Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity today to speak on the Criminal Code Amendment (Cluster Munitions Prohibition) Bill 2010 and to support the Convention on Cluster Munitions. As is often the case when Australia signs and ratifies very worthy conventions, we are not the problem in a lot of ways. There are other places around the world which we wish would sign and ratify these conventions. While I do not think that the use of cluster munitions by the Australian Defence Force was ever an issue, it is good that we sign and ratify conventions such as this to help add weight and momentum to a very good cause and a safer world.

Cluster munitions are air dropped or ground launched weapons. During their flight they eject submunitions and bomblets. They are called ‘dumb bombs’. There is nothing highly technical about them. They are expended during flight, hit the ground and are designed to kill personnel and destroy vehicles, runways and powerlines—basically a range of different targets. They are designed to all explode on impact, but we know there will be a 10 per cent failure rate, where they do not go off on impact. As the previous member said, these cluster munitions have a terrible history of maiming people. I will mention more about that later.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions was adopted in May 2008. On 1 August 2010 it became binding international law, six months after it was ratified by 30 states. We look forward to Australia ratifying it as soon as possible, once we have passage of this bill. More than 100 states have signed the convention, but of course the next step of ratification is required. Cluster munitions were invented in World War II by the Germans initially, as I understand it. They were almost simultaneously invented by the Americans and others. So they have been around for quite a while. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, some 34 countries were involved in the production of these weapons. The weapons can have as few as two submunitions per round or as many as 2,000. As I said, around 10 per cent are not likely to go off. That indicates very clearly the sorts of weapons that were fired over Laos during the time of the sixties and seventies, which was referred to earlier.

Since the early 2000s, related forms of weapons have been produced which can deactivate or even self-destruct in accordance with the way they are built. So these are smarter weapons but they are not technically defined as cluster munitions under the convention. I understand that, since February 2005, over 13,000 casualties around the world have been attributed to cluster munitions. Of those, 98 per cent have been civilian casualties—the worst kind. Of that 98 per cent, 27 per cent have been children. For weapons designed to have a military purpose, the impact has been the very greatest upon civilians.

As the member for Greenway has said, the impact of cluster munitions has particularly been felt in Laos. In early 2009, I had the honour to be part of a delegation to an interparliamentary conference in Vientiane, the capital of Laos. While in Vientiane, we had the opportunity to get a better appreciation of the effect that unexploded cluster munitions have had on that country. There have been many deaths and maiming of a great number of children because cluster munitions appear to be very interesting to inquisitive children. Members of our delegation were able to visit a local hospital and rehabilitation centre where people who had been maimed, the survivors of these munitions explosions, were trying to get their lives back in order. That is a terrible tragedy. Apart from these terrible weapons being on the ground, there is the problem of unscrupulous people asking local villagers to look for scrap metal in the forest, in the jungles of Laos. That has encouraged more people to investigate the metallic objects on the ground—again, to their great detriment.

I welcome this bill. The convention bans the use, development, production, acquisition, stockpiling, retention and transfer of cluster munitions, as well as the assisting, encouraging or inducing of any person to do any act prohibited by the convention. Rather than speaking on the main features of this bill, I note the Attorney-General is here and we probably should get on with the process of moving this bill through. I note as well that the shadow minister mentioned that the Senate will be having a closer look at the bill and amendments may well come out of that consideration. It is important.

The convention was ratified on 1 August by 30 nations, meaning that it is already in force. A lot of progress has been made. We should make sure that this bill delivers everything that needs to be delivered. I look forward to it passing, once all these issues have been sorted out and the Senate has properly dealt with it. I thank the House for the opportunity.

See this speech in context