Australia will not support a resolution to begin negotiations to outlaw nuclear weapons, as it grows increasingly isolated from a global disarmament push.

A resolution is before the United Nations general assembly to “convene a United Nations conference in 2017, to negotiate a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons”.

The resolution has 39 co-sponsoring nations and will be voted on by the general assembly later this month, or next. The conference is slated for March next year.

Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade will appear before Senate estimates on Thursday to face questioning on Australia’s nuclear disarmament position.

Support for a ban treaty has been growing steadily over months of negotiations, but it has no support from the nine known nuclear states – the US, China, France, Britain, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea – which includes the veto-wielding permanent five members of the security council.

Australia has spent months in negotiations over the proposed negotiations, seeking to stymie the push for a ban on nuclear weapons, and has sought to press the case for what it describes as a “building blocks” approach of engaging with nuclear powers to reduce the global stockpile of 15,000 weapons.

Australia has consistently maintained that while nuclear weapons exist, it must rely on the protection of the deterrent effect of the US’s nuclear arsenal, the second largest in the world.

In August, with nations at a UN disarmament meeting set to unanimously pass a report recommending negotiations on a ban start in 2017, Australia forced a vote on the issue, which it lost 68 to 22.



The move upset opponents and allies alike, resulting in the adoption of a report with stronger language in favour of a ban. Australia was marked as the most strident opponent of a ban treaty.

But diplomatic cables obtained under freedom of information laws now show that Australia, despite its resolute opposition, is increasingly pessimistic about stopping ban treaty negotiations progressing.

“We are concerned that the [open-ended working] group [on nuclear disarmament] is tracking towards recommendations supporting a nuclear weapons ‘ban treaty’ which we do not support,” a cable sent to Canberra from Geneva in June this year said.

“The increased momentum of the humanitarian consequences agenda this year has exacerbated differences on nuclear disarmament.”

Australia said an “undercurrent of support for a ban treaty is not surprising”, and that it went into meetings “open-eyed” about the direction of negotiations.

A so-called “humanitarian pledge” to eliminate nuclear weapons has been signed by 127 states around the world. Australia is particularly isolated in the Asia-Pacific region – ASEAN nations, New Zealand, and almost all Pacific Island states, support a ban treaty.





Australia has a strong record on disarmament generally: during its term on the security council it helped shepherd into existence the Arms Trade Treaty, and has been one of the world’s largest donors to the Office for Disarmament Affairs, contributing money for conventional disarmament and arms control, and also for abolition of biological and chemical weapons.

But its posture on nuclear weapons, supporting the US stance that “nuclear weapons continue to play a role in maintaining peace and stability”, is leaving it increasingly isolated in international negotiations.

The efficacy of a ban treaty is a matter of fierce debate. Without the participation of the states that actual possess nuclear weapons, critics argue it cannot succeed. But proponents argue a nuclear weapons ban will create a moral case – in the vein of the cluster and land mine conventions – for nuclear weapons states to disarm, and establish a new international norm prohibiting nuclear weapons’ development, possession, and use.

Non-nuclear states have expressed increasing frustration with the current nuclear regime and the sclerotic movement towards disarmament.

With nuclear weapons states modernising and in some cases growing their arsenals, instead of discarding them, an increasing number of states are expressing disenchantment with the non-proliferation treaty, and lending their support for an outright ban.

The Conference on Disarmament, the world’s negotiating body on multilateral disarmament, has not negotiated a treaty since the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996, and it has regularly struggled to even agree on a program of works.

Associate professor Tilman Ruff, co-president of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, said that with a ban treaty likely to be concluded next year, the world stood at an historic turning point.

A ban would, he argued, “fill the existing legal gap which currently makes the most heinously destructive of all weapons the last weapon of mass destruction not explicitly outlawed by international treaty”.

“For other indiscriminate and inhumane weapons ... the world has first established a clear moral and legal norm of prohibition. For biological and chemical weapons, antipersonnel land-mines and cluster munitions, establishing an unequivocal norm of prohibition has ... been the basis for subsequent progress towards their elimination.

“Prohibit, then eliminate. That is the proven, logical path. For nuclear weapons it is also the only feasible, practical option at this time.”

The Australian government’s position, he said, was becoming increasingly untenable globally, and falling further out of step with Australian public opinion.

Politically, support for Australian reliance on America’s extended nuclear deterrence, is no longer bipartisan. At its national conference in 2015, Labor formally adopted a policy of “firm support” for an outright ban on nuclear weapons.



Lisa Singh spoke at a UN side event in New York last week – in her capacity as a Labor Senator, not as a representative of the Australian government – arguing the “doctrine of nuclear deterrence ... is based on a willingness to inflict violence indiscriminately and on a massive scale”.

“Like most Australians, I’m strongly of the belief that nuclear weapons should play no role in our defence. These are totally abhorrent, immoral weapons. As a nation, we should support all efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons.



But briefing cables from Australian diplomatic posts argue imposing a ban is naive, one of a number of “simplistic approaches which ignore the security dimensions”.

“Effective disarmament can only be achieved by engaging all the nuclear-armed states; simply banning nuclear weapons would not lead to their elimination”.

“As long as the threat of nuclear attack or coercion exists, and countries like the DPRK [North Korea] seek these weapons and threaten others, Australia and many other countries will continue to rely on US extended nuclear deterrence.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade declined to comment publicly for this story, but foreign minister Julie Bishop has argued previously: “We must engage, not enrage nuclear countries”.

She said a ban treaty was “emotionally appealing”, but an approach that would only “divert attention from the sustained, practical steps needed for effective disarmament”.

