 This lecture honours the memory of a man who himself made an extraordinary contribution to making the world a safer and saner place, in particular with the very tireless and brilliant work that he did in bringing to a conclusion the Chemical Weapons Convention and then implementing that convention in practice through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW. An institutional achievement, of course, that was recognised worldwide in 2013 with that organisation's award of the Nobel Peace Prize. It's one of the many tragedies of John's early death that he didn't live to enjoy that recognition, which is not an exaggeration to say, simply would not have occurred without his own remarkable personal work. I first became aware of John's professional work in the mid-1980s, and no doubt Peter will talk a bit more about this, when as the Chemical and Biological Weapons Desk Officer in the Disarmament Division of the Foreign Affairs Department, he was responsible almost single-handedly for the establishment of the Australia Group, which was founded in the wake of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War with the objective, the group's objective of denying access by countries of proliferation concern to chemicals and biological agents precursors dual-use equipment. In the mid-1980s, again, John started to take a very close interest in the long-stalled negotiation of a Chemical Weapons Convention and working very closely with Defence Science and Technology Scientist Bob Matthews, who's here with us somewhere, I hope. And Shirley Freeman drafted the critical path for the acceleration of those negotiations, focusing particularly on the need to get worldwide industry support for a critical verification regime. That effort, with which I personally became quite closely associated as Foreign Minister after 1988, ultimately bore fruit in the conclusion of the Convention in 1992, an international achievement, I think, of which Australia can continue to be very proud. In 1991, John G was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to the UN Special Commission, or UNSCON, as it was called, which had been set up, you'll remember, to oversee the elimination of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction after the First Iran-Iraq War. In 1993, he was appointed Director of the Verification Division of the New Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, HBCW, which I mentioned, which was then being set up in The Hague under the Convention and charged with a complex and extraordinarily politically sensitive task of developing and implementing all the institutions, all the procedures necessary to verify compliance with the Convention. When the Convention entered into force in 97, John became the organization's Deputy Director-General for the next six years before returning to Australia in 2003 to work at the Office of National Assessment, so in A, until he was struck down by the illness to which we so sadly lost him in 2007. John G, I think it's fair to say, and I'm sure Peter will echo this, was absolutely one of the best and brightest public servants Australia has ever produced, and I'm delighted that we do have this, continue to have this opportunity each year to celebrate his memory through this lecture. This lecture, the first of which, back in 2007, I was privileged to give, was established at the initiative of Rod Barton, Bob Matthews, the Lowy Institute for International Policy and the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre here at the ANU. Lectures since the first have been delivered by Mike Kelly in 2008, Malcolm Fraser in 2009, Joseph Cincione in 2010, Ramesh Thakur in 2011, the OPCW Director, Hakhmet Uzumchou in 2012, and last year US Ambassador Christopher Hill. Today's 2015 John G Memorial Lecture is to be delivered by Mr Peter Varghese, AO, Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and he's calling it the Australia and the Challenge of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Peter's been Secretary of DFAT since December 2012, before that he was Australia's High Commissioner to India, he was Director-General of O&A, the Office of National Assessments from 2004-2009. He was Senior Advisor, International to the Prime Minister, and before that held a whole swag of other senior diplomatic and executive appointments, positions within DFAT and PM&C. Peter was awarded the AO in 2010 for Distinguished Service to Public Administration, particularly in leading reform in the intelligence community, and as an advisor in the areas of foreign policy and international security. So on any view, Peter Varghese's career has been a genuinely stellar one, but the only position he held during that career that does not appear anywhere that I've seen on the official record is the 18 months he spent as my speechwriter after I was appointed Foreign Minister in 1988. Maybe that's a role Peter would prefer to forget, but I certainly won't because he was an outstandingly competent performer in the role as he has been in the ever bigger roles that he's taken on since. I think it might be fair to say that Peter's foreign policy reforming zeal over the years has remained a little more muted than mine, including on the topic this evening, but on any view he has made an outstanding contribution to the governance of this country and to Australia's international standing. I'm absolutely delighted now to welcome Peter Varghese to this platform. Well thank you very much, Gareth, for that very generous introduction and good evening to all of you. By no means have forgotten the 18 months I spent as Gareth's speechwriter. It was one of the most stimulating periods of my professional career, although I have to say one of those jobs which is probably enjoyed more in reflection than at the moment. And I thought at the time actually that being a speechwriter to someone of Gareth's eloquence and intellectual stature was a bit like being a food taster to a glutton in that you had the sense that you just got in the way of what they like doing best. It's a great honor to be invited to deliver the 2015 John G Memorial Lecture and can I especially acknowledge Liv G and all the members of the family who are here delighted to see you all again. Gareth has spoken about John's career and his achievements and they were many. And I do want to begin my remarks this evening by honoring his memory. I think it's fair to say that John never sought a claim, but he certainly earned it. He was a modest man, but he was a man of immodest talent. John was a policymaker who never strayed far from the empirical evidence. He had the conviction to call things as he saw them, even if it put him in a difficult position which from time to time it did. He was a creative policymaker who made an outstanding contribution to the work of disarmament and arms control, especially as Gareth has indicated on chemical weapons. John was actually my supervisor in my early, very green years in the department and he taught me many things about