John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I thank the Deputy Speaker and members present for granting me leave to make a few brief remarks in regard to this important report. There is part of my heart and soul in this report. I think it is a very strategic report, as the member for Wills has just reported. It is unanimous on a subject that has the potential for a whole range of diversions. It is a unanimous report from the major political parties represented in this House and in the other place—the Labor Party, the Liberals, the Nationals and the Greens—on sensitive subjects such as the future of the Australian uranium industry, uncertainty about nuclear power generation of the future, issues related to the excess of fissile material and the waste. They are all thorny subjects on which every individual has a different opinion. Yet we were able to present to this chamber and the other place a unanimous report because as a committee we want this report to be used as a strong statement of how Australians feel and of the need to follow the dream that the member for Wills just referred to so that our grandchildren can live in a world free of nuclear weapons.

Australia has an excellent reputation on this argument over the years, even through the frustrating periods of lack of progress, as an international good citizen and an honest broker. We want that reputation to continue and to use that credibility to progress this matter. There is a new wave of optimism that has come out of the election of the Obama administration in the United States. There is an expectation which is not to be overstated but does give us optimism that the intransigence of the last 40 years will finally be overcome. The first step is to get a comprehensive test ban treaty in place and operating. The committee has been able to see evidence of the monitoring system and the verification, and we are confident that, through the verification system, if any nation in the world conducts a nuclear test, the rest of the world will know about it. In fact, the world knew about the most recent explosion from North Korea before the regime there had even made their public announcements.

I share the dream. I want my grandchildren to not have the experience of my youth and formative years. I remember the uncertainty of that period, right through the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s. When the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred I was 12 years old. I remember an occasion at night, after listening to conversations between my parents and my grandparents, of not being able to sleep and waking my father up in the middle of the night and seeking assurance from him. I asked him, ‘It is going to be okay, isn’t it, Dad?’ He made the comment at the time that most of the threat was in the Northern Hemisphere and that we were way down here, Down Under. I reminded him to read Neville Shute’s book On the Beach, the movie of which was playing at the time. In those days in the small town in which I was raised we still had a movie theatre, and we had Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Hopkins and Fred Astaire involved in making that memorable book into a good film. That was 1959, which gives some idea of how long I have been around.

Of the 23 recommendations, I commend recommendation 21 and urge this chamber to support it. It asks for the parliament to adopt a resolution on this parliament’s commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. If we can do that as quickly as we can and before the end of the spring sittings, we will arm the two members of this chamber who are presently at the United Nations in New York speaking on our behalf. We could give them the evidence and speak for all Australians, saying that we want a world free of nuclear weapons and we do not want to go back to the intransigence of the past which has frustrated many nations, like our great country, with the lack of progress. I commend the report as good reading to all members present.

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