Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I move the motion, I seek leave to table statements by Kofi Annan and Nobel Prize winners which I have previously handed to the whips.

Leave granted.

I table the statements and I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

welcomes:

(i)

the Japanese resolution in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly First Committee, entitled ‘Renewed determination towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons’ (L32), which Australia co-sponsored and was adopted on 26 October 2006 by 168 votes in favour, 4 votes against and 8 abstentions, and

(ii)

the joint Australia-Mexico-New Zealand resolution on the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (L48) which was passed by the First Committee on 26 October 2006 by 175 votes in favour, 2 votes against and 4 abstentions;

(b)

notes that:

(i)

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, at Princeton University on 28 November 2006, emphasised the urgency of eliminating nuclear weapons,

(ii)

the Seventh Summit of Peace Nobel’s in Rome calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons as a matter of the utmost urgency, and

(iii)

the United States of America and the Russian Federation have made significant cuts to their nuclear arsenal as agreed in the 2002 Moscow Treaty;

(c)

supports ongoing government efforts, including through the next NPT Review conference cycle commencing with the first session of the Preparatory Committee in April 2007, to:

(i)

encourage further steps leading to nuclear disarmament, to which all states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are committed under Article VI of the Treaty, including deeper reductions in all types of nuclear weapons,

(ii)

stress the necessity of a diminishing role for nuclear weapons in security policies to minimise the risk that these weapons will ever be used and to facilitate the process of their total elimination,

(iii)

call on the nuclear-weapon states to further reduce the operational status of nuclear systems in ways that promote international stability and security, and

(iv)

emphasise the need for all states to take further steps and effective measures towards the total elimination of nuclear weapons, with a view to achieving a peaceful and safe world free of nuclear weapons; and

(d)

urges all states which have not already done so to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty as soon as possible and to support an early start to negotiation on a fissile material cut-off treaty.

Question agreed to.