Hypocritical refusal to sell uranium to India does no good

People such as my colleague Senator Gavin Marshall, who want to keep Labor's policy of refusing uranium sales to India, need a influential justification to persist with a policy that restricts trade and reduces our export income.

Just what is it? It can't be so as to India has nuclear weapons. We sell uranium to Russia and China, together of which have such weapons.That India is occupied in a regional arms race? China is occupied in one of the fastest military build-ups in recent history. That India allows nuclear proliferation? India tightly guards its nuclear technology and has never permissible it to proliferate. None of these objections hold water.

Not selling uranium to India made a few sense when it was part of an global strategy to bring India into the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But the US-India nuclear agreement of 2007 ended that plan and lifted the de facto international ban on nuclear co-operation with India. The current policy no longer serve any purpose.