The School of Australian Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Governance Program present the fourth seminar in the 2007 Occasional Seminar Series on 17 October from 12.30pm to 1.30pm.
Allan Patience presents ‘The Australian politics of nuclear energy’.
Despite some concerted political campaigns in the past to limit Australia's enmeshment in world uranium markets, this country is poised to become the leading resource supplier for nuclear energy industries around the globe. This development now has bipartisan political support.
In public policy terms, it is unimaginable that the planned expansion of uranium mining will be reversed in the foreseeable future. In other words, the issue has moved on, but the on-going uranium debate in Australia doesn't appear to reflect this reality.
It is time to weigh the obligations that we have, as a major exporter of uranium, to decide who we export to, and whether we have the intellectual capacity and political will to become a leading innovator in nuclear waste management technologies and nuclear enrichment. A related argument would propose that Australian scientists, universities and research institutes should be at the cutting edge of world nuclear energy research.
The Northern Territory - especially Charles Darwin University - has much to gain if its scientists and political leaders are able to creatively rethink the political, scientific and technological issues that must now be addressed.
Allan Patience is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Law, Business and Arts at CDU.
This seminar takes place in the SAIKS seminar room, building 30.