Personal reflections on Australia’s contribution to the journey to support the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

Published in ‘90 Seconds to Midnight’, the Evatt Foundation Journal, April 2023

I should declare at the outset that I have had no engagement with party politics since 1996 so I am not writing to promote a party line. I have been asked to write this contribution because of my long involvement in the global campaign to rid the world of nuclear weapons which continues to this day as an Ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

No one could deny that the Australian Labor Party has a long track record of opposition to nuclear weapons which, while not without blemish, extends back decades to the immediate aftermath of the Second World War . On 25th June 1946, then Minister for External Affairs Dr Evatt — who played such an important role in the creation of the United Nations — sent a diplomatic cable back to the Department of External Affairs, as it then was, advising that among other things he would be proposing that “when the controls and safeguards have been effectively organised, the manufacturer of Atomic weapons and the stock pile of material for military purposes cease and that existing stocks of bombs be dismantled.”

History shows that the United Nations has sought to eliminate such weapons ever since its establishment and the first resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1946 called for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”

After hundreds of international conferences and decades of mobilisation of citizen protest organisations around the world, the global efforts of people of faith and so many others, history will conclude that almost 80 years later, substantive progress on the objective of nuclear weapons elimination has not been made.

Yes it is true that a number of multilateral treaties have since been established with the aim of preventing nuclear proliferation and testing, and promoting disarmament. These include the important Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests In The Atmosphere, In Outer Space And Under Water (also known as the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT)), and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was signed in 1996 but has yet to enter into force, and regional nuclear weapon free zones, including the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone to which Australia is a party. Importantly, the Hawke Government also legislated to incorporate the commitments of the Treaty into Australian law through the Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty Act which among other Treaty commitments rules out Australia acquiring nuclear weapons and prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons in Australia. As a humble backbench member of parliament I was deeply involved in winning support for this Act within the Government and, I vividly remember the overwhelmingly large and very persuasive government committee meeting in the old parliament house which convinced the relevant Government Ministers to support the legislation.

However while the multilateral treaties have shown promising signs of what might be, at the end of the day, they have failed to progress the nuclear disarmament envisaged by the NPT and instead we face a bleak and scary outlook. 

Even in the early months of 2023, President Putin has made threatening noises implicitly suggesting the use of nuclear weapons on Ukraine. The United States, under a Democrat administration, continues to build an ever more powerful nuclear capacity and China has accelerated the growth of its nuclear weapons capacity.

Elsewhere in the world there remains: serious threats of further horizontal nuclear proliferation; the ever present threat of the accidental use of nuclear weapons; continuing terrorist threats concerning illicit nuclear material and military threats to reactors. On top of this is the looming impact of climate change, bringing together the two existential threats to world peace and security in the form of catastrophic climate change consequences if a nuclear war does break out. 

The truth of the matter is that we have witnessed decade upon decade of superpower rivalry with the nuclear weapons nations committing themselves to ever expanding nuclear strength and capacity. In doing so they have turned their backs on the obligations in the NPT to bring nuclear disarmament to the negotiating table. Is it any surprise then that there has been a horizontal spread of nuclear weapons to what is now a total of 9 nuclear-armed nation states: namely the United States , Russia, China, India, Pakistan, France, United Kingdom, North Korea and Israel?  

South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons arsenal at the initiation of De Clerk when he was the outgoing President of South Africa, but also warmly endorsed by Nelson Mandela when he came to power, showing that it can be done. 

For over 70 years the debate on the abolition of nuclear weapons has not progressed to effective action because the non-nuclear weapon states and the people of the world have been frozen out of the debate and their voices stifled by super power politics. At every available opportunity the nuclear weapon states have blocked or vetoed progress. The world’s hopes have been dashed by them so very often. Even President Barack Obama, despite his landmark speech in support of a world free of nuclear weapons in Prague for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, before the end of his presidency had initiated the largest reinvestment in the modernisation of United States nuclear forces since President Reagan. We have even dodged an accidental nuclear war by what many commentators describe as “dumb luck”. 

Because of this global failure, the patience of the global majority of nations for the dismal lack of progress on disarmament ran out. In the new millennium they intensified their work to find a pathway for the world to break out of this nuclear straightjacket.

