PM Transcripts

MEDIA RELEASE Canberra, 28 June .76
UNION ATTITUDE TO MKU CONTRACT
Statement by the Acting Prime Minister, Minister for National
Resources and Minister for Overseas Trade, Rt.. Hon. J. D. Anthony
I have been advised that a meeting in Sydney today of
representatives of unions and ACTU State Branches associated
with the mining or transport of uranium decided to ask the
Government, pending the report of-the Ranger Inquiry, to
allow a contract by Mary Kathleen Uranium -to export in July
45.4 tonnes of uranium oxide to the United States to be filled
by borrowing from an overseas uranium stockpile.
I have also been advised that the meeting suggested that
the Government, if necessary, should underwrite the ability of
Mary Kathleen Uranium to borrow from an overseas stockpile.
I understand the meeting also said that if the Government
issued an export licence to enable Mary Kathleen Uranium to
fill the contract from its own production then all unions
involved with Mary Kathleen Uranium would immediately withdraw
their services.
The Government had put it to the unions that a contract
commitment for a July 1976 shipment of 45.4 tonnes of uranium
oxide from MKU to a U. S. power utility should be shipped.
The. Government indicated its view that an earlier ACTU
resolution which would cause unions to disallow shipments until
the report of the Fox Committee of Inquiry was considered should
not apply to this shipment.
An interim report of the Fox Inquiry is expected by the end
of August, and no further shipments of uranium oxide from MKU are
required to be made before October.
The unions have now reaffirmed their earlier decision, but
have urged that the Government should enable the 45.4 tonnes
commitment to be made by, in fact, underwriting the ability of
MKU to borrow from an overseas stockpile.
Successive Governments have reaffirmed that existing
contracts will be honoured. It is natural therefore for the
company, the purchaser and the Government to look to this amount
to be supplied from production at MKU in the normal way.
I repeat what I have said before: existing contracts will
be honoured by Australia. The Government will, after urgent
discussions with the company, re-consider options in the light
of the unions' request.
The threat of cutting off production at MKU will not weigh
in the Government's consideration. That would result in the
unemployment in an isolated area of some 300 people, but would
be solely as a result of the unions' own actions.