 The National Security Coalition is a joint venture between the Commonwealth Government and the ANU. And our main role is to, I feel, help promote a new generation of strategic thinkers in the national security space. In order to do that, we run a series of activities, including academic activity, which includes a graduate studies program and a higher degree by research program. We run executive and professional development courses, which are tailored specifically for officials from government. We also have a research program, and I'm very pleased to say that we're about to publish our first two occasional papers, which will be in the question of collaborative leadership. And lastly, we have a very active outreach program, which this is part. Australia has a very long history of involvement in nonproliferation, which includes strong roles in the Canberra Commission, the International Commission on Nuclear Nonproliferation Disarmament, and also as part of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Our national commitment to nonproliferation is well illustrated by the long history of disarmament and peace studies here at ANU, which has been continued now through the new ANU Centre on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, which is under the guidance of one of our speakers tonight, Professor Thakur. And further, matters related to nonproliferation are frequently raised in the media. Only this week we've seen a re-ignition of the controversy of selling uranium to India and a lot of discussion about Japan's nuclear future. I suppose without playing out too much of a metaphor, this is an extremely hot topic. Now tonight we've invited two very prominent experts in nonproliferation to join us to examine these issues tonight. The first is my old friend and colleague, Dr Rob Floyd. Rob is the Director-General of the Australian Safeguards and Nonproliferation Office. Now you might not be 100% sure about what ANSO does, so let me introduce it first. Its principal focus is on the international domestic action against proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, and in particular ANSO works to strengthen the operation and effectiveness of relevant treating mechanisms in the technical areas, particularly in terms of treating verification and compliance. Rob himself is a senior career official and was most recently the Assistant Secretary of Emergency Management and Proliferation Issues at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Rob has been a leader of the CSIRA's Secure Australian Programme and was a Research Scientist for nearly 20 years. He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from Griffith University, a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of New England. Rob, it's great to have you here tonight and I thank you for coming. Joining him tonight is Professor Ramesh Thakur. Ramesh is Professor of International Relations in the Asia Pacific Centre College of Diplomacy here at the ANU and he's also an Adjunct Professor in the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University. Ramesh has held a number of very senior academic and service appointments in his distinguished career. He was Senior Vice-Rector of the United Nations University and concurrently an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations and has held professorial positions at the University of Wellington in Canada, Otago University in New Zealand and here at the Australian National University. Ramesh was a Commissioner and one of the principal authors of the Responsibility to Protect Report from 2001 and a Senior Advisor on Reforms and Principal Writer of the United Nations Secretary General's Second Reform Report of 2002. Ramesh is also the author of about 30 books and 300 scholarly articles and book chapters. He also writes regularly for the quality news here in Australia and around the world. So for tonight's seminar I'll firstly invite Ramesh to speak on the historical underpinnings of Australia's involvement in non-proliferation and recent international efforts to manage the non-proliferation agenda. I'll then invite Rob to speak on Australian policy perspectives with regard to non-proliferation and to outline some of the measures being taken by the Australian Government in this regard and to help make time for questions of which I'm hoping to be plenty. Rob and Ramesh, I'll give you a quick signal at 15 minutes and we'll hopefully finish up by the 20 minutes so then we can do an extensive Q&A session. When we do Q&A we'll pass a microphone around so the question can be recorded for video recording that we're doing of this particular activity. So it does give me great pleasure to introduce Professor Ramesh Thakur to address us first. Thanks David. Rob and I were just discussing before we started. He just came back yesterday from London for a work meeting in this field. I came back yesterday from Washington where I had discussions on nuclear security summit issues. So between us we might be okay in the Australian time from the direction we've come. I will talk for no more than 20 minutes. I'd like to go through the, if you like, the state of play on this issue around the world at the moment and time permitting I'd also like to speak briefly for about 5 minutes on what we're going to do in this new centre that I've just started. But that will depend on time. The basic position is that we seem to find ourselves once again at a familiar crossroads confronting the same choice between security based on nuclear deterrence or nuclear disarmament. That is security in and through or from and against nuclear weapons. The tyranny of nuclear complacency could yet exact a fearful price if we sleepwalk away into a nuclear catastrophe. And part of the reason for establishing this new centre for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, CNND has been to try and find a way out of this dilemma. Since the end of the Cold War, there's been a bit of a paradoxical position in that the probability of a nuclear war between the major powers and principally the United States and Russia has diminished. But the prospect of nuclear weapons actually being used deliberately by accident or by miscalculation has become more rather than less plausible. Serious threats persist from the use or misuse of weapons by existing nuclear arm states, particularly in South Asia. And may I remind you how close we came to a full fledged war between India and Pakistan in 2002 following the terrorist attacks on India's parliament in December 2001 shortly after 9-11. Threats persist from newly nuclear arm states, particularly in the Middle East and of course from terrorist actors. And we also have barriers for the misuse of the nuclear fuel cycle, the civil nuclear fuel cycle. And therefore major further strengthening of the non-proliferation regimes and major further progress on disarmament remain critically necessary. I don't think an indefinite maintenance of the status quo is a realistic option. In retrospect, I would argue that 1996 was probably the zenith of progress on arms control