BLUE, MR J.N.

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:39): Some weeks ago, there was a notorious South Australian progressive business fundraiser at the National Wine Centre involving the Premier, the Deputy Premier and other ministers. Seated at the main table with the Premier at that fundraiser was one of the representatives and one of the bidding partners for the rail yards hospital project PPP, but there was also another gentleman by the name of Mr Blue from a company called General Atomics. My attention has been drawn in the past week or so to a significant article in the Sydney Morning Herald by the journalist Ben Cubby under the headline, 'Secretive US arms tycoon behind a new uranium mine in Australia'. The article states:

The new uranium mine approved by the environment minister, Peter Garrett, will be owned by a subsidiary of one of the world's biggest arms dealer. A colourful but reclusive billionaire named James Neal Blue, who helped devise the Predator unmanned aircraft being used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a director of Quasar Resources—the company that will control the Four Mile Mine.

Quasar Resources is an affiliate of General Atomics, a US weapons and nuclear energy corporation which is chaired by Mr Blue, and reportedly holds $US700 million in Pentagon contracts. Mr Blue, 74, first came to prominence during the 1980s as a self-described 'enthusiastic supporter' of US involvement in a covert war against the left wing government in Nicaragua.

It is a long article but I will quote the concluding paragraphs. Mr Cubby refers to a recent article in The New York Times, and the article continues:

According to The New York Times, Mr Blue once part-owned a cocoa and banana plantation in Nicaragua with the family of former president Anastasio Samosa. He told the paper he was supportive of the Contra guerrillas that fought Nicaragua's Sandinista government but refused to discuss any link to CIA operations in that country. Mr Blue's brother Linden—

and I interpose to say that they were evidently referred to as the Blue brothers—

was briefly imprisoned by the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro after apparently violating Cuban air space in a private aircraft.

Mr Blue established a business empire based on oil and real estate, before moving into weapons and nuclear power. He is regarded as a pioneer of the unmanned aircraft that the US military uses to spy on and bomb its enemies.

General Atomics has also prospered, and between 2000 and 2005 it was the biggest corporate sponsor of travel for members of the US Congress and their families and aides.

Clearly, Mr Blue, to be seated at the main table with the Premier of South Australia at the SA Progressive Business fundraiser, has very significant connections with the Premier and, also, as I will outline, the Deputy Premier, Mr Foley. Time does not allow me to go into all those links, so I will just refer to travel documents for Mr Foley's trip to the United States in 2005. Three telephone contact numbers are given: one is a DFAT number, one is a SA Tourism Commission number and another one is for someone from General Atomics as a contact for Mr Foley's travel in January 2005.

In the late morning of 17 January 2005, Mr Foley had a meeting with the owners of General Atomics. He attended a lunch hosted by General Atomics in the company's restaurant, and with other stakeholders he attended a dinner hosted by General Atomics at George's at the Cove on that evening. In June 2006, Mr Foley visited the United States and, again, there was a dinner with the chairman of General Atomics, the president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and other significant people at George's at the Cove. There are a number of other references in the travel documentation that indicates the very close association the Deputy Premier and the Premier, through both direct contact and SA Progressive Business, have with the Blue brothers.

The importance of this matter is that there is a dispute in relation to the Four Mile Mine between the minority partner Reliance (25 per cent) and Heathgate (75 per cent), which is the General Atomics company. There has been a considerable amount of evidence in recent times that the Rann government, through the Premier in particular, is supporting the position of the Blue brothers' companies or interests in relation to this dispute. As I understand it, there is much more to come over the coming weeks in relation to the Rann government's involvement in this dispute and the position it has been adopting—which is, generally, supportive of the Blue brothers' companies.

Time expired.