Australia and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty 1945-1974

In February 1970, after considerable debate, the Coalition Government of John Gorton reluctantly agreed to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), two years after it had been tabled by the United States and the Soviet Union. It would be another three years before the treaty was ratified, by the Labor Government headed by Gough Whitlam. The treaty had by then divided the international community into nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states. Beyond that, a number of key states had refused to recognise the nuclear regime and elected to stay outside. The NPT was therefore something of a compromise—some states had chosen to forgo the military application of nuclear power but expected somehow to benefit from the technology largely developed by the nuclear states. On the other hand, the nuclear states had undertaken to progressively disarm, but it was a process that was to operate largely outside the NPT. That, and the fact that measures had to be taken to concert action with states that had not joined the NPT, meant that the treaty could represent only a part of the evolving non-proliferation regime. Furthermore, there was no clear understanding of just how far a non-nuclear-weapon state might go in developing nuclear technology, an issue that involved complex safeguards discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The negotiation of the NPT regime would also be subject to shifting policies by the great powers themselves, as it evolved in the subsequent decades into one of ‘counter-proliferation’