Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The devastation, both human and environmental, seen in Japan in 1945 demonstrated conclusively that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. Yet, while the threat of nuclear weapons may seem like a thing of the past, right now there are nine nations that possess more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, 1,800 of which are on high alert, with the ability to be launched within minutes. Nuclear-armed countries spend more than $143 billion per annum on maintaining and updating their arsenals, diverting public funds from critical services such as education and health care, yet nuclear weapons are ineffective and counterproductive in addressing global and national security challenges. Effective in annihilating everything? Yes. Making the world safer? Certainly not.

The late Hon. Tom Uren AC, a member of parliament for 32 years who served as a minister in the Whitlam and Hawke Labor governments, was a passionate antinuclear and peace activist. A prisoner of war at the Omuta camp located 80 kilometres from Nagasaki, Uren witnessed the second US atomic bombing:

I will never forget, as long as I live, the colour of the sky on the day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on that city on 9 August 1945. The sky was crimson.

Upon returning to Japan 15 years later, Uren's attitude, that 'no nation should use nuclear weapons against any other member of our human family,' was affirmed as he witnessed the ongoing devastation. The Tom Uren Memorial Fund, created after his passing in January this year, supports the work of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, or ICAN. ICAN is an Australian civil society initiative that has been pivotal to the success of three major government and civil society conferences over the past three years that have put the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons, and the need for a nuclear weapons ban, squarely on the global political agenda. I welcome representatives from ICAN in the chamber today.

This morning, Anthony Albanese and I were honoured as patrons, together with our colleague Senator Lisa Singh, to host the federal Labor launch of the Tom Uren Memorial Fund in support of ICAN. We were delighted to welcome Tom's family, including Michael and Jan, Tom's widow Christine Logan and ICAN back to Parliament House on this special occasion. The ICAN-commissioned Nielsen poll in 2014 indicated that 84 per cent of Australians want the government to work towards a treaty banning nuclear weapons. With biological weapons, chemical weapons, land mines and cluster munitions banned, nuclear weapons remain the only weapons of mass destruction not yet explicitly prohibited under international law.

It is a matter of deep regret that at the recently concluded session of the UN General Assembly's First Committee, which deals with disarmament and international security matters, Australia was the de facto leader of a loose grouping of nations that worked to prevent progress towards the negotiation of a treaty prohibiting the use, production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. Australia refused to join the overwhelming majority of the international community in declaring that nuclear weapons should never be used again under any circumstances. It objected to the words 'under any circumstances'. This raises the question: under what circumstances does the government believe that nuclear weapons should be used?

I am pleased that, despite Australia's best efforts to undermine moves towards a ban, the First Committee adopted a Mexico-led resolution to establish a subsidiary body of the General Assembly that will begin discussions in 2016 on the elements for a treaty banning nuclear weapons. The Australian delegation failed in its bid to limit civil society access to the body and to impose strict rules of consensus—a recipe for eternal deadlock.

The complete eradication of nuclear weapons is vital. As Richard Butler, Australia's UN Ambassador from 1992 to 1997, argued:

There is, in fact, an axiom of proliferation. It states that as long as any state holds nuclear weapons, others will seek to acquire them.

Australia must remove itself from its extended nuclear deterrence policy and shift its national security strategy towards an effective and sustainable security paradigm, like the vast majority of nation states that reject any role for nuclear weapons in their defence.

I urge parliamentarians who have not yet signed ICAN's Global Parliamentary Appeal for a Nuclear Weapons Ban to do so, and I call on the Australian government to follow over 150 governments, the UNSG and the Red Cross movement and support the complete eradication of nuclear weapons. To quote the UN Secretary-General, 'There are no right hands for wrong weapons.'

Tom Uren passed away at 1.15 am on Australia Day this year at the age of 93. Just three years earlier, on Australia Day in 2012, nearly 800 Order of Australia recipients, including former prime ministers, governors-general, foreign affairs and defence ministers, premiers, governors, High Court judges and chiefs of the armed forces, called on the government to adopt a nuclear-weapons-free defence posture and work towards a nuclear weapons convention. One of those 800 Order of Australia participants was Tom Uren. Another was Malcom Fraser. In this week of remembrance in the year these warriors for peace died, let us commit to take those steps towards a nuclear-weapons-free world.