On August 6th and 9th, it will be 75 years since atomic bombs were dropped, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing ~210,000 civilians and leaving many more with shocking injuries, cancer and chronic disease.
Australia once led the world in pushing for disarmament but is now largely silent on the matter – timid in the face of American bravado. The Australian Democrats have always been anti-nuke!
ICAN is a small but highly effective organisation that won the Nobel Prize in 2017 for its work in establishing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This treaty will come into force if it is ratified by just 12 more countries.
81 countries have signed the treaty, 38 have ratified it so far, including New Zealand. Australia has done neither.
ICAN says this is an opportunity to take stock and take action. We agree. We suggest you sign and widely circulate our online petition below and we will forward it to the Senate.
Here’s what ICAN circulated to us:
We’re celebrating the 38th ratification of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), thanks to Lesotho! After just 12 further ratifications it will enter into permanent legal force, entrenching the illegality and unacceptability of nuclear arms.
As you may be aware, the United States has recently discussed the resumption of nuclear testing. This continues an alarming trend to undermine or wreck nuclear arms control agreements including the Iran Deal, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty. ICAN co-founder Associate Professor Tilman Ruff AO has summarised the state of play in this article. Australia should be kicking up a fuss about these perilous developments, but it’s not.
Our government’s credibility on nuclear disarmament can be regained by joining the global push to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons with the TPNW. Any use of nuclear weapons would catalyse a public health crisis, one which we can and must avoid.
Our third monthly web-meet is coming up in a few days, discussing the Quit Nukes campaign to move money out of nuclear arms producers. Quit Nukes has so far recognised 4 super funds for their nuclear-weapon-free policies, including Future Super. Join Future Super’s Head of Impact, Emily Flood, and Jenny Grounds and Margaret Peril from Quit Nukes to learn more.
June Justice web-meet: Quit Nukes
Monday 15th June at 6-7:30pm
The Democrats have argued long and loudly for a world free of nuclear weapons. My predecessor, former Senator Sid Spindler travelled to Tahiti in 1995 as a member of a group of anti-nuclear politicians protesting against the resumption of French nuclear testing on Muraroa Atoll.
I have worked with the survivors of nuclear bomb tests in France, the UK, US, NZ, Japan, Tahiti, Iran, Fiji, and in Australia at Maralinga, raising awareness of the awful mortality, ongoing sickness, and failure of nuclear weapons states to take responsibility for the damage done by their testing.