Another Alexander Downer Fraud

When Australia announces that it will lease uranium to India, the deceptiveness and misleading nature of our Foreign Minister will again be revealed

Mr Downer appeared to be sticking to his principles last week when he issued a statement that Australia would not be selling uranium to India. In attempting to repudiate a story in the Australian claiming that a nuclear transaction would take place regardless of whether India signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. "Officials have told me that that's not correct" Mr Downer intoned.

In a way Downer was correct. The supply of nuclear fuel India will not be a sale. It will be a lease, and when the Indians have finished using the ore for peaceful purposes, the leftovers will be shipped back to Australia.

Days after Mr Downer made the denial of a sale our Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaille appeared on national television to introduce the concept of uranium leasing. Mr Vaille said that Australia had not yet been caled upon to make such arrangements.

Such abstract concepts would seem relatively meaningless were it not for the fact that they were made at a time when our Prime Minister was walking the halls of the White House. On Saturday Mr Howard met with Dick Cheney, the US Vice President who still receives two hundred thousand dollars a year from the company to which he gave a signifigant amount of privatised government jobs, including caring for the U.S. miltary wherever in the world they go. On Sunday our PM planted trees with President Bush in a public demonstration of mutuality in what Bush called "The Liberty War"

I'm going to risk the speculation that, by the end of this week, President Bush will make the request of Prime Minister Howard that Australia assists India in meeting its energy needs by allowing her to access our fourty per cent of known global uranium reserves. Mr Bush will also ask Mr Howard, in the name of peace, to safeguard the nuclear waste from possible use in warfare by bringing it home to Australia

The Australian Greens have been the first to notice what's about to happen Senator Christine Milne has suggested today that the Government should tell the truth.

[from The Age]

Greens senator Christine Milne said turning Australia into a dumping ground for spent nuclear fuel from India was unacceptable.

"If there is no safe disposal, there is no justification for mining in the first place," Senator Milne said in a statement.

She challenged the government to name where in Australia it intended to store any spent nuclear fuel from India, China, or elsewhere.

"(Mr) Howard and (Mr) Vaile should stop talking in code and admit that the motivation behind discussions with the US on the lease proposal is pure and simply to circumvent the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which prevents the export of uranium and nuclear technology to India,"
Senator Milne said.

"As such Australians should reject it."

Senator Milne went on to say that the Greens had campaigned for a
"cradle-to-grave" Australian responsibility for its uranium, adding
that "That is why, when there is no safe disposal for nuclear waste, it
is irresponsible to generate the product in the first place,"

"The world is already beset by terrorism. Nuclear waste on the high seas is a frightening prospect."

Senator Milne also said that Australia should respect the existing policy of a
nuclear free Pacific adopted by countries within the region.

Coming back to Minister Downer's comments last week, would it be fair to suggest that, in his position as representative of foreign affairs, Alex might have had more than an inkling of the topics that his leader was intending to discuss in Washington? In "telegraphing" the possibility of uranium leasing, Mr Vaille's words indicate that he at least knew what was going on. Two possibilities exist. The first is that Mr Downer has no idea of how his boss will be sorting out this important foreign policy issue. The second is that Downer knows exactly what is going on and is yet again attempting to mislead the Australian public.

Note the carefullness of Downers words of "officials have told me..." If this isn't the pre-creation of an escape clause I'll eat my (tin) hat. If Mr D is called a liar all he has to do is, in the same manner as his treatment of the AWB fiasco, claim that he was incorrectly advised. It astounds me that any Australian can still possess any shred of trust for the words of this man.

How would Mr Downer fare if interviewed duing a lie detector test. In March of this year the head of Australian Polygraph Services and the boss of Australian company The Podcast Service issued a public invitation to Alex for a free lie detector test.

Poly the Pollie” was launched in Melbourne today with the aim of
inviting Australian MPs to sit a policy-based lie detector test, conducted by Steve Van Aperen, Australian’s leading polygraph expert. Van Aperen is known throughoutAustralia as an expert in the field of interviewing and detecting deception. He has received extensive training from the world’s leading international investigative authorities in how and why people deceive
and has been affectionately named the “Human Lie Detector”.

[from Poly The Pollie]

Reilly said polythepollie.com on The Podcast Network would track responses from MPs and publish results.

“From time to time, we all suspect that politicians may not be
telling us the complete truth. In the past, we shrugged our shoulders
and accepted that lying was part of politics and that there was little
we could do about it. Well now we can,” he said.

“If I have a choice to vote for a politician who is prepared to
submit him or herself to a polygraph and one who is not, then I know
which one I will be voting for, and I think a lot of people will feel
the same way.

”Downer’s admission of knowledge about the Australian Wheat Board’s
dealings in Iraq is just one example. It’s time politicians were held
accountable for their actions.”

Long before the AWB inquiry there was a scare in the Australian media. Korean missiles might strike Sydney. A very quick response by those in the know showed the allegations to be baseless. However, this hasn't seemed to faze their author, Mr Guess Who.

We've been grumbling for years now about lack of ministerial accountablility, to no avail. How do we enforce our elected leaders to tell us the truth?