STATEMENT 2.

/ FROM TOMUREN, MP, FEDERAL LABOR SPOKESMAN FOR URBAN AND REGIONAL AFFAIRS TO HIROSHIMA DAY RALLY, HYDE PARK, SYDNEY, 9/8/80 I am very pleased to be Chairperson of this meeting.

This year, it is 35 years since atomic bombs were dropped on

Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But increasingly throughout this past year, it has seemed that in moving

one more year away from Hiroshima, we have been moving closer to the

next time people will experience the horror of nuclear attack.

I am sure most people here like me have felt a bit more uneasy with

each piece of news about:

* the mistakes of the Pentagon computer; .

* the talk of having nuclear weapons in Iran,  or in the oil fields

of the Persian Gulf;  .

* the.threat of super-power coflict following the United States'

response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan;

* the propaganda assault surrounding the attemptsÂ· to get the Olympic 1

boycott;  .

* the shift towards deploying the neutron bomb not only by the United

States but now by France;

* the efforts of Iraq and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons;

* this week's announcement that nuclear powered and nuclear armed

United States war-ships are to put in near Fremantle in Western

Australia;

* the new strategy of United States President Carter for limited

,  nuclear war. .  .  '  1  .  |

But out of this increasingly bad situation is coming a lot of good.

Right around the world:ordinary people like you and me are coming

out in opposition to the nuclear power and weapons, industries. In ’

Britain there has been a massive increase in support for the Campaign

for'Nuclear Disarmament.  In Europe and Japan the dangers of

nuclear.war are increasingly real. Europe has seen large mobilisations

2  .

against nuclear power and the neutron bomb.  In America, there is

a growing people's movement against nuclear power but not yet

against nuclear armaments.

In Australia, we. have a special role to play, to prevent the growth

of the uranium mining industry - which (as the Fox Report pointed

out quite clearly), contributes to the increased risk of nuclear

war by fuelling the dangerous nuclear energy industry. .

I do not want to be Party-political here today.  But there will

be a Federal election soon.  On the issues of peace, uranium,

nuclear power and nuclear weapons, there is a very clear choice.

Both the Australian Labor Party and the Australian Democrats have

firm policies against uranium mining and all that flows from it.

Everyone here can make his or her contribution to denying

Australian uranium to the world's nuclear madness by not only

casting their v)te for the anti-uranium Parties but by talking

about these issues to their friends and neighbours and encouraging

them to do likewise.

Canberra

8 August 1980

