Uranium:India’s crouching tiger

Fighting for great causes is glorious – while you are in opposition. The consequences can be a little troubling, though, if you wake, one day, in government.

Things are a bit like that, right now, for Labor. The South Australian Labor Premier, Mike Rann, wants to boost his State’s already impressive endeavours in uranium exploration and production. And he specifically included India, when asked to identify countries likely to increase their nuclear power output.

So far, so good. But that put Australia’s new Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith,on a sticky wicket in Perth yesterday, when he visited the cricket, with an Indian friend, Shyam Saran, who is also an envoy of the Indian Prime Minister.

Unlike its neighbour, Pakistan, India has a good record on non proliferation. As Mr Saran happily noted, it hasn’t allowed its nuclear secrets to leak. But India hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, either. Nor is it likely to do so.

That leaves Australia in a bit of a spot. Likely, that is, to miss out on sales it wants to make to India. Especially as its denial, of such an important resource,l are weightier in semantics than reality.

There another point of of embarrassment for Australia in all this.

The previous government, of Prime Minister John Howard, agreed “in principle” last year to sell uranium to India. On the usual “strict conditions,” of course.

Mr Smith has now announced that the Rudd Labor government will reverse that decision.

That’s not a particularly good look, especially with Australia’s Trade Minister, Simon Crean, now in India, on a trade boosting mission. Especially after that recent unpleasantness, after an earlier cricket match.
The financial wire service, Bloombergs, ran the story last night with a suitable touch of disappointment, emphasisng that word “reversing.”

Once again, not a good look for Australia, which has the world’s biggest known uranium reserves.

Winning elections is wonderful. But it does present problems.