2020-08-31
The global nuclear trade begins in Australia with uranium mining
By Kerrie-Ann (K-A) Garlick, CCWA’s Nuclear Free Community Campaigner
In Western Australia, for over four decades now, successive governments have tried to impose uranium mines on unwilling remote communities. Right now, we have four uranium mine proposals, Kintyre, Wiluna, Yeelirree and Mulga Rock that would rip, ship and store radioactive waste on Aboriginal country across WA.
Each proposal has been met with strong community opposition, mostly from Traditional Owners, and today we can successfully say that there are no operating uranium mines in WA. The nuclear free WA campaign will continue to advocate to keep uranium in the ground and to keep our unique environment cleaner, healthier and nuclear free.
One of the primary risks of Australian uranium exports is the contribution to global nuclear proliferation pressures and one of the biggest dangers facing the world is that posed by nuclear weapons.
In this article I use highlights from the recent Yellowcake County webinar series held aptly on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Co-founders from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Dave Sweeney and Dimity Hawkins, former Greens Senator, Scott Ludlam and ICAN Ambassador, Melissa Parke all shared important information on nuclear disarmament.
75 years ago the world utterly changed. We went from knowing we could do massive damage to each other to ‒ knowing we could finish each other off.
Since 1945, we have lived under the shadow of nuclear weapons and nuclear destruction, and that is a profoundly damaging state of being – for the body politic and for the body itself, for people individually and for our world collectively.
The devastation, both human and environmental seen in Japan at the time and afterwards demonstrate conclusively that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist. Hiroshima and Nagasaki teaches us about nuclear alienation.
The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) won the Noble Peace Prize in 2017, and what an incredible achievement, for its extraordinary work on drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty based prohibition of nuclear weapons. One of the major successes of the campaign was and is to amplify the voices of courageous survivors of nuclear war and nuclear testing about the consequences of a nuclear blast and their lived experience. Their stories are the most compelling testimonies that these weapons must never again be used against anyone, anywhere.
Nuclear weapons – the worst weapons of all ‒ remain the only weapons of mass destruction not explicitly prohibited under international law. And consequently, it was decided that the legal gap should be filled and that’s what initiated (in the home of Melbourne volunteers!) the treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
In 2016, the UN adopted that treaty by an overwhelming vote. It needs 50 ratifications to enter into force, and there is currently 44. The treaty acknowledges the harm suffered as a result of nuclear weapons including the disproportionate impact on women and girls and on Indigenous peoples around the world.
Here in Australia, for many Indigenous and service people, victims of British colonial nuclear testing at Maralinga, Emu Fields and the Monte Bello islands in the 50’s and 60’s, the treaty and its acknowledgement of harm suffered was a long time coming.
It is fair to say, that the treaty has been the biggest leap forward for nuclear disarmament in decades. Unfortunately, the treaty has so far been boycotted by the nuclear weapons states along with almost all of their allies including, shamefully, Australia. It is part of Australia’s official defence policy to be under the US nuclear umbrella. While we allow our government to keep nuclear weapons in our defence doctrine and foreign affairs policy we are legitimizing weapons that are designed and intended to cause massive humanitarian harm.
Australia’s refusal to ratify the treaty is out of step with Australian community opinion. A 2017 opinion poll asked Australians, do you think nuclear weapons make the world safer and 77% said no and 73% supported a ban. People of good will everywhere recognise that these immoral weapons should have no place in this world.
We need to keep building efforts to create a bigger civil society movement especially amongst young people to ensure that Australia signs the treaty, that it enters into force and that nuclear weapons become history.
It is with the sharing and coming together to hear these important stories that reaffirms our commitment to keep uranium, the source of a nuclear bomb, in the ground and to work to end these weapons of massive destruction. For more information on ICAN’s extraordinary work and to help ban nuclear weapons go to https://www.icanw.org/
The next Yellowcake Country webinar ‒ Don’t nuke the Climate ‒ is on Wednesday 30th September from 5.30pm (AWST), speakers including Dr Jim Green, Friends of the Earth, Australia, Mia Pepper, Minerals Policy Institute and Tim Buckley, Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. For further details and to see all the previous Yellowcake Webinars view here: http://www.ccwa.org.au/yellowcake_country_webinar_series
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]