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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-09-24 Daily Xml
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NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The Hon. SANDRA KANCK (20:35): I move:

1. That this council notes—

(a) that 21 September was International Day of Peace and on 27 September it will be 52 years since the first explosion of atomic weapons in our atmosphere at Maralinga;

(b) the proposal by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, for an international commission to revive the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and

(c) the existence of the Luarca Declaration which claims a human right to peace; and

2. This council commends the United Nations Youth Association of South Australia for their campaign on nuclear weapons non-proliferation and disarmament.

The United Nations International Day of Peace was established in 1981 and is held each year on 21 September as a means of focusing efforts of individuals, communities and nations to end conflicts and promote peace. Such concentration of our thinking is sorely needed with the numbers of conflicts and the threats of war, including the use of nuclear weapons. On International Day of Peace in 2007 the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said:

Peace is one of humanity's precious needs. It is also the United Nations' highest calling. It defines our mission. It drives our discourse.

In the past two decades the capability of nuclear weapons in the world has increased, most alarmingly in countries Australia regards as allies, such as the US and Britain, but in addition there are the so-called rogue states such as North Korea. But while Australia condemns North Korea, it appears to ignore the fact that more than 95 per cent of the world's nuclear weapons are in the hands of the US and Russia.

I framed this motion in terms which I hope will be acceptable to all parties, avoiding incorporation of wording about the link between uranium mining and export and nuclear proliferation. Nevertheless, without incorporating such words in the motion itself, I place on record my very strong belief that Australia should not be selling uranium to countries which have not ratified the comprehensive test ban treaty. I remain fiercely anti-nuclear, but given the huge reserves of uranium in South Australia, and a government and opposition committed to exploiting them, it is vital that we ensure that all fissile materials resulting from use of this state's uranium be used for peaceful non-military purposes.

My motivation for introducing this motion came as a consequence of being interviewed earlier this year by Adelaide University student, Catriona Standfield, whose resulting essay was entered in the Students for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World Competition. She was chosen one of the 15 winners from all around the world, from countries including Jamaica, Slovenia, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Her prize was to be flown to Geneva to attend the Students for a Nuclear Weapons-Free World Conference in July, where she met people such as Dr Hans Blix and journalist Phillip Knightley.

It was my concern about the French testing of nuclear weapons at Mururoa Atoll in the early 1970s that was the catalyst for my political involvement in the first instance. I had become complacent about the successes of nuclear disarmament in the 1990s, and preparing for Catriona's interview of me forced me to think again. In November 1995 Australia's then Prime Minister, the Hon. Paul Keating, set up what was known as the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. It included people such as the former US Secretary of Defence (Robert McNamara), Professor Robert O'Neill from Oxford University, the winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize (Professor Joe Rotblat), and a former French president. The commission reported in August 1996 and Australia's new foreign minister, Alexander Downer, presented it to the UN the following month. I quote from the report, as follows:

Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states, which insist that these weapons provide unique security benefits, and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable; it cannot be sustained. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them...a central reality is that nuclear weapons diminish the security of all states. Indeed, states which possess them become themselves targets of nuclear weapons. The end of the Cold War has created a new climate for international action to eliminate nuclear weapons, a new opportunity. It must be exploited quickly or it will be lost.

That was said back in 1996, so fast forward to 2005. At the nuclear non-proliferation NPT review conference held in New York in May that year, the Australian representative, Mr Michael Smith, told the conference:

We expect the nuclear weapon states to pursue NPT nuclear disarmament commitments vigorously and with determination.

A representative of the Howard government made that statement to the NPT review.

I am a member of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. At the time that conference was held, along with many mayors and parliamentarians from around the world, I signed a statement which reads:

As mayors and national legislators we have a role to protect the security of citizens living within our jurisdictions and to protect our localities for future generations.

Such security is not advanced when there remain 30,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are deployed and ready for use at short notice. The risk of nuclear weapons use—by accident, design or miscalculation—is increasing due to the proliferation of nuclear weapons to new states, the possibility of non-state access to nuclear weapons and bombing materials, and the expanded nuclear weapons use doctrines of the nuclear weapons states.