and disarmament. The NPT was indefinitely and permanently extended in 1995. The World Court affirmed the NPT's disarmament obligations in July 1996. The Comprehensive Test Plan Treaty was approved by the UN General Assembly in September. Thanks in those small measure of course to Australia. But unfortunately all this proved a false tone as over the next decade we saw but a few faint glimmers of hope amidst a blinding ray of disappointments. The nuclear break out by non-NPT parties India and Pakistan was followed by North Korea's withdrawal from the NPT and its tests. There was little interest to reach the disarmament benchmarks of the 2000 NPT review conference. The 2005 NPT review conference was a total failure and scandalously the UN's summit outcome document of October 2005 failed to include even one sentence on the nuclear challenge. Not because they were unaware of the gravity and urgency of the threat but because they could not agree on even one anodyne sentence on how to include that challenge in the outcome document. But then the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament agenda was re-energized with a coalition of four US policy heavyweights from the US national security community. Bill Cohen, Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Bill Perry who were influenced not coincidentally by 9-11 the dangers of terrorists getting weapons and how that affected the relative equation between the assurances of possession of nuclear weapons and the risks of nuclear weapons in today's world. And they began to advocate for the nuclear weapon free world. Then we had Barack Obama as candidate affirming his support for such a goal eventually and reaffirming it as president most famously in Prague in April 2009 and then presiding over the Security Council deliberation that produced Resolution 1887 reaffirming the NPT obligations and aspirations that may seem like going back and not much progress but there was an interesting shift that occurred in US foreign policy in the discussions leading up to the 1968 signing of the NPT and the negotiations leading up to that. So in the internal American discussions they had a long debate at the time as to whether they should identify the problem as being these weapons in the wrong hands or these weapons per se and for a number of reasons they decided it would not be possible to achieve much progress if they tried to make distinctions between good guys and bad guys having the weapons and so they went in for no one else should have them because the weapons themselves are bad alongside if you like and the temple are those who had them already to keep it for themselves but stop anyone else from having them. So this conclusion was effectively reversed by the Bush administration although several administrations had the effect or made that distinction already between Israel and anyone else in the Middle East the Bush administration of course made that distinction most famously between India and April as well and certain events followed from that. So in a sense Barack Obama comes back to the old consensus nuclear weapons are a problem furthermore they are a problem even in the hands of those who have them so we will in fact aim for nuclear evolution. The Washington nuclear summit looked closely at the safety and security requirements of nuclear programs and materials. Last year's NPT review conference you'd get a debate amongst the disarmament community who object to calling it a success but they will agree that it was not a failure whereas 2005 was a failure. So let's call it a modest success. The International Commission on Nuclear Preparation and Disarmament co-chaired by Kawaguchi from Japan and Gareth Evans from here and campaigns like Global Zero helped to mobilize key constituencies. A New START Treaty was negotiated, signed, ratified and is in effect and one of the prices that the Obama administration paid for that incident I believe was the extension of the Bush tax cuts that also could pro quo in terms of cross issue linkages on issues that are not actually linked. For all of this progress over the last three to five years there is now a palpable and growing sense that the nuclear disarmament balloon has burst. There's little evidence of significant domestic political constituencies in the nuclear arms states to get the train of disarmament back on track. Instead they all show continued reliance on nuclear weapons and deterrence. Efforts already underway and or plans to modernize and upgrade nuclear weapons or upgrade nuclear weapons, deployments and doctrines by the five nuclear weapons states are evidence of their determination to avoid abolition. Just so you are clear when I use the phrase nuclear weapons states I'm referring to the five nuclear powers as per the NPT, United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. When I use nuclear arms states I'm including these five plus all the others who actually have nuclear weapons. One of the problems in the NPT is its definition of what makes a nuclear weapon state is ideological rather than empirical. It's true by definition. Any country that had nuclear weapons and had tested before 1st January 1967. So France and Britain could technically get rid of the nuclear weapons but they would still count as nuclear weapon states. India and Pakistan could fight a nuclear war but they would not count as nuclear weapon states. So nuclear arms versus nuclear weapon states that is just a useful distinction for that reason. So the five nuclear weapons states all show evidence of modernizing or being ready to prepare to modernize the arsenals. India and Pakistan continue to expand and modernize the nuclear arsenals. The fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world today is Pakistan's. When you add to the fact and you add that to the fact that Pakistan has more terrorists per square mile than the whole world you begin to get a sense of unease and anxiety. Just to add to that before you relax too much Pakistan is the only one of the eight nuclear arms states where the nuclear program has from the start been under military control and the military will decide when and where and against whom to use not the civil government. That's not true of any other nuclear arms states. Pakistan is the only one that is an irredentist nuclear arms state with claims on territory, significant chunk of territory. It is the only one that actively promotes insurgency state policy. It is the only one that has active terrorist assets as a matter of state policy. So it's not a very reassuring situation. It is difficult to believe that any Indian government would be able to exercise restraint again if faced with another Mumbai-style attacks simply in terms of domestic politics. So there are lots of reasons to be fearful of where we might end up with that. Israel is not upgrading and modernizing but it is marking time waiting to see how, if at all, the world will deal with Iran. Iran's nuclear ambitions have failed to be checked by all efforts to date by the International Committee. But we're still trying to