ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the India debate, because it has dominated Australian official and public discussion of uranium export policy since 2006 and illuminates the complex reasons for such policy decisions. It identifies and assesses the relative weight of the multiple factors at play in Canberra's decisions to sell uranium to China and Russia, as well as the drivers of debate about possible exports to India. Australia's decisions regarding uranium exports to China, Russia and India will be assessed against the following factors: non-proliferation; domestic political factors such as public opinion; bilateral relations; geopolitical and strategic dynamics; international norms other than non-proliferation; and market considerations. Australia's diplomatic imperatives would seem to provide a large part of the explanation for the decisions to open new uranium export markets among rising or re-emerging major powers. The national-interest bilateralism component played strongly in Howard's decision to sell uranium to India, thus abandoning decades of Australian bipartisanship against uranium exports to non-NPT states.
