PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT (PND)

AUSTRALIA MUST BACK NUCLEAR BAN TREATY



People for Nuclear Disarmament, Australia's oldest disarmament organization and home to the Human Survival Project, has urged the Australian Government to do a U-turn on its opposition to a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. Australia should aggressively and proactively promote both a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty and the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

According to PND's UN Nuclear Disarmament Campaigner John Hallam,
“The total elimination of nuclear weapons isn't merely a feelgood thing that might be nice to achieve 'some century' in a totally perfect strategic environment. The total elimination of nuclear weapons is an immediate and pressing human survival imperative that must be done yesterday no matter what other threats may or may not exist. It is in itself a strategic security goal of the utmost importance, without which as Gareth Evans report on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament noted a few years back, our very existence as a species is under threat.”

“Evans report noted that the existence of nuclear weapons is the most potent and immediate short to medium term threat both to civilization and to human survival itself. This is hardly a new idea. Surely considerations such as these trump utterly all other considerations including what are regarded as core strategic and security considerations – indeed, Nuclear Zero itself has to be regarded as a core security goal that pushes aside all other possible security goals.”

“For Australia to give anything other than completely unstinting support to the goal of nuclear weapons elimination yesterday is frankly incomprehensible in its folly. What we should be doing is being at the forefront of governments that back both the Humanitarian Pledge and the Joint Statement, and working with the governments of Austria, NZ, South Africa, Switzerland and others to push the nuclear weapon states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals immediately.”

John Hallam
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