Labors Uranium Hypocrisy Knows No Bounds

15/11/11

Labor’s playing of politics on the export of uranium to India has cost four years in possible emissions reduction.

Today’s back-flip announcement by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that Labor will lift the uranium export ban to India, is long overdue.

We welcome Labor finally adopting the Coalition’s policy which saw the ban overturned in 2007.

However Labor’s decision to go back on that policy in 2008 has meant that there are have been four years of wasted opportunities to reduce emissions and generate valuable exports for Australia.

It was only in March this year that Prime Minister Gillard re-stated her opposition to exporting uranium to India:

“On uranium exports to India, we’ve had a long-standing policy of not exporting uranium because we’ve got a long-standing policy - which is not aimed at India — but a long-standing policy of not exporting uranium to countries that are not signatories to the non-proliferation treaty. So, not individually aimed at India, but does have the effect that we don’t export uranium to India.”

(Julia Gillard, Australian Agenda, 20 March 2011)

India requires enormous amounts of energy to lift its population out of poverty and nuclear energy is a key part of that plan, while also limiting the emissions that would be generated from coal fired power.

The Labor Party should explain why it introduced the ban in the first place and explain what increase in emissions occurred as a result.

Labor’s hypocrisy and incompetence knows no bounds.