Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the importance of relationships with foreign neighbours and foreign interests, which I notice is once again in the news today with regard to the purchase of products from China. This relates directly to the issue of the moment in this place, climate change and energy security, which leads to the issue of foreign investment. The critical test for consistency in this place is the national interest test—not, I hope, a test shaped around xenophobia.

I want to raise two issues in the time that I have. The first issue concerns the use of uranium as part of our energy mix in the future energy security needs of this country. It was with great concern that we saw that prior to Christmas last year the Foreign Investment Review Board and the Treasury ticked off a 70 per cent Chinese takeover of an Australian uranium company responsible for 4,000 square kilometres of uranium fields in Australia. This latest corporate takeover involves Energy Metals, who have just completed the sale of 70 per cent of their nine uranium sites in the Northern Territory and Western Australia to a Chinese state owned company, China Uranium Development, at a cost of $83.6 million.

I raise this issue first because we have not had a comprehensive and consistent uranium debate in this country and we are selling off our products to overseas countries—it does not matter if it is to China—which want to use this product in their future energy mix and leave us with all the waste management issues that make us reluctant to have this debate. It is an issue for the Australian government to get a bit of consistency on regarding the national interest in allowing a sale to take place to a foreign country to use uranium in their future energy mix while we remain incredibly sensitive and concerned and are left with the bad bits of this deal for the future. We need some consistency in policy.

The second issue is the alternative policy position on climate change that has been put on the table. It is dripping with irony that the Yallourn power station has been used as an example of an incentive from the coalition when it is a fully owned Chinese company, China Light and Power. Australian taxes are potentially going to go to a fully owned Chinese company under a coalition policy. From all I have heard from the coalition today—(Time expired)