China Guangdong Nuclear Power Co. (CGNPC) owns 60 per cent of Australian-listed Energy Metals. It is one of two Chinese companies authorized to import and export uranium in China, Energy Metals will export 150,000 pounds (68 tonnes) of uranium oxide concentrate to Shanghai at $53 a pound, no later than April 30, 2012.

Energy Metals, however, will not identify the seller of the $8 million shipment. Energy Metals said it is still discussing with CGNPC to sell the concentrate, where it expects to generate a profit from the sale. Before the Fukushima nuclear disaster affected uranium markets, Energy
Metals had received federal government approval to export third-party uranium.

Data from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade showed that since 2006, uranium expors to China have been controlled. The first was in 2008 by Energy Resources of Australia, while BHP made a trial in 2009. Uranium displacements from Australia last year reached a record 431 tonnes. However, this represents only 7 per cent of the 5,926 tonnes transferred, where half went to the US. http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/274333/20111230/australia-s-energy-metals-ship-uranium-concentrates.htm

In Queensland, a state Labor government opposes uranium mining, unlike the Labor governments in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

In NSW and Victoria, freshly elected conservative governments have maintained their Labor predecessors’ ban on uranium
exploration……”It takes two election cycles to get a uranium operation up and running and in Australia, this is considered too high a political risk.”…..”

Earlier, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Australia, Abdul Malik Abdullah said if Australia is willing to export uranium to India then it should sell it to Pakistan as well.
Abdullah said, “If Australia is going to lift the ban on a country which has not signed NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) it is much hoped that will also apply to Pakistan the same way.” Australia’s ruling Labour Party voted to overturn a decades-old ban on uranium sale to India, paving the way for Canberra to supply yellowcake to a nation outside the NPT.

Australian Labor Party to enforce dictates of Washington, financial markets, World Socialist Website By Mike Head 5 December 2011 At its 46th national conference last weekend, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) committed itself to imposing the “hard decisions” required by the Gillard government’s unconditional alignment with Washington’s increasingly aggressive confrontation with China, ……
It was the first ALP conference since the June 2010 backroom coup in which Labor’s factional bosses, who had reported their preparations to the US embassy, installed Julia Gillard as prime minister at the expense of her predecessor Kevin Rudd. The conference was also convened just two weeks after President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia and the region, in which he mounted a diplomatic and strategic offensive against China. Not a single delegate referred to these developments, yet they dominated the entire proceedings.

Rudd was removed above all because he had sought to alleviate the  tensions between the US, the Australian ruling elite’s military protector, and China, Australian capitalism’s biggest market. Upon her appointment, Gillard immediately made clear her unconditional alignment with Washington. She also quickly struck a deal with the three biggest mining companies to drop the Rudd government’s proposed mining super-profits tax,….
Gillard returned to the theme of “hard decisions” on the final day
when moving to dump the party platform’s prohibition on selling
uranium to India unless it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT). “We are not a political party that shirks hard decisions,” she
told conference. Making the change would boost mining exports and
establish the “strongest possible relationships” with India, whose
rise, Gillard declared, was just as central to the “Asian Century” as
that of China.
This was as close as Gillard went to acknowledging the actual reason
for the shift, which was strongly insisted upon by the Obama
administration in the lead-up to the US president’s visit, and which
dovetails with Washington’s efforts to promote India as a regional
counterweight to China……..Rudd had incurred the wrath of
Washington in 2007 by reversing a decision by the previous Howard
Liberal government to approve uranium sales to India, following a
similar decision by the George W. Bush administration.
Since 1984, ALP policy has effectively given free rein to uranium
mining, making Australia one of the world’s largest exporters, but it
maintained the pretence of a commitment to nuclear weapons disarmament
by prohibiting exports to non-signatories of the NPT……Those
opposing the shift warned of further damage to the party’s already
disastrous electoral prospects by eroding any claim that the ALP stood
for abiding “values.” Senator Cameron objected that the change would
mean “the abandonment of any pretence of disarmament……
The determination of the factions to suppress any, even tame,
discussion on the Rudd coup, the Obama visit and the agreement to
station US troops was displayed in the final day’s session on foreign
and military policy. Not one mention was made of the most significant
turn in Australian foreign policy for decades: the creation in
Australia of critical staging bases for the US military as part of a
strategy to contain China, thus placing Australia on the frontline of
a potential confrontation between nuclear-armed states…..
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/labo-d05.shtml

The move sparked some fierce opposition from MPs worried that India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Janelle Saffin says it was the wrong step to take. ”Well I see it as a moment of madness,” she said.

“It overturns about four decades of a principal position that’s been taken in Australia on that issue and I just think it will be hard to implement with the stringent safeguards that have to be put in place.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-05/uranium-decision-a-moment-of-madness/3713358

“They’ve (ALP) sacrificed their principles, they’re chasing the almighty dollar and they’re selling uranium to a country that is nuclear-armed and it’s in conflict with its nuclear-armed neighbour. ”Selling Australian uranium to India means that even if they use it all in peaceful nuclear reactors, it will free up their own limited domestic supplies for use in nuclear weapons.”

At the Australian Labor Party’s national conference this weekend, one of the pre-eminent agenda items is a motion to end the ban on selling uranium to India.

 a new market offering high-grade uranium ore for India’s civilian reactors frees up the country’s limited indigenous supplies for boosting its military program.

India to test new missile  dubbed ‘the China killer’, The Age 3 Dec 11, Given the incendiary moniker ”the China killer” by the more sensationalist press, India’s newest nuclear-capable missile will be its most powerful yet, and an unmistakable signal to its neighbours.

According to the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Energy and Minerals, Mr January Makamba, the aim was to make sure that the contracts entered between the government and Mantra Resources Ltd (Mantra) of South Africa and Uranex would benefit the country’s economy and environment.

He told reporters after the committee met with officials of the ministry that uranium exploration was a very delicate issue worldwide and his committee wanted to ensure the mineral did not turn out to be a curse for the country.

“We want to make sure that the environment and the country’s security are looked at…uranium is among the most sought after minerals, and we must take precautions,” the Bumbuli MP said.

Records show that the government agreed with Mantra, under the company’s flagship Mkuju River Project, to explore the existence of uranium in southern Tanzania.The firm has confirmed the presence of multiple thick zones of sandstone-hosted uranium mineralisation at shallow wells in the Nyota Prospect.An inferred mineral resource of 35.9 million pounds (U3O8) is estimated for the prospect.

This initial resource estimate is based on drilling that covers only a small part of the total area of prospecting, and a potential exists to substantially grow the resource base with ongoing work. On the other hand, Uranex is working at Bahi area for Dodoma and Manyoni projects with an estimated 6.7 million pounds.Tanzania is believed to have about 53.9 million pounds of uranium oxide deposits. http://thecitizen.co.tz/news/-/19265-committee-wants-to-see-contracts-for-uranium