As Albanese receives an international award for his leadership on security, Australia remains outside the nuclear weapons ban treaty he once championed. Meanwhile, expanding US military access raises new questions about Australia’s exposure to nuclear conflict.

On Friday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese departed for New York for this year’s United Nations General Assembly session, where he launched Australia’s bid for a seat on the UN Security Council in 2029–30.

While there, he will also squeeze in a black-tie gala event where the Atlantic Council will present him with a Global Citizen Award “for his role in deepening Australia’s alliances and partnerships and promoting security and stability across the Indo-Pacific”. The ABC first reported the Atlantic Council was giving the award for the PM’s “inspirational leadership of Australia, his commitment to strengthening the AUKUS partnership and Indo-Pacific security cooperation, and his efforts to expand Australia’s engagement across Southeast Asia and the Pacific”.

The Atlantic Council is a US think tank established in the early 1960s to promote the alliances reflected in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). It describes its role as “advancing and advocating constructive US leadership in the world alongside friends and allies”. Its diverse funders include the US and other NATO governments, oil, weapons and nuclear power companies.

Others also being awarded this year are President Alexander Stubb of Finland “for his leadership in advancing European unity and strengthening Finland’s role in NATO”; Stefano Domenicali, president and chief executive of Formula 1; and Cynthia Erivo, award-winning actor, singer and producer.

Our PM should be at the UN General Assembly opening to promote international law and cooperation on the great challenges that confront all peoples. He should support the vital work of the UN, especially at this time when more wars are raging, and more people are dying in them, than at any other time since World War II, and the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including Russia and the US, are among the worst violators of the international law they are charged to uphold.

But what a shame that he will not take this opportunity to sign the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). This treaty, the only light in an otherwise bleak and deteriorating landscape of a new nuclear arms race and escalating nuclear threats, now has just over half the world’s nations signed up, including almost all our near neighbours in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. It is the only treaty to ban the worst weapons of mass destruction, and contains the only internationally agreed framework for their elimination.

In 2018 at the ALP national conference in Adelaide, Albanese held up the Nobel Peace Prize medal awarded to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the first Australian-born Nobel Peace laureate, for its role in achieving this landmark treaty. He argued passionately for a motion, seconded by his deputy Richard Marles, to include in the party’s National Policy Platform a commitment when in government to sign and ratify the TPNW. He argued such a policy was compatible with our alliance with the US, would not be simple or easy but was just, and would be “Labor at our best”. He quoted his mentor Tom Uren: “The struggle for nuclear disarmament is the most important struggle for the human race.” The policy was adopted unanimously, and affirmed at each of the three national conferences since.

Yet eight years later, more than a year into their second term, there is no sign of the Albanese government fulfilling that commitment.

US allies New Zealand, Thailand and the Philippines joined the ban treaty eight, nine and five years ago respectively, with no disruption to their conventional military cooperation with the US.

There is an urgent need for Australia to put firm non-nuclear guardrails around our burgeoning military enmeshment with the US. For decades, US facilities in Australia, notably North West Cape and especially Pine Gap, have been high priority targets, including nuclear targets, for adversaries of the US, as they provide information and intelligence via satellite downlinks that contribute to targeting and control of US nuclear weapons and missile defence. New capacities including for space warfare have been added.

On 1 September the first group of US long-range B-52 bombers landed at RAAF Tindal (NT) to newly upgraded dedicated facilities with permanent US support staff. Most of these bombers are nuclear-capable.

The upgraded submarine base Australia is providing for the US at HMAS Stirling near Fremantle under the AUKUS pact will host US Virginia class submarines in increasing numbers. While not currently nuclear-armed, these submarines are prioritised for deployment by 2032 of a new nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile currently in development. As Paul Keating wrote on P&I on 19 September, visiting US Republican Congress member Michael McCaul said it was “logical to assume” US nuclear-powered submarines rotating through Australian bases from 2032 could be nuclear-armed. If they are loaded with nuclear weapons, they are unlikely to drop them off somewhere before coming to Australia.

This means that Australia has for the first time become and will intensify its role as a forward base for US nuclear operations. Nuclear weapons could be brought here and launched from Australia, even without our government’s specific knowledge or consent. Because we don’t ask whether US submarines and planes coming here are carrying nuclear weapons and exclude those that do, and the US doesn’t tell us.

That inevitably means multiple more sites in Australia have become high priority targets for US adversaries. If a war between the US and Russia, China or North Korea were to escalate, the most likely first targets for adversary nuclear weapons would be key allied military bases, like Pine Gap, HMAS Stirling and Osborne, North West Cape and RAAF Tindal and Amberley. Such attacks could show utmost seriousness without inevitably triggering large-scale nuclear retaliation, as attacks on Los Angeles, San Diego or Seattle would.

The most effective way to establish guardrails to keep nuclear weapons out of our country, end our complicity and active assistance for their possible use, reduce our priority as a nuclear target and fulfil our obligations under the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty is to join the TPNW. Yet the Albanese government is moving at speed in the opposite direction.

AUKUS will entail the largest single sovereign wealth transfer in Australia’s history, including over a $4.2 billion non-refundable gift to US naval shipyards, and $20 billion to expand and upgrade HMAS Stirling and the adjacent Henderson Defence Precinct to provide a substantial submarine base for the US on the Indian Ocean. One might well expect a conservative US think tank to flatter the Australian PM.

However, in Australia AUKUS is highly contested. Half of Australians think Australia would be better served by a more independent foreign policy, and more people surveyed think that Australia’s relationship with China is more important than our relationship with the US than vice versa. The PM lapping up a US accolade for AUKUS looks more obsequious than demonstrating sovereign leadership.

It’s a great pity and lost opportunity that the PM is not using this trip to sign the TPNW. As time slips by in a world in great peril, the government’s failure to do so looks increasingly like a broken promise.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.