62/ 053
DISARMAMENT AND NUCLEAR TESTS
SPEECH BY THE FPITI MJT. II. R TF RT. , ONO , ENZI
IN TH7 THROIUPSRESOESF ENTAES
1iTH MAY. 1 02
Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition ( Mr. Calwell i
has read us, very carefully, a long statement and I must say tha'
throughout the first 90 per cent of it I wonered hether e ha
any uoint on which to criticise the statement that had been made
by the Minister for xcternal Affairs ( Sir Garfield Barwick).
However, in the last bit, if I may so describe it, he went throu.-
the motions of warming up, and this produced suitable applause
from his, until then, bemused followers. But one thing that he
said and I have had the advantage of reading this paper was
this " Yet there is no suggestion or offer of any contribution
comparable to that being spent on nuclear weapons by the
nations involved and their allies so that the causes of
these diseases and physical and social ills can be cured".
That is, of course, what might be described as a distributive
allegation. It is put forward as an allegation as much against
the United States of America and the United Kingdom, the i'estern
Pouwers, as against thc; Soviet Union,
I fear, Sir, that the honourable gentleman has
forgotten that if anybody cared to examine the contributions made
in the field of health, in the field of research, in the
production of the great antibiotics in the positive combatting o:'
disease, he would find that the Jostern world has an unchallengei
position in those fields. He would also find that there are
millions of people who can gaz,-from time to time on the sputni:
and other things that may be put into the sky by the Soviet Unio?'"
who would not be there to see then if it had not been for the
devoted, scientific and medical research of the free world.
Therefore, the honourable gentleman falls into error, if I may be
allowed to say so, in distributing these allegations as if they
applied with equal force to both sides in this groat and unhappy
conflicto I want to try to direct the attention of the House to
the real problems that we have to consider. The honourabld
gentleman has made, I am happy to say, several references to the
communioue of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers, issued at the
time of the last conference in March of last yearo I know
something about this, because I was one of those Prime Ministers.
I also know that no communique emerges from a Primo Ministrs'
Conference unless it refers to matters upon which unanimous
agreement has been reached. That is something that honourable
members should note nothing is included in such a communique
unless it has oeon unanimously , greed that it should be included.
Therefore, on the occasion in question all the Prime Ministers
agreed to the statement made with regard to atomic testso These
are the precise words of itz
" Every effort should be made to secure rapid agreement to
the permanent banning of nuclear weapons tests by all
nations, and to arrangements for verifying the observances
of the agroeemnt. Such an agreement is urgent, since
otherwise other countries may soon become nuclear powers,
which would increase the danger of war and further
complicate the problem of disarmament Moreover, an
agreement of nuclear tests, apart from its direct advantages
would provide a powerful psychological impetus to agroement
over the wider field of disarmament."
I think those words are well worth quoting. WJe and I speak as
one of the parties heartily sapported that statement, and we
supported it for the simple sake of humanity. The profound cause
of humanity required, in our mind, that a statement of this kind
should be made. There were talks about disarmament. There were
conferences about it, They were abortive. You can go on talking
about disarmament, in the general, for a long time. But her., in
our view, was a specific matter on which we thought, or at any
rate hoped, that sensible people of all nations could agree. We
hoped that they could all agree to stop further testing of nuclear
weapons, and we said so, the Prime Minister of Great Britain
amongst us. And what happened? It was not more than a few months
thereafter when the Soviet Union, which had itself undertaken to
conduct no further tests pending agreement on their abolition,
and at the very time when the powers were meeting in Geneva to
discuss not only the general principle of abolishing tests, but
also the essential correlative of effecting inspection, so that
we might not be misled, simply broke up the discussions, walked
out and within 48 hours began a series of at least 30 nuclear
tests, preparations for which had obviously been made long before,
That is the kind of problem that the world is dealing
with. We need not live in a world of abstract phrases. wie are
living in a most terribly difficult world, -e are living in a
world of stark realities and unless we admit the existence of
these realities we will walk into danger.
That was the position,. and our distinguished visitor of
the other night I am not going to discuss any other matters in
connection with his visit because honourable members are quite
entitled to their views about everything that he said made this
statement: " Wlhile we were still negotiating, they"
The Soviet Union
" broke the moratorium on testing with a longand obviously
long prepared, series of tests, evertheless, we
The United States of America
" stood on our offer to conclude a test ban treaty, and with
an inspection arrangement that would have involved an
international inspection team looking at less than 1/ 2000th
of the territories of the Soviet Union in any given year.