his chosen field. But much more than that he showed me the virtue of diligence and persistence without which nothing big can ever be achieved. And most of all he taught me about courage, the policy courage to argue against a prevailing view or to draw attention to an uncomfortable fact. And towards the end of his life John also taught all of us so much about personal courage as he struggled to come to grips with what he knew was a fatal illness. So it's a great pleasure for me to speak in John's honor. Ladies and gentlemen, as colleagues in this room I'm sure know over the past few decades Australia has been an active supporter of strong international regimes for weapons control. And in my remarks tonight I'd like to do three things. First I'd like to flesh out why disarmament and arms control is so important for Australia, why it serves our security and strategic interests. Second I'd like to put our record on the record if you like because the fact is as John G's life and work shows very clearly Australia has a very proud record when it comes to this field. And third I'd like to argue that however strong our record has been in the past we're going to have to get even better at our diplomacy and our strategy around arms control and disarmament in the future. Humanity's unprecedented technological prowess has brought innumerable improvements in our lives but it also brings with it perpetual risk. Disarmament and arms control diplomacy is sometimes seen as a humanitarian objective or a gesture towards good international citizenship the concept actually Gareth and I debated quite a bit. And of course it has elements of both but the driver of Australian diplomacy in this area is the security interests of Australia. We pursue global agreements on disarmament and arms control because they make us safer. This is a complicated area and success only ever comes when the strategic underpinnings are clearly understood. It's an understatement to say that eliminating an entire class of weapons requires careful steps. Countries that possess them have to be convinced that their security will not be diminished if they give them up. And countries that aspire to obtain them need to be convinced that they are better ways to pursue their security. It's an area of diplomacy which requires both a deep understanding of the big picture and an attention to detail about weapon systems and their operation. It requires both imagination and perseverance, something John G. Well understood. Judgments about how best to advance the nation's security change over time as strategic circumstances shift. Australia for example has been at the forefront of efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But this was not always the case. In 1957 the Cold War was in full swing. Nuclear weapons were the most powerful destructive devices ever created and the most potent symbols of a nation's military might. Just two bombs marked the end of the Second World War and only three powers on earth, the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom, had the prestige of having mastered nuclear weapons technology. People all over the world, including here in Australia, rightly feared the possible consequences of nuclear attack. These were the days of duck and cover. Then in October 1957 the Soviets launched Sputnik, perhaps the greatest strategic surprise to the United States and its allies since Pearl Harbor. In Australia, a U.S. ally since the Pacific War, we had our own strategic anxieties, our perpetual fear of abandonment in our geographic isolation, our very real concerns about the instability and poverty then prevailing in Southeast Asia, our alarm that communism was spreading south. Just three months after the October 4 launch of Sputnik, Australian Prime Minister Bob Menzies hosted his United Kingdom counterpart Harold McMillan at Old Parliament House. While admitting he had considerable personal doubts, Menzies asked McMillan a question that seems almost unthinkable from our modern viewpoint. What did he, McMillan, think about Australia attaining nuclear weapons of its own? McMillan's response was cautious and hedged. He said that the U.S. would be loathe to see nuclear strike capacity spread to a fourth nation. Rather, McMillan believed Britain and Australia could rely to a large degree on the United States. Britain would be given the key to the cupboard of U.S. nuclear weapons and information, he told Menzies, and Australia should consider that British key of the cupboard when planning against the possibility of an atomic war in our region. In 2015, with two generations of peace and prosperity behind us, that idea sounds extraordinary. But over the months that followed, through the Australian autumn and winter of 1958, Menzies continued to seriously explore the idea of acquiring an Australian bomb. On August 13, in conversations with the U.K. Minister of Supply, Aubrey Jones, Menzies asked whether any scheme is contemplated whereby Australia might secure vehicles and warheads. While noting that amendments to the U.S. McMahon Act of 1946 could prove some impediment, Jones was of the opinion that the response would be very favourable. Menzies said he had no ambition to see Australia equipped with strategic nuclear weapons, but he felt that the possession of some tactical nuclear weapons would be, I quote, inescapable. By way of a telegram on August 30, McMillan referred to the discussions at ministerial level and gave in principle support. If you think he said that the time has now come to take matters further, I should be very glad to see what could be done. Within five days, Menzies sought agreement from McMillan for a 10-day visit by the then Australian Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Suga, departing on September 9. Many thanks for your message about nuclear weapons, replied McMillan. We will gladly arrange discussions between Suga and our defence authorities. And so it went on. The prospect of Australia becoming a nuclear weapon state was seriously considered through the even darker days of the 1960s. It would be a full decade before the starkest of strategic policy debates was relegated to history. In the end, Australia found a different way to build its national security in the nuclear age. Driven by the desire of the nuclear weapons states, particularly the United States, to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, the global community developed what would become the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT established a regime that has helped limit, though not completely prevent, the spread of nuclear weapons whilst allowing for the development of national nuclear power industries. Through the 1960s within government, the debate continued about whether Australia's security interests were best served within such a global regime or by developing an Australian nuclear deterrent capability. But by 1968, when the NPT opened for signature, the view that Australia's interests were best served on the inside of a global