John Hogg (Queensland, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

I am talking about India and Pakistan for a particular reason. As a result of those particular forays by those two neighbours in our region, we ended up with an inquiry by the then Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee into the issue of what was happening in the region in terms of nonproliferation and other things associated with the nuclear race.

Chapter 8 of that committee report is entitled ‘The way ahead’. I think that is a most important thing. The committee spoke of the way ahead, and the first thing it addressed was: ‘The genie is out of the bottle’. The fact is that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has not worked as it should have. It has suffered backward steps; there is no argument about that. At the start of chapter 8, ‘The way ahead’, the report focused on the fact that the Cold War had ended and that there had been ‘a move towards the elimination of weapons of mass destruction’. That is the only way that the path that North Korea is going down now can be described: the path of weapons of mass destruction. The report gave a fairly reasoned analysis of what was taking place in this path of nuclear nonproliferation and recognised that nonproliferation was fairly stagnant. Paragraph 8.73 of the report particularly notes:

Australia has been in the forefront of international moves aimed at global disarmament of weapons of mass destruction, arguing that it is in our own interests for all such weapons to be eliminated. A lot of time, effort and expense has been devoted to fulfilling this goal.

However, the report then notes:

Yet, intellectual studies in academia on these issues have been made more difficult because of the closure of the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University through departmental funding cuts. The Committee believes this is a short-sighted view given the importance attached to elimination of weapons of mass destruction by the Government in the interests of Australia’s security.

What a surprise that is! The committee then came up with a recommendation:

... consideration should be given to the establishment of a Peace Research Centre to rebuild Australia’s academic expertise in regional security, peace and disarmament.

That came as no surprise, arising out of what the committee had just witnessed—that is, the explosions that had taken place at that time. Whether that would have stopped what happened in North Korea the other day I doubt very much. The committee went on in its report to note also the work that had been done by the Canberra commission. It was even conceded by people from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade at that time that there was merit in the Canberra commission report. At page 144, an official says: ‘The Canberra commission report has certainly nourished ongoing debate on the way forward on nuclear disarmament.’ And yet, when faced with the challenge of having the UN adopt the Canberra commission report, this government squibbed it. That was most unfortunate. It was seen as being a reasonable and logical way to proceed—a way which, whilst not necessarily averting what happened in North Korea the other day, was nonetheless a mechanism by which the issue could be addressed on an international basis.

Senator Evans alluded to the fact that Labor has called for the Australian government to launch a diplomatic initiative and to host a meeting of regional and foreign ministers to build consensus on the way forward. I think that is important because again we are looking at the way forward—not at what has happened before, because you cannot undo that. The way forward in nonproliferation is difficult indeed. It is not an easy task. It is a matter of one step forward and maybe two steps back sometimes. Sometimes it is two steps forward and one step back. But, given the uncertainty, given the interests that prevail in the area of security, one would think that it is essential that we would seek the highest and utmost cooperation with the neighbours who share a common responsibility with us for having a peaceful and worthwhile world in which to live.

In her speech this afternoon, Senator Payne outlined a number of government initiatives. Whilst some of those were indeed commendable, they did not go far enough. They did not take us to the area of engaging our region to confront this most horrendous fate that hangs over our heads: nuclear warfare. One would hope that we have a sophisticated society in which this can be countered by rational thought, rational debate and rational discussion rather than confrontation—and rather than going down the path that the government have chosen to go down, as they did in Iraq, to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. It is therefore an important part of this whole debate that it does not get lost—as has the report of the Senate committee, which was a unanimous report in the aftermath of what happened in India and Pakistan—and that the reports of this place do not get lost. The suggestions in there are not partisan suggestions in many instances; they are completely across political parties. They are designed to give the thoughts of the people who work, speak and operate in this place, regardless of whether they are government senators or opposition senators, to the government of the day.

It seems to me that when you have knee-jerk reactions by governments to an ongoing problem then those knee-jerk reactions will fail. The non-proliferation area is an area where an ongoing, long-term, dedicated negotiation is required, in a spirit of good faith and involving all our neighbours. If we do not have them in the can then we are fragmented in our opposition and we will achieve very little indeed. If there is a failure on the part of the government, that is the failure. Whilst governments have the rhetoric of opposition to what has happened in North Korea and whilst they will point to some of the initiatives that they have undertaken in this area—and I commend them for those—that is not sufficient. It is not enough because we are still faced, eight years on from what happened in Pakistan and India, with the problems in Korea today. (Time expired)