Mount Barker Council votes to support International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Cities Appeal
A Hills council is focused on the big issues – it has voted in support of a councillor’s proposal to join a global campaign aimed at preventing a nuclear holocaust.
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Forget rates, roads and rubbish – a Hills council wants the abolition of nuclear weapons on the agenda.
At Monday night’s meeting, Mount Barker District Council voted to support the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear (ICAN) Weapons Cities Appeal.
It followed a motion put forward by councillor Ian Grosser, who believed Adelaide Hills residents could come under attack from nuclear weapons
He said by signing the treaty, the council would send a strong message to the Federal Government that it did not support the storage or use of nuclear weapons.
He said around 30 councils across Australia, including Port Adelaide Enfield, had already pledged their support.
His motion was unanimously carried by the council, despite a survey by The Adelaide Hills News showing only 5 per cent of 323 voters being worried about a threat to SA by nuclear weapons.
“There’s always been the threat of nuclear annihilation … although the threat of nuclear war was perhaps more prominent in the early years, during the cold war, but it looks like we’re re-entering the cold war,” said Cr Grosser, who was the Greens candidate for Mayo at the 2013 federal election.
“There’s certainly the possibility of re-entering the cold war as there are increasing autocratic and extremist leaders in the most nuclear heavily-armed countries in the world.
“So although this is something that may never occur again, the threat is still there.”
According to its website, the appeal provides the opportunity to declare support for the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and call on federal leaders to “sign and ratify it without delay”.
It also recognises, that in the event of nuclear war, mayors and councillors will be among the first to provide local leadership.
Cr Grosser said signing the appeal would also acknowledge the victims and survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
August 6 and 9 will mark the 75th anniversaries of those attacks, which killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people.
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“Hiroshima was unprecedented in terms of loss of life … thankfully (nuclear weapons) have never been used again since, but the threat and danger is still there,” Cr Grosser said.
“I believe the that the community wants to be completely free from nuclear weapons and councils have a lot of influence in such matters.
“So local government resolving that they want to be free of nuclear, it does place a bit of pressure on the Australian government which has not signed the treaty because of the strong America alliance.”
ICAN was founded in Melbourne in 2007 by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War.