treaty rather than on the outside on our own was beginning to win through. A paper by my own department in 1969 summed up the key arguments for why we should join the NPT. Firstly, that as long as it proved effective, a multilateral regime would limit the global spread of nuclear weapons, boosting international security generally. Secondly, that the United States, Australia's most significant ally, regarded the NPT as a major foreign policy objective and that the Americans dearly wanted to see it win universal approval. And thirdly, and perhaps most pointedly for an insecure Australia looking north, that it would help limit the spread of nuclear weapons in our own region. If I can quote from that paper, if the countries of the region were to keep their nuclear options open and if the big powers were unable adequately to deter China, we could expect that the impulse towards nuclear proliferation would be stimulated in Asia. And end of quote. Ultimately, Cabinet agreed and the Gorton government signed the NPT in 1970. Three years later, Goff Whitlam's government ratified it, signalling the arrival of an unbroken period of bipartisan consensus on nuclear policy that lasts to this day. So we've gone from wavering on this question of being one of the strongest, most active supporters of robust international arms control around the world. The main reason for that is simple. Control regimes slow the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction. This year marks the centenary of the first use of chemical weapons on a mass scale, with the first use of mustard gas in the western front in 1915. Until the chemical weapons convention entered into force in 1997, chemical weapons were a feature in the war plans of several countries. But since 1997, the CWC has had a powerful normative influence. When Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people near Damascus in 2013, most likely the nerve agent Sarin, it provoked universal outrage and helped spur the United Nations into action. The story with nuclear weapons is similar, although their important strategic and deterrent effects makes eradicating them much harder. The end of the Cold War symbolized by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty saw significant arms reductions between the United States and Russia. From more than 60,000 nuclear warheads between them in the 1980s, the arsenals shrank to less than 4,000 deployed warheads between them today. The Indo-Pacific undoubtedly contains some of the most challenging strategic environments anywhere on the planet. Asia is being transformed by the way in which shifting economic weight finds strategic expression. Nuclear armed rivals like India and Pakistan and erratic isolated players like North Korea. Without the NPT, there is no question we would today have many more nations in possession of nuclear weapons. The second reason why disarmament and arms control regimes are in Australia's interest is that working towards collective agreements helps reinforce and build the global norms of international cooperation. It has helped all nations build the habit of working together on our common global challenges rather than seeing the solutions purely at a national defence level. The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, for example, which opened for signature nearly 20 years ago, has been a very successful instrument of international cooperation helping establish a global norm against testing. Only one state has tested nuclear weapons in the 21st century North Korea, so it is a norm with considerable traction. While the CTBT has yet to formally enter into force, it still requires ratification by eight key nuclear armed or nuclear capable states. International cooperation under the treaty has led to the establishment of a global network of monitoring stations that can detect an underground nuclear explosion with a yield of as little as one kiloton. Third for Australia, our alliance with the United States remains the bedrock of our security as much as it did in the 1960s. For obvious reasons, the issue of WMD remains of critical importance in Washington, particularly in an age of terrorism and increasingly powerful non-state actors. Keeping weapons of mass destruction in as few hands as possible and making sure international monitoring is available to keep an eye on those fewer hands as well are first order priorities in Washington as they are in Canberra. As well in the post-Cold War age, when we add the challenge of the global diffusion of power and technology into non-state hands, the security of weapons of mass destruction has become an even more critical and difficult policy challenge. And fourth, and this is particularly important in the Indo-Pacific region, a region changing at an extraordinary pace in quite unpredictable ways, arms control regimes help build a sense of predictability about how states will act. Along with a much more prosperous, open, productive and competitive regional economy, the result of decades of hard work on trade liberalization and economic reform, our Indo-Pacific region is a safer place because we have clear rules about how we handle the most dangerous weapons. This normative value of arms control arrangements matters because one of the biggest challenges we face in the Indo-Pacific is how best to shape a strategic culture anchored in the principles of international law, the peaceful resolution of disputes and the rejection of might is right. If we do not embed these principles now, it will only get harder because around the region states are modernizing and increasing their war fighting capacity. Militaries are no longer being used primarily for internal security challenges, but are readying to defend challenges to sovereignty. Technological advances in delivery systems, modernization and the emergence of tactical nuclear weapons are complicating traditional concepts of arms control and novel technologies, cyber weapons, space-based weapon systems, threats to space-based civil communications, drones are potential threats to global security. So for me at this point in our history, the case for control regimes like the NPT, the Chemical Weapons Convention and indeed the Arms Trade Treaty in which Australia played such an important role remains a very strong one. That strong and lasting national security interest in arms control is why, if you like, Australia has made such vigorous efforts over the past four or more decades in support of control regimes. We joined the NPT in 1970 and ratified it three years later. The NPT remains to this day one of the world's most universal treaties. Despite the fact that it was negotiated at the height of the Cold War, it has 192 members. Over the following decade we established mechanisms to ensure that Australian uranium would only ever be used for peaceful, non-explosive purposes. As everyone in this room today knows, Australian diplomats like John G. made a huge contribution in the subsequent development of the Chemical Weapons Convention. And in the creation in 1985, as Gareth mentioned in his introduction of the Australia Group, an organisation whose mission it was to impose export controls on the spread of potential inputs to chemical and biological weapons. This record of Australian activism is also reflected in the awarding to Bob Matthews and I'm delighted that Bob's here tonight, of the inaugural OPCW The Hague Award in recognition of his role in setting up the Chemical Weapons Convention and the OPCW. We continue to provide the secretariat for the Australia Group to this day and play a leading policy role, including in advocacy to non-members on the importance of export controls and in providing technical expertise for the group's deliberations. 