Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, I present the committee’s report entitled ‘Report No. 106: Nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament’, together with the minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

by leave—The road to nuclear hell is paved with defensive intentions. The United States developed nuclear weapons after it was attacked during the Second World War by Japan, and both the United States and Russia developed nuclear weapons as a defensive strategy during the Cold War. Because they had nuclear weapons, China, which at various times during the nuclear age has had poor relations with both America and Russia, developed nuclear weapons as well. Because China had nuclear weapons, India felt threatened and developed nuclear weapons. Because India developed nuclear weapons, Pakistan felt threatened and developed nuclear weapons. The strength of religious fundamentalist terrorist groups in Pakistan has created an ever-present and alarming risk that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of non-state actors, terrorist groups who have no respect for human life and will take no notice of doctrines of deterrence and mutually assured destruction in the way that governments might reasonably be expected to. We must do all that we can to try to break every link in this dangerous nuclear chain. Every one of us has a responsibility to help re-energise the international political debate against the background of a decade or more in which the international community has been sleepwalking when it comes to both non-proliferation and, especially, disarmament.

I want to thank my fellow committee members not just for the hard work involved in producing a 230-plus-page report but for the attitude of cooperation and determination to say something significant and worthwhile with which they approached this task. The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has members from the Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Nationals and the Greens, with very different perspectives on a range of nuclear and foreign policy questions, but each member of the committee wanted to play their part in protecting people from the nuclear threat and to ensure that Australia’s voice is heard loud and clear around the world on these matters. So we have worked through the issues until we achieved an agreed outcome, a platform for progress.

What is that platform? We want to see the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in place. This treaty is incredibly important in halting the momentum for nuclear proliferation and ultimately ringbarking the nuclear weapons tree. We want to see a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty in place. This would stop countries building up fissile materials and therefore reduce the risks of proliferation and limit the risk of nuclear arms races. We want all uranium-exporting countries to require that the countries to whom they export uranium have an additional protocol to guarantee International Atomic Energy Agency inspector access. We believe that the International Atomic Energy Agency’s budget needs to be increased so it can do its work properly and thoroughly. The committee examined proposals for a nuclear weapons convention and for a multilateral fuel bank. In each case more work needs to be done, and we have recommended the allocation of research and consultation resources to the development of a nuclear weapons convention with a clear legal framework and enforceable verification.

It is important to understand that the friction between the nuclear haves and the nuclear have-nots is alive and well. Throughout the history of the non-proliferation treaty the nuclear haves have stressed non-proliferation—that is, making sure no other country gets nuclear weapons—while the nuclear have-nots have stressed disarmament—that is, obliging the nuclear armed countries to get rid of their bombs. The countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, essentially have-nots, are frustrated by the lack of progress on disarmament. Too often this difference of approach has led to international stalemate. Clearly we need to have action on both fronts: non-proliferation and disarmament.

The committee strongly supports the work of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, co-chaired by Gareth Evans. We support the Conference on Disarmament and the forthcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. We have made recommendations which reflect this support. We have also made recommendations designed to encourage parliamentarians all around the world to engage with and talk up a world without nuclear weapons, for—borrowing a little from the late great Edward Kennedy—the dream of a world without nuclear weapons is a dream that must never die. We must never accept that it is all right to live in a world where some people have the power to kill tens of millions of their fellow human beings and make the planet uninhabitable in a heartbeat. That must never be acceptable.

I wish to place on the record my great appreciation for the mighty work done by the committee secretariat, in particular inquiry secretary Julia Searle and committee secretary Jerome Brown, in enabling this report to happen. I urge my colleagues here in Australia and in other parliaments, and ordinary Australians and citizens of other countries, to read it, think about it and make a world free of nuclear weapons a reality.

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Link to 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.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House take note of the report.

The debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.