Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am continuing my contribution on the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008 here this evening, which Hansard will record I began last evening. Last evening I spoke generally on the royalties regime. I said that the royalties have been set at 18 per cent, that Australia has something like 40 per cent of the world’s uranium deposits, that the use of uranium in power generation saves the world something like 400 million tonnes of CO2 gases per annum and I spoke about the benefit to our economy. I was progressing towards speaking further on the bill. I note that it was such a riveting contribution that the member for Brand has again made sure he is in the chamber to hear my contribution this evening. I have just made a quick appraisal of his contribution because he was the only speaker from the Labor Party on this bill. I notice that, as much as I am sure he has a particular view, he stuck to the party line, saying that he does not want to see it outside the three-mines policy.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn’t say that!

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must not digress, because I only have 15 minutes left.

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Gray interjecting

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Pardon?

Gary Gray (Brand, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Northern Australia) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Digress as much as you like

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I’ll bet you would like me to. As I said last evening, the fact is that Western Australia has an abundance of potential uranium mines because it has an abundance of proven and unproven reserves of uranium. We think that there is an opportunity to do something about that, particularly as the new Barnett government made it very clear that, on election, it would give approval to mining of uranium in Western Australia. As I said last evening, it was interesting that the Carpenter government ran a very strong anti-uranium mining campaign, thinking—I understand from reading the commentary—that it would have a big effect, particularly on the female voting demographic, in the latest Western Australian election. It did not, because the Labor Party lost and the cobbled together coalition, now under Premier Barnett, is in power. So it obviously did not have the effect that Mr Carpenter thought it would.

In fact, the case in Western Australia is such that approval has been given to mine a deposit which is the fifth-largest known deposit in Western Australia. It is called the Mega Uranium deposit and is at Lake Maitland. It is a project in the eastern goldfields, about 100 kilometres south-east of Wiluna, and it is estimated that this deposit is worth somewhere between $1.3 billion and $4.6 billion, depending upon the uranium price at the time. Of course, we have the normal suspects. We have Greens MP Giz Watson saying in the state upper house that she vows to fight the company’s bid. The shadow minister for mines, Jon Ford, has said that Labor remains opposed to uranium mining in Western Australia, although I do note that some of his colleagues in the same house, such as Vince Catania, have a different view, as does the Minister for Resources and Energy in this place, the member for Batman. He finds it quite interesting that many of his colleagues are so opposed to uranium mining when they see the benefits to the world in power generation and that countries that are particularly deficient in energy stocks are obviously moving towards generation through the use of nuclear means.

The Australian Uranium Association has previously identified eight major deposits in Western Australia. I have already listed one of them. Leaving Western Australia unable to mine uranium for some years has been described by the association as ‘economic vandalism’. When making the announcement that he had lifted the ban, Premier Colin Barnett said:

WA prides itself as a world leader in mining, yet an outmoded and philosophical objection to uranium mining was put in place, denying the State a significant economic opportunity.

To put that into context, it is a bit like your state of Queensland, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, saying, ‘We are not going to export coal because it is going to produce all these terrible greenhouse gases in other countries.’ If that were the case, and we had that ‘not in my backyard stuff’, I suspect we would see the pollution in China heavily reduced if it was not burning a lot of Queensland coal. But, no, the other side seem to be absolved from the pollution issue of using coal but still have this left-wing obsession about producing power from what is essentially a clean, non-polluting material source in uranium. We hear all the arguments against it such as: how about Chernobyl? How long ago did Chernobyl happen? Since the effects of Chernobyl and the leak at Long Island, there has barely been a recorded leak anywhere else in the world. In fact, the Chernobyl factory in the USSR, as it then was, could be thought of as an FJ Holden in comparison to the nuclear facilities that are built now, which are absolutely state of the art and highly technologically efficient. I will speak more on that later in any time remaining.

We know that more countries do move to nuclear power because their demands grow. It has been made very clear, for example, that France is building something like its 61st nuclear reactor because it is so energy deficient. France produces about 70 per cent of its power from nuclear means. There are countries all throughout the world using nuclear power. For example, recently I visited a nuclear facility in Argentina. Argentina produced its first nuclear reactor in 1953. That was the year I was born; that is how old the technology is. The Argentineans had to come here just recently, because we are so bereft of this technology, and help to upgrade Lucas Heights. We had to get the Argentineans in because we do not have any local expertise in this area. Argentina is a country that, for lots of different reasons, is reasonably energy deficient as well. They are expanding. While we were there they told us that they were building two further facilities.

I have already mentioned Mega Uranium, and there will be jobs that will come from it. We have heard previous members talking about jobs. In this current climate we need more jobs and, with falling prices in commodities hitting Australia, particularly in a resource-rich state such as Western Australia, extra jobs would not go astray. We have just had 3,400 jobs cuts at BHP Billiton, the majority of them in Western Australia. There were 450 cut at Ravensthorpe and 300 at Mount Keith. This will cost the Western Australian government about $200 million in mining royalties from Ravensthorpe alone. While WA plans to open up its uranium market, creating jobs when they are most needed, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who has decided to put her hand up and go to the people this week, is blinded to the needs of her own state. She is staying in the way of the development of uranium mining in Queensland. So Queensland still has this philosophical ban, which can only harm the economic wellbeing of Queenslanders. Uranium mining creates billions of dollars of export revenue and thousands of jobs. It is estimated that Queensland’s vast reserves of uranium would increase its export revenues by $1.9 billion in the period to 2030—a fair bit of money and obviously something that the Queensland people would want to take on board.

Selling uranium not only meets the energy needs of many developing nations but drastically cuts their carbon emissions. For India, nuclear power can supply 35 per cent of their domestic power. There is a report which says—and we need to put this in context, because it is a very important statistic—Australia produces 1.5 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions. That is not a lot in the whole scheme of things—1.5 per cent. Yet if we were to sell India the uranium they wanted to generate the electricity they need from uranium rather than coal, it would totally offset the carbon emissions that Australia produces. Let me say that again: if we allow India to use our uranium instead of generating power through coal, Australia would totally absolve itself of its 1.5 per cent of emissions by offsetting it with what happens in India. I would have thought that was a pretty sensible proposition, and this can happen in other parts of the world, but for some reason India is on the black list.

The five countries that are allowed the A-bomb, the nuclear bomb, are China, Russia, the US, Britain and France. We say we will not sell to India because they are currently having a fair old blue with Pakistan on their borders, largely out of Kashmir, yet it is okay to sell to those other countries. I can understand us not selling to Pakistan, because Pakistan currently is in a very parlous situation, particularly on its northern border with Afghanistan, and is seemingly quite unstable. Yet India, as it says in this article from the Age on 28 January, ‘has demonstrated a responsible attitude by not spreading its nuclear expertise’. We know that Pakistan actually had some of its scientists helping to advise Iran, so Pakistan was quite irresponsible.

Certainly we would not be trying to sell uranium to North Korea, because of their threats and their jingoistic behaviour to the rest of the world. But there is India, a Commonwealth country, a democracy, and we are saying: ‘India? No, no—you can’t do that.’ Yet what has India done just recently? Only recently, according to the same article from the Age, India did a deal with Kazakhstan, one of its chief competitors in this area, and signed a civil nuclear pact allowing supplies from the uranium-rich Central Asian country to fuel the nuclear plants in India. So Kazakhstan is going to sell its uranium to India, but we are so holier than thou because of the ideological left-wing bent of the Labor Party that we are not going to sell it to them—and who are we harming? Ourselves. We are economically harming ourselves, because exports not only produce jobs but bring foreign earnings. But it would be not only economically responsible but, as I said, environmentally responsible. It is noted by even Tim Flannery, who I will come to in a moment, as a means of reducing greenhouse gases.

The coalition continues to support the previous government’s commitment to selling uranium to India, subject to safeguards being put in place. If you can get a deal and a safeguard arrangement which India say they will enter into, why wouldn’t you do that? I just find it quite unbelievable. In fact, another article I have speaks quite clearly about the confusion surrounding the Labor Party’s position on uranium sales, because it:

… has the potential to damage Australia’s credibility on nuclear diplomacy. If the Government wants to play an active role in improving international nuclear safeguards, it needs to adopt a more consistent approach.