1985 was a big year for Australia in disarmament. It was also the year in which we finalised and signed the Treaty of Raritonga, otherwise known as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, and here too John G. played an important role. A decade later, Australia introduced the resolution to the UN General Assembly containing the text of the CTBT. With like-minded countries including Japan, we've developed cross-regional groups such as the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Initiative. We've been successful in our efforts for a number of reasons. As a medium-sized country, our diplomacy has always relied on building a strong rules-based system because Australia can neither bully nor buy its way in the world. Our unique geographic position, the fact we do not belong to a group like the EU or ASEAN, and our distance from our traditional markets and allies have all meant that we have had to be active and successful in working with others even when they come from very different perspectives. And without wanting to make too many generalisations about our national character, I think it's fair to say that Australian diplomacy has always been informed both by our strong national values but also by our strong sense of pragmatism. The period since the Second World War has been enormously productive in terms of disarmament and arms control treaties, but there is still much work that remains to be done. Ours is a multi-polar age marked by the growing diffusion of state power. We also face the rise of non-state actors, nourished by the expansion of non- or poorly-governed spaces with an interest declared or undeclared in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. It is 70 years since the atomic bomb was used in war, but if terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or Daesh were to get hold of a nuclear weapon, they would not be constrained by the so-called nuclear taboo. That risk remains mercifully low, but the consequences would be extraordinarily high. The NPT regime needs reinforcing in light of challenges posed by potential breakout states. A number of important states remain outside the NPT, including India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. And decades on, we inevitably run the risk of complacency. Could the decay of systems that worked well in the past threaten security and the safety of arsenals? Likewise, chemical weapons, despite the ongoing dismantling of one of the world's last major weapons arsenals in Syria, remains a real concern. Non-state actors have used chemical weapons and we have to maintain a heightened vigilance against the possibility that they could acquire or be involved in the development of biological agents. The advent of the Internet, too, with the prospect it brings of cyber-enabled warfare, is a significant challenge. Two elements of cyber are relevant here. Firstly, the capacity of the Internet to serve as a vehicle for proliferation, for it to be used to disseminate design information with respect to novel or old weapons of mass destruction. Instructions on how to build a bomb and 3D printing spring quickly to mind, but so too do a thousand Hollywood blockbusters with storylines based on the threat of a global pandemic or disease outbreak. Chemical and biological weapons can be constructed a long way away in time and space from the source of expertise if only a do-it-yourself guide can be delivered electronically. And secondly, the Internet serves as a vehicle if its code or that of software travelling along it can be turned against distant national infrastructure. In many ways, the as yet unrealised potential of cyber-enabled warfare is a radically different field of operation to that of traditional weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear weapons use is still in 2015, characterised by such high barriers to entry that only governments and only some governments at that have proven capable of acquisition. Cyber operations, by contrast, have a much lower barrier to entry. The ubiquitous prevalence of Internet and telecommunications infrastructure today means that almost any non-state actor, if they know how, can engage in malicious cyber activity. Indeed, much of the infrastructure for cyber is in private hands and the lines between the actors are much harder to see. A nuclear attack during the Cold War would have been readily traced back to its source, but these days the source of a hostile or malicious cyber attack, whether from a state actor or a non-state actor or a non-state actor proxy for a state, may never be known. Cyber obviously is not nuclear. Nevertheless, policymakers are looking at our rich experience in arms control for parallels which might work in the cyber domain. What we can say as we look forward to the world of arms control and disarmament in the 21st century is that we have a lot of work to do. States remain a prime focus of concern, but we also have to focus on non-state actors and the intersection between the two. Existing treaties, conventions and export control regimes must be upheld. They must be updated and built upon so that they remain relevant as the landscape shifts. New technologies such as additive manufacturing and the convergence between chemistry and biology have potential applications in the development of WMD and existing treaties must take account of these. Disarmament must be practical and realistic. We all like to take the moral high ground, but it won't always achieve the best outcomes, particularly as we move to work beyond governments with businesses and non-state actors. What would an outright ban on nuclear weapons, for example, achieve in light of North Korea's nuclear program and how effective would it be against non-parties to any treaty that established it? International legal instruments must be designed for effective implementation taking into account modern circumstances. The Biological Weapons Convention, for example, has no verification mechanism, so it must be seen as less effective than its counterpart, the Chemical Weapons Convention. We must work to strengthen existing export regimes and work to bring outlying or non-participating states under their effect. As a committed, active player in non-proliferation, Australia can play a role in building dialogue