Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Non-Proliferation Legislation Amendment Bill 2006. This is a non-controversial bill which, as the member for Batman has pointed out, the opposition supports. The purpose of the bill is to reinforce Australia’s commitment to the international regime for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons by strengthening the physical protection of nuclear material and facilities in Australia. The bill implements new requirements following amendments to the International Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. It regulates the decommissioning of a nuclear facility to ensure that Australia is able to meet its international obligations in this respect. It increases penalties for serious offences relating to security of nuclear materials. These are sensible measures and the opposition supports them.

Australia is currently having a debate about the future of nuclear energy in this country and also about the future of uranium mining and exporting. We in the Labor Party will be debating these issues at our national conference next month, so we will have a sound policy to put to the Australian people at the election later this year. The scope of that policy is something that delegates to the conference will determine, but I can tell the House now that our policy will firmly reject any suggestion of nuclear power generation in Australia. Let me quote from an excellent article by Senator Chris Evans, the shadow minister for resources and energy:

For countries with limited energy choices, nuclear energy may be a reasonable option despite its substantial disadvantages. But for a nation with vast reserves of cheap coal and gas, and an environment suited to renewable energy production, nuclear power makes no sense at all.

Australia has a competitive advantage in coal; we have an abundance of supplies and an established industry.

What we have got to do is bring the new technology into play to make it cleaner and more efficient.

Labor rejects both the anti-coal fundamentalism of the Greens and the fetish for nuclear power which seems to have seized the coalition in recent months.

These are discouraging times for those of us who take the issue of nuclear nonproliferation seriously, which is why I support any moves Australia can take, such as those in this bill, however limited, to support nonproliferation. Indeed, I echo the excellent sentiments of the member for Batman in pointing to the call by the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, for a new international diplomatic initiative led by Australia to enhance the provisions of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Last year we saw North Korea join the club of declared nuclear powers, although it now appears that the device the North Koreans exploded was small and not very sophisticated. That a lunatic such as Kim Jong Il should be close to developing a useable nuclear weapon is a frightening prospect and one which the international community, particularly North Korea’s neighbours, such as Japan, are increasingly alarmed by. Although I welcome the recent announcement that North Korea has agreed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for assistance in developing non-nuclear energy options, I remain sceptical. The North Korean regime’s record of bad faith and broken agreements is too long for anyone to believe that Kim Jong Il has suddenly given up his strategy of nuclear blackmail. I fear we have not heard the last of this story.

The extended deterrence of the nuclear umbrella of the Americans over North-East Asia has provided the security that has underwritten the spectacular economic growth of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and even China. But, as a result of nuclear proliferation, I am concerned that Japan will now be asking the US for a nuclear guarantee—which, of course, no US government could provide. Although the North Korean nuclear threat to Japan has steadily grown since the end of the Cold War, it is not just about North Korea but also about China. During the Cold War, China developed nuclear weapons for its own defences, including deterring both superpowers. Now China is free to use nuclear weapons for other purposes, China’s destruction of one of its satellites in January strongly suggests the rise of China might not be too peaceful. This should be seen in the context of yet another 17 per cent increase in China’s acknowledged defence spending, its lack of transparency, its activities in the East China Sea and the rapid build-up of the Chinese navy.

Australian policymakers have to be concerned particularly about the effect on Japan of these developments in North-East Asia. I wonder about the internal debate within the Japanese governing party, the LDP, re extended deterrence of the US nuclear umbrella. Is their support growing for what might be described as the Gaullist position, long advocated by the likes of Japanese Diet member Shintaro Ishihara? Such a change in attitude in Japan would be based on the belief that Japan could not rely for its nuclear security on more powerful allies who might not prove reliable in a crisis. According to Robyn Lim, professor of international politics at Nanzan University in Japan, a top Australian analyst, who recently testified to the Labor Party national security committee, we are now entering what some strategists call ‘the third nuclear age, in which a much faster pace of nuclear proliferation can be expected—that is, horizontal proliferation; states acquiring nuclear weapons for the usual reasons: power, status and security’. Professor Lim has long questioned whether extended deterrence can possibly work in a multithreat environment. It is important to remember that everything we know—or we think we know—about nuclear deterrence and extended deterrence came out of the particular global strategic circumstances of the Cold War. The problem is, as Professor Lim points out, that the rules of the game have changed. If we have a multithreat environment, not based on two polar opposites who had rational aims, we have a very complicated situation with nuclear proliferation.

Particularly worrying is the rapid progress being made in Iran towards the development of nuclear weapons. Iran does not need nuclear energy any more than Australia does. It has huge reserves of oil and gas. The only reason Iran is building nuclear reactors is so that it can produce nuclear weapons. Indeed, the Iranian regime is scarcely bothering to conceal that fact. Furthermore, while we can reasonably expect that Kim Jong Il does not actually intend to use a nuclear weapon if he finally succeeds in building a rocket that could deliver one, the same cannot be said of Iran. Kim’s reasons for playing the nuclear card are essentially political and economic: he wants to blackmail the West, particularly South Korea and Japan, into perpetuating his economically and morally bankrupt state. His intentions are evil, but based on what Bismarck called an iron logic. President Ahmadinejad does not need Western money and his country is far from bankrupt. Iran is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, although that is not reflected in the living standards of the Iranian people, who continue to suffer under the Islamic republic’s economic mismanagement and corruption. Iran can afford to build nuclear weapons that work and delivery systems that deliver.