Again, this is a comment from an article written by Daniel Flitton in the Age on 28 January. In other words, its credibility on this issue is being eroded because of its inconsistent approach. So I say to those opposite: we are largely talking about the royalties arrangement for the uranium in the Northern Territory and setting aside a percentage, but we could be doing this all around Australia. As I said, Olympic Dam is one of the biggest resource pits in the world, providing a massive amount of income to this country. There are lots of olympic dams around the country and there are lots of deposits in my state of Western Australia that have not even gone any further than being pegged because of the previous bans, and yet here we are, so out of touch with the power generation of the rest of the world.

The clean coal technology that is being touted by the Rudd government has not happened. In fact, they really have not put any money into it and there is nothing happening on that issue. Australia has a massive amount of gas reserves, but when you put it in context it is only three per cent of the world’s known reserves. It is still a massive amount of gas, and we know that Woodside is looking at its next Pluto train in the Pilbara, but we need to have a number of alternatives—and not just alternative energy sources like solar and wind but baseload power which will come out of facilities such as uranium reactors that will produce electricity to meet Australia’s energy needs.

In the Australian on 5 February 2009, scientist Tim Flannery, the former Australian of the Year, went so far as to say that the government’s approach to selling uranium to India was immoral. He said:

Australia’s moral position of selling them—

India—

coal, which is a bloody poison, but not selling uranium doesn’t make any sense.

       …         …         …

… there’s no doubt coal is a much more damaging prospect for India than uranium.

How about that!

In the last few seconds I have, the issue I want to discuss is uranium storage. Australia is well placed to store spent uranium. We are keeping isotopes in hospital basements, and that is not the way to store spent nuclear material. We need a decent storage regime. (Time expired)

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008 is welcome legislation. It puts a formal and automatic proposal in place for a royalties regime in the Northern Territory, which of course is still a Commonwealth territory in terms of the mining of uranium. In the same breath as doing that, the government are admitting that ‘uranium’ is no longer a dirty word. We survived for all those years with their three mines policy, and the difficulty of changing that in the Senate was just outrageous. Suddenly, this legislation openly admits that the government have changed their policy on uranium mining, and the comments that the member for Canning just made in that regard are very sensible. His was a very pragmatic analysis of the situation.

I will now take the opportunity to look at some of the difficulties that still exist and at how there can be significant abuse of the authorisation and approval of these particular mines. The government speaks primarily about the management of a royalties regime. It has been acknowledged in the offshore oil industry for a long time that it is more sensible to have a profit based tax than an ad valorem tax, whereby it is a tax per tonne. The latter does not let the community share in the good times and it does not protect a lot of mineral deposits in the bad times, when a fixed ad valorem rate per tonne can be very expensive. A profit based tax for the oil industry was decided on, as I recollect, in the early years of the Hawke government, with the approval of the opposition. It is a much more practical approach because it is a form of income tax, with variations. So that is a sensible approach.

We look at the circumstances confronting Australia today and see the very significant retrenchments that are occurring in the mining industry. The Ravensthorpe mine, which was closed completely, is a classic example of that. One would think that there would be better initiatives for employing the sort of people being retrenched in the industry. The member for Canning has made the point that there could be opportunities were uranium mines to open promptly. Of course, some have been discovered, but most have still got a lot of approval processes to get through before those displaced mine workers could have an alternative job. The $42 billion stimulus package will not do that, unless they want to be checkout chicks or have some skills in cottage construction. As we know, many of the miners that are being retrenched are those on the construction side of the industry. They are the first to go when there is a cutback and they need job opportunities that are not catered for in this $42 billion package—although maybe some of them could become fitters of pink batts! The sorts of jobs that would suit these people are not being encouraged.

There was a major campaign during the period of the Howard government to change the tax laws—and tax, of course, is fundamental to this legislation—to encourage exploration, picking up on a Canadian tax arrangement. Dedicated exploration companies frequently declare losses because they are constantly spending money in looking for new mineral development opportunities. As such, they have losses which, under our tax law, accumulate in their books. Of course, these companies are of no benefit until they make profits, which may take a long time, and so that does not make investing in exploration very attractive for the typical investor. The Canadian process is to have what they term a ‘flow-through share’. It is the reverse of franked dividends, where the dividends are franked. Instead, where a company does not have to pay tax, the shareholder does not have to pay tax either. In this case, the company can allocate its losses from a tax perspective to the shareholder, which of course can be very attractive to the shareholder as a style of investment. There are many examples where people have participated in those sorts of tax friendly schemes.

It appears to me that if we want more people out there looking for uranium—now we have suddenly made it a good mineral rather than a bad mineral—then in fact it is time, in this particular environment, to consider tax assistance through the flow-through share principles for the broader mining exploration industry. I take this opportunity with this legislation to argue for that. When it was being promoted to the Howard government, the mining industry was booming; there were plenty of profits to be made in exploration and there was no need to give this concession. In the present economic circumstances, it certainly should be considered and, of course, it would contribute to further exploration in the pursuit of uranium. Uranium is in demand around the world and, again, as companies move away from carbon based sources of energy and on to uranium, you get a very serious increase in demand and the profits associated with that. That is good for the nation because the nation gets royalties, for which this legislation is designed, and a lot of jobs are involved, particularly in the development of these mines, as we have learnt in recent times. So there is every reason for the government to be out there doing everything it can in the wider context to encourage exploration.

My state of Western Australia was, under the previous state government, identified in the international mining industry as the toughest place in the world to do business because there was a total collapse of public policy in the approvals process. To its credit, the newly elected government has given that high priority and is trying to sort it out. But, as we read in the second reading speech and in the explanatory memorandum, the distribution of royalties is reasonably complex, because the Commonwealth will remain the collecting agent. They will provide the full amount collected to the Territory government and then it has an obligation under the Aboriginal Land Act of the Northern Territory, introduced in the years of the Fraser government, to make a pro rata payment to Aboriginal interests.

That is fine, but I have to draw to the attention of the House correspondence I have had with the minister for Indigenous affairs on behalf of Indigenous persons residing in the northern part of my electorate, soon to be inherited by the member for Kalgoorlie, who has just entered the House. In that area the Indigenous people are complaining about the collapse of due process within the land and sea council—in that case, the Yamatji Land and Sea Council. I have further problems of a similar nature but in an entirely different area, which I will not mention, in the southern area of my electorate with the great southern land and sea council. The point I am making to you is that, if we want to get into the business of exporting uranium, if we want people to be out there investing in exploration and employing people in that process and creating assets for people in the future, which may be needed to pay off a couple of hundred billion dollars worth of Commonwealth government debt, we have got to get some smooth transitions, and one of the great hurdles or logjams is within the Aboriginal approvals process. Here is a circumstance where the government is passing legislation to ensure that Aboriginal people associated with a particular area of land where mining development might occur get the equivalent amount of money in a trust fund that applies to the Territory government.

But the evidence is that they cannot make up their minds. The Yamatji council, and other land and sea councils operating within my electorate, meet once every three months—and only if they have enough money left in their budget to travel to some locality for that purpose. You cannot say to people with money willing to invest: ‘Come along to Australia and start investing money, form a company and buy the appropriate equipment; the worst thing that can happen to you is that you find something.’ I say that because it is when you find some minerals that you are in real trouble, because all of a sudden every possible authority in the country descends upon you—the heritage people and the environmental people. The piece of land has been there forever but it is only when someone finds something of value that all these other parties become interested. I guess it was highlighted by the extensive debates we had in this place about Hindmarsh Island in South Australia, where it became blatantly obvious that a group of individuals, not Indigenous, who wanted to prevent the development on that island co-opted a group of Indigenous people to claim all sorts of outrageous, as it turned out, cultural changes relating to the island—amongst others, all the local women were going to cease having babies if it was interfered with in any further way. I might add that people were living all over it at the time, but there was no marina and other things that have been developed since. What I am saying is that in that case it was real estate, but when we get back to uranium mining, which we are trying to simplify in terms of administrative procedures in this bill, all of a sudden activists stir up trouble amongst Aboriginal people, as they have in the past, and all of a sudden the development does not go ahead.

