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By Paul Pickering
A NUCLEAR Free coalition of La Trobe residents and members of the Wilderness Society did their best to enliven a dormant pre-election issue last week, urging La Trobe MP Jason Wood to break Liberal Party ranks on the nuclear power debate.
During their meeting at Mr Wood’s Boronia office last Thursday, local representatives of the Wilderness Society’s Nuclear Free campaign implored Mr Wood to publicly oppose his party’s nuclear ambitions.
Nuclear Free spokeswoman Imogen Zethoven said that Mr Wood’s anti-nuclear stance – and his position on the backbench committee for Environment and Heritage – made him a vital asset for the group.
“We’d like to see Mr Wood – as someone who has a reputation within the Liberal Party as being environmentally aware and pushing pro-environmental policy – take a stance urging his party to renounce its pro-nuclear policy,” Ms Zethoven said.
“Despite the Prime Minister saying that nuclear power is clean and green, the fact is nuclear power stations produce highly toxic radioactive waste that remains dangerous to people and the environment for hundreds of thousands of years.”
Ms Zethoven said the group’s concerns had only been heightened by the Government’s decision to sign on as part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) – an agreement between 16 countries committed to using nuclear energy – at a seminar in Vienna on 16 September.
“Australians are at great risk of having an international nuclear waste dump imposed upon them by a future coalition government if the Government is re-elected with the same policies,” she warned.
Mr Wood responded to the group’s prodding by saying that he could do no more than he had already done.
“I’m not sure what else they expect me to do,” he said.
“I can’t do more than make public comments and write to the Prime Minister and write to the Minister for Environment.”
Reiterating that his personal preference was to focus on sources of renewable energy, Mr Wood was keen to play down the Government’s nuclear ambitions.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s off the agenda,” he said.
“The Government hasn’t got plans to build a nuclear reactor in Australia.”
La Trobe ALP candidate Rodney Cocks, who met the Nuclear Free group immediately after Mr Wood’s meeting, said the Howard Government had been asleep on the issue of nuclear power.
“The Liberal Party can’t play this down. The message has been sent clearly that a vote for the Liberals is a vote for nuclear reactors and nuclear waste,” he said.
Mr Cocks said that having toured former Soviet countries during his military career, he believed the nuclear road was “a dangerous path that Australia does not want to go down”.
While Ms Zethoven noted that Mr Wood and Mr Cocks were both receptive to the Nuclear Free message, she said she was concerned to hear from Mr Wood that Government backbenchers had not been briefed on developments such as the GNEP.
“It became clear that most senior levels of the Federal Government don’t appear to be informing backbenchers of what’s going on, so it appears as if the Government is going to steamroll on ahead,” she said.