Honourable members on both sides of the House will recall that one
of the pretences of the Soviet Union was that it could not have
inspection because this would involve espionage inside its
borders. The statement went on
" But, as the Soviets were still unwilling to agree, President
Kennedy felt obliged to resume our own testing for the
security of the free world. As you knovw, he reached that
decision most reluctantly. And we stand prepared to stop
testing at any moment that the Soviets ; gree to a test ban
treaty with essential international verification",
That is a pretty plain statement by the man who, as second to the
President of the United States, occupies one of the most
responsible and powerful positions in the world.
He went on
" But the President of the United States will not acce. pt the
responsibility for allowring people who want their kind of
world order to move ahead of the free uorld in this nuclea.
field".
I wonder who disagrees with that? I wonder if thero is a. nybody :. n
this House I do not really believe there is who believes tha
after all this series of tests by the Soviet Union which will ad,:
enormously to the Soviet Union's knowledge and technology in thi.-
field, the U. S. A. should have said, " Jell, you can have it; we
will d) nothing about it. > e are prepared to stabilize the
knowledge of the free world in this field while you go on year
after year, mnonth after month so that you will have the power to
impose on the world what is to us your rotten system of government'"ΓΈ
Really, Mr. Speaker, I would have thought it hardly admitted of
debate. Now, there are practical issues here and I think that
unless they are resolved by unanimity in this House they ought to
be analyzed frankly on both sides of the chamber. The first of
then is involved in what I have just said: Should the wostern
nuclear powers cease testing whatover the Soviet does? When I say
that, let me elaborate a little, I fool that there is a great
assumption in many minds that all thuse tests are tests of
weapons to be deposited on the enemy and to destroy or to blast
his cities. But we have got to a stage when a great deal of
testing in the world is of what are called the anti-missile missles,
These tests are devoted to discovering how to defend a country anc.
how to defend hundreds of thousands of innocent people against an
attack from the air. You cannot have one of these things done ard
forget about the other. You cannot have the Soviet Union
perfecting its means of attack and perhaps developing its means f
resistance by special exporiments in the nuclear field and say to
our own side and do not let us forget that, alive or dead it iour
side " You are not to do it. You stop where you are". All
these experimentations that go on have not only a relevance to
attack but also a relevance to defence. Therefore, I propound my
question and I would like to think that it reached the people of
Australiat Should the Jstern nuclear powers cease testing nuclear
devices w hatever the Soviet Uniujn does? The clear answer to thaL
in the name of humanity is: No.
The second issue is this: Can there be any effective
cessation of testing which could give to the world a feeling that
there was a calm in the storm or a hope for ordinary humanity,
unless we have inspection or verification whatever the word
might be? Are we so naive in the free world we are not really;
we have a long history of practical wisdom and experiment, but I
repeat: Are we so naive as to say to the prospective enemy the
country which is the groat and. only threat to the peace of the
world " We will take your word for it? ' ie do not want anybody to
go near your country to see whether you are conducting tests or
not", Can anybody imagine such a thing? The United States of
America, the great western nuclear power, and the other ; wstern
powers have gone to great lengths, as we ; wcre reminded the other
night, to reduce their d.-. eands for verific. tion to a more minimum,
Are they to abandon those demands? we sleep more
comfortably if they did? '/ ould the ban-the-bomb processionists
sleep more comfortably if they knew that on our side tests had
ceased and development had come to an end, and that we were rel;. ng
upon the punic faith of the authorities in the Kremlin? I do not
believe it. Ue say: No. I do not know ! that other people might
say, but we say: No.
In the third place there is an issue that perhaps
scarcely emerged in what my honourable opponent had to say but it
is clearly implicit in certain things that have happened. It is
this: Should Australia, not a nuclear power herself remember that
in 1ll these mat-' ers permanently contract herself out of
permitting nuclear : reapons to be used in w ar or defence or in the
grave arbitrament of , war on her s: il? . ucause I did hear
suggestions that when the Minister for External Affairs ( Sir
Garfield Barwick) said we were not prepared to give a permanent
undertaking to that effect, he was under criticism. Under
criticism,' Have we reached the very ecstasy of suicide in
Australia? Are we prepared to say that come war, come peace,
come any circumstances nobody shall bring a nuclear -reapon on our
soil or discharge a weapon of that kind there? Are we bent on
self-destruction or are we prepared to sit up and wake up to the
fact that those nuclear powers which are on our side in the
contest of freedom, cannot protect us if we warn them off the
premises in perpetuity.
These are the three questions. All must have
considerable difficulty in understanding how there could be any
more than the one clear answer to any of them. There is certainly
nothing in what the honourable gentloman has said that in form
cuts across what I have boon saying in these matters; but if
there is a feeling in this Parliament anywhere that this attitude
is wrong, let us . for the sake of our own self respect, for the
sake of our standing in the world and for the sake of our
capacity to talk to the other countries of the world, learn it now-,
Let them stand up and be counted.