Major mining companies around the world, considering they are involved in Africa and many other countries, are very sensitive to these issues. They do not want to trample on the rights of Aboriginal people. But, when they are being manipulated by other parties for purposes that are unrelated and are often denied the royalties for which this legislation is designed, that is an outrage. The nation loses and people do not get jobs. What has occurred in Western Australia with INPEX is that the traditional landowners have got nothing because the state government at the time was unable to come to a conclusion regarding the provision of a site for an LNG process and they have gone to the Northern Territory. They do not have any Aboriginal problems in the Northern Territory because it is going to be built in Darwin. But these people do not get a cent because other people, partly in the higher echelons of the land council structure, messed it up.

Indigenous people in Geraldton have come to me with that complaint. There could be uranium out there—there have been spot finds in the past—but there is iron ore and all those developments. These people have come along and said, ‘There’s an opportunity for us and our people.’ One bloke, an Aboriginal person with a university degree, said, ‘We want to get out there and start businesses servicing and being employed by these mining companies.’ The Yamatji Land and Sea Council meet occasionally but not very regularly to give approval to these matters, and typically, at the end of the meeting, because some family interest has not been accommodated, they do not come to a conclusion. It just leaves people who are trying to develop our country and make investments in a very difficult period hung out to dry, so they pack up and go. I have other reasons to raise a similar issue. It is nice to have the royalties regime in place, but there will not be a cent paid out if all these processes are so deleterious to the development of whatever the find has been that it will not happen.

The member for Canning made the point about isotopes when it comes to low-level storage of radioactive products. Unfortunately—and, I think, unwisely—with uranium, if you are unfortunate enough to need to be injected with radioactive isotopes for the tracking of certain diseases or infirmities that you might have, when the doctor who administers that injection takes off their rubber gloves and disposes of the syringe, that becomes low-level radioactive waste. It is stored all over the capital cities of Australia because we are still fighting and arguing about where you might put a storage facility in the middle of a desert for our own domestic waste of that nature. When you get to plutonium and things like that, there may be other difficulties, but there is very little of that. You could probably pack that in a 44-gallon drum.

I am making the point that in this industry we need to get rid of the myths, but also, in terms of the fact that Aboriginal people, as provided for in this bill, are going to be one of the major beneficiaries, it is about time that their decision-making bodies became effective and efficient. Furthermore, and in the broader context, I have argued all my life that if—to give my analogy—you were to go to the hotel tonight, get drunk, get back in your car and drive it, you would have committed an offence and the police would deal with you accordingly, but you do not ring up and ask the police, ‘Can I go to the hotel?’ Why is it that, in so many areas of development, we have all these preliminary requirements and hurdles that people have to jump over for years? Usually they cannot even do them all at once; they have to go and get an approval from the heritage people, then they have to go and do an archaeology study and then, when that turns up a couple of little chips of rock that might have been the point of a spear, that is a major matter of concern. They talk about middens. Middens are waste dumps. We do not give a special cultural heritage value to the ones we create—landfill.

The whole point about it is: why do you have to go through all these things—heritage and environment—before you can mine? Why doesn’t the law as it is written apply so that you commence your development and comply with the law and, just as when we visit a hotel or any of the other examples I could give, you only get into trouble when you break the law? Furthermore, you should get judged by a person competent in the law, whereas all these preliminary processes are usually judged by public servants with no legal training whatsoever and often a high degree of bias as to what they believe is right. I happen to live on the Swan River, and I am just trying to build a new house. In the process of getting that approval, which only took a year, I was asked what colour I was going to paint it. I felt like saying ‘purple with pink spots’. When you have public servants interfering to that point in development, I do not think it is in the public interest.

The Aboriginal people are entitled to their royalties, but we have to make sure that they are not the reason that they never get them. I think that is a very important part to be considered in this legislation, but I welcome the fact that the government and of course the government of Western Australia have now approved of uranium mining. (Time expired)

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak today on the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008. The purpose of this bill is to apply a uniform royalty to all new uranium projects in the Northern Territory. In terms of royalties, this bill will make the development of uranium resources consistent with that of other minerals in the Northern Territory. The bill applies to prescribed substances under the Atomic Energy Act 1953, which, in addition to uranium, specifies thorium or ‘an element having an atomic number greater than 92 or any other substance declared by the regulations to be capable of being used for the production of atomic energy or for research’. Thorium has the atomic number of 90 and uranium the atomic number of 92. The elements thereafter in the periodic table are referred to as transuranic and are generally man made—for example, curium and plutonium—and are unlikely to be found naturally, except rarely in tiny quantities. Therefore the practical application of this bill, as the title implies, is for uranium, which occurs naturally in the Northern Territory in highly valuable concentrations, as it does in my home state of Western Australia and, more specifically, in the vast area of the new electorate of Durack.

In 1978 the Northern Territory was granted self-government by the Commonwealth, but the Commonwealth retained ownership of uranium and other prescribed substances as defined in the Atomic Energy Act 1953. Uranium had already been mined in the Territory before that date. The first mine was set up at Rum Jungle in the 1950s by the Commonwealth and there were several after that, developed by various interests. The Northern Territory has one currently operating uranium mine, the Ranger uranium mine in the Alligator River region, enclosed by but separate from Kakadu National Park. Ranger has been operating since 1980, and indications are that it will be operating for many years yet.

Uranium royalties in the Northern Territory to date have been determined on a project-by-project basis. Royalty arrangements have been determined individually for each mine, taking into account a range of considerations, including the state of the market, any existing negotiated non-statutory payments to Indigenous communities, loss or damage likely to be suffered by Indigenous communities affected by the proposal and royalty rates determined for other mines. It is significant that this legislation does not pertain to Ranger, which has an existing and longstanding royalty arrangement in place. However, all new mines in the Territory will fall under this legislation in the future.

The Northern Territory has extensive uranium resources, from the Red Centre right up to the Top End. A range of explorers are currently active, and there is considerable potential for a number of uranium mines to develop in the coming years. In 2005 my colleague the Hon. Ian Macfarlane, as Minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources with the Howard government, sought to make some improvements to assist development of the Australian uranium industry. He instituted the formation of a steering committee to develop the Australian Uranium Industry Framework. The steering group was guided by the vision of:

A sustainable, safe, secure, socially and environmentally responsible uranium industry, making a growing contribution to Australia and the world’s energy supply well into the 21st century and assisting in reduced global greenhouse gas emissions.

To this end, the group reviewed the exploration, mining, milling and transportation of Australian uranium to support the sustainable development of our uranium industry.

In 2006 the Uranium Industry Framework Steering Group presented its report, containing some 20 recommendations for the sustainable development of our uranium industry. This piece of legislation that we are discussing this evening, the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008, is concomitant with recommendation 13 of the Uranium Industry Framework Steering Group. Specifically, the recommendation stated:

The Australian Government should establish, in consultation with stakeholders, a royalty framework for the uranium industry in the Northern Territory.

The Uranium Industry Framework Steering Group included representatives from government and Indigenous groups, but the majority were from uranium industry or industry groups. As a result, more than 150 industry and government experts contributed to the development of the Uranium Industry Framework. Therefore, it is to be expected that the industry welcomes this legislation, which is directly based on the strong level of industry consultation initiated by the Howard government.

Going back a decade or two, uranium was made into something of a mining pariah by Labor with the introduction of the now infamous three-mines policy. Companies in the Northern Territory can now have the same expectations and certainty about developing uranium interests as they do for other metals. Companies will pay the same 18 per cent profit based royalty on uranium as they do on other minerals under the Northern Territory’s Mineral Royalty Act. For uranium companies, this is a particularly useful simplification of matters when there is a multimineral or polymetallic resource and uranium occurs with the other mineral resources. Industry is also strongly supportive of this legislation because it pursues the profit based model of royalty payments rather than an ad valorem approach. Companies will pay royalties based on profit rather than revenue, which is a strong incentive for the industry, encouraging investment and development. Companies feel this will help ensure maximum longevity of mines, which in turn means longer term benefits for communities with regard to jobs and the economic and social contributions that come with mining developments.