Regardless of where nuclear weapons are targeted or detonated, or whether they are used by terrorist organisations or state militaries, no-one would escape the calamitous consequences of a nuclear attack. Even cities that are not the direct brunt of an attack would feel the global economic, social and medical repercussions, which would dwarf those of 9/11. Any nuclear weapons use would cause unimaginable devastation requiring massive aid, global effects from nuclear fall-out and a rise of refugees seeking to escape from the most contaminated regions.

The only way to prevent nuclear weapons use is to eliminate all nuclear weapons as mandated by Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. Mayors for Peace have provided a vision for the achievement of a nuclear weapons free world by 2020.

Therefore, we, the undersigned mayors and parliamentarians, call for the commencement of negotiations which would culminate in the comprehensive abolition and elimination of nuclear weapons and the international control of nuclear materials to prevent clandestine bomb-making.

If a small number of states continue to prevent such negotiations being initiated at the Conference on Disarmament and also at the NPT review conferences, then governments should be encouraged to find an alternative track to nuclear disarmament as was done with the Landmines Convention.

The overwhelming majority of citizens in our cities, countries and around the world support the abolition of these ultimate weapons of mass destruction, and we mayors and legislators have a responsibility to use our authority to ensure the implementation of this imperative.

Frustratingly, disagreements at the NPT Review Conference were so deep that no resolution was possible. Now, in 2008, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is on the verge of collapse, yet most of us are entirely unaware of this sad fact—but some are. In a speech made just last month, former prime minister Paul Keating said:

The treaty represents perhaps the most egregious example of international double dealing of any international regime. In a nutshell, the nuclear weapons states signed up to the elimination of their nuclear weapons while, in the meantime, other signatory states undertook to forgo their development. But now most of the nuclear weapons states are developing new nuclear weapons. Tony Blair announced the new Trident submarine program in 2006, while the British administration has turned its hand to new bunker busting nuclear weapons designed to attack underground facilities. The Russians, quick on the uptake, are also refining their arsenal. The old nukes had the dubious advantage of existing solely for self-defence. This new variety of US weapons is actually being designed for use, for intended war-time deployment and operation, and ditto for the Russians. What sort of future compliance can we expect from states already signatories to the NPT, let alone non-signatories, when the promoters of the treaty reserve the right to ignore their obligations as to elimination while designing and building new devices?

Paul Keating observed that we need:

…a new international order based on truth and justice founded in the recognition of the rights of each of us to live out our lives in peace and harmony…The old order of victorious powers, of a compromised UN, a moribund G8 with major powers hanging onto weapons of mass destruction, is a remnant of the violent 20th century. It cannot provide the basis for an equitable and effective system of world governance. Just as world community concern has been ahead of the political system on issues such as global warming, so too world community concern needs to galvanise international action to find a new template for a lasting peace.

Paul Keating was right. From the human and environmental damage still remaining from those test explosions at Maralinga, we in South Australia have an inkling of the cost and the long-term damage that nuclear weapons can cause. That first bomb on 28 September 1956 had a similar power to that dropped on Hiroshima. Another three tests took place over the ensuing year, but, since then, despite the assurances of safety at the time, we have seen servicemen die of cancers and leukaemias. We know of blindness resulting from observing a nuclear flash and spontaneous abortions amongst Aboriginal women, and still the area has not been adequately cleaned up. It may never be.

Australia's current Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, has set up an international commission to revive the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Ron Huisken, Senior Fellow at ANU's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, commented:

Prime Minister Rudd's proposal in Japan to appoint an international commission to revitalise the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and put nuclear disarmament back on the international political agenda is courageous but timely. The world has had little difficulty in condemning chemical and biological weapons unreservedly, but has always been ambivalent about nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are deeply entrenched in the primary architecture of global stability. We have tried for a half a century to have our cake and eat it too: allow a few states to possess nuclear weapons but dissuade or prevent others from getting them. It has become clear that this is not a sustainable approach. In addition, we now have to take much more seriously the risk that international terrorist groups will get hold of a nuclear weapon or enough fissile material to make a crude device themselves. Mr Rudd has committed Australia to a big job.