Iran is the only country in the world which has openly expressed the desire to destroy another sovereign state, Israel, in blatant violation of the UN charter to which Iran is a signatory. Today even Syria and Libya grudgingly accept Israel’s right to exist. Iran is the last bastion of rejectionism and its most dangerous advocate. I do not think the world quite realises how deep are the religious and ideological convictions that drive the behaviour of President Ahmadinejad and those around him. Shiah Muslims, like Christians and Jews, believe in a great redeeming figure who will return to earth and bring human history to an end. Christians believe in the return of Christ; Jews await the coming of Mosiach the Messiah; but the variant of Shiism to which Ahmadinejad belongs is known as Twelver Shiism. It awaits the return of the 12th or Hidden Imam, whose name is Muhammad al-Mahdi. Twelver Shiahs believe that Muhammad has been hidden by God since the ninth century and he will one day emerge to fulfil God’s plan. President Ahmadinejad and his circle believe, on the basis of various omens and prophesies, that the return of the Hidden Imam is imminent. Since the return of the Imam will bring human history to an end, they are not particularly concerned about earthly things, like whether the people of Iran can find employment or the broken-down state of Iran’s oil industry; they are concerned above all about the end of what they see as the greatest affront to God—that is, the establishment of a non-Muslim state in the Middle East, namely Israel.

Honourable members would be aware of President Ahmadinejad’s recent sponsorship of a grotesque conference of Holocaust deniers, led by David Duke of the Ku Klux Klan, in Tehran. They probably think Ahmadinejad’s preoccupation with disproving the Holocaust offensive and ridiculous but essentially harmless. This is a mistake. Ahmadinejad’s objective in trying to refute the irrefutable is to de-legitimise the state of Israel as a prelude to its destruction in fulfilment of what he conceives to be God’s will and as a precondition to the return of the Hidden Imam. That is the basis for his rhetorical attack against Israel. When he speaks to the UN Security Council next week, which is scheduled to discuss extended sanctions against Iran for its failure to observe international demands that it cut back its nuclear program, we can expect to hear more of his deluded view of reality, which he will bring to the UN Security Council, which he sees as a necessary precondition for an actual physical assault on the state of Israel.

This is the essential difference between the North Korean situation and the Iranian situation. North Korea is playing a game of bluff, a dangerous game but essentially a game. Kim Jong-il has his price and it now appears that the US and Japan—Japan less willingly—are willing to pay that price. This may prove to be a mistake in the long run, but it certainly eases the North Korean situation in the short term. President Ahmadinejad, in my view, is not bluffing and he does not have his price. He cannot be talked out of his nuclear ambitions and he will not be bribed out of them. What arguments, what bribes could mean anything to a fanatic who believes in the coming apocalypse? That is why Iran’s nuclear ambitions are so dangerous.

Of course, there are many international diplomatic moves that can be implemented in the meantime to stop the Iranian atom bomb. We can hope that comments made in the Iranian press recently by people associated with the mullahs, the Supreme Guidance Council, denigrating Ahmadinejad are a sign of hope, because many people argue that within the power circles in Iran the mullahs are more interested in keeping control of power than getting involved in a nuclear exchange. They prefer to continue running Iran than to get involved in a nuclear war with Israel. That is again a glimmer of rationality. Hopefully within the power circles in Iran this will be resolved in their favour by their pulling back Ahmadinejad on the nuclear weapons acquisition plan.

It is of course a great pity that this drama with Iran is unfolding at a time when there is a crisis of leadership in the Western world. President Bush has been discredited by the debacle in Iraq. One of history’s greatest Labour prime ministers, Tony Blair, is about to retire in September. The failure in Iraq, particularly the botched post-invasion plan, means that it is almost now impossible to mobilise international public opinion in the Western world to take the Iranian threat seriously. People say: ‘We were lied to about Iraq. Why should we believe you about Iran?’ It is a difficult question to answer.

But this is, in my view, not a problem for Israel alone. People no doubt remember the Israeli air attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 which ended Saddam Hussein’s first attempt to acquire nuclear capacity. They assume that Israel could always do the same thing to Iran. Perhaps many world powers secretly hope the Israelis will, so that it will absolve everyone else from dealing with the situation. There are two problems with this rosy scenario, one military and one political. Firstly, the Iranians also remember what happened to Osirak and are not as dumb as Saddam Hussein. Their nuclear facilities are scattered all over Iran and buried, thanks to North Korean engineers, deep underground. Perhaps the Israelis know where they are, but probably they do not, or they do not know where all of them are. Even if leaders in Jerusalem did, a single air raid would not do the job and they do not have the capacity to bomb every bunker in a country the size of Iran.

