Global Security Newswire

Benign scientific initiatives in Australia could suffer as a result of legislation aimed in part at preventing the spread of expertise relevant to building weapons of mass destruction, scientists warned in a report last week by The Australian newspaper.

Academic institutions, the nation's Defense Department and a key legislative panel have failed in discussions conducted over several months to eliminate all disagreements over the Defense Trade Controls Bill 2011, which Australian lawmakers might consider next week. The proposal is intended to implement the five-year-old U.S.-Australia Treaty on Defense Trade Cooperation.

Critics contend the text would impose an unnecessary bureaucratic burden on legitimate studies while undermining international cooperation and circulation of findings. Opponents of the draft legislation have accused Canberra of making an overly hasty push to win approval of the rules in advance of a high-level meeting with Washington scheduled for November.

Representatives of Defense Minister Stephen Smith said the proposal would require scientists to obtain licenses in order to provide data "regulated by the Defense and Strategic Goods List to a person outside Australia." The licensing process would enable Australian authorities to "assess the risk of providing that technology to a person overseas," they added.

Certain measures in the proposal did not worry Michael Biercuk, a physics specialist who heads the Quantum Control Laboratory at the University of Sydney.

"If you send someone the plans for a nuclear bomb, that can be as detrimental as providing fissile material," Biercuk said.

Still, the bill "doesn't extend the same protections to science and research that comparable legislation does in the U.S.," the scientist said. "It provides only an exclusion for basic scientific research, explicitly defined as research that has no application."

Biercuk voiced particular worry over the bill's rules on "dual-use" materials with both peaceful and weapons applications.

The legislation should undergo revision to "extend exclusions to basic and applied research that is in the public interest," the expert said, referring to "research where we intend to publish our results."

"This (bill) fails to meet the needs we have relating to communication with people offshore," he added. "We have many collaborators overseas, (but under the bill) e-mail data that goes to a foreign server is considered an offshore transfer."

The legislation has prompted statements of opposition from other sources, including the country's National Tertiary Education Union. The Australian Defense Department, though, has countered that the proposed measures enjoy wide backing.

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday formally recruited the University of Western Australia to support efforts aimed at ensuring governments are not carrying out uranium enrichment operations without U.N. oversight, according to a press release. The enrichment process has the potential to produce civilian fuel as well as bomb material.