Australia has dropped its opposition to a landmark treaty banning nuclear weapons in a vote at the United Nations in New York on Saturday.
Although Australia had not yet joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the change in its position to vote to “abstain” after five years of “no” is seen by campaigners as a sign of progress given that the former coalition government repeatedly sided. the United States against.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said through a spokesman that Australia has “a long and proud commitment to the global non-proliferation and disarmament regime” and that the government supported the “ambition of a world without nuclear weapons” of the new treaty.
The previous coalition government was staunchly opposed to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a relatively new international agreement that imposes a blanket ban on developing, testing, stockpiling, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, or assisting other countries to carry out these activities. .
Australia voted against opening negotiations on the proposed new treaty in late 2016 and did not participate in those talks in 2017. Since 2018 it has voted against annual resolutions at the UN General Assembly and to the first committee that asked all countries to join the agreement “at the earliest possible date”.
That changed on Saturday morning when Australia changed its voting position to abstain. Indonesia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Ireland were among the countries co-sponsoring this year’s UN resolution of support.
Australia traditionally argued that the treaty would not work because none of the nuclear-weapon states had acceded and because it “ignores the realities of the global security environment”.
He also argued that joining would breach US alliance obligations, as Australia relies on US nuclear forces to deter any nuclear attack on Australia.
But the treaty has gained momentum because of growing dissatisfaction among activists and non-nuclear states over the prospects for disarmament, as nuclear-armed states such as the US, Russia and China are in the process of modernizing their arsenals.
The treaty currently has 91 signatories, 68 of whom have formally ratified it, and it entered into force last year.
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The Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) had called on Australia on Saturday to vote in favor of the UN resolution, or at least to abstain to “end five years of opposition to the TPNW under the previous government”. .
Three out of four members of the Labor caucus, including Anthony Albanese, have signed an Ican pledge which commits MPs “to work towards the signing and ratification of this historic treaty by our respective countries”.
Labour’s 2021 national platform committed the party to sign and ratify the treaty “after taking into account” a number of factors, including the need for an effective verification and enforcement architecture and working towards universal support.
These conditions suggest that the barriers to actually signing may still be high. But Gem Romuld, Ican’s director in Australia, said the government was “moving in the right direction” and engaged positively with the treaty.
Mr Romuld said it would be “completely self-defeating to wait for all nuclear-armed states to join” before Australia joined.
“Indeed, no disarmament treaty has achieved universal support and Australia has acceded to all other disarmament treaties, even where our ally the US has not yet signed, such as the ban treaty of land mines,” Romuld said.
In 2017, the US, UK and France declared that they “never intend to sign, ratify or become a party” to the new treaty, and the Trump administration actively pressured the countries to withdraw.
Wong told the UN General Assembly last month that Australia would “redouble our efforts” towards disarmament because Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “feeble and desperate nuclear threats underline the danger nuclear weapons pose to all We”.