Social Democracy and the nuclear fuel cycle

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Nick G.

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.

Social Democratic parties choose to operate within the political and legal institutions of capitalism, and develop their policies on the basis of the continued operation of the capitalist economic system.

We sometimes refer to Labor parties getting into “power” at state and federal levels when in reality all they do is get into office: the real power resides with the ruling class regardless of which of the two main parliamentary parties holds office.

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.

The first was the Forrest Report, a thoroughly reactionary set of proposals to demonise and punish the poor written by a billionaire member of the ruling class.  Weatherill saw its proposed Healthy Welfare Card as a solution to problems on the APY Lands.  He rushed out an announcement during a consultation period that endorsed all 27 recommendations in the Report.  When told that SA Unions opposed the Report, Weatherill enlisted Forrest and Marcia “Rio Tinto” Langton to try and secure support from SA’s Aboriginal communities.  They failed and Labor’s State Convention subsequently adopted a motion proposed by the Maritime Union that criticised and rejected the Report.

The most recent sign of Weatherill’s grasping at straws of possible “solutions” was his address to the National Press Club on July 8.  He embraced the Abbott-Pyne mantra that the states be “sovereign” in areas like education and health but only if the feds adopt “fair” revenue measures to support this.  He failed to understand that it is precisely because the feds want to ditch funding responsibility that they seek to give education and health back to the states.  There was no mention of the fundamental inadequacy of the current Constitution in providing for Australia’s future capitalist economic development and a very mixed message about imposing on the big end of town for the taxes they owe the community: on the one hand, he suggested expansion of the GST to cover financial transactions, whilst on the other he advocated “a reformed taxation system that removes taxation from investment and business activity”.

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”! 

Anticipating opposition to the nuclear fuel cycle, Scarce determined that all public submissions be typed and sworn under oath in front of a Justice of the Peace.  This was firmly opposed by the union movement as an attack on community participation, and on the ability of Indigenous communities to put their views forward.

At the ACTU National Congress, the Electrical Trades Union National Secretary Allen Hicks moved a motion, seconded by SA Unions Secretary Joe Szakacs, that declared that “To be required to type a submission then swear an oath just to have your say is simply not necessary, and will have a disproportionately large effect on regional and remote communities, a majority of whom are Indigenous.  Additionally, in many remote communities English is not a first language, so along with typed and sworn oath requirements means that many Indigenous voices will not be heard in the Royal Commission”.

In any case, the Olympic Dam Indenture Act, introduced by Labor when it seemed that an expansion of the mine by BHP Billiton was likely, exempted the giant corporation from the Aboriginal Heritage Act.  And yet the Royal Commission’s Issues Paper 1 misleads the public by saying that the Aboriginal Heritage Act will protect Aboriginal sites of significance.

“This inaccuracy is significant,” said Friends of the Earth Adelaide spokesperson Nectaria Calan on July 13, “as it misrepresents existing regulatory and legal arrangements and potential arrangements in the future, issues on which the Issues Paper invites public comment.”  Ms Calan called on the Commissioner to correct the mistake and extend the deadline for submissions on the basis of the corrected information.

Veteran SA anti-nuclear campaigner David Noonan described the conduct of the Commission as “a promotional exercise for nuclear industry vested interests” that would “target custodians’ country for nuclear waste dumping”.

The Weatherill government is a classic example of the reason the working class needs its own party and its own agenda.

Either you are on the side of the capitalists and prefer capitalism to socialism, or you are on the side of the workers and recognise the necessity of socialism’s victory over capitalism.

Either you are for depleting the environment of resources and creating nuclear wastes that require thousands of years of safe storage, or you are for expanding the use of renewable clean energy sources.

Either you are for denying Aboriginal communities their rights to self-determination and sovereignty, or you support these.

Mr Weatherill can’t do both.

He can’t be a Social Democrat, holding office in a capitalist institution and administering a capitalist economy, and have policies that put the people before profit.

The policies embraced by the Weatherill government indicate the path that Social Democracy has chosen to follow.

The people will ultimately decide on a different direction to take.

 

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