Whilst it is admirable that Minister Ferguson has introduced this legislation, continuing the excellent work put in by my colleague the member for Groom and the Howard government, I cannot help but note Labor’s confused and ever-changing stance towards the development of Australia’s uranium industry. It is also admirable that the Minister for Resources and Energy and his federal colleagues managed to get past the irrational Labor prejudice that prompted the three-mines policy and then the ‘no new mine’ policy. However, this is still a government that says one thing and does another. This Rudd Labor government says it supports the development of new markets and wants Australia to be the world’s biggest uranium exporter, but I question Labor’s overall commitment because, with all this new-found enthusiasm for uranium, only one Labor member could be bothered to speak on this bill apart from the Minister for Resources and Energy. That member spent some time explaining why he thought uranium mining led the way to the world’s best practice in environmental standards, which I do not for a minute question, but elsewhere in his speech he made the comments that his party had a long history of supporting the development of a uranium mining industry in Australia but had from time to time taken positions opposed to uranium mining. Of course, as these positions against uranium mining occurred when Labor was in power, they were quite detrimental to the development of the industry, as my colleagues before me have pointed out.

Parliamentary Secretary Gray, obviously a keen exponent of the industry himself, is in the unenviable position of being in a party which has supported uranium mining in the past, then decided it was undesirable and set a limit of three mines for the whole country, then said there should be no new mines and now, whilst apparently endorsing the industry on a national level, could only find two members to speak in support of this legislation and has allowed state Labor governments in two states with rich uranium resources to enforce and go to election on uranium mining bans.

I take this opportunity to bring to the House’s attention a particularly blatant example of Labor’s confused and contradictory attitude on uranium and the nuclear power industry. Labor has recently and quietly appointed a well-known antinuclear campaigner, no less than Professor Ian Lowe, the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation, to represent the interests of the general public on an advisory council to ARPANSA, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. ARPANSA is a federal agency that is charged with responsibility for protecting the health and safety of people and the environment from the harmful effects of ionising radiation, such as X-rays, and non-ionising radiation, such as solar UV radiation. It is not just about nuclear; it is about the sun, and the effects of ionising and non-ionising radiation. ARPANSA is part of the Department of Health and Ageing and falls in the portfolio of the parliamentary secretary and proud anti-uranium mining campaigner, Queensland senator the Hon. Jan McLucas. It makes me wonder if she is also a proud campaigner against jobs for Australians.

A public poll conducted by Essential Research in January this year shows that 43 per cent of Australians totally support Australia developing nuclear power plants for the generation of electricity—that is more than the 35 per cent who oppose it. I will give those figures again: Essential Research, a reputable company, in January this year did a survey the results of which showed that 43 per cent of Australians supported nuclear power and 35 per cent opposed uranium power. That is what the general public thinks.

Professor Lowe was elected president of the Australian Conservation Foundation in 2004. The Australian Conservation Foundation states on its website:

Mining uranium in Australia poses serious, continuing and unresolved problems and fails to meet key environmental sustainability criteria.

It does not say that you have to keep your head in the ground because you will glow in the dark if you mention the word, but it is in the same vein. This same organisation is currently recruiting, as part of an alliance, someone to do the job of WA uranium-free campaigner. It is an absolute disgrace. I rest my case. How can Professor Lowe represent the interests of the general public? His responsibility is to advise the CEO of ARPANSA how to move. How can Labor think that he does? Yet he will serve in this role representing the public for the next two years. Once again Labor says one thing and does another.

Minister Ferguson is well aware of the potential of Australia’s uranium resources. This legislation supports the development of those resources, and it was the very first point he made in his second reading speech on 3 December last year:

Australia has over one-third of the world’s medium-cost reserves of uranium, which have the potential to make a major contribution to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. As the world is moving to a low-carbon future, the uranium industry in Australia is forecast to grow rapidly and could add an additional $14 billion to $17 billion to Australia’s GDP over the period to 2030.

I could not agree more about the potential of our uranium resources. But if the minister is serious about making a major contribution to reducing global emissions then he could hardly do better than to assist one of the largest developing economies in the world, that is India, reduce its emissions and increasing emissions into the future. As I said before, this is a government which says it wants Australia to be the world’s biggest uranium exporter, supports the development of new uranium markets and wants to encourage further resources and energy investment between Australia and India. Selling uranium to India ticks all these boxes. It is mutually beneficial for Australia and India, and the mutual benefits are considerable. This is a government which has made any number of positive comments about our relationship with India and its desire to strengthen economic and trade ties. But the government says it will not sell India uranium even though the Howard government made the decision to, believing the appropriate safeguards were in place. And the Rudd government agrees that the safeguards are in place for the US to do so.

This is an absurd and irrational position for the government to take, even more so when you consider the greenhouse emissions which could be reduced. We all know how frequently and in what glowing terms the Rudd government has spoken about reducing carbon emissions. Selling uranium to India would give the Rudd government the chance to make a significant international contribution to carbon emissions reduction. In 2005 the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre in the US, which advises the Department of Energy, compiled a ranking of per capita fossil fuel carbon dioxide emission rates. This is carbon emissions from fossil fuels per person per year. In 2005, sadly the last and best figures we have, Australia was 10th in the world with nearly five tonnes of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emitted per person per year. We are a developed country and we are at the level of five tonnes per person per year. We have a developed economy, as I said.

India is not a developed economy. In fact, you would be drawing a very long bow if you suggested that India was anywhere near being a developed economy. Many subsistence farmers across the rural areas of India use cow dung as a fuel. They are not connected to electricity. They have no access to electricity at all. However, India is developing rapidly. The critical figure that I have not given to the House at this point is that per capita per annum CO2 production in India is about one-third of one tonne. The point I make and bring to the attention of the House, and members will find it alarming I am sure, is that as India moves to become a developed country the per person usage of electricity will go up exponentially. If all those houses and all those lives were hooked up to electricity made with fossil fuel, how on earth would we be able to do anything serious to reduce global greenhouse gases? The use of uranium rather than coal fired power would make a difference to the level of carbon emitted by India as it grows.

The Northern Territory has important uranium resources and this legislation will assist the Australian uranium industry to develop. Selling that same uranium to India is another way for the industry to develop. This legislation is a step in the right direction for the Rudd Labor government and I strongly urge the government to continue on this path—embrace and encourage uranium mining across the country and take every means necessary to foster an industry which has so much potential for our country both in the current economic climate and in the future. As members of this House, it is our job to do the right thing, and that is not necessarily the most popular thing for the Australian public. We are charged with the future of this country and right now we know that there are more Australians out there who are prepared to embrace a future that involves the mining and, possibly, the generation of electricity using Australia’s uranium. We therefore do not need to throw these red herrings into very reasonable advisory committees who are hell-bent on destroying any potential nuclear industry in Australia. We need to be concerned with income, jobs and the balance of trade. It is our responsibility. We need to look at the issues I have raised here and pass this legislation, and let uranium miners get on with the job.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to rise and speak on the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008, which of course is a bill that responds to the concerns of the Uranium Industry Framework members. It addresses commercial concerns of uranium project proponents in the Northern Territory. It establishes a uniform royalty regime of 18 per cent for uranium projects in the Northern Territory, thereby delivering costing certainty to commercial operators in the planning stage. The proposed 18 per cent royalty would make uranium consistent with other mineral developments in the Northern Territory. It will provide for the Northern Territory government, via the Northern Territory Treasury, to collect the royalty on behalf of the Commonwealth, and provide for the Northern Territory judicial system to be used if prosecution or dispute resolution is required.

The opposition supports this bill. We are strong supporters of Australia’s uranium mining industry. As a member from South Australia, I am a very strong supporter of our uranium industry. In South Australia, we have by far the largest known uranium resources in Australia. At this time, more than three-quarters of the known and inferred resources are found in my state. Those resources have great economic potential for the future of my state going forward. Other significant resources of uranium in Australia of course are found in the Northern Territory and in recent times exploration has begun in Western Australia with the ridiculous ban being lifted, and also in Queensland, where of course the ban still exists. I will come back to that.

