Thursday, 31 July 2025

Nuclear prohibition

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (18:05): (1791) My adjournment is to the Premier, and I ask her to advocate to the federal government that Australia sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. 6 August marks Hiroshima Day. On 6 August 1945 the US dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Three days later Nagasaki was also bombed. The bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people, most of whom were civilians. The death toll among everyday citizens of Japan that day, and in the years and decades after, is a global shame, and how dreadful it is to see echoes of this indiscriminate slaughter so persistent in present conflicts.

As a child at primary school I heard the story of Sadako, one little girl who lived through the bombing despite being blown out the window of her home by the force of the explosion. In the following years Sadako developed leukaemia because of the radiation she was exposed to through the nuclear blast. An old saying in Japan told that if you folded 1000 paper cranes you would be granted a wish. Sadako set about this task, folding cranes from every scrap of paper she could get her hands on, including medical wrappers and packaging, desperate to realise the promise of the saying and be granted her wish – to live. Sadako succumbed to the sickness the nuclear bomb inflicted on her. She died 10 years after the bombing, at the age of 12.

A statue was erected in her memory and the memory of all young people robbed of their lives by the bombings – the Children’s Peace Monument. Last year I finally visited Hiroshima, a city that is so like Melbourne, full of galleries and gardens, sited on a river and a bay and with its own iconic trams. I took a paper crane, and I added it to the thousands that people still bring to Sadako’s statue. The plaque at the foot of that monument, originally erected through fundraising by Sadako’s schoolmates, reads:

This is our cry, this is our prayer: for building peace in the world.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted in 2017 and entered into force in 2021. There are currently 94 signatories, and 73 states are parties to that treaty. Australia is not one of them. As we mark the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Australia must heed the lessons of history, be a good global citizen and finally sign the nuclear weapons ban treaty.