Russell Trood (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is a welcome opportunity to participate in this debate, because the events on the Korean peninsula over the last few days are a matter of grave importance to the Senate and to our region. Although we bring different perspectives to this debate, I think there is some common ground. The obvious common ground is that this nuclear test by the North Korean regime represents a grave threat to peace, security and stability—potentially, anyway—in the East Asia region. Some of the previous speakers have referred to the possibility of an arms race occurring as a consequence, and that would indeed be a grave threat to stability in the region.

But there is a wider implication, of course, and that implication relates to the consequences of this test for the international non-proliferation regime, about which much has been said. In my view, in the light of these dangers, it is important that there is a strong and firm international response to these events in North Korea over the last couple of days. It is important that this takes place because it is fundamentally important that we discourage a wider break-out from the non-proliferation regime. It is important that we send messages to other countries in the international system, such as Iran, which might be inclined towards going down the proliferation route.

It is true, as Senator Milne has said, that the non-proliferation regime is under some threat. North Korea is an example. Iran is an example. The difficulties we are having at the moment in securing the ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty is another example of the dangers to the regime. Senator Milne had a rather doomsday assessment of the situation and the plight in which we find ourselves in 2006, and I think it is important to get some clear perspective on this.

Part of that perspective requires us to recognise that since 1968, since the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was signed, many more countries have given up nuclear weapons than have taken them up; there are fewer nuclear weapons in the world and the United States and Russia have cooperated in relation to disarmament and arms control. One of the important consequences of that cooperation is that there has been a significant reduction in the vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons. Libya, of course, has given up any aspirations to be a nuclear weapons state. Whatever one might think of the situation in Iraq, one of the important consequences of the intervention there is that Iraq no longer represents a threat to the international community.

We have the US-led proliferation security initiative. And we ought not to forget the United Nations Security Council decision—I think it was in April 2004—passing resolution 1540, which actually improved the security of weapons and materials. In a sense, that created a criminalised regime in relation to that kind of activity. So over the last 30-odd years there have been some significant developments which have reinforced the non-proliferation regime.

Far from being complacent about this, far from treating it with disparate concern, I think the reality is that for 30-odd years Australia has been a consistent, strong, vigilant, determined and committed member of the international community determined to try to support and reinforce the nature of this regime. Far from taking the actions that Senator Milne and some of those from the Labor Party have suggested in this debate, Australia has been absolutely diligent for this period of time in trying to reinforce the nature of the regime.

It is worth while recalling the extent to which we have been diligent. In doing that, I think it is useful to recall that the non-proliferation treaty is just the centrepiece of this international architecture. Hanging off this non-proliferation treaty is a whole series of other conventions and arrangements, all of which tend to reinforce the non-proliferation regime so that we end up with a regime, not just a treaty. When you look at the totality of all of those conventions and arrangements, you find that it is a very comprehensive regime.

Australia is at the centre of almost all of these particular arrangements—the non-proliferation treaty itself; the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards; the efforts to try to secure ratification of the comprehensive test ban treaty; the efforts to try to secure a fissile material cut-off treaty; the work on the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies; Australia being an advocate of the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Materials; Australia’s support for nuclear weapons free zones; and resolution 1540, which I mentioned just a few moments ago. Australia’s own very comprehensive and detailed uranium export policy, which requires that states with which we deal in relation to uranium sign on to the additional protocol, is an important part of the regime.

The export controls are an important part of the regime and add a new dimension to this overall regime. The export controls and the financial controls run in various kinds of ways into a succession of committees of which Australia is absolutely at the centre—the Zangger Committee, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement. We should not forget the Australia Group, which Australia itself founded and in which we have been active since 1985, when that initiative was first put before the international community. So at every juncture Australia has been trying to reinforce the regime and do more than perhaps other states have tried to do. (Time expired)