Walters VanushiVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour): Thank you Madam Speaker and may I add my thanks to the Minister for his leadership in this critical area of work as well as the select committee for their work on the report.The former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once talked about the fraught times we're in internationally and said we should now define ourselves not only by what we stand for but by what we stand against. Salman Rushdie then proposed the inverse: he mused that what we're against is clear; it's what we stand for that needs greater definition articulation and commitment. I believe to solve this complex issue in front of us we fiercely need both: we need opposition yes but we also need real solutions of how to deal with international disagreements and tensions.Just a week and a half ago I was at the Inter-Parliamentary Union assembly in Rwanda with members of the Russian Duma the Iranian Parliament Ukrainian colleagues and parliamentarians from around the world in heated discussions about Russian threats of the use of nuclear weapons and the use of Iranian drones to carry out acts of terror in Ukraine. The threat is not new but it looms larger than it has for decades.So where to from here? First I think we need a shift away from faith in a flawed 20-year-old doctrine of mutual destruction. Some say this has kept us from a third world war; I believe this doctrine has kept us on the edge of tension and fear. Secondly we need an understanding of the scope of the risk. The Minister noted when he spoke to the select committee that there are currently around 14000 nuclear weapons in the stockpiles of nine countries but the existence of them isn't the totality of the risk picture. There are misreads and mistakes in addition to the risks that States pose to States. In 1995 the Black Brant incident happened when Russians believed they saw a US missile flying towards them; it was a Norwegian craft taking data images of the lights. The Russians came within five minutes of nuclear retaliation. In 2018 the US accidentally dropped nuclear weapons on North Carolina twice. By sheer luck neither detonated.Nuclear weapons are also vulnerable. The stockpile is not uniformly secure particularly in Russia where there are sites where warheads and fissionable materials are available to be bought or stolen—they are acquirable. There's older data that I was looking at recently from 1993 to 2006 which had 175 documented incidents of nuclear theft 18 of which involved key ingredients to make nuclear weapons. I think we assume that the amount of fissionable material you would need would be huge but in today's terms what you would need to make a bomb akin to that used in Hiroshima is about eight cans of coke. For the bomb used in Nagasaki you'd be looking at source material of plutonium about the size of a cabbage. The risk is very real. It's not just States who pose this risk but individuals and groups some of whom are Stateless.So what can we do? Is all hope lost? I don't believe so. In 1991 the Soviet Union fell and the US sent cash to the Russians to secure loose nuclear material and to employ out-of-work nuclear scientists to work with US scientists to convert weapons-grade uranium into power. It was called the Megatons to Megawatts project and over 20 years the two nations worked together to do this which resulted in one in 10 US lightbulbs being fuelled by former Russian warheads. Change is possible and I note the reports that the US has made invitations to Russia to engage in bilateral conversations.Kennedy once said No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." but we do need a renaissance in thinking about how we manage global disagreements and to be able to articulate both what we stand against as well as what we stand for. In my view New Zealand must play a key leadership role in this.Motion agreed to."