do our best to keep Iran inside the box. I'm not sure that we can figure out how to get North Korea back inside the box. The CTBT is no nearer entering into force. FISAG Materials Treaty, no nearer negotiations. Conference on Disarmament for a decade has not been able to agree on an agenda. There is also a revival of interest in nuclear power, which may suffer temporary clip or setback post Fukushima, but I don't think it's going to be a major reversal, particularly in Asia and other parts of the world. And that in turn throws up a number of issues. How do we ensure that nuclear plants are operated with complete safety so that chances of accidents are minimized and mechanisms and procedures are put in place so that accidents are discovered immediately, their effects are mitigated and firewalls are constructed to prevent wider damage? How do we secure the plants against theft and leakage of weapons, sensitive material, skills and knowledge? How do we build firewalls between civilian and weapons related use of nuclear power? How do we establish multinational regimes for the assurance of fuel supply, the management of spent fuel, the disposal of radioactivists and the decommissioning of old reactors? And these concerns relate not just to the countries in which the reactors are located, but also to the international trade in nuclear material, skills and equipment. There's a lovely quote from the previous Director General of the IAEA, Mohamed Albiradhar, who said, my quote, nuclear components designed in one country could be manufactured in another, shipped through a third, assembled in a fourth and used in a fifth. So that's your trade, international trade in nuclear weapons. As of the start of this year, there were 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world's inventories, plus 20,000. 5,000 of these launched already, 2,000 indeed in a state of high operational alert. After the New START Treaty, the Americans will go down to, when fully implemented, 1,550 deployed strategic warheads. In terms of their triad, that will still include 420 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles, 240 submarine-launched ballistic missiles, 60 heavy bombers. But in addition, the United States U.S. plans include retaining a hedge of reserve warheads for potential rapid upload and the construction of three new nuclear bomb factories for increased warhead production capacity. In other words, essentially, the Cold War nuclear force structure has been retained rather than abandoned. Faced with this, this is one other item I've just mentioned, because I actually saw it today. This is an article in Yale Global Online, published deadline yesterday, but New York Times yesterday, of course, is today for us. So you just got it today because it gives you a sense of where we might be heading even in the future. We know the problem countries, but there's a whole range of other countries in a sense circling who might become interested in going down this path also, or might develop postures and policies and inventories that suggest a degree of ambivalence. And one of these that has come on the list to watch out for in the future, surprisingly, is South Korea. And this is an article by someone called Lee Byung-chul who served on the foreign and national security policy planning staff of two South Korean presidents. He points out that there are right-wing elements now clamoring for a reversal of the denuclearization of the peninsula, a reintroduction of American nuclear weapons onto the peninsula, and even perhaps contemplating the future in the South Korea itself might want to go down the path as the United States keeps experiencing relative decline, and the strength of his assurances to Asian allies might be less credible. So what can we do in Australia? Well, Rob will talk very shortly and I won't be much long at all on what governments do. There are some things, of course, only governments can do. There are other things that governments can do better than anyone else. But then there are some things that governments, being governments, find politically much more complicated and sensitive to do, where it is useful to have institutions outside governments, circles, who can raise issues of concern, suggest possible ways forward, identify options and alternatives. And it is in that sense that we have been set up with the view to going back over the past three or five years, looking at the whole plethora of agreements, authoritative speeches by relevant officials and leaders, outcome documents, etc. And distilling from these policy benchmarks and converting these into a forward-looking agenda under five categories. Nuclear disarmament, nuclear non-proliferation, security dimensions of civil nuclear energy, nuclear terrorism and building blocks for non-proliferation and disarmament. Under these five headings, picking out these policy benchmarks and a forward-looking agenda. And then in partnership, particularly with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, but taking advantage of the wealth of research and very high-quality research being done all over the world, collecting and collating the material and, as I said, distilling them into policy action agendas under these five headings. And then seeing how many of these agreements, declarations, outcome documents, benchmarks are being met or are likely to be met by the time of the next NPT, Commission meetings and the next NPT review conference in 2015. How many are falling short but are essentially still in the right direction and on track? And how many are going to fall well short let alone how many and which ones have been set aside completely? So it's an issue-by-issue category evaluation of where we stand with the hope of making it less sensitive by not going in for a country-by-country finger-pointing exercise. And then recognizing that at the end of the day we may be an advocacy organization but we are not governmental or intergovernmental and it's only the intergovernmental machinery and governments that can actually do something about it. So present this in the form of a succinct research and evidence-based report to the PREP-COM process and hope that they can take it into the review conference. That in short is the goal of my centre. I'll hand it over to Rob to take you through where the Australian government stands on the whole range of different regimes and treaties and conventions. Thank you very much. That was a very sobering assessment but an assessment I think that is very important for us all to hear. Firstly, I'd like to start by thanking the National Security College and particularly Professor Lestrange for holding this event and focusing on this issue. I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Thacker that it is more than the role of governments to see the issues of non-proliferation and disarmament move forward. It is probably inadequate for governments to try and do this alone and it is important that groups that take an advocacy role outside of governments are empowered and are speaking. It's important that they are