Three times this year the world has been close to nuclear catastrophe of one form or another — the India–Pakistan conflict, the ongoing Ukraine–Russia war and more recently the Israel/US–Iran “12 day war”. Here is one of the speeches at the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima Day in Sydney before the “March for Humanity” on Sydney Harbour Bridge.
COMMENTARY: By Peter Murphy
I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.
I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.
The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.
- READ MORE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange joins Sydney Gaza humanitarian protest as thousands cross bridge
- Israel backing Gaza ‘gangs’ to create unlivable chaos, says academic
- NZ ‘lagging behind’ world by failing to recognise Palestinian statehood, says former PM Helen Clark
- What would New Zealand recognising Palestinian statehood mean?
- Other Israeli war on Gaza reports
The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.
Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.
They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.
The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.
Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.
Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.
And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.
This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.
But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.
We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.
Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.
The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.
The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.
The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.
The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.
AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.
It is imperial madness writ large.
The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.
Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.
We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.
So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.
We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.
This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.