Australia has 1.1 million tonnes of known uranium—reasonably assured resources of uranium. To put that in context, Australia has a greater share of the world’s uranium resources than Saudi Arabia’s share of global oil resources. So when Mike Rann, the Premier of South Australia, talks about Adelaide becoming the new Dubai, he might not necessarily be wrong. However, of course, many things that Mike Rann says do in the end become wrong.

We are very supportive of this bill. We understand in this time of economic turmoil that for the mining and resource sector this framework is an important way to provide certainty. Certainly for the uranium industry, it is quality in a very short measure from this government, unfortunately, in particular from certain segments of the Labor Party. However, it should be noted that the minister in this respect is a supporter of this industry and has been working away, as I understand it, within his own ranks to convince some of his colleagues that uranium is not the beast it has been made out to be in the past by the Labor Party.

I want to reflect on the value of uranium to Australia and to the world in respect of one of the great challenges facing our country: climate change. At the moment, we are in the middle of a long and difficult debate on Australia’s response to climate change. We have seen the government’s attempts at responding to this by their announcement in the green paper and the white paper of an emissions trading scheme. It is alleged that carbon dioxide pollution is a cause of climate change. The government’s policy in this respect has been to find ways to reduce the amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere, particularly in energy-producing sectors. In that respect, the previous Howard government made many efforts to encourage both domestic and international sectors to find new ways of using different types of energy. For instance, I understand the largest solar panel powered station in the Southern Hemisphere was being built just south of Mildura. We are also part of the framework which addressed the deforestation in Indonesia.

One of the other ways to address the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere is to use nuclear power. Australia does not at this stage need to have nuclear power. Other countries have quite substantial nuclear power industries. France is a notable one among those. The other one is India. India has a large and growing economy. As the previous speaker, the member for Kalgoorlie, mentioned, it has an economy that is developing very quickly, putting more pressure on their energy needs and desires. In that respect we are a little aghast—shocked, I guess—at the Rudd government’s approach to selling uranium to India, because uranium is an important fuel for developing nuclear energy.

It does come as some surprise that this comes from a government that constantly berates us on this side of the House about our alleged opposition to policies on climate change. They sit on their pedestal and accuse us of being sceptics or whatever other language they want to use today; at the same time they refuse to sell uranium to India, which would enormously reduce the amount of carbon that goes into the atmosphere. We know we cannot solve climate change in Australia alone. We can do what we can in Australia. We can move to more energy-efficient buildings. We can increase the use of solar panels. We can move our industry to a more carbon friendly situation. We can look at issues like emissions trading schemes and so forth. However, we have less than one per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, so we cannot solve the problem of climate change alone.

But a country like India, which is developing very quickly and is very, very large, contributes an enormous amount to the problem of carbon emissions. So it makes very little sense for this government to refuse to sell uranium to India. It refuses on the basis that India refuses to distinguish between sales for the civilian use of uranium—that is, in nuclear energy power plants—and sales of uranium for use in military weapons. This is because India is not a party to the NPT—the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. It has its own domestic reasons for that. However, the United States of America has seen fit to find a way to make sure that they can sell uranium to India for civilian purposes, with an investigation regime to make sure that it is not being misused or used for military purposes. This is something which I am sure the Indians—being very good friends of Australia—would undertake with us.

So it makes no sense at all, in my view, to let an issue like the NPT stand in the way of giving India the uranium it needs to develop an industry which will reduce the amount of carbon being leached into the atmosphere. It seems to be an ideological bent of some on the other side that it has had to do so. We know that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts came into public life as a great opponent of nuclear power and uranium mining in this country. Unfortunately, it seems that he is well listened to when it comes to these matters. The basis of the argument is that India would not use uranium for the right purposes. That has got to be the basis of the argument. So it is okay to sell uranium to China. And I am all for that; that is very good for my state, South Australia. It is very good for the economy and it creates jobs. However, to argue that, on the other hand, you cannot sell it to India because they have refused to sign the NPT—when the Americans have already said that is okay—does not make much sense.

So let us look at some facts. The Rudd government is happy to preside over $2.5 billion a year in exports of carbon-polluting coal to India, but it will not sell it uranium. Within seven years, India will become the world’s third largest carbon emitter. Already Australian exports of uranium contribute to a saving of nearly two billion tonnes of carbon emissions by the world’s nuclear industry. They are the countries that we have deemed that it is reasonable to sell to—China, but not India. It is estimated that our potential reserves could save the planet 11 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2030 alone—significant savings of the gas which is alleged to be causing this climate change. India’s objective by 2050 is to have 35 per cent of its power nuclear generated. But we refuse to help them. We would rather see India continue to contribute to climate change by burning fossil fuels. It is a policy driven by ideological purity; it is not driven by the real need to address climate change. What we see all too often from this government is a political approach to this issue. We have seen it in recent days with the emissions trading scheme. We had an inquiry one day and, the next day, we did not and the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Economics was hung out to dry.

This is all about the Prime Minister having to placate the left wing of his party on this issue. Many in the left wing of the Labor Party came into politics, became interested in politics, in the early eighties, opposing uranium mining. In previous generations it was Vietnam; in the early eighties that group came in for being opposed to uranium mining. What we have seen in this approach to sales to India is purely ideologically driven. It is detrimental to our country, it is detrimental to our climate and it is very detrimental to my state of South Australia—as I said earlier, we have about three-quarters of the known and inferred resources. In particular, there is the great mine site of Olympic Dam in the north of South Australia, which is one of the state’s greats. I was fortunate enough, in a previous incarnation, to visit my colleague’s seat of Grey with my then boss. It is a fantastic site. It employs many good South Australians. Roxby Downs is a great town. Many good people live in Roxby Downs. In fact, a very good AFL footballer, Luke Darcy, comes from Roxby Downs. But I digress. My point is that Olympic Dam is a great asset for South Australia. It creates many jobs, it is great for our economy and of course the Premier of our state loves to brag about Olympic Dam.

While I am talking about the Premier of South Australia, I must mention that he is a good example of the kind of Labor Party member that I was talking about earlier. In 1982, when he was an adviser to the then Premier, John Bannon, Mr Rann spent some time writing a book about the dangers of uranium. So we see that Mr Rann, the greatest salesman of uranium, only 20 years ago was writing a book about its dangers. That sort of sums up the ideological challenge within the Labor Party with people like the minister for the environment—people who spent most of their lives opposed to uranium mining but have been able to win the way, unfortunately, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Prime Minister in this respect. I think it is to the great shame of the government that they have taken this decision.

We have a very good relationship with India—whether it be trade, whether it be cricket or whether it be through opportunities for further economic development. Of course, India and China are the two great developing nations of the world. They are facing difficulties at the moment, like all countries are, with the economic conditions; however, they are developing very rapidly. Their middle classes are developing very rapidly, which means they need more generation of power as they grow. We should be helping in that respect, as we help China by selling them uranium for their nuclear power plants. We should do so with India as well, because the figures on the savings are quite significant. I am very disappointed with the approach of the government in relation to the uranium industry, in particular in relation to the sale of uranium to India.

The other aspect I am very disappointed about with the government is that we hear from the great number of Queenslanders on the other side who run the government and who are influential in this place—the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and others who have taken over from the New South Wales Right, although they seem to be exerting their influence again in recent times—but the only state now remaining which refuses to mine uranium is Queensland. Queensland is now in the middle of an election campaign, and hopefully after 22 March—I think that is the date of the election—we might have a new government that will lift that ban.

We have seen this week the Queensland government lose its AAA credit rating, and it is now $1.6 billion in deficit. It is going to drag on Australia’s economic performance, and of course it is another big debt. But we have seen the ideological approach from the Premier of Queensland on this issue. We know that there is much uranium in Queensland and, if mining were permitted, it would add $1.5 billion to the gross state product, it would generate an additional $204 million in state revenue, it would increase export values from Queensland by $1.9 billion and it would increase Australia’s GDP by $950 million. Can you imagine the number of jobs that would support? That is the new language, of course. We hear about job creation ‘supporting jobs’ these days. It would increase Australia’s consumption by $910 million and it would help avoid 900 million tonnes of CO2 emissions—the equivalent of Queensland being carbon-free for more than five years. If only they would lift the ideological ban on uranium mining.