empowered by public opinion. Clearly, there is a debate that goes on across the community around issues nuclear and long may that continue because that debate is the essence which empowers his centre and provides guidance to governments for us to be able to move forward. Just in opening, I would observe that the issue of non-proliferation and disarmament is not a short game. It's a long game and I want to make a few comments about what does success look like because maybe success if it's about complete elimination would only lead to a pessimism and depression and a sense of failure while I see some of the officials in the room here smiling. That is not necessarily the measure that we should use but let me explain that further as we move forward. I'm glad you're here, I'm glad this event is on. This is important stuff for the public to be involved with. I'm going to flick through a number of these topics but I'm also going to jump a whole bunch of my slides and focus on some of the key issues that I see about the Australian government's commitment and involvement in the weapons of mass destruction space and some of our particular policy interests. It's so interesting that this issue, particularly around nuclear weapons brings together two of the great threats to society as we know it these days. It brings together the threat of climate change and the threat of weapons of mass destruction. Two issues that could substantially radically or disastrously change the way that life is for us. And it's so interesting to see how some aspects of this are in complete contradiction as to what you might wish to do for reducing proliferation may be completely at odds with what you might want to do to reduce carbon emissions, such as the difficulty of some of the policy that has to be wrestled with around these issues. My comments will be largely on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, but I will touch on chemical and biological towards the end. A couple of the policy interests of the Government of Australia but many other governments too are these. There's a whole range of different areas, be it about protecting our national security, ensuring our economic prosperity or issues now brought in together with this about energy security and environmental concerns about climate change. In the national security area it is far from straightforward as to what a nation such as Australia should do. We are strongly of the belief that we should move towards a world without nuclear weapons. However, we have our security pinned in part to the nuclear umbrella of the United States of America but we hold both these at the same time. This is the difficulty of this space and we then find ourselves having to consider for as long as there are nuclear weapons we hold a certain position although in the long game as I said before, we may aspire to a world which was without nuclear weapons that is a different set of circumstances. So there is a need to hold some of these tensions and tensions they are. My last point under national security, referring to good relations with major powers our security Australia is very very good at building alliances at building relationships and assuring our security and our trading arrangements etc on strong relationship building. We have to find some times that those relationship building objectives may be in conflict with non-proliferation or disarmament objectives and we have to work through that and one of those tensions that the government may one day seek to wrestle with is that to do with India and should we export uranium to India it is a difficult wait if and when it is had and that is to say that our policy currently is that we do not export uranium to any nation state that is not a member of the non-proliferation treaty India is not therefore we can't export to India but India is now saying to us that our strategic relationship would be so much enhanced by us exporting uranium to them and thus there is a tension now if the government was to consider changing its policy it's in that conundrum that it might look at that policy but it remains a point of tension uranium exports a lot could be said about the economic prosperity and value to Australia around exporting uranium one of the largest holders of uranium reserves in the world I would encourage you to keep it in perspective that if you look at the Australia's earnings from the export of different minerals uranium is not top it's not second top in fact it's at least two orders of magnitude lower than the top in the amount that we export well sorry the value of that export coal is way up here although another energy source coal is way up here iron ore is a little below it and uranium is somewhat way down here so we need to be careful that we don't over-argue issues around economic prosperity and the need to export uranium energy security I've touched on those issues and you know a dilemma that countries face is to do you embrace nuclear power if you do does that contribute towards proliferation or not but that is not saying that my advocate for nuclear power my office just so that you've got the context the Australian Safeguard Non-Proliferation Office is responsible for safeguarding which means to ensure that Australian material technology etc. does not get into weapons programs so safeguarding against things getting into weapons programs and responsible for nuclear security making sure that it stays controlled where it should when I look at the safeguarding side and the security side I'm sure we can manage nuclear material in a way which will be adequately safeguarded and secure the debate about nuclear power or not is on a different axis not on the axis of safeguarding or security Australia has a proud history in the non-proliferation space not just an ordinary history but a proud history and the chancellor of this university has been one of many who have contributed to that proud history and I've listed a number of the achievements here that Australia points to and continues to perform well on is that we're a founder of the International Atomic Energy Agency that kind of watchdog and nuclear body and we have a semi-permanent seat on the Board of Governors of that body we set up a new export control regime called the Australia Group around chemical and biological weapons and precursors to the making of those weapons we were involved in initiating the introduction of the comprehensive test ban treaty into the UN General Assembly because it was stalled in the aforementioned body that Professor Thacker mentioned the conference on disarmament and then that has moved forward to a point where countries are signing up and gratifying such an agreement we've played a leading role in the strengthening of safeguards arrangements following concerns about breakouts in Iraq and undetected activities and we were the first to incorporate an additional protocol to our agreement with the International Safeguards we've been involved in a crucial way in bringing the chemical weapons convention into play and as the Australian Government stands to support