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

Senator Macdonald, I will take that interjection, because the former Soviet Union and now the Russian government have demobilised an enormous number of strategic nuclear weapons—there are far fewer than there were before.

I put a number of questions to the Minister for Defence on 27 June—I thank him for the responses—to try to tease out precisely what role these weapons, which are quite literally weapons of genocide, play in Australia's security policy. There have been, over modern Australian history, a few tentative moves to develop them for ourselves, but fortunately sanity prevailed and that has never occurred, although we know that was one of the rationales for the construction of the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney. I put those questions to the Minister for Defence to get a sense of where Australian military doctrine stands on the issue of nuclear weapons under the US nuclear umbrella in 2011. Some of the responses are quite detailed. In part (4), they state:

For the time being, Australia accepts that nuclear weapons are part of the strategic environment.

Australian defence policy acknowledges the value to Australia of the protection afforded by extended nuclear deterrence under the US Alliance.

This is, as Senator Brandis was yelling across the chamber before, the policy of nuclear deterrence; if we have them we will deter the use of nuclear weapons by hostile countries. In the wonderful, bipolar world which these gentlemen who are—

Opposition senators interjecting—