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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (Senator Conroy) to a question without notice asked by Senator Ludlam today relating to Iran and nuclear weapons.

My first question to Senator Conroy, the minister representing the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was not answered. I asked whether or not our government has a position on military strikes on Iran. My second question was not answered. It was: what have we done to express such a position to the United States government or the Israeli government or through multilateral forums? This question was also not answered: what are we doing to ensure that uranium sales to Russia from Australia do not end up in Iran's nuclear facilities? While it is an open question as to whether or not Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, why we would be selling uranium to their key strategic enabling supplier of technology is absolutely beyond me. We do not know if Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program. The regime has consistently denied that it is doing so. In fact, it has even said that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic. I would add to that that they are un-Christian, they are un-Hindu and they are un-Buddhist. They are, in fact, anti-human weapons.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, after years of inspections, has not concluded whether Iran is developing such technology or not, but it did say last week that Iran has not been fully cooperating. The IAEA has been saying for many, many years that it is not getting the cooperation that it needs from the Iranian regime. What is clear, of course, is that Iran could pursue nuclear weapons technology if it wanted to, because the technology for producing nuclear fuel for enriching uranium up to fuel grade is the same technology used to enrich uranium up to weapons grade. I have probably lost track of how many times I have had to make that point in the chamber. The technology for producing fuel is the same as the technology that produces weapons. The only difference is political intent and political will.

The problem, of course, is that once a country has been supplied a nuclear energy program or develops one indigenously it is quite capable of developing a weapons program. The expertise is there, the training is there and the materials and so on are there. That is one of the reasons that the Australian Greens oppose not only the rampant prolifer­ation of weapons but also the proliferation into all parts of the world of civil nuclear energy. Military strikes have never been a successful way to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction. The 1981 bombing of the Osirak facility in Iraq is a good example. The program was delayed by the bombing, but, of course, it then went underground. The Iraqi government took it underground with the result that, whilst Osirak had been monitored by the IAEA, subsequent Iraqi activities in pursuit of nuclear weapons was not monitored. Through Israel bombing this facility, the Iraqi regime simply became more determined following those air strikes and committed more human and economic resources to an underground nuclear weapons program. So we have an example of what happened before. The Greens are opposed to all nuclear programs whether they be weapons or energy programs, and we have been publicly critical of Israel's clandestine nuclear weapons program, just as we are in the instance of allegations of a uranium weapons program. It is clear, however, that this lack of even-handedness from other policymakers here in Australia and around the world is absolutely exacerbating the situation. There is a clear lack of effort and a clear lack of action on behalf of the existing nuclear weapons states, declared and undeclared, on their disarmament commitment and obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It is obvious that some countries in the standard discourse are to be trusted with nuclear energy and others are not, and it is very easy for a country like Iran to hide behind the kind of nationalistic rhetoric that we are seeing and assert that it is doing nothing different from any number of other countries, and that part of the story is true.

The only way that we are going to solve the problem is for there to be serious further debate on how to create a nuclear-free Middle East, and this includes Israel. Of course, this is a conversation that is already decades old. It is incumbent on the other nuclear weapons states and the five permanent members of the Security Council, in particular, to lead the way by diminishing and eliminating the role of nuclear weapons in security doctrine and taking concrete steps to eliminate the nuclear weapons arsenal. There are 22,000 or thereabouts of these weapons, many of them vastly more powerful than the devices that were exploded in 1945. Iran is obviously currently a signatory to the NPT, so our challenge there is to stop it violating an agreement that it is a party to. Israel, of course, is a different situation.

The Australian government must end uranium sales to Russia if it is serious about stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Russian nuclear industry built Iran's Bushehr plant and continues to work with the Iranian regime closely. Many other countries, starting with the United States government but including Germany, Argentina and Spain, led the way and helped the Iranians develop the technology that we now ask them to phase out.

Question agreed to.