all of the non-proliferation regimes and that's a major part of our policy framework so these are the achievements of a government that have many years and of different persuasions of government being very committed to these issues I'm not going to talk about treaty arrangements and export control and other counter-proliferation arrangements we'll leave that for some other day a couple of the risks around the nuclear space and this is where I get back to the issue of what does success look like when the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was negotiated and agreed there was an expectation that over time there could be 30 or more countries with nuclear weapons at the time of signing there were 5 now as has been pointed out if we look at nuclear arms states there are 8 is that success or failure? now call me an optimist if you would but I would say it's actually success that it is limited to only 8 and did not achieve that the feared level of 30 nation states with nuclear weapons so has the non-proliferation treaty been successful I say it continues to be successful is it a difficult marriage between the haves who are committed to disarmament and the have nots who are committed to not having and at the same time the inalienable right of all to have nuclear energy yes it is a difficult relationship to hold those 3 pillars of the non-proliferation treaty in balance but as we continue step by step in working that out it has held for quite a long period of time and I think it will hold for quite a long period of time to come there are a number of significant states outside of the NPT but there is a certain stability around those sorts of issues I mentioned the nuclear surprise group this is where India as a country outside of the NPT has been given the right for other countries to trade in sensitive technologies and nuclear materials some say that's the beginning of the end to the nuclear architecture I don't think that is necessarily true at all but it's one of those things that continues to test as we evolve will the grand deal hold the grand deal disarmament, non-proliferation and nuclear energy I think it will for the foreseeable future some are very concerned that how we deal with Iran and North Korea is really the crucial test of the regime as to how it will move forward I think it's an A test it is one of the current issues or two of the current issues that have to be focused on but I do not think that the separation treaty survives or sinks on the basis of a couple of states that have broken out I think there is a lot more commitment across the countries than that, that it would fall apart I'm not going to go into particular issues around various countries, you can read about those in various other sources yes, there are continued problems but down the bottom there are some countries that have moved away from nuclear weapons and that is a positive thing, South Africa has moved away so there's a number that have moved in the right direction which is very good to see and we've already mentioned about some of those states in our region there is continuing reporting and the public media around Burma and Burma potentially having interest in having nuclear power capability or B, a nuclear weapons capability I think those allegations are being taken seriously by the international atomic energy agency as they continue to build their relationship with the Burmese officials and government and are looking for inspection opportunities within Burma it's as any mature regime should do if there are claims and they should be then investigated and considered as to whether there is substance there and what should be done about it the expansion of the nuclear energy area I'll just touch on that briefly yes, there has been a significant interest of many countries in recent times to embrace nuclear energy not least because of concerns about reducing carbon emissions and some say well that has got huge proliferation risks again I would say that doesn't have to be the case is that there are ways of implementing a nuclear power capability which doesn't necessarily build proliferation risk one of those which is of particular interest is in the United Arab Emirates where in the United Arab Emirates they have chosen to for square any enrichment and reprocessing capabilities but they're going to set up nuclear power capability so they won't even have those sensitive technologies on their soil and they will then be returning spent fuel afterwards so that it goes back to a country that has produced it in the first place so they don't have the technology, they don't have the material and so in a sensitive part of the world there is a model which has a minimum of proliferation potential there are encouraging signs around that as well as some of the international multilateral fuel supply options fuel banks being established in different places I shall move on the disarmament issue I think Romish has covered that one adequately so I won't pursue it further here today Nuclear terrorism the Australian government has certainly has been committed to the Nuclear Security Summit Initiative of President Obama Sherpa's meeting the leaders the people who lead the leaders to the summit the Sherpas meeting for the next Nuclear Security Summit which will be held at the end of March next year to take stock of how nations are going towards securing your all vulnerable nuclear material it is a good initiative of 47 nations, not all nations but of 47 nations and is moving in a helpful direction to secure nuclear materials chemical weapons some say the poor man's nuclear weapons yes that might be so and maybe it is more accessible as with biological weapons as well than nuclear that is true and I'm glad that Australia is strongly involved with chemical weapons convention and the office for the prohibition of chemical weapons in The Hague in the work there towards the destruction of all chemical weapons stockpiles that currently exist and again towards no proliferation in chemical weapons activities biological weapons just very quickly biological weapons and the potential thereof has to be dealt with differently to nuclear and the reason is that the technology and the materials to be able to make such a weapon is so much more easily available the technology is generally born open what I mean by that is much of the nuclear technology is born classified and is managed from there you can't do that with biotechnology because it is so fundamental to human health and agriculture advancement and it is so well developed outside of the military domain that your measures of control and verification of control are very difficult so it needs a different approach it will never have the tough rigorous approach that we have around nuclear but there is an ongoing discussion around the biological weapons convention and the conference of state parties which continues to advance this issue so just finishing on some of the recent actions of Australia yes we are in compliance with all of the non-proliferation regimes that's the very minimum that you would