between the P5 nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear weapons states, but we also have to help the global community develop methods to deal with new threats in the intangible world of the transfer of critical knowledge. So let me conclude with these brief observations. Australia has a proud record of contributing to the global fight against the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Our diplomacy in this field has been successful because it has been integrated, anchored in our national security interests, idealistic in its objectives, pragmatic in its execution, and global in its ambition. This is the task whose success is measured in silence in the absence of use rather than in an overt public way, and it is a task far from complete. Thank you. Thanks, Peter. Terrific talk. Question time. Let me sit the ball rolling by asking you this. I certainly share your pride in the strike rate of Australia on a bipartisan basis on many, many important arms control issues over the years, which you've well described. But the bipartisanship on nuclear issues is, to me, been disappointingly lacking on some of the most crucial issues of all, and in particular, what you just described as the moral high ground, the actual elimination of nuclear weapons. I think of the Canberra Commission on Nuclear Weapons back in 96 to the Labor Government initiated, which for the first time made an articulate case, I think, for elimination as distinct from simply non-proliferation, but which was ignored after the change of government. I think of the work initiated by the Rudd government, second commission on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, which I co-chaired, which came up with a sort of realistic and pragmatic approach to the issue of disarmament, recognising that verification and enforcement issues, plus psychological issues and geopolitical issues, were going to make the achievement of global zero something that was a long, long way away, but nonetheless, there was virtue in getting to work internationally on a nuclear weapons convention aimed at creating the conditions for ultimately getting to zero. And indeed, there was merit in the kind of normative momentum that could argue would be generated by a treaty, even though there was not much prospect of it being fully implemented or fully universally endorsed, and you yourself acknowledge the normative utility of something like the CTBT, even though there's still holdouts to its final So Peter, given your advice, advisory role with the present government and given the newly apparently civilised and intelligent regime under which we are now flourishing, what do you see is the prospect of the government moderating what has been a rather standoffish position on anything to do with serious move toward elimination, not being willing to sign any of the statements coming out of the humanitarian impact conferences that have been held in recent years, shying away with a high level of anxiety from anything that suggests that elimination might actually be the really serious goal we should be working towards. Do you see any possibility of a little bit more bipartisanship in this respect, and can we rely on de facto to be a voice in favour of such a move? Well Garth, leaving the editorial comment to one side. This is an area that you know extremely well, and I want to acknowledge the enormous contribution that you've made to this objective of the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. The complexity in this has always been how do you get from here to there? Sure. And how do you manage strategic anxieties and theories of deterrence in that transition period? And as a country which ultimately is in alliance with a nuclear weapons state, for us we need to think through all of those complexities. I don't know if there's been a weakening of bipartisanship here, so much as a bipartisan recognition of the complexities and the length of the timelines that we're dealing with, because the so-called slowing in our enthusiasm can be charted over a time frame that covers not just one side of politics, but both sides of politics, just to go to the bipartisan. They have got a bit limper these days. Now look, I don't see much prospect of us being able to cut through the complexities that have held us back up to now, which is not to say that we should just abandon the idea and put it in the far too hard basket. It'll remain in the hard basket, I think, for quite some considerable period of time. I think in his first term, President Obama looked as if he was going to make this a major feature of his foreign security policy. I think he made less progress than he hoped, and I think that's indicative of the point I was making before about the really complicated challenges of how we get from here to there. I'm not sure a rekindling of the level of the level of enthusiasm that you would like to see in Australian policy will necessarily achieve the cut-through that we want to achieve. Very diplomatic. Questions, comments, discussion. Could you please identify yourself? Acoustics are pretty good here, but do we have mics? Hi, Jasmine Crawford Hill from Wynn Global. We work in the nuclear space and represent about 35,000 people working in nuclear worldwide. My question is about in a physically constrained world, how much of a threat is that to effective arms control when agencies like our UN agencies like IAEA are finding it harder and harder to get nation states to give them the budget to do what they need to do? And at the same time, we're looking at more and more tougher agreements that require harder verification or more intensive, more expensive verification. Is this going to get harder to try and justify continuing to fund these crucial steps and our verification of them? Sure. Well, I think we'll have fiscal constraints applying for the foreseeable future. I don't think fiscal constraints in and of themselves are the most important barriers to achieving what we want to achieve. And, I mean, take the Iran nuclear agreement. The agreement reached with the P5 plus 1 and Iran. That will require a higher level of resourcing for the International Atomic Energy Agency. It imposes a safeguards regime which will come at a fiscal cost and everyone recognizes that that's worth paying and the money will be found even if we haven't yet identified precisely from where. So I don't think this is going to be a significant determinant of whether we can make progress or indeed even a significant determinant of the rate of progress that we make. The barriers to agreements are going to be things other than fiscal pressures. Yep. Anyone else? Can I just ask you a question about biological weapons convention which you mentioned the obvious difficulties confronting, practical difficulties confronting an effective enforcement regime. But there has been a move afoot for quite some time to at least try to get international agreement on a compliance monitoring protocol. Australia was playing a reasonably