Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on the Autonomous Sanctions Bill 2010 and I commend the Australian government for bringing this important piece of legislation forward. Australia is a founding member of the United Nations and all Australian governments have been supporters of the UN when it has sought to impose sanctions on regimes which commit aggression against neighbours, threaten the peace of the world or violate human rights.

The sad fact is that, because of the veto power enjoyed by permanent members of the Security Council, the UN is frequently unable to act as we know it should against certain regimes. In recent times both China and Russia have used their veto power to protect their friends and clients from scrutiny and to shield them from sanctions. Some of the world’s worst regimes, such as North Korea, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cuba, Burma and Iran, are constantly in violation of the principles of the UN charter, but automatic majorities at the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council enable them to protect themselves. Some threaten their neighbours with aggression and develop weapons of mass destruction. Some support terrorist organisations in other countries and export arms to rogue regimes. All of them oppress their own people. Unfortunately, because of the politics of the Security Council, the UN is usually unable to apply effective sanctions against these regimes. In these circumstances, it is important that democratic countries have the means to apply their own sanctions.

This bill strengthens the legal base of Australia’s autonomous sanctions system. The objects of applying targeted, autonomous sanctions on the regime in Tehran, for instance, are to, firstly, limit the harmful consequences of the actions of a government against which the sanctions are being applied; secondly, influence the government in question to modify its behaviour; and, thirdly, penalise those individuals responsible for threatening the peace of the world or violating human rights, while not penalising most Persians, the history and culture of whom Australians only have respect for.

Most importantly, this bill makes it an offence under Australian law to contravene sanctions law. When committed by an individual the offence will be punishable by 10 years imprisonment or else by a large fine. When committed by a corporation it will be punishable by a maximum fine three times the value of the relevant transaction or transactions. This is important because long experience has shown us that when trade or other economic sanctions are imposed on a regime this sometimes creates an economic incentive for individuals or corporations to assist the regime by evading these sanctions. It is therefore important to create a negative disincentive in the form of a threat of heavy fines or even imprisonment to deter both individuals and corporations from trying to evade or sabotage sanctions. The bill makes it clear that sanctions busting will be a serious offence in Australia.

I now want to turn to what I believe is the most serious situation threatening the peace of the world at present and its relationship to these autonomous sanctions—that is, the determination of the Islamist theocratic regime in Iran to develop nuclear weapons and to threaten their use against neighbouring states. This situation has the potential to be the most dangerous threat the world has faced since the Cuban missile crisis half a century ago. Iran has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and continues to skirt its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On 31 May this year the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran had expanded its atomic work, with its low-enriched uranium growing to 2.4 tonnes. Iran has been enriching uranium to 20 per cent, taking it closer to the weapons grade it needs for atomic weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency shows that Iran is pushing ahead with higher level enrichment and continually failing to answer the agency’s questions about the military dimensions of its nuclear work. Iran has failed to comply with UN Security Council resolutions 1737, 1747, 1803 and 1835 calling for Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and to suspend its proliferation without delay.

What makes the 31 May report most disturbing, however, is that the International Atomic Energy Agency and its nuclear inspectors have declared that Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough to make two nuclear weapons. This comes on top of the Tehran administration unveiling a third generation domestically built centrifuge that enables much faster enrichment of uranium and reports that they have a four-year plan to test a neutron trigger, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion. My view is that unless the world shows itself willing to apply serious sanctions on the regime in Tehran, sanctions strong enough to make the regime change its course, there is a real danger that Iran’s behaviour will lead to a regional war, with totally unpredictable consequences.

Since 1945 the world has lived with nuclear weapons. During the Cold War there was a ‘balance of terror’, and the appropriate terminology was ‘mutually assured destruction’, MAD, the acronym which I think many people thought macabrely apposite. MAD and the balance restrained both the US and the USSR from considering a first use of nuclear weapons, although I do not believe at any stage either side contemplated it, because after all these were two big superpowers, two rational powers that would not want to contemplate their own destruction or their people’s destruction. However, when we look at Iran, we see a completely new situation. Since the eighties the Iranian regime has persisted in developing nuclear capacity. Despite the regime’s claim that this was for peaceful purposes, the program is more consistent with weapons development, and is shrouded in such secrecy that no-one really doubts that Iran’s objective is the development of atomic weapons.

The Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, said earlier this year:

Iran is a special case because, among other things, of the existence of issues related to possible military dimensions to its nuclear programme.

Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the agency to confirm that all nuclear material is for peaceful activities. The obvious question therefore is: what does Iran want these nuclear weapons for? President Ahmadinejad has made no secret of the answer to this question. Since he took office in 2005 he has made a series of inflammatory statements calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, one of Persia’s neighbours in the Middle East. One of the best-known statements made in October 2005 was:

Our dear Imam—

that is, Ayatollah Khomeini—

said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map for great justice and this was a very wise statement. We cannot compromise over the issue of Palestine.

               …            …            …

I have no doubt that the new wave that has started in Palestine, and we witness it in the Islamic world too, will eliminate this disgraceful stain from the Islamic world.

