Let's not wake up to the sight of a city in ashes

By Malcolm Fraser

THIS Australia Day, more than 700 Order of Australia recipients have come together to voice their support for a world freed from nuclear weapons.

The group includes such diverse Australians as Rolf Harris, Bryce Courtney, Olympian Liz Ellis and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks.

These are not merely celebrity endorsers, but respected leaders in diverse fields voicing their concern about the gravest issue of all -the threat of nuclear destruction.

They share a vision to remove from human affairs the unthinkable calamity of nuclear strikes on any of the worlds' great cities, be it Tehran or Tel Aviv, Shanghai, New York or Melbourne, and dares to imagine a time when children will not grow up with such ultimate catastrophe hanging over their heads.

A future without nuclear weapons is not only possible, it is essential. Eliminating nuclear weapons has the support of the majority of governments and has been championed by Barack Obama, Ban Ki-moon and Desmond Tutu among many. However, as with other monumental challenges humanity has faced and overcome, it will take great leadership if this vision is ever to become more than just a distant dream or rhetorical ideal.

When I think about the threats facing our world, such as climate change, resource depletion or terrorism, the threat posed by nuclear weapons is without doubt the greatest and most urgent existential threat. This is not the time for complacency or to entertain the comforting but misplaced perception that the nuclear threat dissipated after the cold war.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by Albert Einstein, has since 1947 been the custodian of the Doomsday Clock, the most widely recognised indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe.

Reviewing lack of progress in 2011 towards eliminating the nuclear threat, and continuing inaction on climate change, on January 10 they shifted the hands of the Doomsday Clock back from six to five minutes to midnight.

In fact, in 2012 we have all the elements of a perfect storm for nuclear calamity - ample supply of nuclear materials usable for weapons and the means to make them, inadequate nuclear security arrangements in many countries, easy access to the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb on the internet and groups proclaiming malicious intent to acquire and use a nuclear weapon.

The risks of nuclear escalation of a conflict between India and Pakistan, in the Middle East, or on the Korean Peninsula are real and present dangers. And thousands of nuclear weapons from bloated cold war arsenals persist on high alert, prone to things going wrong in a crisis, technical failure, error and cyber attack.

We are at a crossroads: during the next several years either we will take decisive steps towards banning nuclear weapons or more governments will become nuclear capable and the risks of nuclear weapons being used will grow towards their inevitable eventual use.

With over 30 per cent of the world's uranium, Australia has both an opportunity and a responsibility to become a global leader in galvanising international co-operation towards a nuclear weapons free world. However, our recent record shows that instead of being in front, Australia is becoming a global laggard.

At the 2010 review conference of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, more than 130 countries called for an immediate start to negotiations on a nuclear weapons convention but, shamefully, Australia remained silent. Recently we have seen the ALP move towards allowing uranium sales to countries including India, Russia and the United Arab Emirates - all countries with patchy security records and non-transparent arrangements around their nuclear programs.

Australians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention, a project organised through the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, aims to provide role models to encourage Australians and our government to join the call of Ban Ki-moon to begin negotiations to outlaw nuclear weapons and eliminate them within an agreed timeframe.

This Australia Day would be a good time for Australians to ask themselves what we can and should do to address the urgent need to abolish nuclear weapons. Indeed, there has never been a more important time for an Australian initiative in global efforts to rid the world of this most grave and human-made menace.

Let us not wait until a time when the unthinkable happens and a nuclear weapon is detonated on one of the world's great cities, and we ponder what we could have done to halt the nightmare that would unfold before our eyes.

It is time for Australia to adopt a nuclear-weapon-free defence posture and join other nations in working to achieve a comprehensive, verifiable treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.

Malcolm Fraser was prime minister from 1975 to 1983. For Order of Australia recipients supporting the Australians for a Nuclear Weapons Convention campaign, www.nuclearweaponsconvention.org.au/.