Antinuclear

Australia’s uranium policy dictated by Washington

the actual reason for the shift, [ to sell uranium to India] which was strongly insisted upon by the Obama administration in the lead-up to the US president’s visit, and which dovetails with Washington’s efforts to promote India as a regional
counterweight to China……..Rudd had incurred the wrath of Washington in 2007 by reversing a decision by the previous Howard Liberal government to approve uranium sales to India, following a similar decision by the George W. Bush administration.

Australian Labor Party to enforce dictates of Washington, financial markets, World Socialist Website By Mike Head 5 December 2011 At its 46th national conference last weekend, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) committed itself to imposing the “hard decisions” required by the Gillard government’s unconditional alignment with Washington’s increasingly aggressive confrontation with China, ……
It was the first ALP conference since the June 2010 backroom coup in which Labor’s factional bosses, who had reported their preparations to the US embassy, installed Julia Gillard as prime minister at the expense of her predecessor Kevin Rudd. The conference was also convened just two weeks after President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia and the region, in which he mounted a diplomatic and strategic offensive against China. Not a single delegate referred to these developments, yet they dominated the entire proceedings.

Rudd was removed above all because he had sought to alleviate the  tensions between the US, the Australian ruling elite’s military protector, and China, Australian capitalism’s biggest market. Upon her appointment, Gillard immediately made clear her unconditional alignment with Washington. She also quickly struck a deal with the three biggest mining companies to drop the Rudd government’s proposed mining super-profits tax,….
Gillard returned to the theme of “hard decisions” on the final day
when moving to dump the party platform’s prohibition on selling
uranium to India unless it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). “We are not a political party that shirks hard decisions,” she
told conference. Making the change would boost mining exports and
establish the “strongest possible relationships” with India, whose
rise, Gillard declared, was just as central to the “Asian Century” as
that of China.
This was as close as Gillard went to acknowledging the actual reason
for the shift, which was strongly insisted upon by the Obama
administration in the lead-up to the US president’s visit, and which
dovetails with Washington’s efforts to promote India as a regional
counterweight to China……..Rudd had incurred the wrath of
Washington in 2007 by reversing a decision by the previous Howard
Liberal government to approve uranium sales to India, following a
similar decision by the George W. Bush administration.
Since 1984, ALP policy has effectively given free rein to uranium
mining, making Australia one of the world’s largest exporters, but it
maintained the pretence of a commitment to nuclear weapons disarmament
by prohibiting exports to non-signatories of the NPT……Those
opposing the shift warned of further damage to the party’s already
disastrous electoral prospects by eroding any claim that the ALP stood
for abiding “values.” Senator Cameron objected that the change would
mean “the abandonment of any pretence of disarmament……
The determination of the factions to suppress any, even tame,
discussion on the Rudd coup, the Obama visit and the agreement to
station US troops was displayed in the final day’s session on foreign
and military policy. Not one mention was made of the most significant
turn in Australian foreign policy for decades: the creation in
Australia of critical staging bases for the US military as part of a
strategy to contain China, thus placing Australia on the frontline of
a potential confrontation between nuclear-armed states…..
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/labo-d05.shtml

December 6, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, uranium