Two years later, in October 2007, the Iranian newsagency reported Ahmadinejad’s Jerusalem Day speech in which he said:

The zionists—

that is the 5.8 million Jewish inhabitants of Israel—

should be resettled in Europe or “big lands such as Canada and Alaska”.

He has made many similar statements. So have many leaders of the Iranian regime. In 2008 he said:

… the Zionist Regime that is a usurper and illegitimate regime and a cancerous tumor should be wiped off the map.

On the 60th anniversary, in 2008, he said:

Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken.

He also said:

Today, the reasons for the Zionist regime’s existence is questioned and this regime is on its way to annihilation.

Ahmadinejad’s repeated denial of the historical reality of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry must also be seen in this context.

With Iran we have a unique situation. We have a regime which is developing nuclear weapons and whose head of state has publicly and repeatedly called for a neighbouring state to be wiped off the map. This is not a regime that shrinks from violence. Last year the regime blatantly rigged the presidential elections which returned Ahmadinejad and his gang for another term. When the students and the young people of Tehran took to the streets in protest, the regime’s brutal thugs, theBasaj—very much like the Sturm Abteilung, or SR, in Germany under the Nazi regime—attacked them, killing 70 protesters and throwing hundreds into jails. There have been horrific stories from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch of the torture and rape of hundreds of Iran’s best and most elite young people of Iran.

If the world wishes to preserve peace in the Middle East region indeed the whole world, the international community needs to seriously address the issue of Iran’s steady march towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. President Barack Obama and his administration have a clear understanding of the danger that Iran poses to the peace of the world. President Obama has worked very patiently to persuade members of the Security Council to vote for a new round of sanctions, the fourth round since 2006. Winning support for these sanctions was far from easy. The main difficulty was, as always, persuading Russia and China that effective sanctions were the only way to respond to the Iranian regime’s continuing refusal to abide by Security Council demands that it halt its nuclear program.

The UN Security Council resolution 1929 on sanctions focuses on three targets: first, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which are a major pillar of the theocratic regime and which have enormous business interests; second, Iran’s shipping industry; and, third, its banks. In light of the passing of UN resolution 1929, the Obama administration on 16 June imposed its own sanctions on two top commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, five front companies of the Iranian state shipping line as well as 71 ships with names that had been changed to undermine previous sanctions.

Australia joined the United States, the European Union, Japan and South Korea in imposing autonomous sanctions on Iran. Australia has imposed autonomous sanctions on Iran since October 2008 and this legislation will bring a total of 21 Iranian individuals and 20 Iranian organisations subject to Australian autonomous sanctions. The two additional organisations are Bank Mellat, one of the four designated banks under the UN Security Council resolutions, and the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line.

Earlier this year, using powers afforded to him under the Weapons Of Mass Destruction (Prevention Of Proliferation) Act, the Minister for Defence blocked and issued prohibition orders on three companies which sought to export goods that could be used in the development, production, acquisition and stockpiling of weapons. To be effective, sanctions must bring home to the ruling elite that there is a personal economic cost to them in continuing to back such a regime, which is dragging its country and 74 million people towards war. There is plenty of evidence of how Iran has been successfully evading the previous sanctions—for example, by rebranding its shipping fleet so that ships no longer appear to be Iranian owned. I hope these sanctions succeed in diverting Iran from this course.

Australia has done all it can to see that Security Council sanctions against Iran have been implemented, and we should also look at whatever ways there may be of using the powers contained in this bill to impose such sanctions on Iran. The bill gives us a legal framework to impose and enforce effective sanctions. We should explore the best way in which this can be done. We must also continue to put pressure on foreign companies and banks that continue to help Iran skirt UN sanctions. Forty-one companies have helped develop Iran’s oil and gas sector, which accounts for more than half of the Iranian government’s revenues.

The US House of Representatives and Senate have passed legislation aimed at strengthening sanctions on companies doing business with Iran, leading to a number announcing that they will end their operations in Iran. European insurance firms Allianz, Munich RE and Hanover RE have committed to ending business with Iran. Multinational firms such as Total, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Glencore and Vitol have ended their refined petroleum trade or energy investments in Iran and in July this year Iran’s gasoline imports were down 50 per cent. On 1 October, European oil firms, France’s Total, Anglo-Dutch Shell, Norway’s Statoil and Italy’s Eni pledged to stop investing in Iran. Australian sanctions, too, are biting hard on Iran. The Sydney based engineering contractor, Wolsey Parsons, has announced that it will not accept any more work in Iran.

Australia has pressured and must continue to pressure its own companies not to deal with the Iranians, and the way to do that is by publicly calling them out. We must also do this with banks that help Iran curb international sanctions. UN resolutions 1747 and 1929 designate four Iranian banks as banks that help Iran’s proliferation activities. Those four banks are Bank Sepah, Bank Melli, Bank Saderat and the First East Export Bank, a subsidiary of the Iranian Mellat Bank. Australia, under these resolutions, already imposes sanctions on these banks, but we should be doing everything in our power to ensure that Australian financial institutions do not indirectly involve themselves with these subsidiary banks.

This bill strengthens Australia’s ability to impose and effectively enforce sanctions against regimes which defy international law, threaten their neighbours and oppress people. I welcome this and hope we make effective use of the powers which this bill creates. I commend the bill to the House.

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