Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to take part in this discussion this afternoon and particularly to place on the Senate record Australia’s strong record of leadership in this area. I want to refer to a few different aspects of this discussion. I begin by saying that the country of which we are speaking, North Korea, has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world. The longstanding food crisis that North Korea has allowed to develop over years and years has resulted in chronic malnutrition amongst children in particular and amongst urban populations, particularly in the northern provinces. In a country where fundamental rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of association and freedom of movement continue to be denied and where access by independent monitors is severely restricted, it is of no surprise that this is the sort of behaviour that in this instance we end up with. There are well-documented reports of widespread political imprisonment, of appalling conditions in detention and of both torture and ill-treatment, and extrajudicial executions are regarded as an unfortunate matter of course in a country like North Korea. But the bottom line is that those who lose the most from the regime’s behaviour on this occasion are their own poor and starving millions—again and again and again.

In relation to the motion that Senator Milne has moved noting the need for the Australian government to take actions that strengthen and not undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty following this nuclear weapon’s test, I think it is important to state very early in the debate that the prevention of the further spread of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery is a longstanding national security priority for Australia. Not just this government but successive Australian governments have recognised that if more states were to acquire nuclear weapons, even those that are far-removed from Australia, it would increase the risk of nuclear weapons being used, would destabilise both regional and international relations and would undermine global restraints on nuclear proliferation. More recently, we note that the emergence of a new form of global terrorism only adds urgency to the threat that terrorists might one day themselves carry out an act of nuclear or radiological terrorism.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the NPT, which entered into force in 1970, was ratified by Australia in 1973. It is the centrepiece of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. We have been one of the longest and strongest supporters of the NPT, recognising at a very early stage that its future would have a major impact on the future security environment both globally and in Australia’s own region. It is the most widely supported arms control treaty ever. Only India, Pakistan and Israel have never joined. North Korea in theory joined but claims to have withdrawn.

It has, though, come under challenge in recent years. Some states have clearly been able to pursue clandestine nuclear programs while still being a party to the NPT and subject to IAEA safeguards, and that indicates that there are weaknesses in the verification mechanisms to ensure that states are adhering to their NPT obligations. The announced withdrawal by North Korea from the NPT in 2003 brought to the fore the risk of states acquiring sensitive nuclear technology on the basis of being an NPT member and for ostensibly peaceful use and then subsequently withdrawing from the treaty to pursue nuclear weapons. The announcement on 9 October—in quite bizarre terms, it seems to me—that North Korea had conducted a nuclear test is indeed a grave threat to peace and security in the region and beyond and a further serious challenge to the NPT based nuclear non-proliferation regime.

As far as the NPT itself is concerned, the parties meet every five years to review the operation of the treaty. They met in May 2005. We have been a strong contributor at all of those review conferences and we have used them to pursue strengthened operation of the treaty. In fact, in 2005 at the review conference the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, said—and I quote briefly from his remarks:

... no multilateral treaty has done as much to strengthen our collective and national security as the NPT in its 35 years.

But he warned:

... if the NPT is to continue serving our interests well, this Review Conference must tackle the serious challenges we now face.

Of course, that conference is on record as not reaching consensus on measures to strengthen the treaty, and Australia noted its disappointment in that regard, because we had worked very hard to find common ground at the conference. We worked with Japan, in particular, producing a joint paper on nuclear disarmament measures, and many members shared our strong support for entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and for the negotiation of a treaty to ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. In that context of the discussion, we coordinated a small group of countries, the G10, which submitted proposals on nuclear safeguards and peaceful uses of nuclear energy issues. But we also noted, having seen the disappointing result, that the future of the NPT did not hinge on the outcome of that review conference. It was disappointing that it did not produce a final document, but it was not fatal. Other review conferences have suffered from the same defect. Australia maintains its absolutely strong support for the NPT, marked by its participation in that review conference process.

I want to make some brief remarks about the IAEA safeguards and in particular note that the weaknesses in those safeguard systems, which were exposed by the 1991 discovery of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, are now being remedied by the IAEA’s strengthened safeguard system and, in particular, the adoption of the additional protocol to those safeguard agreements which extends and improves the IAEA’s inspection, information and access rights.

In 1997, we were the first country to conclude an additional protocol with the IAEA and in 2005 we announced our intention to make the additional protocol a condition for the supply of Australian uranium to non-nuclear weapons states. We worked very actively in that process. In relation to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, that treaty itself reinforces the nuclear non-proliferation regime by banning all nuclear explosions, and we strongly support the CTBT’s entry into force. While it did not overcome the final hurdle of being adopted in the conference on disarmament, in 1996, Australia led international action through the foreign minister in taking the treaty to the UN in New York, where an overwhelming majority of countries adopted it. In 2005 the foreign minister chaired a conference of CTBT parties in New York on ways to accelerate its entry into force, and he chaired a further meeting of those parties in September 2006. So we operate at a very high level in that regard and do take the sort of leadership that Senator Milne commented on in her earlier remarks.

We have also been active in supporting international efforts to strengthen controls on the spread of sensitive nuclear technology. At the NPT review conference to which I referred earlier, in May 2005, the minister called for the development of a new framework to limit the spread of sensitive nuclear technology while respecting rights to peaceful nuclear energy. We have a long record in this country of demonstrating strong support for the rights of NPT parties to benefit from the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. We note that these rights are not unqualified and do not automatically extend to proliferation-sensitive technologies. We are a very active participant in the international dialogue on sensitive nuclear technology issues and we follow those very closely, not only from the non-proliferation perspective but also in view of our role as a major uranium supplier.

In terms of the stronger physical security of nuclear and other radioactive materials and nuclear facilities, we know that physical security is essential to protecting against nuclear and radiological terrorism and we also know that the IAEA makes a crucial contribution in that area. We were one of the first countries to contribute to the IAEA’s Nuclear Security Fund, which was set up to support their 2002 action plan which was designed to upgrade worldwide protection against acts of terrorism that involved nuclear and other radioactive materials.

We are a very strong advocate of the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, which seeks to prevent illicit trafficking of nuclear material and the acquisition of nuclear material by terrorists. We have been an active contributor in negotiations on amendments to the CPPNM to extend its application. We chaired the main committee on that at the July 2005 diplomatic conference. In 2003 we also chaired negotiations in the IAEA which developed the Code of Conduct on the Safety and Security of Radioactive Sources. In 2004 we hosted a conference in this region, the ministerial-level Asia-Pacific Nuclear Safeguards and Security Conference. It is not true to say that Australia is not continuing to take a role in leadership in this area, and it would be disappointing to ignore all of those facts.

I note that part of the discussion which Senator Milne began before she concluded her earlier remarks—and I know she will continue later—was in relation to Australia’s sale of uranium and Australia’s uranium export policy. And that important element of Australia’s support for the non-proliferation regime is the policy which we run at the moment— (Time expired)