2015-08-06
Mr BARBER (Northern Metropolitan) — Today we mark 70 years since the Hiroshima bomb. We continue to mark Hiroshima Day not only as a reminder of an event of great human tragedy but also because it initiated one of the most difficult periods in human history, the Cold War.
Recently I had the eerie experience of visiting a decommissioned nuclear missile silo in South Dakota in America, and I pondered how difficult it is going to be to ever explain to my own children that there was a period in human history when, despite our incredible achievements in culture, science, technology and the rest of it, we also held in our hands the ability and, in some cases, the willingness to destroy the whole of civilisation with just moments of notice. There are many tens of thousands of nuclear weapons still out there, operational, on hair-trigger alert, and we see the continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of new countries, something that works directly against the aims of the 1960s nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That historic deal, involving nuclear states getting rid of their weapons and new countries refusing to obtain weapons, is looking shakier than it ever has, and for that reason we should continue to mark events such as this.