On Hiroshima Day peace groups call for Govt to abandon AUKUS
“On Hiroshima Day, 6 August, we call on the Albanese Government to announce the cancellation of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and steps to promote peace and co-operation within our region and globally,” Denis Doherty from the Hiroshima Day Committee said in Sydney today.
“These submarines will cost an eye watering $386 billion or $32 million every day for the next 30 years, adding 1.6 per cent to our GDP.
“This exorbitant cost inevitably means the government will have to raid other portfolios such as environment, health, housing and education. It is simply not acceptable that we suffer because of US ambitions to remain top dog in the region,” Doherty said.
“Many of our regional neighbours are deeply concerned by AUKUS, criticising it as destabilising and a threat to their security. They carry the scars of the nuclear age and want the Treaty of Rarotonga observed so that the Pacific is nuclear free.
“The submarines will produce high level nuclear waste which the government has agreed to store for around 200,000 years. No country in the world has yet found a way to store high level radioactive waste so is the government going to simply dump it on Indigenous land?
“Australia is losing its ability to be a nuclear free country and to comply with the provisions of the non-proliferation treaty. And the Albanese Government still has not honoured its commitment to sign the Treaty on Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the almost quarter of a million men, women and children who perished there, give us a bitter history lesson on the nuclear age. Yet the AUKUS deal has opened up the prospect of more Hiroshima in our country, only this time both sides will have nuclear weapons,”. Denis Doherty concluded.
The 78th anniversary of Hiroshima will be commemorated in many cities and towns around Australia on August 6
Details of the Sydney event are:
Sunday August 6 at 2 pm in Town Hall Square.
Speakers will be followed by a procession to the Defence Department at 320 Pitt St where wreaths for the victims of nuclear weapons and nuclear testing will be laid.