Nationally, over the period to 2030, permitting uranium mining in South Australia, the Northern Territory, Western Australia and Queensland will increase GDP by $14 billion, increase consumption by $12 billion, and help avoid 15 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions—the equivalent of Australia being carbon-free for 20 years. Those are quite extraordinary figures, I am sure you would agree, Madam Deputy Speaker. So it is a great pity that the Queensland government retains this ban. Fortunately, late last year we saw the WA government’s ban overturned, with the election of a Liberal Premier, with the support of the National Party—and a fine premier Premier Carpenter is turning out to be, as well.

Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Premier Barnett.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Premier Barnett—sorry. He has overturned that ban and we have seen the WA uranium industry already take steps forward.

Finally, I wanted to reflect on another indication of Labor’s lack of commitment to the uranium industry and nuclear power. It comes on the back of the member for Kalgoorlie having raised it. I understand the member for Kalgoorlie raised the fact that the Rudd government has recently appointed Professor Ian Lowe to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. You might say that it is not a surprising thing to occur; however, you have to look at Mr Lowe’s views on uranium. They are quite extraordinary. He is completely opposed to uranium mining, and you would think that to have someone of that ilk on ARPANSA is a sure sign of the ideological deals that have to be done by—

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In relation to Professor Lowe, he was reappointed as president by the previous government, in October 2005.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not a point of order. The member has the call and is in order.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your protection. I appreciate that. It is interesting that the minister got up with a point of order when only two people from that side of the House want to speak on this bill. Generally we have quite a long speakers list.

Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mrs Elliot interjecting

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think that is right, Minister; I think you need to be a touch careful. I know you are in trouble in your portfolio. I have got aged-care homes knocking at the door saying, ‘She’s coming’ and then, ‘She’s not coming’—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member has the call and will speak to the bill.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I apologise for being diverted by interjections. It is tempting to raise concerns with ministers who are, I understand, under a bit of pressure at the moment. I do apologise for being diverted.

In summary, we on this side of the House are very supportive of the uranium industry in Australia, particularly in South Australia. It will add to our economy and provide many jobs. At a time when we need to be looking at ways to create jobs, we are all for the development of the uranium industry. I grieve the Labor Party’s approach to this. I know they have ideological problems on this issue. I hope they are able to resolve them so that we can move this industry forward.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008. I have great hopes that it will increase the prospectivity of the Northern Territory at least in the uranium mining industry. There have been a number of obstacles to the uranium industry in Australia over a long time. These obstacles have been discussed by my colleagues, and I will cover some of them as well. The Northern Territory has only one operational uranium mine, and that is the Ranger mine. The reason it has no more, of course, is that the development of that industry has been impeded by both state and federal Labor Australia-wide.

I do have some reservations about the rate proposed to be charged as a mining royalty. I understand that it brings the uranium industry into line with the rest of the mining industry in the Northern Territory, but a royalty of 18 per cent of net profit seems fairly aggressive to me insofar as the Olympic Dam mine is running at 3½ per cent on production and the Ranger mine contributes 5½ per cent of net profit. While I cannot accurately predict what those sums will be—because profit is one of those very difficult things to analyse from a distance—it is a concern to me that the proposed royalty is as high as 18 per cent. But we will take it as progress, and we are sending a signal to the mining industry that they will have some certainty in this issue and will be able to negotiate with the traditional owners and government knowing exactly where they are heading.

The reason for such a confused approach to the uranium industry and the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia lies squarely at the feet of the Labor Party. The ALP’s approach has been convoluted, inconsistent and totally incomprehensible to many of us—and that is really saying something. The three-mines policy has now, thankfully, been abandoned federally, and I see that as a step forward. It has been abandoned nationally and by the South Australian government and now, we presume, by the Northern Territory government. Of course, it has not been abandoned by Labor Australia-wide. The Queensland government is still opposed to it and, I believe, the Western Australian Labor Party is still opposed—and many of the Australian assets in the uranium industry lie in Queensland and Western Australia. But Labor has abandoned the three-mines policy, at least in a national sense.

The problem we have is the Labor Party’s two-sided approach to the uranium industry. On the one hand they are in favour of mining uranium, but the government of Australia cannot even find enough gumption to sign off on a low-level repository in Australia for medical waste, for instance—and I will come back to that in a little while. On the one hand, they are in favour of mining but, on the other hand, they are totally opposed to nuclear power generation. They are very much like the three brass monkeys sitting on the cupboard. They see no evil, they hear no evil and they speak no evil: ‘We shall not discuss nuclear generation’. My colleague the member for Mayo has just highlighted to this House the opportunities to combat world carbon emissions. Surely, we must at least talk about and consider the one established technology that is capable of delivering real changes to our carbon emissions in the world. The ALP talk of their commitment to reducing carbon emissions, but they are not even willing to debate the technology. Once again, to use a simile, it is very much like trying to get the trucks off our roads but not being allowed to talk about the option of rail. So there is a lack of common sense in their policy stance.

Instead, the government and the Labor Party seem to be fairly convinced that one policy, the ETS, will fix the problem of carbon emissions in Australia. At the same time, they have been spraying money around the economy. Looking back at the $10 billion cash splash just before Christmas, what could we have built with that money in Australia to do something really concrete about reducing carbon emissions? Perhaps we could have considered a nuclear power plant—but that is not the only place we can go. And I am quite happy to state my stance on nuclear power generation to this House. While I have no problems with the technology of nuclear power generation, and would welcome it in Australia, I remain to be convinced that it is the most economic option for us. But we cannot make that decision if we refuse to discuss the option, and that is where the Labor Party is at the moment on this issue. Typically, the government is displaying inconsistency.

In another inconsistency, the government refuses to export uranium to India. As outlined by my friend the member for Mayo, India is a friend and a democracy and will possibly soon be the second biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. We will not sell uranium to India but we are happy to sell it to nuclear-armed totalitarian regimes. You would have to wonder where we are sitting in this debate.

I have touched on the establishment of a low-level waste repository. This comes back to a local issue. The last proposal in South Australia was that a national low-level nuclear waste repository be built in the Woomera region in the electorate of Grey. Before the last state election in South Australia, Premier Mike Rann ran an appalling scaremongering campaign based on a low-level nuclear waste repository in Australia. It was a cheap, short-sighted stance for political gain. It resulted in a High Court decision banning any future development of a low-level repository in South Australia.

At the time, the Premier said that this waste would damage our clean, green image in South Australia—that this incredibly dangerous waste was too dangerous to be shifted to Woomera, one of the most geologically and politically stable parts of the world, recommended by an independent panel of scientists. It was too dangerous to be shifted there but it still lies in hospital basements around Australia. There is no solution. It is an absolute disgrace that the South Australian government took the stand of opposing the establishment of that repository. In its defence I would say that the current national government, the Labor government, was not opposed to that particular solution—but it was another arm of the Labor Party that did bar it and so now we are looking at a Northern Territory solution.

The same man, Mike Rann, during the Bannon Labor years described Roxby Downs as a mirage in the desert—saying it would never happen; it would never be established. Now, of course, he is a champion of the uranium mining industry. If you had listened to Premier Rann, you would think that he in fact discovered Roxby Downs and was instrumental in its establishment. No wonder the Australian people have no idea what the ALP think about anything to do with uranium. I think the problem the ALP has with uranium is that they have groups within their midst that they have encouraged, for reasons of strength and to enlist people to their cause, who have ideological issues and use inappropriate tools to try and harm others who they see as their political foes. In the end there is a great danger in this: if you encourage way-out views into your midst then in the end you become hostage to them. That is what has happened with the ALP.