active role in promoting that for some time. We seem to have gone a bit off the boil on that. Is this another area where practical exigencies have taken over or what? Well, I think you're very familiar with the reasons why we haven't been able to get the level of consensus that we need on a protocol. And it doesn't seem to me as if that's going to shift. I mean, in all of these things, as you know as a practitioner as well as an architect of arms control agreements, you have to make judgments about what's changeable and what is highly resistant. And you can pick anything on the disarmament and arms control agenda and you will have to make a judgment about whether a greater diplomatic effort just pushing harder, being more energetic will get you across the line or whether you're facing issues of such fundamental significance to the relevant player that no amount of energy is going to get you there. And I think having gone through the efforts we have on the biological weapons protocol, I think we got stuck. So, you know, I mean, I don't, I'm not at the school that basically says too hard, too hard, too hard, too hard, don't try. It is very important for us to push hard, but you always have to push hard with a sense of what you can achieve. Understood. But, yeah, normative momentum demands a degree of energy, a little less complacency about the futility of the energy than perhaps we've seen in recent years. But anyway, another question in the middle. My name is Callum Lynch from Intelligence and Security. My question is in regards to cyber. In the modern world with the associated threat to critical infrastructure, is it reasonable to consider a large-scale cyber attack as a weapon of mass destruction in its own right today? Well, I think the consequences of a serious cyber attack in relation to critical infrastructure can be the equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction because it can have horrendous implications for communities and for economies and for daily life. So, while it won't be measured in dead bodies in the way that weapons of mass destruction would be, it would still be measured in a way that would make it horrendous and therefore, if you like, the conceptual equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. So, you know, it is hugely important that we try and find some framework for establishing rules of the road in relation to cyber, which is not going to be easy. And you only have to look at the tension between the U.S. and China on this question of targeting private companies to see how difficult it is to get a consensus on what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, let alone how you put together the actual framework and rules and verification, particularly in an area where the hiding of activity is an art form. So, you know, it's an area with enormous challenges, but it's not going to go away. And the sooner we can try and find an effective framework, the better. Yeah, Rory Mitkin. You've got a big voice, Rory. Get started, anyway. Peter, great leg, Charles, where? My question, I guess, goes to the present a bit. And it's really about the relationship between Australia's capacity, our capabilities, our expertise across the whole gamut of nuclear issues, including, I guess, civil nuclear. What's the relationship in your view between Australia having significant domestic expertise and the effectiveness of our diplomacy in nuclear arms control, whether you believe in nonproliferation, whether you go all the way with disarmament? How satisfied are you with the level of our resourcing and expertise in this country at the moment? Well, I think it's very much a declining asset, Rory. We are losing a lot of expertise, particularly in the nuclear area. And as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, you know, arms control and disarmament is both an act of imagination, but also requires a mastery of detail, operational detail that's absolutely fundamental to the effectiveness of an agreement. And so, I think the fact that we have such a limited exposure to the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia does make it more difficult for us to get on top of those serious technical and operational details. And therefore, I think hinders the effectiveness of our diplomacy. Because if we're not grounded in that, then I think, you know, it's much more difficult for us to play a really significant role in the negotiations, because you don't get agreements just with headline objectives or headline phrases. It's a lot that needs to sit behind it. So, you know, my personal view, because I don't think I'm necessarily expressing a government view here, but my personal view is that Australia ought to be much more actively engaged in the nuclear fuel cycle. I think the Royal Commission that the South Australian government has set up is a very welcome step. And I think the opportunities for us to work through more of the spectrum of the nuclear cycle having, you know, having the largest reserves of uranium in Australia, we should be building on that as far as we can go consistent with our nonproliferation commitments. Were we to redevelop some kind of nuclear civilian energy infrastructure? Yeah. Would that make more attractive the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia instead of the ridiculously short-range nonsense that we seem to be condemned to because of the vital bodily fluids brigades opposition to anything nuclear? Well, you certainly asked the easy question today. Look, I think we'll always have a debate in Australia about whether ultimately we should have nuclear-powered submarines or whether we stick with non-nuclear-powered submarines that are as quiet as the technology will enable us to have. It doesn't seem to me that we're anywhere near a consensus to switch from where we are to nuclear-powered submarines. I mean, I think conceptually they make a lot of sense in our strategic environment. There's a lot of infrastructure that sits behind nuclear-powered submarines which sometimes people tend to not appreciate just how complicated that is and what it would mean for the way in which we would manage our submarine fleet. But the fact that we're now contemplating the next generation of submarines and everyone's working on the basis that they're going to be non-nuclear, repelled, I think just shows that we have a way to go there. Anyone else? Yeah, in the middle. Oh, sorry, yeah, far away. Thank you, Anna George. And I had the privilege of working with John for a long time. I just want to ask you, what about issues such as artificial intelligence? I mean, that's taken us to another whole range of areas that we need a lot more expertise. And also, is there any move globally to try to work on that one and come up with some ways of containing the spread of weapons that would be driven by artificial intelligence? I have trouble with normal intelligence, let alone artificial intelligence. To be honest, Anna, I haven't really given that much thought. It's not