expect of a government such as Australia we take a very active role in the development of various of the international norms and certainly those to do with nuclear security and we are involved in outreach into the region of the Asia Pacific area in a number of different forums we chair the Asia Pacific safeguards network it's a network for the professionalization of safeguards organizations in different countries across the region we continue to be involved in the promotion of verification of the biological weapons convention and hold some optimism for the fissile material cut off treaty by engaging in some of the technical discussions to bring the political discussion into some sort of environment where maybe there can be serious negotiations commence it's still a long haul but there are steps in the right direction the establishment of the international commission on nuclear non-proliferation disarmament and the work plan that Gareth Evans and Mr. Kiyogachi from Japan conducted a couple of years ago was an outstanding contribution towards I think the success of the non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2010 Gareth Evans is a man of great energy great intellect and the success of the ICNND would not have been what it was without those characteristics he is quite phenomenal to see an action on these issues I am proud to call him an Australian and for what he has done in that area and finally following on from the 2010 nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference there is this formation of what we call NPDI an international group on non-proliferation disarmament initiative it is co-chaired again by Australia and Japan with an interesting collection of countries now these are non nuclear weapons state countries and these countries are working together to seek to see the agreements that came out of the 2010 non-proliferation treaty review conference implemented and they are doing some significant work to that regard in this five year period between NPT review conferences that gives you some thing of an overview of some of the activities of the Australian government some of the values of the Australian government but most of all some of the difficult policy issues that surround non-proliferation disarmament I thank you for your interest and look forward to questions well it is always good to know that your Chancellor has many interests he has acted in a number of areas in this one for our point I think that those two presentations have really thrown up a large number of issues for us to consider and we would like to be able to take now the best part of the next 25 minutes to do so if you want to show us if you would like to ask a question please raise your hand please wait until Ash brings the microphone to you so that we can make sure it is recorded properly and we will take them from now thank you very much and I am the Swedish Ambassador for my government and thank you very much for very interesting introductions I recently read about what is happening in CD Geneva and my impression was that the enthusiasts and optimists like Sweden and Australia and a few other countries mainly decided to give it another year before they throw in the towel that is how bad the situation is in CD and I am wondering whether we are trying to somehow completely think anew because what we have been doing so far is to continue on the agenda created by basically Europe and US and I include Australia and Europe meaning that now we have a new multipolar world where US and Europe cannot in the long run set the agenda there are so many other countries who are involved in setting the agenda isn't it somehow necessary to make these countries participate more actively instead of us the old enthusiasts pushing this agenda how this could be done I have no idea but I wonder especially after you professor talking about what is happening in Pakistan and the situation between Pakistan and India if one aspect that should be discussed more is how do we limit a nuclear war this sounds awful but with the situation as you describe it this might be what we will have to deal with and the positive aspect about that might be that if we put that in the agenda maybe we will have a popular opinion again when it comes to the spread of nuclear weapons and the threat of using nuclear weapons because right now there is no popular opinion at all almost and that is one of the problems with democratic items how do you push on this issue when there is no strong popular feeling behind and also since it seems to be so likely that this will develop maybe that is what should be on our agenda instead of just continuing to work on these very small partly idealistic issues where we simply cannot move one out of FNCT for example and then the big question is of course what should the western world do, what should the Australian government do well my very frank and brutal answer to that is stop thinking about the missile defence well let's might start with Ramesh thank you Ambassador and please that you still retain one year window of opportunity optimism with regard to the conference and the assignment I will give up on that but I was still a UN official I think the significant progress we have achieved on the range of arms control and disarmament initiatives both conventional weapons and WMD have essentially all come from outside the CD for when was the last issue that came through there and of course out of a process on landmines issue was very much a reflection of frustrations with that at one point I said that CD stands for cumbersome and deadlocked that remains true but at the same time you are quite right it does not mean that there are not other avenues and mechanisms and actors for pursuing some important initiatives and objectives and the agenda has been sketched out by the RCN&D I I've been working with Gareth Evans for almost two decades now I have been fortunate unlike many officials in the ministry here in never having had to work for Gareth Evans I am told there is a distinction in practice between the two one of the armament discovered that but I worked alongside him for a number of issues but if you read there that report it sets out a very nice set of agenda items there are many things we can do we can continue to insist on reducing numbers let's face it more than 90% of nuclear weapons stockpile is still held by Russia and the United States whereas 95% of the press attention is focused on Iran and North Korea if nuclear weapons are served I don't know I need to keep reducing the numbers and you have some analysis suggesting that the United States could achieve all its nuclear security goals with a number I can't remember the exact number but it's around 341 nuclear weapons instead of the 8000 what it has today because of course these weapons are not they're not target specific they can be reconfigured and redeployed and stuff like that but leave that aside we can reduce the numbers we can keep demanding that other countries join in this so far the bulk of that has been Russia and the United States but there's no