Uranium: The debt solution
Uranium deal with India can fetch Aus as much as $1 billion, says MARK SHARMA..
Australia will be paying for the damage caused by the floods in Queensland for a long, long time, but a solution is at hand.
It is not exactly the kind of start that anyone would have expected for 2011. Bushfires in Western Australia followed by floods in Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales have all but put a dampener to the festivities of the New Year. But Australia, they say, is a tough nation. This is a self-made country; the “never give up” Aussie spirit will overcome even the greatest of challenges that Mother Nature throws at us.
Tens of thousands of volunteers took to the streets of Brisbane and elsewhere to clean up the mess that the killer floods unleashed. Not to be forgotten also is the generosity of millions of Australians. Within hours of the first floods, thousands of people pledged money to the Premier’s Relief Fund in Queensland. Schools, offices, tradies, restaurants, corporate groups, sporting teams and hundreds of other professional bodies got together and raised money for this worthy cause. At last count, close to $182 million has been raised and this is expected to go up.
It was heartening to see that even smaller nations like Sri Lanka, Tonga and East Timor wanted to help in Australia’s hour of crisis. The Federal and Queensland State oppositions should also be commended on their show of solidarity with the government at this crucial juncture. The cleanup bill is expected to run into billions of dollars and the effects of this devastation will stay with us for months and possibly, years.
People in Sydney and some other parts of NSW can consider themselves lucky that they were not directly affected by the water, like our brothers and sisters up north of the border. But this national crisis will eventually hit all of us. Apart from the extra spending on repairing infrastructure, it will also hurt grocery and petrol bills of every Australian family.
The nation is already under a mountain of debt and taking on more is only going to worsen the situation. It is expected that all the gains enjoyed by our Aussie dollar against the greenback will fall spectacularly.
To sum up, Australia is staring down the barrel of another financial crisis. Nobody is talking about it just yet, but eventually it will become an important issue. Already there is speculation that the Reserve Bank will hike up interest rates again, anytime between now and the next 3-4 months.
In short, we need to generate more money and we need it now. Many experts believe that it is our mining industry that will once again rescue us from another disaster. Yes, the same industry that Kevin Rudd wanted to kill with RSPT. But Australia can’t just rely on normal exports. We need to rethink our strategies and look for newer avenues.
In November last year, Prime Minister Gillard announced a nuclear deal with Russia and called it a “job creator”. It is widely expected that the Labor party will finally get rid of its colonial thinking and embrace new realities by starting talks with India for a similar deal. Indian PM Manmohan Singh is expected to visit Australia later this year and the export of uranium is tipped to be at the top of the agenda. India desperately needs uranium to feed the energy demands of its over 1 billion strong population. Imagine if you had to stay without electricity for hours in 45c sweltering heat?
Over 800 million Indians experience this every year, for which Australia has the solution. It is expected that a uranium deal with India can fetch as much as $1 billion in extra cash over three years.
Already the USA, France and Russia have signed major nuclear deals with India. In Australia, the Coalition has strongly supported uranium exports to India. This is the right time for Prime Minister Gillard to show some leadership and agree on another “job creating” nuclear deal. She needs to pick up the phone and call her counterpart in New Delhi with the good news. A nuclear deal with India would be the right thing for the people of Australia, India and the planet. It would provide electricity to millions of Indians, financial strength to the Australian nation and a cleaner planet for rest of the world. Is there anyone listening in Canberra?