The breakthrough which led to the TPNW came over the last decade as a result of the triumph of international humanitarian law values and the renewed endorsement by the global community of these values. In my view they were overwhelmingly centred around the protection of civilian populations and other core principles embodied in the international humanitarian l aws of warfare.

The fact is that the nuclear weapons of the world are overwhelmingly targeted on the cities of the world and no amount of equivocation or diplomatic doublespeak will ever convince us otherwise. 

That is what the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is founded on, namely the capacity and willingness of a nation state to inflict a reign of terror on enemy countries. To put it in simple terms, it is just like the argument that allowing more higher powered guns in a country capable of mass slaughter somehow makes that country safer. The world knows that without question that does not work and nor does nuclear deterrence make the world a safer place. 

Meanwhile, although no real progress had been made on nuclear weapons disarmament since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the international community has been able to outlaw, delegitimise and then disarm most of the worlds supplies of chemical and biological weapons, land mines and cluster munitions and their use is now overwhelmingly disavowed not only as a breach of international law but recognised as an atrocity which demands universal condemnation.

It is indisputable that in each of these cases the first step towards disarming the world of these other weapons was the delegitimisation of them by an international ban treaty thus rendering them an illegal and illegitimate weapon of war. This was driven overwhelmingly by international humanitarian law principles. 

The speed with which international opinion shifted on these issues was demonstrated by the fact that in April 1996, one of the first policy announcements of the new Howard Government was a joint statement by the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence pledging Australia’s support for a global ban on production, stockpiling, use and transfer of antipersonnel landmines. This stand was taken despite the strong opposition of the United States .

And yet, despite the magnificent global achievements in eliminating indiscriminate weapons of war like landmines, cluster munitions, chemical biological weapons, the nuclear weapon states continued to promote the legitimacy of nuclear weapons in the face of world opinion which recognises these weapons as a threat to our fragile planet and to humanity itself. In simple terms it makes no sense to ban landmines and yet tolerate nuclear weapons which bring the greatest threat of mass civilian carnage ever known to humankind .

Efforts were also made in the International Court of Justice to secure a decision that the use of nuclear weapons should be considered illegal at all times and in all circumstances. In 1996 the International Court, by a small majority, and in a bizarre twist considered that the use of nuclear weapons may be permissible if the very existence of a nation state was threatened. On this view of the world, ironically Japan itself would arguably have been authorised to use nuclear weapons at the end of the Second World War which is of course an absurd moral and legal proposition. The decision did however leave a gap in international law which could only be filled by a treaty which would definitively outlaw nuclear weapons for all time and in all circumstances.

With the International Court of Justice closing the door on the judicial outlawing of nuclear weapons, efforts to find other pathways to engage the international community in efforts to prohibit nuclear weapons continued. In 2005 a small group of people in Melbourne gathered to take the first steps to form what was to become known as ICAN . Right from the beginning, their focus was resolutely in favour of a global convention to outlaw nuclear weapons and this is what they ultimately worked with others to achieve from those humble beginnings.

Other developments were happening in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement when the then President of the International Committee of the Red Cross — the guardian of the Geneva Conventions — delivered a major speech on nuclear weapons to the Geneva d iplomatic c ommunity in April 2010, which I truly believe was transformative.

Dr Kellenberger said: “ The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) firmly believes that the debate about nuclear weapons must be conducted not only on the basis of military doctrines and power politics. The existence of nuclear weapons poses some of the most profound questions about the point at which the rights of States must yield to the interests of humanity... ”

He concluded with a call to action by saying: “In the view of the ICRC, preventing the use of nuclear weapons requires fulfilment of existing obligations to pursue negotiations aimed at prohibiting and completely eliminating such weapons through a legally binding international treaty.”

Soon afterwards Red Cross in Australia became very active in the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) working to support the international humanitarian law approach of the ICRC. My Red Cross colleague, Dr Helen Durham — Head of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) at the Australian Red Cross — was deeply involved in this work and later went on to head up IHL at the ICRC in Geneva. Our collective work not only saw the IFRC adopt a unanimous opposition from the 190+ countries where there is a Red Cross or Red Crescent Society but also secured a commitment to commence actively advocating for a nuclear ban treaty with their national governments. The work which led to that Treaty was clearly not just going to be a government initiative but would also be driven by the strong support from civil society organisations around the world. 

