Antinuclear

SA Premier Jay Weatherill’s Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle is a gift to the big mining and energy corporations.

It is also a sign of the desperation of a state Labor government facing growing state debt and the nation’s highest unemployment rate…….

Weatherill is typical of a Labor leader who identifies the immense problems besetting his state and who wants to be seen to be providing a solution so as to justify remaining in office.  This is particularly so of Weatherill whose team failed to get a majority of the votes in the last election.  The result was a hung parliament in which Labor had 23 seats, the Liberals 22 and with two independents, one of whom died shortly afterwards.  The remaining independent went with Labor, the by-election for the now vacant seat of Fisher went to Labor by a handful of votes, and the government picked up one extra seat when the former Liberal leader Martin Hamilton-Smith defected and was given a Cabinet position.  To say that there is no guarantee of a re-election next time around is an understatement.

Grasping at straws to “manage” capitalism

In the face of the collapse of the car industry in SA and the uncertainty around the shipbuilding and submarine contracts, Weatherill sought straws to grasp……..

Nuclear fool cycle

In between the Forrest Report and NPC address lies the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.

Although previously an opponent of the nuclear fuel cycle and a strong supporter of renewable energy (SA leads the nation in energy generation from wind and solar which together account for 39% of the state’s electricity generation), Weatherill has been lured by the pro-nuclear lobby with the twin carrots of income from the storage of Australian and international nuclear wastes, and release from carbon dependency through the allegedly “clean” nuclear alternative.

It appears not to matter that a nuclear waste dump is illegal under SA laws introduced and strengthened by former Premiers Olsen (Liberal, in 2000) and Rann (Labor, in 2003), nor that nuclear reactors, uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing are illegal under Australian law and therefore outside SA’s jurisdiction.

What matters is that this Labor “Left faction” premier can paint himself as a business-, energy- and mining-friendly state premier prepared to rewrite policy on the nuclear fuel cycle via a supposedly independent and impartial Royal Commission.

Weatherill’s problem is that his choice of Royal Commissioner was derided from day one: Kevin Scarce is a retired Rear-Admiral and former State Governor, and current Chancellor of the University of Adelaide who in December 2014 suggested that South Australia consider developing nuclear industries to compensate for the downturn in manufacturing.   He was addressing the SA Chamber of Mines and Energy at the time.  When Scarce was appointed on February 9, 2015 to head the Royal Commission, he brazenly declared: “I come to this with no preconceived views”! ……..

(The author here failed to mention Kevin Scarce’s ownership of shares in uranium miner Rio Tinto)