Influence As well as monitoring overseas nuclear programs, the Australian government hopes to influence them. And that means operating a nuclear research reactor in Australia. This seat is said to be dependent on the operation of a research reactor, although there is no iron-clad guarantee that it will be lost without a reactor, nor that it will be maintained with a new reactor. The make-up of the Board of Governors is determined by the existing Board. It is the only body in the world which looks at those issues on a week to week basis and that is fundamental.
Concrete examples are few and far between.
However, the North Korean situation would not have unfolded any differently without Australian involvement. The then ALP government contributed some millions of dollars towards that ridiculous deal, and avoided public or parliamentary scrutiny of its manoeuvrings insofar as it was able. Another example provided by the foreign affairs bureaucrats followed the Chernobyl disaster, after which there was an emergency meeting of the IAEA's Board of Governors. Australia took to that meeting a resolution to set up a process of negotiating some new nuclear safety conventions. The rest of the time, however, Australia, like so many other countries, promotes the spread of the nuclear industry in all sorts of dangerous and irresponsible ways.