Australia's uranium puzzle: Why China and Russia but not India?

• Rory Medcalf
• Australia India Institute

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28 November 2011In recent years Australia has finalised agreements to export uranium to China and Russia but not to a third great power, India. The uranium question has become a thorn in the side of Australia-India relations. In November 2011, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard at last declared publicly that she supported a policy shift to allow Canberra to negotiate the sale of uranium to India for electricity generation. This potential change would bring Australia back to the position it had reached in 2007, when the then conservative government of John Howard briefly put Australia at the leading edge of the many nations seeking strategic engagement with a rising India. This situation was immediately overturned by the Labor government of Kevin Rudd when it came to office that same year.

Since then, despite hints that Canberra would rethink its position, the issue has hindered wider progress in the Australia-India relationship, at a time when most nuclear supplier nations have begun pursuing legitimate nuclear commerce with New Delhi in line with the historic 2008 US-India nuclear deal and subsequent waiver by the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The India debate has dominated Australian official and public discussion of uranium export policy since 2006 and continues to limit one of Australia’s most important bilateral relationships in the Asian century. The prospect that the Australian Labor Party will finally review its stance on this issue at its national conference from 2-4 December 2011 makes it timely to re-examine the drivers of Australia’s uranium export policy.

This paper seeks to untangle the confusing array of factors in Canberra’s decisions about selling – or not selling – uranium to India.