reason why other countries in the nuclear arm category could not come in we can minimize role, visibility we can separate decision making views for these we can delegitimize deployments and encourage the difference to nuclear free zones if you think of the nuclear security summit that Rob has engaged because most of the significant actors in this field tend to be from the northern hemisphere they forget the southern hemisphere is virtually covered in nuclear free zones many of which regional arrangements have already built in secretaries and in my discussions in Washington I raised this and people haven't talked about it but you could actually have some of these inspection and verification and implementation mechanisms taking through these existing arrangements also so they are there and of course the initiative that Rob talked about that is Australia Japan includes other countries so it's already going beyond that I don't I think the universal intergovernmental machinery is useful for validating and ratifying but most of the discussions and negotiations and substantive progress will come outside that scheme not in it and that represents I think a good partnership model for how we can approach these and increase the normative and treaty based constraints and practical measures to delay the decision to use them because one thing about nuclear weapons the consequences are not limited just to the countries concept and to the extent that we suffer from that we have arrived to make representations very quickly in the interest of more questions the conference of disarmament given one more year before it is killed or something to that effect that's very strong ambassador the way we see it is that the five nuclear weapons states are looking increasingly more seriously at the leadership they need to provide to the commencement of any negotiations of Fissile and Material Cut-off Treaty and I think that's a significant and important step because without their leadership there is no Fissile and Material Cut-off Treaty so maybe with that leadership that then influences after a year of that leadership the conference on disarmament your comment that we don't live in a bipolar world we see that very strongly and the NPDI as Romesh mentioned has got intentionally cross regional representation on it so that we see a more of a global you know, activity the Nuclear Security Summit 47 countries scattered all around another expression of the same do we see new leadership rising up I'm really encouraged with some of the diplomatic leadership coming out of Indonesia in our region and their commitment and interest to some of these issues is very, very hard can I ask you just to identify yourself with me Hi, I'm the devil's advocate Does the devil's advocate have a name? She might later on we're talking about disarmament like it's a strategy or an end in itself I'm just wondering what do you think are the implications of global nuclear disarmament what kind of world does that leave us with? That's a very good question I think one of the it picks up on a recurring threat in Rob's presentation and that is that countries have genuine and legitimate security concerns and apprehensions their security policies reflect this and it is these fears that are embedded in a range of practices, relationships weapons etc simply to demand nuclear evolution doesn't take care of all these fears and concerns if we are going to move to nuclear disarmament on the argument the risks that are inherent in these are of a magnitude that they exceed protection of benefits nonetheless it is incumbent on us to identify how the security concerns can be met by alternative strategies and policies and weapons if we fail to do that we are not going to get to nuclear evolution and that's why I was talking we talk about short-term medium-term and long-term strategies but to get that equation going we also need to begin the long-term process thinking about that now rather than defer it so that it is not seen as a rhetorical alibi for doing nothing Some say that a nuclear weapon free world could be a less stable and a less secure place than one with nuclear weapons there is a certain stability to an armed world I remain very confident that if we move towards a nuclear weapon free world that with the caution that is being exercised by those armed states sorry those weapon states embracing such ideas that there will be no void left as we move towards such a thing the bigger concern would be that that caution would be sufficiently great that we would never move towards it rather than creating a void of insecurity I have a question China hasn't been mentioned much what is China's role in nuclear disarmament what should it be what is this role not very good it's the country that no one likes to mention if you relate this to the debate that Rob mentioned about should we export uranium to India and you listen to the Indian government people and Indian analysts they make the point that okay you said India is a non-signatory to the NPT China is a signatory you export to China and you want to export to us if you look at the NPT obligations and look at the actual record of behavior leaving the actual signature aside there is basis to the Indian claim that actually India's record is far more NPT compliant than is China's we know China was complicit in some proliferation activities we will be Pakistan and North Korea you look at the NPT plan network and where it went so there is that history and some projectivities by the way if you remember when Tony after 9-11 and if you look at the statements from Avokadar Khan himself about the exchange between Pakistan and North Korea facilitated by and overflying China there is that aspect there as well in response to the civil nuclear deal with the US by India China has been pressing for an exemption for Pakistan and may decide to engage in various activities themselves on the other hand the cause of the world being what it is and because of the absolute need for China's cooperation on a whole range of issues it's not something that's going to be helped if governments start speaking the way I've been speaking in the past couple of minutes and fingering China so we still need to work with them because it's not going to get any progress on any of these issues without somehow bringing China in one legitimate question is whether China would still do this with Pakistan now if it could foresee where it was going to lead it's a rare example of this so yes we need China I don't think we should ignore its actual record on history but that doesn't mean to say that we should bring it up as opposed to maybe we need to get out of this mess together it's just a bit too dangerous for anyone's conflict swallow microphones so moving just a point on China thank you for not pushing it China is a part of P5 the nuclear weapons states and those five countries work together on a whole range of issues and they all have different perspectives and so there's challenges for the P5 to see things in a common way but I see science where that's happening more and as