MUSSE

Associate Professor Tilman Ruff from the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne is an infectious diseases and public health physician, with particular interests in vaccines and immunisation and in the urgent public health imperative to abolish nuclear weapons. He serves as International Medical Adviser to Australian Red Cross; and technical adviser to the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) and UNICEF on immunisation programs in Pacific Island countries.

He also chairs the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, supported by the Poola Foundation (Tom Kantor Fund). In October 2008 he was invited to serve as one of the two civil society advisers to the Co-Chairs of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament.

The recent Defence White Paper is a giant leap – in the wrong direction. The writing looms large on the walls: we face unprecedented global challenges, need urgent and massive investment and effort in disarmament, sustainable energy, environmental restoration, and equity to hold hope of a benign future for humanity and our Earth. We’re in for a rough ride. This White Paper can be expected to make it rougher.

The White Paper envisages a massive $4.3 billion (16 per cent) real increase in Australia’s military spending next financial year to $26.8 billion – $1230 for every Australian.

Above and beyond this extraordinary sum, a three per cent real increase is planned each year till 2018, and beyond that 2.2 per cent real annual increase to 2030. This is despite Australia being “one of the most physically secure countries in the world”.

What will we get for these vast sums? The shopping list is very long, including 12 new submarines (at present we have six Collins Class submarines, but staffing only for three), 100 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, new long-range sea-based land attack cruise missiles, 8 new frigates, and a major enhancement of cyber warfare capability; all unashamedly designed for long-range operations and high-intensity wars among the major powers.

Missing from the White Paper are some modest investments in areas of need in the ADF including increasing the number of dedicated occupational medicine specialists from the current number – one.

Through a Strategic Reform Program, $20 billion of savings is supposed to be freed-up for re-direction to priority areas. There are plenty of cost blowouts and instances of poor financial management but few, if any, precedents in Defence’s track record to inspire confidence that these savings will be realised.

One would be hard-pressed to design a package more suited to justifying regional concerns and inviting a regional arms race than this profligate spending in doomed pursuit of military superiority.

There’s worse. The Rudd Government came to office pledging active, multilaterally engaged, middle power diplomacy; with the creation of a world free of nuclear weapons as a priority objective, and in the words of then Shadow Foreign Minister (now Attorney-General) Robert McClelland, “committed to driving the international agenda for a nuclear weapons convention”.

Mr Rudd established the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, jointly hosted by Australia and Japan, to help re-invigorate nuclear disarmament efforts and build political traction for abolishing nuclear weapons. Even the Commission’s “hard-headed, pragmatic” incremental approach envisages the achievement of a pre-abolition “minimisation point”, with nuclear arsenals reduced by about two orders of magnitude and few of them on high alert, or even deployed, by 2025.

Yet the White Paper sails on stating that “Within the timeframe of this White Paper, the United States will continue to rely on its nuclear deterrent capability”. It claims that US extended deterrence provides a key defence against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, whereas in reality the failure of the nuclear-armed states to disarm is a major driver for proliferation. It confirms “the value to Australia of the protection afforded by extended nuclear deterrence under the US alliance”, which “provides a stable and reliable sense of assurance”.

What does this Orwellian patter actually mean? It means a willingness to countenance and contribute to the use of the worst weapons of terror; a willingness, in the end, to risk incinerating millions, devastating and radioactively contaminating vast areas, and place all in jeopardy.

To understand the real priorities, follow the money. The Commission received $9.2 million in this year’s budget; about 0.04per cent of this year’s military spending.

Our ducks do not line up.

We have now the best opportunity for a generation to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The White Paper should contribute to seizing this moment, by anticipating a world free of nuclear weapons. Instead it contradicts and undermines Australia’s stated commitment to nuclear disarmament.

Is the Australian government going to urge President Obama to slow down on disarmament, so as not to jeopardise our nuclear umbrella? Achieving a world free of nuclear weapons would enhance our and everyone else’s security more than anything else; it is the only decent, moral place to be. We should prepare for it.

Australian security can best be promoted not by cowering under a nuclear umbrella, but by working with regional and global partners to address our shared global human security challenges – climate change, resource depletion, poverty and inequity, disease, disasters and human rights abuses. Therein lies real security.

Hopefully the new Defence Minister Senator John Faulkner will apply major surgery to this shameful White Paper.