Uranium leaps to the rescue

THIS week the new Liberal Government in Western Australia honoured its election commitment and lifted the former Labor government's ban on uranium mining.

Colin Barnett predicted mines would be up and running in three to five years.

The Premier is looking to become to the uranium industry in WA what Charles Court was to the emerging iron-ore industry of the 1960s when he threw his support behind exploration and mining in the state's north.

The Australian Uranium Association estimated that the revenue windfall for the state in the coming years will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Given the slowdown in the global economy, the mining royalties cannot come quickly enough.

At the state election, the WA Labor Party tried to scare the public that a vote for the Liberals represented a vote for nuclear power plants and nuclear waste. Never mind that both potential outcomes from uranium mining were categorically ruled out by the then Opposition leader on the campaign trail.

Australia has more than one-third of the world's known uranium reserves, much of which is in the vast expanses of WA, in particular the Pilbara and Northern Goldfields regions.

Dealing WA out of the considerable mining royalties it would gain from exporting uranium was the kind of economic vandalism that could only be covered up during the boom times of recent years.

The policy change Barnett has instituted should therefore be welcomed.

It is not as if the mining and export of uranium is a new concept in Australia. We have been doing it since 1954, prolifically since the 1970s.

However, the mining of uranium has been restricted for decades to no more than three operating mines in the whole country, presently Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and Ranger in the Northern Territory.

Labor's three-mines policy restricted uranium mining for fear environmental hazards might follow. The policy script was adhered to until last year when the party's national conference overturned the restriction, with the backing of Kevin Rudd, opening the way for more mines and more taxation revenue.

But not in WA. Had Labor won the state election in September, it was committed to continuing the ban on uranium mining at a state level and introducing legislation to make it more difficult for future governments to overturn it.

Now in Opposition, WA Labor is dealing itself out of the debate by continuing to stick to the policy rejected by federal Labor and the voters of WA.

With one eye on Greens preferences in four years, new Opposition Leader Eric Ripper has missed an opportunity to bring his state party into the 21st century on this issue. Many countries are already reliant on nuclear reactors for energy production, meaning it won't be hard for WA's uranium exports to find a home.

For example, France produces 80 per cent of its energy from nuclear power, Sweden 50 per cent, Japan 30 per cent and the US and Britain 20 per cent each.

All are vibrant democracies and all are signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Even a non-signatory nation such as India is a worthy recipient of WA uranium, given it is a robust democratic state. Whether it can receive uranium from Australia is, however, a matter for the federal Government. It is presently banning state governments from exporting uranium to India.

A more controversial receiver of our uranium is China.

Since China is not a democracy, it is reasonable that we have a debate about whether it is appropriate to export uranium to a nuclear weapons state that may rise in coming decades to threaten the institutional political system under which we operate. But that is a debate all and sundry seem hell-bent on avoiding across the trading spectrum, not just with respect to uranium exports.

Opponents of the mining of uranium in WA focus their argument on a view that nuclear power is in decline, not to mention environmentally dangerous. Never mind that there are more than 400 nuclear power plants worldwide and the number under construction or proposed will double that number in the not too distant future. The environmental argument that WA may be saddled with returned waste from exported uranium is erroneous in the extreme. No country that exports uranium is required to take back the waste and Australia never has.

Mining Minister Norman Moore recently reiterated the Liberal Party's pre-election commitment that WA would not be taking back waste or building nuclear reactors in the lifetime of the Barnett Government, in case there was any doubt.

Uranium mining in the west seemed like a distant possibility when Troy Buswell was leading the Liberals a few short months ago. The Liberal Party was facing electoral oblivion and Labor's policy looked like holding back growth in the state's mining sector.

A change of leader brought with it a change of government, opening the way for WA to become to uranium exports what the Middle East has been to oilexports.

Peter van Onselen is an associate professor in politics and government at Edith Cowan University, Perth.