Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

We have an interjection about the communists. Yes, John Howard is trading with the communists. We say, ‘Don’t do it.’ He is saying, ‘Beijing, here we come with Australian uranium.’ Who is to say what the political outcome will be later this century?

This is a Prime Minister who has lost his sense of long-term commitment to the wellbeing of this nation of Australia. This is a Prime Minister who has a greater connection with the big end of town than he has with the younger generation of Australians who are going to have to live with the results of this. This is a Prime Minister who has failed to make us the environmentally advanced country that we should be, with the renewable energy technology that we should have, exporting that safely to the rest of the world, which wants to substitute the climate change fraught energy options with those which are safe.

As we go into this break, we not only have the Prime Minister taking over the Northern Territory communities without consultation with the Indigenous people but have him taking his cue from George Bush on putting uranium into an unsafe world. We object to that. We do not agree with that. If he is going to find one supporter in this country in this matter of increased exports of uranium, he will find it in Kevin Rudd. Kevin Rudd says, ‘Thank goodness, not with India, because it has not signed the non-proliferation treaty, but yes, we’ll tick off on China and we’ll tick off on Russia.’ The Greens say: we want a safer world than that. We think there are values other than money for a few uranium miners—and that includes the future safety of this planet and this country.

Question agreed to.

The PRESIDENT (Senator the Hon. Alan Ferguson) read prayers.