Twyford PhilHon PHIL TWYFORD (Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control): This weekend I'll be travelling to New York to head the New Zealand delegation at the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons otherwise known as the NPT. The treaty came into force in 1970 and for the last 50 years it has been the cornerstone of international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. It is centred around the idea of a grand bargain whereby most States gave up the opportunity to get nuclear weapons in exchange for those five that already have them—that is the US Russia the UK China and France—agreeing to pursue disarmament. The treaty was forged in the depths of a nuclear arms race when the need for disarmament was frighteningly clear. The mood at the time was summed up well by John F Kennedy speaking in 1961 when he said We must abolish these weapons before they abolish us." Now the NPT is far from perfect but today only four additional countries possess nuclear weapons—India Pakistan Israel and North Korea—and the number of nuclear weapons in existence is less than a quarter what it was in 1985 when the figure peaked at more than 63000. But it's important that we think about the achievements of the NPT when we criticise its failings not because New Zealand is not ambitious for nuclear disarmament—because we very much are—but because the best weapon against the current cynicism and pessimism about the prospects for disarmament is to remember what the NPT has achieved often in very difficult times. New Zealand and our like-minded friends are fighting right now against a sort of collective amnesia by the nuclear weapon States and their allies: an idea that with all of the challenges the world currently faces—a war a pandemic economic woes growing geostrategic rivalries—disarmament is just too hard. In short we're presented with a catch-22 in that the current lack of stability and security renders us incapable of actually working towards greater security and stability. The logic of the nuclear weapon States frankly does not pass the sniff test. It forgets the grave uncertainty out of which the nuclear non-proliferation treaty was born which some in this House will still remember. The world was in the grip of the Cold War an existential threat in the form of a nuclear arms race and two heavily armed nuclear powers playing out their competition in real time but none of that stood in the way of Kennedy and Khrushchev and in another decade of Reagan and Gorbachev taking the opportunity to lead. Speaking to NATO last month our Prime Minister confronted this false logic in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She said that we cannot allow the legacy of the war in Ukraine to become an arms race or an even more polarised and dangerous world and to this end she urged the international community to match our solidarity with Ukraine with an equal commitment to strengthen international institutions multilateral forums and disarmament. In New York I will be making clear that the lack of action in recent years by all of the nuclear weapon States in holding up their side of the NPT's grand bargain is totally unacceptable. In recent years we've seen massive reinvestment in nuclear weapons nuclear modernisation programmes and a reduction in transparency by the nuclear weapon States. Add all that to the heightened international insecurity and superpower rivalries and you can see why the risk of nuclear catastrophe is considered to be greater now than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. The nuclear weapon States must return to the path of nuclear disarmament. I'll be joined in New York by a parliamentary delegation including the Hon Jenny Salesa and the Hon Todd McClay. This is a visible demonstration of New Zealand's cross-party commitment to nuclear disarmament. Over 50 years on from the NPT entering into force New Zealand's message remains clear: we must ban the bomb."