Student Speaks to APEC Rally about Nuclear Institute

At the demonstration around the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Sydney on Saturday September 8th, Holly Creenaune from the Australian Student Environment Network spoke to the crowd about APEC's dangerous nuclear agenda, and how the Institute of Nuclear Science proposed for Sydney University will play a pivotal part in it:

"At the Sydney APEC meeting, John Howard is fuelling climate disaster: expanding coal mining and exports, pushing ineffective and non-binding targets, and undermining the Kyoto Protocol.

On Wednesday [September 5th], George Bush and John Howard announced their nuclear pact: escalating uranium mining, dotting nuclear power stations along the Australian coast, and turning Australian universities into research and training grounds for a dangerous and unsustainable industry.

Sydney University is marked for a major role, proposing the first nuclear institute in over twenty years. Students oppose their university's role in Howard's aggressive nuclear push. In 1986, the anti-nuclear movement saw the closure of the sole remaining School of Nuclear Engineering at UNSW. Twenty years on, there is still no support for Howard's nuclear agenda. We will shut down the Institute of Nuclear Science at Sydney University before it begins.

Australia's status in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership will mean that uranium mined on Aboriginal lands and exported, will return to be stored in an international nuclear waste dump, proposed on Aboriginal lands in the Northern Territory.

We know uranium is a dirty fuel – it is used to create nuclear weapons, and it becomes radioactive waste that is toxic and deadly for 250,000 years. We know that after 50 years in the global nuclear industry there is still no safe way to store nuclear waste.

Despite what Bush and Howard say, Nuclear power is NO solution to climate change and across Australia we will stand up, we will resist, we will stop Howard and his nuclear agenda.

John Howard and the NSW Police have spent the last year attempting to intimidate, suppress and silence today's rally against APEC's dirty energy agenda. It has been difficult for us to demonstrate today. It has not been easy. But we are building this movement. Two weeks before the Federal Election we can put half a million people on the streets to Walk Against Warming, demanding a renewable and nuclear-free future.

There are a host of energy options available to us: wind, solar, solar thermal, hot rocks, small-scale hydro, energy efficiency and the list goes on.

But our growing movement to avert dangerous climate change goes beyond the technology: we are shifting power.

We are shifting power away from the 21 climate criminals here at APEC.

We are shifting power away from the multi-national coal and uranium mining companies pushing their polluting agenda.

We reject APEC's energy agenda – we need REAL ACTION on climate change. We reject a coal and nuclear-powered future. Today, we are creating a movement that is shutting down the dangerous fossil fuel industry. We are creating a future that is just, renewable and people-powered."