Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak for a couple of minutes on the same report. While I do not often find myself in strong agreement with Senator McGauran, it is nice to be able to stand here today and acknowledge that I agree on this. Largely due to the work of the Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, who has a very collaborative style and is open to a lot of different points of view, we have handed down a unanimous report on this issue, which is often very polarising. It is a tribute to the work of the people who applied themselves over the last 12 months or so that the report is not only unanimous but also contains some very strong recommendations for Australia regarding nuclear weapons policy.

It got off to a good start in that it was a direct referral to the joint standing committee from the Prime Minister’s office. It is somewhat rare for the committee to look at treaties before they are signed or while negotiations are in play. Often we see things at the end of the pipe. In this case, we were very pleased with the wisdom of the idea of putting it to the committee while the treaty was under negotiation so that these issues could be looked at side by side with the work that Gareth Evans is doing on the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, which has been playing a role largely behind the scenes in assessing the degree to which the world’s nuclear weapons states, or states that are seeking nuclear weapons capabilities, may be able to come to some form of consensus on the issue of disarmament and nonproliferation.

It is really important to note that there are two sides to the agenda. Senator McGauran dwelt mostly on the nonproliferation side. Obviously, there are extreme concerns about the state of Iran developing nuclear weapons capacity. Very late in the process of drafting the report there were revelations from ANU Professor Des Ball about the development of nuclear weapons capabilities in Burma, allegedly being very actively facilitated by North Korea and potentially Russia as well.

Two of the things that the committee did not really go near—and this is really the elephant in the room in this debate—are the facts that we have about 40 per cent of the world’s uranium and that we are the second largest uranium exporter in the world. What the report does do quite effectively is take a pretty hard look at the pros and cons of the so-called multilateralisation of the nuclear fuel chain. So, while it is very disappointing that we had to agree to disagree on the issue of Australia’s uranium exports, the point is very well made that we are exporting bomb fuel to nuclear weapons states around the world. That is something that we cannot hide from. We cannot pretend that the safeguards regime under which we export uranium to nuclear weapons states in any way prevents that material from being used in nuclear weapons programs—most obviously that it diverts domestic or other supplies away from the civil nuclear power industry so that they can be used in weapons programs.

One of the greatest and most valuable contributions made by the committee in its 12 months of work is the very strong recommendation that Australia support the introduction of a nuclear weapons convention. Anybody who is familiar with international law will know that literally decades of work on chemical weapons, on biological weapons and, more recently, on cluster munitions and landmines has led to legally binding treaties that nations around the world are signing up to in order to eliminate these weapons from their arsenals. Nuclear weapons are the world’s worst weapons, and that is why the proliferation argument is so strong—we do not want them spreading any further. But the other half of that debate and the other half of the deal that was signed under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is that the world’s nuclear weapon states should disarm, that they should put these weapons down once and for all.

The committee’s recommendation that Australia adopt a nuclear weapons convention is very good news and is advice that the government would be very well advised to follow. If we do that and take that position to the 2010 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty conference in New York early next year, we can play a key role in those negotiations by taking a very strong stand in favour of the negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention. This does not invalidate all the other work across all the other domains that needs to be done on things like the comprehensive test ban treaty, but it does bring all those disparate threads together under one banner which says that the world is going to work towards a goal of zero—zero nuclear weapons.

It is quite significant to note that Australia has not had this policy. In 2008, 137 countries at the United Nations called for the immediate negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention, and Australia was not on that list. It is essential that Australia put itself on that list early next year. I suspect that it is going to be a longer list of countries next year, and it is essential that Australia be there, not just putting our name to it but also actively working openly and behind the scenes to make that a reality.

For the last 64 years, we have really been part of a global nuclear suicide pact, in which we have held weapons of armageddon up against each other’s heads: first it occurred bilaterally between the United States and the Soviet Union and now there are multiple nuclear arms races around the world that are effectively out of control. It is time that these weapons were taken off alert and pulled to pieces for all time. It is time that we got very firmly in our sights the goal of zero nuclear weapons, which means taking nuclear weapons out of Australia’s security policy. This will have consequences for the visits of nuclear powered and armed warships and it will have consequences for places like Pine Gap, where we assist the United States government in intelligence gathering, the tracking of satellites and other things, which very much include the targeting of nuclear weapons capabilities.

Before I take my seat again, I pay tribute to the very special community that works on international non-proliferation and disarmament issues. These people are the third generation since the bombing of Japan at the end of World War II. They are a very tight knit community of people who exist in their own world of acronyms—United Nations departments, treaties and all the other arcane parts of that world. It is wonderful to see that after such a long period of paralysis on this issue we may be moving forward at long last. So I would like to pay tribute to them, to all the groups around the country who gave evidence and who came to the committee hearings. We had quite an extensive program of hearings. Among these were groups like ICAN, who have really led from the front in the campaign to abolish nuclear weapons and who gave great evidence, and groups like the Medical Association for the Prevention of War.

I thank the committee staff who worked very, very hard over the last 12 months under quite difficult circumstances to bring this report together. I thank my staff, who have done an enormous amount of work in preparing for the tabling of this report today; and, lastly, I thank the chair, the member for Wills, whose collaborative style played quite a major role in having this report brought down unanimously. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.