Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Criminal Code Amendment (Cluster Munitions Prohibition) Bill 2010. This is an amendment to the Criminal Code Act 1995. You realise the seriousness of the nature of the subject matter of this bill when you look at what it is amending. It is amending division 72 of the Criminal Code, which, as you may well know, Mr Deputy Speaker Murphy, has some of the most heinous crimes listed in this part, including explosives and lethal devices.

This bill amends Australian domestic law to ensure consistency with the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Australia signed this convention in December 2008 as part of our commitment to a world free from cluster munitions. A cluster munition is defined in the convention, but I think it is very neatly summarised by the United Nations Development Program, which states:

Cluster munitions are weapons that, when launched or dropped by aircraft, disperse large numbers of sub munitions over wide areas that can be the size of two to four football fields. These sub munitions, or bomblets, are usually designed to explode upon impact. Often they fail to do so and remain unexploded and unstable on the ground.

Certainly, for me at least, that definition sends a shiver up my spine.

The passage of this bill will place Australia in a position to ratify the convention. The convention is very significant as it prohibits all use, stockpiling, production and transfer of cluster munitions. The convention also provides for adequate provision of care and rehabilitation for victims, clearance of cluster munition contaminated areas, risk education and destruction of stockpiles. At the heart of the convention is a commitment to:

… put an end for all time to the suffering and casualties caused by cluster munitions at the time of their use, when they fail to function as intended or when they are abandoned …

This legislation forms one part of the measures necessary for Australia to implement the convention. The government is also working to ensure that the doctrine, procedures, rules and directives of the Australian Defence Force are consistent with the convention. Moreover, through the Mine Action Strategy, the government fulfils its obligation to support victims and to clear and destroy munition remnants. As part of this strategy, the government has committed $100 million over the next four years to reduce the threat and socioeconomic impact of landmines, cluster munitions and other explosive remnants of war.

I note that this bill was introduced into the parliament by the Attorney-General during Disarmament Week. Disarmament Week was established by the United Nations in 1978 as a way of promoting awareness about the need to disarm and to highlight the severe and adverse consequences of the arms race. While growing up, I thought that the arms race was insidious. I was personally very disturbed by the threat of war, but I realise today that even more insidious is the death and maiming that occurs from war. It is not just a threat; it is actually occurring.

While Disarmament Week may have been established in response to the arms build-up that came to characterise the Cold War, the continued use of cluster munitions sadly means disarmament remains an important issue for the international community. Cluster munitions kill, and they kill indiscriminately. They lead to the destruction of innocent lives in a most horrific and graphic manner. The United Nations Development Program’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery estimates that cluster munitions have caused over 10,000 injuries or deaths across the world. I can think of nothing more senseless than the death of a child, and certainly the death of a child in this manner. I note a report from the organisation called the Cluster Munitions Coalition. This is not a report from decades ago, during the various conflicts in the Mekong region; it is a report from March 2010. It states:

Five children were killed and one injured when a cluster submunition exploded in a village in Lao PDR’s Champasak province on 22 February 2010. The incident highlights the need for urgent action to assist survivors and ensure the clearance of cluster munition remnants when states parties to the treaty banning cluster bombs gather for their first official meeting in the Lao capital, Vientiane, this November.

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According to Lao government sources, a group of eight children found a … cluster submunition while they were feeding buffalo in rice paddies about 2 km from the village … near the border with Thailand. The device exploded while the children were playing with it in a hut on stilts in the rice paddies. The blast instantly killed five of the children and injured one, while two who were farther away were not harmed. The US widely used … cluster submunitions—also called pineapple bombs because of their resemblance to the fruit—in bombing raids over Lao PDR in the 1960s and 70s.

I will talk in a minute how some children actually think that these munitions are balls or other toys that they can play with. It simply drives home the insidious nature of these things.

Since World War II cluster munitions have targeted over 30 countries and territories, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Chechnya and Western Sahara. Their use has had devastating impacts, not just on human life but on the ongoing sustainability of these countries. They have had a detrimental impact on food security, for example. They contaminate arable land and kill livestock. Food insecurity, as we all know, is already a significant problem in war-torn countries, and the use of cluster munitions simply makes the problem worse. They have a long-term devastating impact on communities, causing severe damage and destruction to shelter and water, again leading to health and hygiene problems.

Put simply, cluster munitions cause damage so significant that they hinder the economic growth and development of emerging countries. Much of the work that we do through international agencies like the World Bank to implement practical measures to improve the lives of people in emerging economies will be undone as long as these weapons of insidious destruction continue. They create poverty in countries that are already plagued by poverty. It is also alarming that at least 75 countries have stockpiled billions of cluster munitions. Indeed, the convention says that the states parties to the convention are:

Deeply concerned also at the dangers presented by the large national stockpiles of cluster munitions retained for operational use and determined to ensure their rapid destruction …

According to the UNDP, most of these cluster munitions are of the type known to have high failure rates. As I mentioned, cluster bombs often fail to explode upon impact. This has significant long-term consequences for communities that are turned into minefields. I mentioned the Lao PDR. Thirty years after the conflict in Laos efforts are still taking place to clear the 75 million unexploded cluster bombs across the country. In July 2003 UNICEF warned that more than 1,000 children had been injured by weapons such as cluster bombs since the end of the war in Iraq. According to Carol de Rooy, the then UNICEF representative in Iraq:

Cluster bombs come in interesting shapes that are attractive to children. Many children are injured or killed because they see a shiny metal object, sometimes in the shape of a ball, and they have to go and pick it up and play with it.

The thought of innocent young lives being lost at the hands of unexploded cluster munitions is deeply saddening, and I am deeply disturbed by the thought of innocent lives being lost in this way. That is why I welcome the efforts of this government to move as quickly as possible towards lodging Australia’s instrument of ratification for the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The bill will create offences that reflect the range of conduct that is prohibited by the convention. This includes creating a new offence of using, developing, producing, acquiring, stockpiling, retaining or transferring a cluster munition. The bill will also create an offence of assisting, encouraging or inducing a person to commit these acts. As the Attorney-General said in his second reading speech, this offence includes a person providing financial assistance to, or investing in, a company that develops or produces cluster munitions where that person intends to assist, encourage or induce the development or production of cluster munitions by that company. The details of this offence are outlined in proposed subsection 72.38(1). These offences will carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment for individuals and $330,000 for bodies corporate.

I welcome the provisions on banning investment. I note that Switzerland, for example, recently moved to ban its investment in cluster munitions. They are poised to join a number of other countries that have outlawed these investments. The Cluster Munition Coalition has welcomed this step and has called for more countries to follow suit to eradicate what I think they very rightly describe as the ‘double standard of banning cluster munitions while allowing financial institutions to benefit from their production elsewhere’.

Act for Peace is the international aid agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia. They warn that many financial institutions across the globe provide loans to companies that manufacture cluster munitions. Although I recognise that these financial institutions are not directly funding the production of the munitions, Alistair Gee, the Executive Director of Act for Peace, has warned:

… providing finance to these manufacturers allows them to free up other funds to continue making an internationally banned weapon.

In the spirit of this bill and in the spirit of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, I urge financial institutions to reconsider this practice and cancel the funding they provide to these companies.

In conclusion, this bill builds on Australia’s commitment to a world free from cluster munitions. Our determination to ratify the convention as soon as possible reflects our commitment to pursuing international peace. I commend the bill to the House.

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