While I take some encouragement from the fact that they have gotten rid of the three-mines policy and they are prepared to adopt the new system of taxing the natural resource in the Northern Territory—I see that as a positive step forward—we still have these other problems which I have outlined. I ask them to open their eyes and ears—to fix the issue of the low-level repository in Australia, to get the Indian sales sorted out, to at least get nuclear power on the discussion table and to give the appropriate signals to the industry. We have had 20 years or more of confusion and intellectually bankrupt attitudes to the industry, and it is time to move on. Now it is perhaps a little more popular within the ALP to back a uranium industry in so much as they see it as a way of bailing out a lot of their state governments to provide a revenue flow to them. But if this all means that we are now in a position to encourage the Australian uranium industry, at least in the Northern Territory and South Australia and hopefully in Western Australia, it is a good move and it should be encouraged. I support the bill.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Uranium Royalty (Northern Territory) Bill 2008 and to support it. This is a relatively technical and uncontroversial bill. It essentially introduces a legislative royalty regime to any future uranium mine in the Northern Territory. Effectively it will apply the existing 18 per cent profits based royalty regime that is prescribed by Northern Territory laws. The current bill that we are discussing in the parliament goes back in some senses to the time of the former industry minister the Hon. Ian Macfarlane. In his time as a minister, in August 2005 he announced the formation of a steering committee to try and create opportunities for, to examine impediments to and to look at how we might be able to develop the Australian uranium mining industry over the short, medium and long term.

It was a very useful committee and a very effective one. When they brought their report down in September 2006, it did make recommendations for a royalty regime in the Northern Territory to be established. Interestingly, the report talks about separate royalty regimes being inappropriate to a growing uranium mining sector as new entrants to the uranium industry are uncertain about their potential royalty liabilities. Of course, that was in the context of a federal government led by Prime Minister Howard that was very much in favour of trying to develop and grow the uranium industry in this country. There have been some interesting developments since the election of the new government in the context of uranium exports, which I would very much like to touch on in my presentation here today in the parliament.

Australia has over one-third of the world’s uranium reserves. This bill gives me the opportunity not only on my own behalf as someone who is very interested in this topic but also on behalf of the constituents of Ryan to shine a torch on the government’s attitude, its mindset and perhaps its values in relation to uranium mining. There has been some hypocrisy in its policies and some glaring inconsistencies. In 2001 Australia supplied about 22 per cent of the world market for mined uranium and about 12 per cent of world reactor requirements. Interestingly, this made some 350 billion kilowatts of electricity per year—equivalent to almost twice Australia’s requirements. So it is certainly no small amount of electricity.

For those who are not aware of uranium I would like to highlight a few technical points which I certainly did not know until I prepared for this speech and learnt some more about uranium, which I found very interesting. Uranium is a very heavy metal which can be used as an abundant source of concentrated energy. It occurs in most rocks in concentrations of two to four parts per million and is as common in the earth’s crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum. Interestingly, it also occurs in sea water and can be recovered from the oceans. Uranium was discovered in 1789 by a German chemist, Dr Martin Klaproth. It was named after the planet Uranus, which had been discovered only eight years earlier, in 1781. Because of its high density, uranium is used in the keels of yachts and as counterweights for aircraft control surfaces as well as radiation shielding. Being no technical person and certainly not having a full appreciation of science, I note that uranium’s melting point is 1,132 degrees Celsius. I do know, though, that the chemical symbol for uranium is U.

I will go to the more substantive points, which I know most of my constituents in the Ryan electorate will be very interested in because of their interest in matters relating to energy production, the efficient use of energy and how we might be able to make life as easy as possible for people not only in this country but also in other parts of the world where energy is an issue. The world will need a greatly increased energy supply in the next two decades—in particular, from clean generated electricity. Nuclear power provides some 15 per cent of the world’s electricity, almost 24 per cent of electricity in the OECD nations and some 34 per cent in the EU—and its use is increasing. Nuclear power is the most environmentally benign way of producing electricity on a massive scale. Without it, most of the world would have to rely on fossil fuels for a continuous reliable supply of electricity. And we know the damage that fossil fuels do to our environment.

From 1980 to 2006, total world primary energy demand grew by 62 per cent, and to 2030 it is projected to grow at a slightly lesser rate but to grow nevertheless. Electricity growth is even stronger, and is projected to almost double from 2006 to 2030. We all know that there is going to be increased demand from the developing world—particularly from the two countries that have over a billion people, China and India. The demand for electricity is going to be massive and access to electricity has to be one of the major challenges for the world to address in as equitable a way as possible. As I have said in previous speeches in this place, I think energy security, diversity, efficiency and affordability are amongst the top issues confronting the leaders of the world.

The United Nations predicts that our world’s population is going to grow from some 6.5 billion today to nine billion in just over a decade and a half. That is something that we have to be very conscious of in policy development that affects people both in developed and developing economies. Based on this analysis of growth, energy demand is going to be right up there. Growth in energy demand is expected to be 1.6 per cent per year from 2006 to 2030.

Nuclear power generation is part of the world’s electricity mix, providing over 15 per cent of the world’s electricity. In comparison, coal is 40 per cent, oil is 10 per cent, natural gas is 15 per cent and hydro and others are 19 per cent. Interestingly, the World Energy Outlook 2008 report from the OECD’s International Energy Agency highlights that the increasing importance of nuclear power in meeting energy needs while achieving security of supply and minimising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be underscored enough. The 2006 edition—going back a couple of years—also reported that, if policies remain unchanged, world energy demand in the next 20 years is going to be massively increased, by 53 per cent. So there is a trend developing, as reported in the publications of major international agencies, such as the OECD’s International Energy Agency. To quote the language used in the 2006 edition, ‘dirty, insecure and expensive’ energy options will still be the norm if nuclear energy is not considered by policymakers.

As I touched on earlier, over 70 per cent of the increased energy demand is going to come from developing countries, led by China and India. Today, China is the world’s largest CO2 emitter, surpassing the United States. So there is an environmental element to this as well. The World Energy Outlook 2008 report highlights that nuclear power does make a major contribution to reducing the dependence on imported gas and curbing CO2 emissions in a very meaningful way, since uranium fuel is a vast resource. It also highlights, however, that governments must play a stronger role in facilitating private investment and encouraging the private sector to get engaged. But they can only do so with the support of national governments. In this country, this is where I think the national government is certainly not playing ball. The national government really has a lot of work to do to support this industry in this country. Some US$26 trillion is required by 2030, according to the 2008 International Energy Agency report. We are talking about big dollars but it is a big challenge, and I believe we have to take this very seriously.

Today, over 16 per cent of the world’s electricity is generated from uranium in nuclear reactors. This amounts to 2,400 billion kilowatts each year—as much as from all sources of electricity worldwide nearly 50 years ago. To give some sort of context to it, this is 12 times Australia’s or South Africa’s total electricity production; five times India’s and double that of China. That gives an idea of the kind of scale that we are talking about. Some 440 nuclear reactors, with an output capacity of about 370,000 megawatts, operating in 31 countries, generate this 16 per cent of the world’s electricity. About 30 more reactors are under construction and another 40 are planned in certain countries. Interestingly, the countries that make use of nuclear power—Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, South Korea, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine—all get 30 per cent or more of their electricity from nuclear reactors. The United States has over a hundred reactors operating, with a capacity of almost three times Australia’s total, and supplying 20 per cent of its electricity. The UK gets almost a quarter of its electricity from uranium.

As I think all speakers have touched on and all would certainly be aware, Australia is not the only country with major deposits. Let me highlight this: there is Kazakhstan with 70 per cent, then Canada and, as is widely known, the United States, South Africa, Namibia, Brazil, Nigeria and Russia. Of course, some of those have smaller deposits, but we are not alone in the world with our uranium deposits—although, as I said at the outset, we have some two thirds of such deposits. Yet the blinkered view of this government is that we should put a lid on who we export to—that we should contain the number of countries that we export our uranium to. I think this is very short sighted. It shows a complete lack of vision, and I think that Australians are paying the price of it economically, socially and environmentally and, in the case of India, also strategically.

