The Australian Labor Party has voted to change its platform on exporting uranium to India following an impassioned debate at the party’s national conference.

 

Prime Minister Julia Gillard highlighted an apparent hypocrisy of selling uranium to China but refusing to sell to India.

 

"We are at the right time in the history of the world to seize a new era of opportunity in this, the Asian century," Ms Gillard said

 

Australian Worker’s Union National Secretary Paul Howes echoed the Prime Minister, urging support for the move.

 

"I believe the 400 million people who live in India without power deserve the right like we do to have powered homes and schools and hospitals,” Mr Howes said.

 

Senator Stephen Conroy weighed into the debate, conjuring emotional imagery of a 1950’s nuclear leak in his family’s traditional home in Cumbria, Southern England.

 

Senior left figure Peter Garrett urged delegates to ‘remember Fukishima’, and similar nuclear catastrophes in forming their opinions over the issue.