things move forward the second issue that I mentioned in terms of disarmament when you consider the number of weapons that the US and Russia hold between them it's difficult to engage China in a discussion about disarmament when the levels are so much lower so at some point in the future I think that is more likely in terms of discussion and that's the day I look forward to when the US Russian numbers are down such that the other of the nuclear weapons states need to start thinking about their own disarmament and so on I want to take two more questions so first one there my name is Sanjay I'm a master student in international relations regarding uranium exports to India by Australia given the importance of Australia's trade relationship with China how does that dynamic relate to uranium exports to India on a simple issue like the Kalai Lama visiting here China is so fiercely opposed will they stand back and just let Australia export uranium to India without any sort of fight back on that Australia's exported uranium to India would require a significant change in the government's policy as I said before one of the first of those policy criteria is to be a member of the nonproliferation treaty also to have in place a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the international atomic energy agency and to have it read an additional protocol India still need to move towards having an additional protocol in place so there are several steps and that's our normal policy on the export of uranium it would require the government to change its position significantly before the contemplation of trading uranium to India could occur I think China is reacting like that it's less likely that Pakistan's reaction would be even more distant a goal to get an official materials treaty through you've got all sorts of considerations in the background to this thank you John Sullivan from the Center for Defense and Strategic Studies Rob you talked about eight nuclear armed states but amongst that eight you didn't include the DPRK but given the DPRK has had two nuclear weapon tests is it your assessment that it's not yet a nuclear armed state with a sense of having nuclear weapons? I don't plus it as such necessarily but as you're well aware John that there are a range of moves towards that capability exactly what capability DPRK has you can't be fully confident in terms of our relationship with the DPRK then it's clear what their intentions are and we see that the future of negotiations with DPRK rests with a six party talk mechanism and we would look forward to further meetings with the six party talks we will take one just life question then we'll grab on Nick Floyd from the Australian Defence College Rob you mentioned before the the pragmatic benefit I guess between the potential between the energy policy environment policy non-proliferation and some policy that Australia and other countries similar to it needs to balance but I guess and obviously the current government's policy will be able to change that balance greatly but is there an opportunity to extend that further into consideration of such as economic policy and productivity from the nation and to that end is there a plausibility that in the future for future governments to look at not just exploring unprocessed, unrefined nuclear material but actually looking at taking a hint from the UAE and other countries like that and looking at the actual technology behind nuclear energy and looking to evaluating an arrangement where we are contributing in demonstrative terms about non-proliferation because we are controlling as much of the process as possible in any country that is stable and adherent to the MIT treaty that I mentioned if I'm doing anything out of that I think those propositions from time to time get to come up there's another proposition related to that which I find most interesting and that is where different countries approaches and say why don't you become the nuclear waste dump of the world you've got such stable geology you've got such open spaces etc and there's huge money involved in it my response to people that raise that is that you're talking about a country that is not comfortable to embrace nuclear energy for its own domestic use it probably is a longbow to say that country is willing to embrace nuclear waste now you raise a different scenario at the front end which is to say if we are a minor of uranium why don't we do conversion and enrichment in Australia and self-valuated product and again that's an economic argument to bear my reflection on that would be that I imagine the government would consider that in the same way as looking to their comfort on various issues nuclear and that probably that is a much bigger step than embracing nuclear energy in Australia but that's obviously the property of governments to determine and to weigh but your proposition you're not the first one who's raised that one of the potential of value add I think it's a it's a political decision to be thought about and to that David you mentioned and Rob repeated another in those it as well I think on this issue Australia has history has credentials has credibility and I certainly hope that we'll stay engaged with that one of those reasons is the camera commission which had a very interesting set of three propositions which are end of it one the very destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes them politically unusable against non-nuclear weapons states because the political costs would far exceed any possible military gains from that but it also makes them militarily unusable against other nuclear weapons states just think about it the biggest Soviet territorial gains after the Second World War Americans had a monopoly 1945-49 conversely the Soviets get their nuclear weapons attain strategic parity and then implore it wasn't very useful either politically or militarily to them India Pakistan it doesn't help either country combat poverty fight disease fight insurgency fight terrorists indeed the worry is added by the element of terrorism there it doesn't even have to prestige during a time when both countries have had nuclear weapons Pakistan's international reputation has gone slowly but steadily downhill India's has gone upwards nuclear weapons having irrelevant so they don't actually serve any political or military purpose but saying that doesn't get us there nonetheless it's important to remember that because they remain and ever present and clear danger to all of us and on that note we'll wrap up tonight's seminar I think you'll join me in thanking both speakers for the way they're now applying the matters I think particularly when we look at what are the aims of proliferation and non-proliferation we want to have your measures excessive to really big questions also then how do we manage the competing or the inherently competing tensions within our foreign policy that proliferation non-proliferation and I think both Robert and I should outline that superbly tonight can I ask you to join me in thanking our speakers for their presentation