Australia: fertile ground for banning the bomb

摘要

Australia has a long-standing relationship with the bomb. In 1952, Prime Minister Menzies announced, after a single message and phone call from the then British PM Attlee and no consultation with Menzies' own Cabinet, that a British atomic weapon would be tested in Australia and that 'there will be no danger whatever from radioactivity to the health of the people or animals in the Commonwealth' (Tynan 2016). Over half a century and 12 nuclear tests later, and with hundreds of square kilometres at Maralinga in South Australia still radioactively contaminated, Australia continues to act as a willing accomplice for the nuclear weapons policies of a major ally, this time the United States. Successive Australian governments give legitimacy to a role for nuclear weapons by claiming that the US 'nuclear umbrella' protects Australia. Perhaps spurred on by the ongoing failure of their governments to act in the interests of their own people or the common security of us all, civil society in Australia has grasped the agenda.