Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It is called balance; that is what we are talking about. The quadrilateral dialogue of democracies was clearly abandoned to appease China. This is disturbing. China is of great importance to Australia, but we must not be in the position of tugging the forelock to any country. We must not be in that position. Further concerns have been raised in Japan and India and among South-East Asian countries over the lack of meaningful consultation with Australia over the Prime Minister’s preference to institutionalise and expand the six-party talks that were originally established to discuss North Korea—expand them to include Australia but not India or Indonesia.

The Rudd government’s decision to reverse the former coalition government agreement to supply India with uranium for clean power generation is also a serious snub to India and reduces India’s capacity to combat climate change. Its grubby motivation for reneging on this understanding with India is born purely out of party politics. And that is what they told the Indians—this is just a matter of party politics; this is not about the national interest. Nuclear power generation would be a safe, sustainable and nonpolluting source of energy for India. Clean nuclear power has the potential to meet 35 per cent of all of India’s expanded energy needs by 2050.

Yet what do we do with 40 per cent of the world’s uranium? We put our heads in the sand. It makes absolutely no sense at all to sell uranium to China and Russia and not to India. And 95 per cent of the people on the other side would believe, accept and agree with that. But, no, party politics says otherwise. Indian government officials have said they were angered by the Rudd government’s pathetic hypocrisy on this issue. This issue alone could make Australia a strategically important partner to India, the world’s largest democracy and an emerging regional powerhouse. It is the only thing they really want from us, the major thing. It is a big issue.

To date the Prime Minister has offended or ignored most countries in Asia and has failed to present a coherent policy towards Asia other than for China. Even in China, there are growing and persistent concerns about the way in which they are being discouraged from investing in resource projects in Australia. They are getting all sorts of funny signals coming out of Australia. They are being directly told to withdraw applications while this Australian government thinks about it. It is another watching exercise. But this is a dangerous situation.

The Howard government demonstrated that Australia could simultaneously deepen and broaden all of these relationships. The Rudd government has a regional repair job to do, and has to do it fast. The Prime Minister should start tonight, in his address to the Asia Society annual dinner, and acknowledge the damage his 5½ month snubbing of Japan has done—(Time expired)

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