Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the 80th year since the nuclear age began, with the testing on First Peoples' country. Australia has to come to terms with its nuclear past to avoid a nuclear catastrophe in the future. Australia must sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the TPNW, to show that we have learnt from our past. I rise today to talk about the past nuclear catastrophes in Australia, the painful impacts of which our First Nations people and country are still feeling.

Three weeks after the first test, the atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds and thousands of people. Seven years later, the British government started testing nuclear weapons in Australia on First Nations land. People were vaporised, maimed and blinded, a fact that was covered up at the time—unsuccessfully. Plenty of people remember and still have the physical scars. Think Maralinga, Emu Field and the Montebello Islands. Along with this death and tragedy, the ongoing environmental disaster continued to sicken people for decades after. The test sites were never properly cleaned up.

Besides laying out a path to nuclear elimination in international law, the TPNW also compels parties to assist victims of nuclear weapons use and remediate impacted environments, so why would Australia not continue to commit to this? The late South Australian elder Yami Lester OAM was blinded by the fallout of the Totem nuclear tests in October 1953, and his daughter Karina Lester is at the Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons negotiations talking about her father. We cannot let this happen in the future on First Nations land.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time for two-minute statements has expired, and we move to question time.