Think again, minister, on uranium deal with Emirates
Dave Sweeney
It might surprise many Australians to know that Foreign Minister Bob Carr is moving forward with a deal to sell Australian uranium to the United Arab Emirates – a country with an illiberal government situated in one of the most volatile and insecure regions in the world.
In Abu Dhabi last August, Carr talked up the deal which would see the UAE become Australia's first Middle Eastern uranium market as "underpinning jobs and investment in Australian uranium mines". A Department of Foreign Affairs briefing makes it clear that there is "strong commercial interest in the long term amongst Australian uranium producers in supplying uranium to the UAE".
The commercial interests of uranium producers have been prioritised over the wider national interest before but it is now time to test the claims of Australia's uranium sector. The value of the employment and economic contribution made by the Australian uranium sector is consistently exaggerated while its risks and liabilities are routinely played down. When it comes to jobs and dollars uranium is a small contributor to Australian export revenue and employment, but when it comes to global impact and risk Australian uranium is a major player.
From 2002 to 2011, uranium sales averaged $627 million annually and accounted for only 0.29 per cent of all national export revenue. The industry's contribution to employment in Australia is also underwhelming − even using the highest estimate, it accounts for just 0.015 per cent of the jobs in Australia. While small industrial sectors can play an important economic role, the unique properties and risks of uranium mining relative to its meagre employment and economic benefits means it requires particular scrutiny.
Supporters of the sale deal have equally failed to address other key concerns, including the poor democratic record of the UAE or to voice any criticism about crackdowns on democracy activists making modest calls for political reform in a country where the "Arab Spring" has not yet sprung. The UAE is a collection of seven emirates including Abu Dhabi and Dubai and has one of the least participatory political systems in the world. In the most recent national election in 2006, only 6889 people – less than 1% of the population were entitled to vote, and they were hand-picked by the national rulers.
Last year, over 50 human rights activists in the UAE where rounded up and detained without charge following calls for political reform. Several pro-democracy NGO's including the US-funded National Democratic Institute and the German-funded Konrad Adenauer Foundation were forced out of the country and Amnesty International expressed concerns over torture.
The uranium sale treaty currently before the Federal Parliament's joint standing committee on treaties, states that the agreement "shall remain in force for an initial period of thirty years and upon expiry of this initial period shall be renewed automatically for successive thirty year periods".
The treaty would lock us in to supply uranium to the UAE irrespective of political changes or upheavals in the region. Because of military and commercial deals, including the Qantas-Emirates alliance, the UAE is portrayed as an island of democracy and stability in the Middle East. However the evidence and recent crackdowns on even modest voices of reform suggest a different story.
Australia's plan to sell uranium to UAE is ill-considered. It essentially requires us to turn a blind eye to the UAE's poor democratic form, and strikes a blow to the goal of achieving a nuclear-free Middle East.
Despite the federal government's repeated insistence that the uranium must and will only be used for peaceful purposes, there is clear evidence that international nuclear safeguards are stressed, under-resourced and effectively impossible to police. To simply state that Australian uranium will not be misused in the UAE because it is not in the UAE's interests to misuse it is naïve and lacks credibility.
In the shadow of Fukushima – an ongoing crisis directly fuelled by Australian uranium – nuclear energy's place in the global energy mix is literally under a cloud. The commercial interest of a small, high risk-low return industrial sector should not be confused with Australia's long term national interest. Instead of fast-tracking increasingly irresponsible uranium sales we urgently need a mature and independent assessment of the domestic and international impacts of this contested and contaminating trade.
Dave Sweeney is nuclear-free campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation