Deputy Leader of the Opposition Parliament House  Canberra, A.C.T. 2600

SPEECH BY THE DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION, TOM UREN, IN THE  'MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE" DEBATE ON THE LEAKING OF A  CONFIDENTIAL DOCUMENT (re Fox) - 3 November 1977 .

The nuclear debate is of extreme importance..  It is one of the most  important debates of our time because it deals with the whole future

of mankind, the whole future of the human race. Therefore I make

no apologies about the.document that was passed through the post  to.my office. That document dealt with a three hour discussion

between senior Government officials and Mr Justice Fox. I made

that document public. I did not select newspapers. I gave it

a broad' circulation among all members of the Press Gallery of  Canberra.. I sent it to concerned people throughout the nation.

I sent it to conservation and community groups throughout the  nation. I sent it to every one of my Labor Parliamentary

colleagues so they could make up their own minds about it. So .

that we can get it into Hansard, I seek leave to incorporate Â· the whole document in Hansard. (LEAVE WAS REFUSED)

.  We know that the Government will not allow it to be included in

Hansard. I will make a couple of quotations from the document.

When talking to officials, Mr Justice Fox said that in the US . .   he had found the Carter, non-proliferation policy to be ambiguous  and uncertain.and that there were widely divergent views within

the administration..  He went on to say that the US and Canadian

policies were deeply"resented in Western Europe, Brazil and Japan  and that there was general opposition elsewhere to the proposition  that there could be no reprocessing of American supplied material

without consent of th'e US. He went on to talk, about the countries

that were deeply disturbed about it. He referred to Egypt, Iran  Pakistan, India, Argentina and the Philippines, all of which in  my view want to have their own nuclear power stations and do what

they want with the by products of those stations, with no .

restrictions whatsoever - including in some cases.acquiring nuclear

weapons. That is the real concern. What does the Minister for  Foreign Affairs say?

.  .  .  / 2

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He is reported as saying on PM last night:  Ã¢ÂÂ

"It,  in fact,  endorses the very thing the Government has been

saying. It is, of course,  only one small document of a whole .   host of documents."

In other words he was saying: 'This is right! We support it!' He

was saying that the Government, "supports the utterances made in the  report. I hope that he expresses that view to the upper echelons in

Washington. He knows that diplomatic representatives of the US

and other countries of the western world in Canberra are greatly  disturbed about this document of which the Foreign.Minister says:

'We support it all the way.'

The Foreign Minister again says by interjection: "Indeed we do." .  .Â·Â·Ã¢ÂÂ Â·Â·

The report also states that Mr Justice Fox said that there was

concern about the ability of the International Atomic Energy  Agency to administer the safeguards satisfactorily.  .  .

In the few moments I have I want to deal with the so-called. .   energy crisis and the safeguards proposals, and ÃÂª want to say a

few words about Australian Labor Party policy. Let us look at the

phoney approach of the Fraser Government to contracts with Britain  and the phoney Fraser Government so-called nuclear safeguards. The

nuclear safeguards policy which the Prime Minister announced on

24 May has already been shot to peices. To take one example, I  refer to the eighth safeguard stated by the Prime Minister. It  provides that, in bilateral agreements between Australia and .

countries importing uranium,the Australian Government shall

insist that any reprocessing of nuclear material supplied by

Australia should take place only with the consent of the Australian  Government. I

I ask the Government to think about that question and correlate

what is said there with what is said in the document that I  distributed to the Press-  yesterday. We know now that this safeguards

policy is completely unacceptable to Japan. It is completely

unacceptable to EURATOM.  The Government can either drop those

safeguards or write off any possible contracts with Japan or

EURATOM countries.

. .  .  / 3

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Much has been made in the past few days of possible contracts

^  with the United Kingdom. Let us get at this question of the hypocrisy

on the part of this Government. What, has been said about the

British Government spokesmen, particularly by the Deputy Prime  Minister and Minister for National Resources is completely false  and I nail it to the mast. The United Kingdom has no independent

power to make contracts outside the EURATOM Agreement - and I

stress that. What the Government has said in the past few days  about its alleged negotiations with Dr Mabon is completely misÂ­

leading and false. The United Kingdom cannot make bilateral

agreements of this sort, and the Fraser Government knows it.

Let me quickly look at the question of the energy crisis. It

has been said that our uranium is needed for transport fuel. Now

that is not true because the so-called 'energy crisis' is due to

a potential shortage of liquid propellant fuel for transport .   services. There is not a shortage of fuel for electric power _

generation. There is enough coal for that for the next 100 to  200 years. Then there is the question of conservation.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries

.  are beginning to reduce their energy consumption. In 1975 and

.  1976, OECD countries did not increase their consumption of energy.

In part this was due to the international economic recession,  but it also .reflects increased concern for conservation. Sweden  and West Germany have already announced long term energy conservaÂ­

tion programs. 1  .

The Central Electricity Generating Board in Britain.suffered a .  .

drop of 14 percent in electricity sales last year. There have  been no new. orders for power stations, nuclear or otherwise,  .  in .

.  the UK for at least 5 years and there are unlikely to be any for

several years into the future.

Let us look at the question of reduced nuclear power demand.

.  Over the past decade official expectations of the contribution that

nuclear energy will make to world energy consumption for the rest

of this century have been moving steadily downwards.. This process

is gaining momentum. For example, at page 46 of the first Ranger

Report, using August 1976 figures, it is predicted that for the

OECD countries, at least 400,000 megawatts of electricity would

be nuclear-generated by 1987. In January 1977 the OECD's World

Energy Outlook gave a comparable projection of 325,000 megawatts .  .../4 "

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.  of nuclear generated electricity in 1985. By early May,  the official

OECD figure had declined still further to 253,000 megawatts.  I

am told by OECD sources that the figure is now 224,000 megawatts.

In other words, there has been a decline of 44 percent in the  projected 1985 levels of nuclear generated power in a period of  less than one year.. This decline in nuclear generated electricity

projections must continue.

I now turn to the Labor Party's policy. It is not a "leave-

it-in-the-ground" policy. The Labor Party's policy is a policy  which is concerned about the future of mankind.  We are concerned

.  about the many unresolved problems that now exist within the

nuclear fuel cycle. The first two paragraphs of the Labor Party's  policy on uranium state that we recognise that the provision of

Australian uranium to the world nuclear fuel cycle creates problems  relevant to Australian sovereignty, the environment, the economic

welfare of our people, and the rights and well-being of the .

Australian Aboriginals.  Labor believes that,  having regard to  the present unresolved economic, social, biological, genetic, .

environmental and technical problems associated with the mining Â· .  of uranium, and the development of nuclear power should

not continue at this stage.  ,

'  Therefore we are clearly saying that that is the position. We _

.  want time until these matters are resolved. .  .

