Greens' uranium stance dated

FOR all the criticism about The Australian's readiness to use its front page to target the Greens, thank goodness it did so yesterday.

The revelation that the Greens spokesman on nuclear matters, senator Scott Ludlam, thinks the party's strong showing at the recent election, relative to its usual poor performance, is some sort of endorsement for its anti-uranium position, is the sort of view voters need to know about so they can reconsider how they cast their ballots next time.

"We don't believe another kilogram of this material should come out of the ground . . . if the uranium industry is feeling nervous about the fact that 1.7 million Australians voted for that explicit position, then they should feel nervous," he said.

Voted for that explicit position? He has got to be kidding.

Voters need to know how the Greens are reacting to the election and misreading the political situation at the moment.

They need to know about it because of the implications it will have on Greens' bullishness to pursue policies most Australians are opposed to.

And they need to know about it so voters can send the exact opposite message in the future to remind the Greens that so long as they advocate contradictory and unworkable policies they will never be anything other than a protest vote alternative to the major parties.

How ironic it is that the party that wants the world to lower its carbon emissions (read cut down on the use of dirty coal for power supplies) also wants Australia to stop exporting uranium, one of the cleanest forms of energy production available to supply base load power.

We have the world's largest uranium stocks and the world has moved to nuclear power as a way of cleanly satisfying energy needs.

Yet the Greens want to stop the export of uranium in this country, driving up the price globally and thereby leading to more coal-fired power stations being built.

And that's before considering the damage to our domestic economy of ceasing uranium exports.

One of the most relaxing things about being an opinion commentator is that you can take all care and no responsibility when offering your views on public policy.

It sometimes frustrates the poor ministers who are charged with enacting public policy.

But the same all-care and no-responsibility mantra applies to the cross benches, or at least those who chose to function that way, in particular the Greens.

Despite the so-called alliance at present between Labor and the Greens, the Greens are not in government and likely never will be.

After comments such as that from Ludlam yesterday, thank goodness for that.

As a consequence, they can suggest ceasing the export of uranium without considering how to make up the many billions of dollars in lost revenue it would lead to.

They don't need to find that revenue in the budget to fund the many programs they constantly bemoan are under-funded.

They can call for more use of renewable energy, without any plan for how it will provide enough base-load power (which it can't) to cover existing energy needs. And not only can't renewable energy cover base-load power in most parts of Australia, it can't do it in most parts of the world either, yet the Greens want to stop exporting uranium, which helps under-developed countries develop in a cleaner way.

They can strike fear into the minds of businesses and communities dependent on the export of uranium without having to worry about the political fallout from such fearmongering because their vote is largely made up of inner-city elites not dependent on economic growth for their jobs (or don't realise they are).

How ironic that the Greens condemn the fearmongering (quite rightly) when major parties pander to people's concerns about asylum-seekers, yet they fear-monger just as violently about uranium and planet-threatening perils attached to using it.

But before we start getting too worried about the power of the Greens in the new parliament, and this is where I disagree somewhat with my paper's editorial line, everyone can take comfort in the fact that there is little chance Labor will lurch to the left to accommodate the Greens on issues such as these.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson immediately quashed the silly idea Ludlam raised of stopping the export of uranium, and he hails from the Labor left.

Julia Gillard is a pragmatist and she wouldn't mind winning an election in her own right next time.

To do that she can't pander to the Greens on issues such as uranium mining, and the Greens can't stop such a policy without her because the opposition will put obstructionism to one side and always back Labor when it comes to opening up exports of uranium by approving new mines and guaranteeing mining in existing ones.

Minor players such as the Greens would do well to remember that while they might have cracked double digits at an election for the first time in their history, 80 per cent of voters still gave their first preferences to one or other of the major parties.

That is a ringing endorsement for the mainstream, even if voters are sick of the spin of modern politics. There are plenty of old lefties clinging to their antiquated beliefs from a bygone era.

They are especially prevalent in some universities, lurking around the corridors clinging to their academic tenure (disclaimer: there are many excellent academics of all ideological persuasions).

Don't get me wrong, the same breed exists on the Right of the spectrum, consigned to think tanks that prop them up as if they were some sort of symbol of conservatism's capacity to preserve the old order.

Back in the 1970s and 80s when the science wasn't settled and technology hadn't yet evolved, the argument that uranium mining and nuclear power were too dangerous was worth hearing out.

In fact, it probably helped lead to the safety standards that exist today.

But the likes of Ludlam, who stick to that 30-plus-year-old view, are either too pig headed to change their minds or haven't done enough reading on the subject to get up to speed with the not-so-new paradigm that suggests uranium can be safely handled, and any minor risks are worth the massive reward it offers to price efficiency, economic growth and the environment.