Greenpeace, "should be concentrating on tackling climate change by encouraging Australia's budding renewables industry ... not expanding an outdated nuclear industry which threatens global security and is loaded with unresolvable issues, such dealing with waste".

Beazley's "uranium U-turn" is not surprising. The "no new mines" policy was itself a product of an earlier, more spectacular, Labor backflip regarding uranium mining and the nuclear fuel cycle.

A year after winning the 1983 federal election, Labor's parliamentary caucus forced the dropping of party's principled position of outright opposition to the mining, processing and export of uranium — a policy Labor had held for seven years and which was a major contributing factor to its March 1983 election victory.

The ALP's previous principled position was replaced with the "three-mines" policy, which allowed the continued operation of the Ranger, Nabarlek and Olympic Dam uranium mines. However, it made a concession to the vanti-nuclar movement by claiming that it would eventually end up phasing out uranium mining — as the three mines were depleted and closed down.

Then, following the Coalition parties' electoral victory in 1996. the ALP replaced the "three mines" policy with its current"no-new-mines" policy. This bars a future federal Labor government from revoking the mining licence on any uranium mine approved by the current Coalition government.

The betrayal in 1984 showed clearly that the ALP parliamentary caucus was ready to betray the interests of the movement it had claimed to represent (as well as Labor's own rank and file, who strongly supported the anti-uranium-mining position). It was ready to put the profits of big business ahead of its own ranks and most voters' opposition to Australia's involvement in the world nuclear industry.

Despite Beazley's new sell-out of Australian voters' wishes — a May 2006 Newspoll showed that 66% of Australian voters and 78% of ALP voters oppose any new uranium mines — he is still trying to maintain a "greener" image than PM John Howard.

Beazley reiterated his opposition to nuclear power and the establishment of a uranium-enrichment plant in Australia. However, Howard has been able to exploit the obvious contradiction in Beazley's position. In his July 17 speech to the Committee for Economic Development in Australia, Howard argued that it is "hypocritical" to oppose a nuclear power industry while selling yellowcake to other countries because "it says that while Australia will not use uranium, we are very happy to sell it to other countries and let them deal with the consequences".

Beazley also talked up how a future ALP government would impose a more stringent safeguards regime to ensure that Australian uranium exports do not end up in nuclear weapons. However, a July 25 Greenpeace media release points out that "Australia's uranium exports to date, once irradiated in nuclear power reactors, have produced around 80 tonnes of plutonium, enough for

8000 nuclear weapons...

"While mining and exporting may bring Australia initial financial rewards, safeguards are weak and it is almost impossible to prevent Australian uranium being used to make nuclear weapons. Of the countries that have 'peaceful' nuclear facilities, one third are known to have used them to make covert weapons."

Beazley has maintained that the ALP would not sell uranium to any country that is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, however the pressure on the Australian government to supply India (a non-signatory country) with uranium is sure to increase given that the US has already signed a deal to provide India with nuclear power technology.

ALP environment spokesperson Anthony Albanese is openly opposed to the scrapping of the existing policy and Western Australia Premier Alan Carpenter has confirmed his opposition to any uranium mining in WA. Carpenter was quoted in the July 25 Australian Financial Review as saying that "we do not support uranium mining because we believe it will inevitably lead to Western Australia becoming the dumping ground for the world's nuclear waste".

Now is the time for all those opposed to the deadly nuclear fuel cycle to join forces to build a strong anti-nuclear movement. The victory of the movement against the proposed Jabiluka uranium mine in 2005 shows that we can win. The commemoration of the US atom bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 is the most immediate opportunity to show our opposition to more uranium mining.