The Australian government has refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and have stood by the major Kyoto refuser, the US under former oilman president, George Bush. On a recent visit to the US, Prime Minister Howard reignited the nuclear debate in Australia by calling for an expansion of uranium mining and he even floated the idea that nuclear power could replace green house gas producing coal fired power stations. Critics were quite willing to point out the weaknesses of Howard's arguments and those of the nuclear industry promoters. After half a century and billions of dollars of public money subsidising the nuclear power industry, the threats remain the same and no progress has been made in finding solutions to the dangers posed by nuclear power.

In the 1950s Dr Helen Caldicott trained as a paediatrician but by the 1970s was fully enmeshed as part of the emerging global anti nuclear movement. She has devoted the past thirty-five years to an international campaign to educate the public about the medical hazards of the nuclear age. Dr. Caldicott is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, the recipient of the 2003 Lannan Prize for Cultural Freedom and the inaugural Australian Peace Prize awarded by the Peace Organisation of Australia. She is the bestselling author of uclear Madness and Missile Envy. Dr Caldicott divides her time between the central coast of New South Wales and Washington, DC where she is President of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute. She launched her latest book, Nuclear Power Is Not The Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else at Melbourne's Trades Hall in July 2006.

The opening speaker for the evening was Hillel Freedman from Nuclear Free Australia. He was followed by Jacob Grech a long time anti-nuclear campaigner, a former Nuclear Disarmament party candidate and co founder of the Victorian Peace Network.

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