Uranium is part of our mining heritage but three mines only are really operating at the moment, and I think this has really got to be revisited. In the five years to mid-2007, we exported some 50,000 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate with a value of almost $3 billion—a figure that could easily be much greater. Our uranium is sold strictly for electrical power generation only, and the nations which currently purchase Australia’s uranium include Canada, the US, Japan and South Korea and many countries of the EU as well—Spain, France, UK, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and Finland. Interestingly, as I said, we export to China—in 2006 a bilateral agreement was concluded with China enabling exports there—but we do not export our uranium to a democratic nation such as India. I think this is a very regressive and regrettable state of affairs to be in. We could easily increase our share of the world market because of our low-cost reserves here and, of course, our political and economic stability.

Clearly, it is a political factor that hinders our capacity to grow this industry, and yet if we were to revisit this policy and to take a different approach we would be able to employ more than the 1,200 people who are today employed in the uranium industry. We have only about 1,200 people employed, with only about 500 in actual exploration. This is just untenable in 2009. Uranium mines generate about $21 million in royalties each year, with the Ranger mine generating $13 million, Beverley generating $1 million and the Olympic Dam some $6.9 million. Corporate taxes, in the context of what they could be to the Commonwealth, amount to only a small figure of $42 million a year. So I strongly encourage the Rudd government to revisit this issue. Despite our well endowed uranium reserves, political factors mean that Canada is well in front of Australia as the main supplier of uranium to the world.

Interestingly, I had a very profound conversation with a gentleman in Queensland. Queenslanders would know who he is but other Australians may not be so familiar with his name—Murrandoo Yanner from the Torres Strait. He is very much an activist Queenslander. We had a very good conversation before Christmas and he came out encouraging the Rudd government—although in the context of our specific conversation, it was the Bligh government—to revisit its policy on not mining uranium. I want to quote from his words in the Queensland papers. He was very colourful in his language but I think very insightful, and I think he has got a lesson to teach some of the people down here with their fancy names, titles and qualifications. He said:

We have nothing and here we have an opportunity for us to climb out of the gutter …

All she has to do is make a policy change, sit on her butt and we will do all the work and she can take all the credit for it.

He is referring there, of course, to the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh. Describing himself as ‘the greenest black fella you will ever see’, he said that ‘anyone with half a brain’ could see that uranium was needed to fight climate change. He went on to say:

We are more concerned with that than anyone on the globe because we have to live with it, not some bloke in a koala suit outside the minister’s office carrying a tin.

I am not sure if there has been some bloke in a koala suit outside the honourable minister’s office, but I am sure the minister knows of Murrandoo Yanner. He is a very articulate man. He has a lot of fire in his belly and he has only the interests of his community and his people at heart. Of course, the context of our conversation was about the closing of the Century mine up in North Queensland, and he was very concerned for their welfare. There is very much an environmental benefit to that, Murrandoo Yanner articulated it in a very fine way and I support that entirely.

I say to the minister, who is one of the brighter sparks in the Rudd government and on the record as supporting an expansion of the uranium industry: let us take the blinkers off and export uranium to India. It is a country that needs our goodwill and needs our uranium more so. In a strategic sense and a larger macro sense they will not forget that, because right now India needs cheaper, more affordable energy to supply its growing economy and to allow its people, including the hundreds of millions of poorer Indians, to develop their businesses. Energy clearly has to be part of the solution. I know that they have asked us formally and informally. We could really develop a great relationship with India. (Time expired)

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

in reply—I appreciate the contributions by a number of members on both sides of the House to what is a very serious debate. The contributions of members have been wide-ranging, in a lot of ways beyond the scope of the bill. Whilst I do not intend to respond to each of the contributions, especially those by members of the opposition, I will make a few comments in passing. Firstly, in terms of history, it is interesting to note that throughout the period of the Howard government the number of uranium mines in Australia remained three. There was no expansion of the industry, with the exception of a relatively small mine in South Australia. The real expansion of the industry has actually only come to the fore in more recent years because of the question of supply and demand. The reason for that is that one of the benefits of the post Cold War period has been the use of old nuclear warheads to supply resources for the operation of nuclear reactors throughout the world for civil energy purposes.

So let us get a few facts right about the nature of the debate about uranium mining in Australia. In recent years there has been a significant increase in exploration in Australia because there has been growth in the international demand for a primary source of uranium, of which Australia is potentially a major producer. In accordance with that, I note that during the course of the previous parliament the House Standing Committee on Industry and Resources, to its credit, conducted a major inquiry into the state of the uranium industry in Australia. The report of the inquiry received cross-party support and made a number of practical recommendations about the potential expansion of the industry in the foreseeable future. Those recommendations have been taken up by government and, perhaps more importantly, by industry for the purpose of facilitating the expansion of the industry. Obviously, some of the intentions of the companies involved in the industry have now been set back as a result of the impact of the global financial crisis. I say to the House that, as the Minister for Resources and Energy, I will be doing everything I possibly can to work with the representatives of uranium mining in Australia and with state and territory governments to facilitate the expansion of the industry in Australia. I am aware of a number of proposals to go beyond exploration to production, including in the state of Western Australia, as a result of an indication from government that we will do everything possible to facilitate the expansion of the industry in Australia.

Having dealt with a little bit of history—because some of the criticism of the current government has no factual basis; it simply goes to the nature of supply and demand for uranium over the previous 12 years—let us deal with the issue of nuclear power. The government accepts that in some countries, which are not as rich in energy capacity as Australia, nuclear power is a fact of life. I also make no apology for the fact that Australia historically has had a policy that goes to us as a nation being very careful about whom we sell our yellowcake to. That policy is about making sure we have a framework in place to guarantee that we as a nation mine with safe hands and put in place appropriate international protocols, and bilaterals between Australia and those countries that decide to purchase our uranium, which guarantee that our uranium is used with safe hands for civil energy purposes in those countries. The Australian government makes no apology for that.

On the question of India, obviously under the existing Australian government policy framework it is not permissible for us to export uranium to India. That aside, I acknowledge the international processes that have been put in place by the United States, through the global Nuclear Suppliers Group, for the purpose of facilitating greater international monitoring of the use of uranium in India for civil energy purposes. The advances as a result of those considerations by the international community, which have now opened India up to more international accountability than ever previously achieved, are to be applauded. They represent a step forward in the international community’s attempts to guarantee that uranium is used only for civil energy purposes and not for the purpose of nuclear armament. The Australian government has no intention of changing its policies with respect to the existing policy framework, which is clearly aimed at guaranteeing that, at home, uranium is mined with safe hands and that internationally it is used only for civil energy purposes. That will continue to be a debate between us and the opposition. It is not a blinkered view of government when an alternative view could potentially see some supporting the sale of Australian uranium to, for example, Iran—and that is not on.

We must have an appropriate policy framework which guarantees, in what is a sensitive industry, that our uranium will only ever be used for civil energy purposes. I also acknowledge that the development of the industry in Australia must be based on sound environmental requirements. The uranium industry under the current government—and it was the same under the previous government—will continue to be required, as is the case with all mining activities in Australia, to meet what we regard as being appropriate environmental requirements. To do otherwise would undermine public support for not only the uranium industry but mining generally in Australia.

Having said that, I also understand and accept the contributions which pointed to the importance of the development of this industry for Indigenous purposes. In terms of our desire as a government to close the gap, to do something that is economically sustainable for Indigenous communities, our focus is on sustainable economic development, not an ongoing process of government handouts. Successive governments of all political persuasions have now accepted that that strategy failed, that in some ways we have lost a generation from the Indigenous community. My portfolio responsibilities cover mining, energy and tourism, areas often having a focus in rural and regional areas. Our responsibility is to work with industry to guarantee that we engage with the Indigenous community to create as many training and employment opportunities as we can for the further expansion and development of not only the uranium industry but also mining, energy and tourism activities generally.

The member for Kalgoorlie, in his contribution, commented on Mr Ian Lowe’s appointment to ARPANSA. I simply note that Mr Lowe was appointed as a member of the ARPANSA council by the Howard government, then reappointed by the Howard government in 2005 and further reappointed—on the basis of his contribution through those appointments—by the Rudd government in January 2009. So, again, let us get the record straight with respect to Mr Lowe’s appointment.

In conclusion, this bill is directed at applying a royalty regime to all new mining projects in the Northern Territory containing uranium and other designated substances, such as thorium, that is consistent with the royalty regime that applies to other minerals mined in the Northern Territory. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.