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Tuesday, 1 November 2011
Page: 7801

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (17:43): I rise to make some additional comments on the 121st report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties. I acknowledge Senator Birmingham's backhanded compliments to me as a longstanding colleague on this committee while repudiating the rude and undignified shot that he just took at my colleague Senator Rhiannon. Senator Birmingham, you and I are fortunate to be young enough not to have gone through the Cold War, when people quite literally lived in fear that their allies were going to incinerate each other one afternoon in an exchange of nuclear weapons. I did march, and perhaps you did as well, with my parents on Palm Sunday when 20,000 or 30,000 people streamed down St Georges Terrace. I can really only give thanks to people in the global peace movement who dedicated their lives to ridding the world of these weapons. Many of them have been demobilised over the last 10 or 15 years.

Senator Brandis: They weren't the ones who rid the world of nuclear weapons. They were the ones who wanted to disarm the West.

Senator Siewert: We sat and listened to you in silence. How about you do the same?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Back ): Order! Senators will accord Senator Ludlam the courtesy of listening in silence. Senator Ludlam, resume.

Senator LUDLAM: We contributed to a dissenting report on this matter for some of these same reasons. We are not really satisfied that the agreement between the government of Australia and the government of the United States of America relating to the operation of and access to this communication station at North West Cape is good enough. Senators will be aware that the base sits right on Ningaloo Reef, which is Western Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I spoke about the risks faced by Ningaloo Reef due to climate change earlier today during the carbon debate. The North West Cape base emits very low frequency communi­cations, and these are of abiding concern to marine biologists and environmental campaigners due to the possible ecological impacts of these sound waves on creatures that inhabit this precious marine sanctuary.

As we learned through the inquiry, there is disagreement between the US government and Australia on a couple of matters. For over 10 years it has been very difficult to tell who is responsible for cleaning up contami­nated sites up there, and while that situation exists we have asbestos and quite serious diesel contamination of the groundwater very close to one of Australia's most important marine parks. The national interest analysis also states that there are unresolved issues on the worth of assets at the base. We are about to enter into another 25-year agreement—should we not perhaps clear up whether this thing is an asset or liability, and which of the two governments holds those? The Austra­lian Greens believe that a new agreement should not be entered into before these matters are cleared up.

The base did attract controversy—here is this paragraph again, Senator Birmingham—during the Cold War in the role it played as a command control and communications centre for US submarine warfare against the Soviet Union. These are ballistic missile submarines whose entire purpose for being constructed and operated is to cruise the world's oceans completely out of sight, in communication only with bases such as this one, in the event that military or political commanders either in the US or in the former Soviet Union decide one afternoon to end civilisation. They are there in the event that someone decides to incinerate civilisation with nuclear weapons. That is their purpose; that is what they are for.

Senator Brandis: What about the deterrence?

Senator LUDLAM: As we learned during the hearing, it is still, 'Oh, because of nuclear weapons, that's what it is.'

Senator Ian Macdonald: That is why you are here today, because of the deterrence.

Senator LUDLAM: Senator Macdonald, the less we hear from you the better this will go.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Ludlam, direct your comments through the chair, if you will.

Senator LUDLAM: Yes, thank you. As we learned during the hearing, the base facilitates, enable and support nuclear armed submarines, which are an attack and defensive weapons platform. There is no real doctrine which says that these are defensive weapons. The credibility of Australia's efforts to push for action on nuclear disarma­ment at the global level is greatly reduced when we lend ports infrastructure and personnel to legitimising the retention and deployment of these weapons. This, of course, is another reason why the Greens do not believe that this treaty should be adopted in its current form.