an area I've focused on. The constraining of knowledge in order to prevent it from crossing a certain threshold in this area, the area that you're talking about, I imagine would be immensely complicated. I mean, where does it begin and where does it end in terms of its application to weapons or to an offensive capability? So, I mean, I can see a lot of complications in getting to anything that looks like a control regime for artificial intelligence, but I don't know enough about it to offer more than that very broad comment. Someone had a question in the middle? Yeah. Ron has constituted a Defence Study Centre. Peter, Gareth, Ron. One of the most conspicuous features of the nuclear disarmament campaign, if you like, in my adult lifetime, is the heavy reliance on the United States. They were the country that we leaned on to be in the vanguard of this exercise. For a number of good reasons, they had a surfeit of power. In the nuclear field, they had more bombs than anybody else and the most advanced ones. Most importantly, they were a country that you could get at. They were accessible. You could demand that your bureaucrats and your politicians go and talk to them. Even NGOs can go and talk to them. There's been a significant evening out in the last 20 years, if you like. The United States no longer has that surfeit of power and a much lower expectation if you're realistic, I think, for them to stick their necks out and be adventurous above all in fields like nuclear disarmament. And that kind of tells me that for the campaign to go ahead, it now has to have a much broader focus. We have to work just as hard on Beijing and in Moscow as we do in Washington. Are we ready to do that? Do we possess the skills and the access? Or as you say, this is just another indication of how difficult it's all going to be. The Americans obviously will still play a hugely important role and I think as the earlier years of the Obama administration indicated also a willingness to be ambitious. But the role of the other nuclear weapon states is, I agree, is going to get more important. The Soviet Union and Russia have a history and a background in relation to nuclear disarmament which doesn't apply to China and which doesn't apply to other countries with a nuclear capability. So preparing the diplomatic ground to be able to deal with those countries and to engage with their systems and to get them to focus on it in a way that's roughly parallel with what we've done with the United States and to a lesser extent with Russia and the old Soviet Union I think is going to be quite a challenge. But it's also happening at a time when our diplomatic engagement with their systems across the board is becoming more and more intense. So I think one ought to help us in the other area even if the other area has been a relatively undeveloped one for us. I wonder if you wouldn't mind saying a little bit more given this topicality. The interesting point you made that you assessed the probability is being quite low of an act of nuclear terrorism involving a fission bomb. Let's put to one side the radiological bomb, the dirty bomb which is clearly a much higher order of probability. Why do you say it's low? I mean I tend to share that assessment on the basis that the degree of coordination, the timeline, the amount of expertise you'd have to concentrate is probably within the capacity of our intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies to pick up at some point along the way and the obvious difficulties of getting hold of the FISA material. But given your background in intelligence as well as foreign affairs can you just spell out a little bit more the basis for your reasonable level of optimism that this is containable? Because a lot of people think it isn't. In relation to nuclear. Yeah, the fission bomb by Al Qaeda or ISIL or whatever. Well I think the path to the manufacturing of a bomb is way beyond any expertise of groups that at least we're familiar with in terms of their capacity not just to acquire FISA material but also the expertise and knowledge that would be needed and the technology that would be needed to weaponize it. So I don't think that's a particularly contentious judgment. I think it's a reasonably straightforward judgment. Even though everybody says the engineering is so well known and just a simple Hiroshima kind of Nagasaki devices. It's one thing to sort of have some diagrams on the internet and quite another thing to actually put the stuff together I think. Now there is another pathway which is of course then contingent on the security of nuclear weapons. And there I think certainly in the amongst the P5 countries the level of security applying does generate a lot of confidence. I mean the big worry has always been in a country like Pakistan whether the same confidence can be generated but everything we see suggests that this is something taken very seriously by the system itself and to the extent that you have visibility of these issues quite a strong level of security at buying and I mean you never know of a breach until it occurs but I don't think it's a sort of utopian judgment or a wild eyed judgment. Time for two or three more questions before we break for refreshments. Chris, the student know about nuclear fuel cycle. What are your views on the merits of Australia becoming involved in the nuclear waste storage end of the cycle? Also from the perspective of safety and also its value to our partners or heavy nuclear energy users and do you see it as a source of any sort of leverage that we could use diplomatically or economically in other fields? Not only our own waste generated from Australian uranium but everybody else's as well just to add another dimension to it. What do you think about that? Again I'll give you very personal views because I don't think it would be fair to ascribe anything that I say on this topic as reflecting a government position. I think there's a very strong case to be made for Australia to develop nuclear waste repositories. I think we have the geological locations and the political stability and the nonproliferation credentials to make that a credible option. You could argue in relation to our own uranium exports that we may even have something of an obligation to take back Australian origin generated nuclear waste but if we were to go down this path I think the logic of what we're doing would not stop with Australian origin material. I think the logic would actually extend more broadly and there probably are not many places around the world that could offer such an opportunity or such a service. My personal view is we should look at this very seriously. There'll obviously be a whole lot of issues that you would have to adequately address before it could become reality and I imagine public sentiment on this would be quite divided if not initially quite hostile. But I think if you step back a bit and look at the objective facts it's a strong case in my personal opinion. Okay, one or two more questions and then