That he most certainly has, and we should commend and support him for this. This commission will report to an international conference at the end of next year. Mike Steketee, national affairs editor of TheAustralian, commented on 12 June about this plan in an article entitled Arms Talk Relaunch. I will read a few sentences from that article, as follows:

So what is the point of yet another inquiry and report? Just possibly another report may get the timing right and give impetus to tackling an issue that, together with climate change, represents the greatest threat to human survival. Next year promises the first serious discussion of arms' control and disarmament in more than a decade. Forty years after the introduction of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty there are more than 25,000 nuclear warheads—10,200 of them are operational and several thousand are kept on high alert, ready to be launched within minutes.

I referred in the motion to the Luarca Declaration, which was formulated in Spain after a series of meetings with its final wording agreed to on 30 October 2006 with the intention that it be considered by the United Nations. In its preamble concern is expressed 'because arms manufacture, the arms race and the excessive and uncontrolled traffic of all kinds of arms jeopardise peace and security'. But, with a degree of optimism, it states:

...that peace has been and continues to be the constant aspiration of all civilisations throughout the history of mankind, and therefore we must all join our efforts to its effective realisation.

Article 11 of the Luarca Declaration is the right to disarmament, and it declares:

Individuals and peoples have the right:

(a) not to be regarded as enemies by any state;

(b) to the general and transparent disarmament of all states together and in a coordinated manner within a reasonable time and under efficient and comprehensive international supervision;

(c) to the allocation of the resources freed by disarmament for the economic, social and cultural development of peoples and the fair redistribution of such resources responding especially to the needs of the poorest countries and to vulnerable groups in such a way as to put an end to inequality, social exclusion and poverty.

I very much like the philosophy in the Luarca Declaration: that there is a fundamental human right to peace.

Adelaide has an active group of the United Nations Youth Association that holds that same belief, and their project for this year is cleverly titled 'Drop Da Bomb'. It is refreshing to see these young people fired up and taking on this challenge, and I have invited their executive to Parliament House to present their message to MPs—that is to you—on 15 October. They are also very keen to see as many South Australian MPs as possible join Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament. As of this afternoon, they were out collecting signatures on a petition. It is a petition for nuclear disarmament, and I will read it onto the record. It is addressed to the Hon. Mike Rann MP, Premier of South Australia, and the Hon. Martin Hamilton-Smith MP, Leader of the South Australian Liberal Party:

We, the conscientious human beings of the world, being threatened by nuclear weapons, hereby call upon the South Australian government to increase its efforts regarding nuclear disarmament, in line with the commonwealth government stance. The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, echoed this sentiment at Hiroshima earlier this year, when he said, 'Let the world resolve afresh from the ashes of this city—to work together for the common mission of peace for this Asia-Pacific century, and for a world where one day nuclear weapons are no more.'

The United Nations Youth Association of SA (UNYA SA) urges Premier Rann and Mr Hamilton-Smith to show bipartisan commitment to the future of South Australia's youth by signing up to Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND). PNND is a global network of over 500 parliamentarians from 70 different nations who have joined together to advance the cause of nuclear disarmament. By joining PNND, parliaments are able to:

Actively influence nations to systematically disable and dismantle their nuclear arsenal, and abide by the IAEA and NPT protocols;

Stress the importance of the peaceful uses of uranium;

Enhance general awareness of the issues regarding nuclear proliferation, and the advantages of disarmament;

Actively encourage nations to assent to their global peace commitments, and resolve matters of dispute through dialogue and negotiation.

UNYA SA believes that this would be an important step for our state's leaders to take. Ensuring the safety and welfare of present and future generations is not just a political issue; it should be a concern to all members of our community. The 27,000 nuclear weapons that currently exist pose a constant threat to that safety and welfare. We anticipate that South Australian and Australian leaders will lead the way in advocating the necessity of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament and ensure a safer future for us all.

We have become complacent. We have accepted the presence of nuclear weapons in the world and the resulting instability as an inevitability. It does not have to be that way. As the threat increases rather than decreases it is time to change our thinking. We must recognise that nuclear disarmament is possible and then make it happen.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. B.V. Finnigan.

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