The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly to adopt a treaty banning the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons. The final vote of 122 to 1, with 1 abstention, leaves no doubt as to the scale of the global movement for abolition.

There are a handful of empty chairs in Committee Room 1 in the UN General Assembly building in New York. One of them should have been occupied by an Australian representative, but these negotiations are going ahead without us. Yesterday, the second draft of a treaty to ban nuclear weapons was circulated, despite Australia’s best efforts to prevent these talks from happening at all.

The Australian Greens have condemned the Government’s plan to disregard warnings from the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and proceed with uranium sales to Ukraine.
 

Australian Greens Co-deputy Leader and nuclear spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam has thanked Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan for extending the veterans ‘Gold Card’ to service personnel exposed to nuclear radiation at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the British nuclear test sites in South Australia, but says there is still more to do.

“It’s been a long fight. I’ve been advocating for this support for nuclear veterans for my 9 years here, but these veterans have been fighting for this recognition for more than 50 years.