Three international conferences were convened by Norway, Mexico and Austria in the lead up to the UN General Assembly processes which launched the Treaty negotiation. They were the first international conferences in the history of the world which focussed on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons. This was the breakthrough the world needed. I was privileged to speak on behalf of the IFRC at each of these conferences and to engage with ICAN which played a critical and prominent role at each of these events.

The TPNW was ultimately adopted by the General Assembly on 7th July 2017, opened for signature on 20th September 2017 and entered into force on 22nd January 2021. Like most treaties the process of gaining signatures and ratifications takes time but progress is relentlessly proceeding. At the time of writing the treaty has 92 signatories, 68 of which have ratified. 

It was Anthony Albanese who was the leading champion at the ALP National Conference in 2018, securing unanimous support for Australia to become a party to the Treaty, after taking account of various factors set out in the current party policy document. As I have made clear I have not been a member of the ALP for over 26 years but because of my commitment to this issue I deeply admire the Prime Minister’s leadership in support of Australia signing the TPNW . I also know that his moral convictions and principles run deeply on this issue and have done so for a very long time. Moreover, repeated public opinion polls have shown that almost 80% of the public also supports Australia signing the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Turning to my personal reflections on the reasons why I believe the nuclear weapons ban is a matter of deep conviction to the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is because of his friendship, love, admiration and deep connection with the late veteran Labor MP Tom Uren AC.

Tom was a prisoner of war of the Japanese on the hell on earth of the Burma- Thai railway where, like other POWs, he was treated abysmally. However, he refused to carry hate for the Japanese and was driven by his profound love of people and commitment to humanity. He was a prisoner of war near Nagasaki when the second nuclear weapon was dropped on that city. He never forgot it and I know it enhanced and drove his commitment to this issue all the long remaining days of his life.

Although mistreated by the Japanese, Tom, as many of his friends know, when he returned from the war, championed the phrase that there was “no progress in hate” and how right he was. For the next 70 years of his life, he campaigned for the outlawing of nuclear weapons and for nuclear disarmament.

Tom died on Australia Day 2015 and was intensely aware of, and strongly supported, the work of ICAN and the Red Cross in Australia to secure support from all sides of politics for a convention outlawing nuclear weapons.

This is not a partisan endorsement of a party political line but an expression of belief that Anthony Albanese is a good human, someone who is prepared to take a stand for something that he also believes is in our national interest. In joining the Treaty I can envisage the continuing legacy of Tom Uren, who inspired so many of us irrespective of political allegiance — including me.

The first step for the Albanese Labor Government to implement the party policy is to sign the TPNW . Of course there must be close and detailed discussions with the United States but whatever their political views on the issue, surely no one can doubt the commitment of the Albanese Government to the United States alliance.

That commitment is shared by the Government of New Zealand which already signed and then ratified the treaty almost five years ago. In May 2022 President Joe Biden and then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern issued a joint statement at the White House headed “A 21 st -Century Partnership for the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific, and the World”, in which they said in part: “Today, we acknowledge that security and defense will become an ever-more-important focus of our strategic partnership. We look to increase the interoperability of our forces, including through personnel exchanges, co-deployments, and defense trade”. This regional example underlines the point that Australia can join the Treaty and retain a committed military alliance with the US.

Support for Australia signing and ratifying the Treaty is growing in the National Parliament from its already strong base of support in the community. In September 2022, 9 independent members of the House of Representatives and one independent Senator issued a joint statement in which they said: “We welcome Labor’s National Policy Platform commitment to sign and ratify TPNW when in government and look forward to working with the Albanese government in leading Australia to achieve this historic move towards global nuclear disarmament.”

Australia joining New Zealand and most of our regional Asia Pacific neighbours in signing the Treaty will send a message around the world that at this time in human history the international community must take a stand in support of the delegitimisation and elimination of nuclear weapons. 

Australia can then play a leading role demonstrating integrity alongside like-minded nations to help build global support and diplomatic initiatives to bring the nuclear weapons states to the negotiating table to achieve a verifiable process for step-by-step global nuclear disarmament, just like Dr Evatt advocated all those years ago.

Now that would be a legacy for us all and for generations to come.

Robert Tickner was Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Affairs in the Hawke-Keating Governments, former CEO of the Australian Red Cross, and serves in a voluntary position as an Ambassador for ICAN.