In any case, following the demise of Arik Sharon, the Israelis are quite unprepared for the challenge. Few analysts believe that the current shaky coalition government in Israel has the nerve to make a pre-emptive attack on Iran—even if it has the means to—unless the Iranian threat literally becomes imminent. I have no doubt, however, that if Iran really did attack Israel the response would be immediate and overwhelming. I am sure honourable members understand what I mean by this: the whole region, the whole world, would be plunged into a nuclear conflagration. That is why the current Iranian regime is the greatest threat ever faced by the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, of which this bill is a small part. Russia’s move in the last couple of days to withhold nuclear fuel from the nearly completed Bushehr nuclear power plant—I suspect it is unless Iran suspends its enrichment program—is a very encouraging development. When told of Russia giving Iran an ultimatum on its enrichment, a senior European official said:

We consider this a very important decision by the Russians. It shows that our disagreements with the Russians about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program are tactical. Fundamentally, the Russians don’t want a nuclear Iran.

For a long time, there has been a proposal which would create hundreds of millions of dollars of business for Russia and at the same time ensure that Iran does not go nuclear. The proposal involves Iran receiving, for its power reactors, nuclear enriched material that was produced within Russian territory. Iran has unfortunately rejected that proposal.

Last month the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, informed some European officials that Russia had made a political decision not to deliver the fuel to Iran, adding that Russia would state publicly that the sole reason was financial. Then, last week, a senior Iranian official confirmed in an interview that the Secretary of the Russian National Security Council, Mr Ivanov, had threatened Iran with an ultimatum: the fuel would be delivered only after Iran’s enrichment of uranium at Natanz was frozen. In other words, the Russians are happy to provide nuclear fuel for the real domestic nuclear power facility they are building for the Iranians at Bushehr, but they are not prepared to continue providing it if the Iranians go ahead with their nuclear activity with their centrifuges at Natanz, which is where the world fears Ahmadinejad’s Iran is building fuel for their nuclear weapons. Mr Ivanov, the Russian foreign minister, also called on Iran to resolve outstanding questions with the International Atomic Energy Agency about its nuclear program and to stop enriching uranium. The Russians have been pressing Iran to take some sort of pause in its uranium enrichment which might allow the UN Security Council sanction process to halt and bring Iran back to the negotiating table. The Russian foreign minister said:

The clock must be stopped: Iran must freeze uranium enrichment ... The U.N. Security Council will then take a break, too, and the parties would gather at the negotiating table.

I congratulate the Russian foreign ministry and President Putin on this very wise stance of the Russian federation.

Five years ago, President Bush described Iraq, North Korea and Iran as the ‘axis of evil’. Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq has been overthrown. Kim Jong Il’s regime is now being bribed and cajoled into abandoning its nuclear program—at least for the time being—although, as Robyn Lim has pointed out, the subject of negotiations with North Korea is its ongoing nuclear program at Yongbyon. The negotiations are not about decommissioning the nuclear weapons that, theoretically or actually, the North Koreans have. This is subject to further negotiations, and I hope that in the political blowback from Iraq in North-East Asia we do not concede too much to the North Koreans. It is a very encouraging development, but we have to remain firm in our purpose in North-East Asia and hopefully decommission their primitive bombs.

President Ahmadinejad’s regime in Iran is the one partner in the ‘axis of evil’ that really does have the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, really does have a target in mind as it builds them and really does have a regime evil enough and reckless enough to use them. After what has happened in Iraq, I am aware that there is not much appetite in the Western world for the concept of regime change. At this stage any regime change in Iran will be internal and limited, with the mullahs there realising that the whole world, via the UN Security Council, is putting tighter and tighter sanctions on them—financial and economic sanctions—and realising that the particular brand of provocative international behaviour of the Iranian president is going to lead to conflict and to their loss of power. I hope that this will cause them to wake up and to abandon this attempt to acquire nuclear weapons and to use them.

Unless there is a change of regime in Iran one way or the other, there is a real danger that not only will the nuclear non-proliferation regime be at grave risk, but so will the peace of the world. That is why I strongly endorse the comments of the member for Batman that the proposal of the former Leader of the Opposition, the member for Brand, for a new effort, an international diplomatic effort, by Australia to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and non-proliferation regime is an urgent task that Australia should take to its heart. This issue is becoming very live all around the world, and we are going to see more of it at the United Nations Security Council meeting next week when President Ahmadinejad will face all of his critics, including the Russian government, the European Union, the United States and indeed the entire world, who have decided that if Iran will not desist from its policy of acquiring nuclear weapons it will face stronger and stronger sanctions. I hope that, despite Mr Ahmadinejad’s no doubt deluded rhetoric next week, forces within Iran come to the realisation that the international community will not put up with these threats of genocide and the plan to acquire nuclear weapons that would enable them to put that into effect.

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