I acknowledge that the JSCOT committee, which did a comprehensive and unanimous report on nuclear disarmament issues some time ago and which Senator Macdonald's party signed onto, did seriously engage with the question of nuclear weapons in its inquiry and report. The committee noted in this report that the proposed 25-year agreement may pose a conflicting obligation should nuclear disarmament diplomacy advance within this timeframe. In other words, this agreement, it is to be hoped and acknowledged by this report, may outlast the security arrangements which preceded it, in that we may not need to keep these horrific weapons in the field for another 25 years. It is a pity that the committee refused to acknowledge that allowing nuclear weapon states to continue business as usual deters any action towards disarmament. As long as Australia continues to lend weight and credence to the idea that nuclear weapons bring security by participating in the US nuclear weapons umbrella, and allowing bases on our soil to facilitate the nuclear weapons apparatus, we are missing an opportunity to demonstrate that giving a reduced role to nuclear weapons is practically achievable and need not result in damaged alliances.

Senator Ian Macdonald: Did your colleague ever think that the Russians were going to get rid of their nuclear weapons?

Senator LUDLAM: Senator Macdonald, I will take that interjection, because the former Soviet Union and now the Russian government have demobilised an enormous number of strategic nuclear weapons—there are far fewer than there were before.

I put a number of questions to the Minister for Defence on 27 June—I thank him for the responses—to try to tease out precisely what role these weapons, which are quite literally weapons of genocide, play in Australia's security policy. There have been, over modern Australian history, a few tentative moves to develop them for ourselves, but fortunately sanity prevailed and that has never occurred, although we know that was one of the rationales for the construction of the Lucas Heights reactor in Sydney. I put those questions to the Minister for Defence to get a sense of where Australian military doctrine stands on the issue of nuclear weapons under the US nuclear umbrella in 2011. Some of the responses are quite detailed. In part (4), they state:

For the time being, Australia accepts that nuclear weapons are part of the strategic environment.

Australian defence policy acknowledges the value to Australia of the protection afforded by extended nuclear deterrence under the US Alliance.

This is, as Senator Brandis was yelling across the chamber before, the policy of nuclear deterrence; if we have them we will deter the use of nuclear weapons by hostile countries. In the wonderful, bipolar world which these gentlemen who are—

Opposition senators interjecting—

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Birmingham was heard in silence.

Senator LUDLAM: He was. They are continuing to heckle in a most undignified way. What has happened is that the construction and use of these weapons and the testing of these weapons has simply bred more. The Soviet Union got them because the United States had them. Once the Soviet Union got them, India, Pakistan and China got them. Now Israel holds them, and we have reason to believe that even the Burmese government is engaging in a covert weapons program.

Senator Feeney: And Iran.

Senator LUDLAM: Iran, thank you, Senator Feeney. And who could forget the United Kingdom and France? We do not have a stable, bipolar situation any more with two rational governments facing off across western Europe to its great misfort­une. We have these weapons potentially in the hands of non-state actors, for whom deterrence is a joke. We have them in the hands of highly unstable regimes such as Pakistan. I wonder how the senators who have taken the time to come down here this afternoon and heckle about the idea of disarming the world of these horrific devices would feel if we came in here one morning to hear that one of these weapons had been detonated. We have lived in this extraordin­ary period of the last few decades where some survival instinct has kept the finger off the button. We must never take that for granted, as we have seen some examples of this afternoon. For some reason we feel that it is sensible and sane and part of an ordinary and entirely rational military doctrine to hold tens of thousands of weapons that could end civilisation in an afternoon; for some reason we feel this is somehow a great idea. I find it completely dumbfounding that this obsolete Cold War logic has followed us all the way to 2011. The Greens believe that the US government and Australia should not collaborate on support for nuclear weapons to be floating around the world on ballistic missile submarines. I acknowledge that the former Prime Minister, now the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Kevin Rudd, has poured a huge amount of energy into these endeavours and has seriously tried to move the international debate forward. But at the same time that is occurring it is being undermined by the efforts of the global uranium mining industry and by precisely the response we had from the defence ministry that while trying to abolish these weapons we somehow believe there is still a place for them in Australia's defence and security doctrine. There is no place in the defence doctrine of any country in the world for weapons as horrific as these. I think having an honest conversation about removing the US nuclear weapons umbrella from Australia's security policy would strengthen, not destroy, our alliance with the United States.