It was a distasteful affair, but Australian politicians have become accustomed to those toadying practices that accompany capitulations to power. On his visit to Melbourne, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was, as he had been on a previous trip, greeted by an evangelical atmosphere unseen and, it should be said, needless for other political leaders. Indian Australians mean votes for the politicians in Canberra; an Indian economy, strappingly moving ahead, means returns: education, services, and as became so clear on this Modi sojourn, uranium.

On July 9, Australian and Indian governments minted an administrative arrangement permitting the sale of Australian uranium to an ever energy hungry India. The Australia-India Joint Statement on Energy Security confirmed the finalisation of such arrangements “necessary to enable the export of Australian uranium to India for exclusively peaceful purposes and under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, as provided for under the Australia-Indian Nuclear Cooperation Agreement (2015).” In Modi’s words, this would “give our clean energy objectives fresh momentum.” Australian uranium, which accounts for almost 28% of global sources, is seen as essential for helping India reach its goal of 100 gigawatts of nuclear energy capacity by 2047.

There was much in the way of ignominious foot washing by the government of Anthony Albanese and a largely starry-eyed press corps salivating over the imminent flow of dollars. The Australian Financial Review celebrated the “landmark agreement that will pave the way for a flood of exports to India, finally making good on a nuclear co-operation pact between the nations signed more than a decade ago.”

The publicists of mining companies also featured prominently, left conspicuously unchallenged in their assertions. “The uranium industry is just one of the things that can help make sure we continue to enjoy the world’s highest standards of living in Western Australia,” stated Jonathan Fisher, the Chief Executive Officer of Cauldron Energy Ltd. (A simple formula is at play here: What is good for uranium miners is good for Australia, a link that operates not so much in persuasive terms as unsubtle blackmail.)

The Minerals Council of Australia was invigorated by the agreement, reiterating the call to overturn uranium mining bans in force across the country in all jurisdictions bar South Australia and the Northern Territory. (Fisher is of a similar view, calling such prohibitions a product of “ideology” rather than “practicality”.) “This deal is a big step forward for Australia. It puts us in the box seat to meet India’s ambitious goals on nuclear power,” trumpeted MCA chief executive Tania Constable. “It sends a strong, clear message that Australian uranium and Australian mining is of great strategic importance to India.”

The matter of uranium, which has been powdered and pasted over by an uncritical fourth estate, ignores the enormous problems arising from supplying New Delhi. In November 2011, international law academic Donald Rothwell advised the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) that this would violate Article 4 of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga) unless India subjected its entire nuclear infrastructure to comprehensive safeguards and invigilation by the IAEA. That article bars parties from providing “source or special fissionable material, or equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the processing, use of production of special fissionable material for peaceful purposes to (i) any non-nuclear-weapon State unless subject to the safeguards required by Article III.1 of the NPT, or (ii) any nuclear-weapon State unless subject to the applicable safeguards agreements with [the IAEA).” Article III.1 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) impose obligations on non-nuclear-weapon State Parties to accept safeguards to be negotiated with and concluded with the IAEA “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other explosive devices.”

The late former Coalition Prime Minister Malcom Fraser was also sceptical, opining that “selling uranium to India would breach our international obligations.” In January 2012, he further warned the then Labour government of Julia Gillard that permitting exports of uranium to India would nourish a global spread of nuclear weapons.

India, along with Pakistan, Israel and North Korea, are not members of the NPT. (North Korea announced its withdrawal from the treaty in 2003.) For that reason, New Delhi was prevented for decades from securing uranium purchases and various associated nuclear products from members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). It’s refusal to accept full-scope safeguards allowing the IAEA freedom to inspect all nuclear facilities also compounded matters. Despite these impediments, Indian diplomacy was relentless enough to secure an exception in 2008, when the NSG, of which Australia is a member, voted to permit uranium exports to India. The then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lauded the dispensation, marking “the end of India’s decades-long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and of the technology denial regime.”

Despite the 2015 bilateral agreement between Australia and India on the supply of uranium, the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCT) recommended that sales could only commence after India had met various conditions regarding nuclear regulation, routine inspections and decommissioning plans.

In a submission of seething critique to the JSCT, ICAN made various formidable points that are by no means clarified by the latest administrative arrangements. Not being a member of the NPT meant that India was not obligated to pursue negotiations in good faith for nuclear disarmament. Other legally binding undertakings to disarm had not been made. To therefore supply India with uranium would question Australia’s own commitment to the NPT, jeopardising that crucial understanding that parties, in joining the regime, would be able to access nuclear materials and technology for non-military purposes as long as they renounced the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

ICAN’s submission further dispenses with the image of India as an “impeccable” international citizen on the issue of nuclear non-proliferation. Its first nuclear test in 1974 was conducted using material and technology provided by the US and Canada intended for non-military purposes. The “development of nuclear weapons sparked a nuclear arms race with Pakistan, which led to a series of nuclear tests in the late 1990s, and is still ongoing.” Australian uranium would also benefit the Indian nuclear weapons program by permitting New Delhi to use domestic reserves, as imported uranium is preferred to power civilian reactors.

New Delhi has also shown itself to be unreliable, even dangerous, in another respect. In his 2021 annual threat assessment, Mike Burgess, the director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), announced that a foreign spy ring had been assiduously operating in the country. It was subsequently revealed that the Indian foreign intelligence agency, otherwise known as the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) had furnished the spies in question. Not only were they responsible for gathering information on Australian defence projects, the country’s state of airport security and classified material on trade relationships; they were also engaged in a squalid practice shared with other regimes: an unhealthy appetite for gathering information on members of the diaspora. Sikhs, suspected of fostering secessionist tendencies in India, figure prominently on that list.

Despite this blotting of the record, successive Australian governments have fallen for the riches and rewards a relationship with New Delhi promises. Modi, despite his salty sectarianism and sketchy record on human rights, has managed to charm his way into many liberal democratic establishments. He knows that money does not so much talk as bellow, drowning out the cries of human rights advocates and those who wish to see a world free of nuclear weapons.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. Email: [email protected]