we'll wrap it up. Hi, I'm Vipur. I'm a master's student. In this era of tactical warfare with the advent of RMA, with the advances in technology in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance do you think the term nuclear deterrence is losing its meaning because nuclear deterrence did not stop Argentina from attacking Britain in 1988 over Falkland Islands or Pakistan attacking India in 1999 so do you think it is losing its meaning? No, I don't think the fundamental concept of nuclear deterrence is losing its meaning. I mean, I think that doctrine probably still holds water. You know, countries who are interested in acquiring nuclear weapons clearly believe in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence in that they believe that their security is best guaranteed by the acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Now, you can debate whether that's a correct judgment or not but I think if you look at North Korea, for example North Korea's acquisition of a nuclear weapon is at least in large part a statement about how best to ensure its security from attack. So I don't see the concept itself being fundamentally challenged. The question of at what point, you know, a nuclear exchange, if you're talking about two nuclear weapons states as opposed to only one, that at what point would the logic of nuclear deterrence kick in? In other words, when does it transfer from a conventional to a tactical and then a strategic nuclear exchange of course is a very complicated set of calculations and one of the worrying features of what's happening in South Asia is whether there is too much confidence or too many assumptions made about whether you can contain that escalation cycle. So to that extent, I think it does raise some quite serious questions. Peter, I don't disagree with you for a second about the psychological appeal of nuclear deterrence but the rational appeal is something else again and I would hope that we wouldn't just succumb to reporting on other people's psychology. I hope we do something about trying to change the reason, belief in these things. There's a large element of psychology in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. There's a large element of psychology in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence. Yes, but whether it be ever remotely rational for North Korea to actually wiggle its nuclear weapons, let them off, given the capacity of the place to be reduced to a car park by conventional means is another story. So that's a long argument which we all continue to have as we've had on many occasions in the past. Is there anyone bursting to ask a final question or two? Yeah, sure, in the middle. Bob Miller, Department of Political and Social Change here in this university. If I understood you correctly, you said, and I fully agree with it, that you have to be very careful about the issues that you can affect and about change and how others educate. And it seems to me there's a big difference between nuclear weapons and CDW weapons. And one of the things that is different about the nuclear weapons issue is that there's a very limited number of countries for whom the possession of nuclear weapons is a key factor. The threat of Armageddon, it seems to me, is very important, for example, for the North Koreans vis-a-vis South Korea, but especially the United States. Russia vis-a-vis the United States. Pakistan vis-a-vis India. India vis-a-vis China. And Israel vis-a-vis everybody. And that being the case, the idea that you can bring about a tremendous catastrophe on the world is something that very few states it seems to me really require. And I may have skipped a few of them, but I mean it seems to me that other countries really do not have the pressing need or felt need to have these weapons. And I'd just like to hear your take on this. I mean I agree very much with the way you've set it out. I mean a lot of this, of course, is driven by your threat perception as a country and whether your threat perceptions are fundamentally existential or not. And I think countries which have a deeply rooted sense of existential threat would be more attracted to nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent, if you like. Now fortunately, most countries in the world don't have a deeply anchored sense of existential threat. And you could argue that some that currently do ought not to. And this is where psychology and reality become issues, but fundamentally I agree with the observations you're making. Well, I've got a happy note. Let's begin to wind up. Can I just say that ANU has been for many years a source of active encouragement of debate on all these issues. And the debate continues later this week with the National Security College hosting a talk by Dr Trevor Finley in Australia in the huge international reputation and distinction on the subject of the International Tonic Energy Agency in non-compliance reporting, the subject which is of enormous immediate interest in the context of the IAA's imminent report on Iran's compliance a few years ago with the requirements of the NPT. That's being held Thursday, 26th of November, between 5.30 and 7.00 in the Brindabella Theatre in the Corford and Rory Medcafs, where you'll personally be interested in following up further on that. Trevor's a former DFAT official. He is indeed an outstanding one, too, and a fine tradition, a great department, and underappreciated, mostly, sometimes by me, but not always. Let me just offer some thank yous in conclusion. To Bob Matthews, sitting up the back, whose names were mentioned and dispatched will be one of those people whose indefatigable energy has kept the tradition of this lecture alive, and every time we look as though we're not getting around to getting organised, Bob is out there pushing and prodding and poking, and so thanks for that. But thanks particularly to the SDSC people, Brendan Taylor and Suan Tan, for all the work that you've done in putting together the physical arrangements for tonight. Kerry Hogan from Central Communications and COMS for your contribution, too, in bringing us all together. But above all, let me thank Peter Buggies for outstandingly lucid, thoughtful... I don't always agree with him, but I've never agreed with him. But, I mean, I think we could be in a lot worse hands in terms of the management of our foreign policy... High praise, go. High praise. Well, that's as much as you get out of me on this topic anyway, but you have contributed. You've created a lot of things for us to think about this evening, and you've chanced your arm on a couple of issues and been deeply cautious of a few others. But this is a complex topic, and you've certainly made us understand Australia's role in all this a lot better than might otherwise have been the case. So can I ask you to join me in saying how much we appreciate you in honouring the memory of John G, how much we appreciate his family being here to share this occasion with us and thank you to the speaker accordingly.