Fact or Fission?

Richard Broinowski

Australia used to be prominent in trying to stop nuclear weapons testing and proliferation. Since 1996, however, such activities by Australian diplomats are almost unheard of. In Canberra, an uncritical acceptance of Washington’s nuclear and war-fighting policies encourages the very things that Australia once so vigorously and moralistically opposed.

Based on previously unclassified files, and interviews with some of Australia’s prominent diplomats, this fascinating book reveals how Australian policy has evolved. It shows that the non-proliferation credentials that Australia embraced in the 1970s were a ploy by Labor leaders to disempower anti-nuclear groups both within the party and in the community. It provides evidence that mining companies substantially compromised safeguards controlling Australian uranium exports. As a result, Australian uranium has probably found its way, in one form or another, into clandestine nuclear weapons.

All Australian governments since 1945 have shaped their nuclear policies according to what they believed or knew Washington wanted. But the Howard government has gone further, unquestioningly supporting American policies that threaten the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and encourage further nuclear weapons proliferation. Such outcomes, this book argues, would profoundly endanger Australia’s own security.