Antinuclear

Future Fund betting on the nuclear arms race, THE SATURDAY PAPER, NOV 22, 2014 JAMES NORMAN Australia’s Future Fund invests in nuclear weapons development and our banks are happy to provide capital as well.  On August 9, 2013, Future Fund CEO Mark Burgess encountered some unexpected visitors at his Melbourne office. A group of about 20 protesters gathered outside his office doors, some dressed from head to toe as nuclear missiles, before being escorted away by police. The human missiles turned up again a few weeks later at the fund’s Sydney office, demanding answers about its investment portfolio, which includes nuclear weapons.

The protesters were drawing attention to the fact that the federal government’s $101 billion Future Fund invests more than $260 million in foreign companies involved in the manufacture of nuclear weapons (and that figure has increased by $33 million since last June)……..

The Future Fund’s nuclear weapons investments only came to light in 2011 when Tim Wright, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Australia, issued a series of freedom-of-information  requests that uncovered the investments. According to Wright, the Future Fund argues that the investments are justified because the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) doesn’t establish a ban on nuclear weapons.

“They say they are taking a disciplined position, but it’s hardly a disciplined approach to exclude tobacco, landmines and cluster munitions, but not nuclear weapons. The fund argued that, given the lack of a global prohibition on nuclear weapons, it was perfectly legitimate for them to invest in these weapons,” he says.

“The Future Fund has consistently mischaracterised the NPT as a treaty permitting certain states, including the United States, Britain and France, to possess nuclear weapons. In fact,” Wright says, “the treaty compels these and other states to pursue negotiations in good faith to eliminate their nuclear weapons. The substantial upgrades they are now making to their arsenals – with plans to retain them for decades to come – are clearly incompatible with the aims of the NPT.”………..

figures are contained in the report “Don’t Bank on the Bomb”, released earlier this month by Dutch peace organisation IKV Pax Christi (PAX). It details how Australian banking institutions, including ANZ, the Commonwealth Bank, Macquarie Group, Platinum Investment Management and Westpac, have financed an estimated $US4.6 billion for nuclear weapons producers since 2011.

The money is used to modernise old nuclear warheads and assemble new ones, build missiles and launchers, and update the technology that supports them. While most of that money comes directly from taxes collected in nuclear-armed countries, private-sector investors and banks from non-nuclear-armed countries (including Australia) provide the missing financing to maintain nuclear arsenals……..

ANZ and Westpac have both provided sizeable loans (totalling more than $US200 million) to Honeywell International, a US company that manufactures components for nuclear weapons, as well as being involved in tritium production and the life-extension program for the US Navy’s Trident II nuclear missiles. Westpac has also made $US380 million in loans available to companies such as Boeing, the manufacturer and now maintenance supplier of the US’s Minuteman III nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles arsenal, and URS, which manages US nuclear weapons facilities such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and provides electronics systems support for the Trident missile program…………

Cormann confirms of FF backs nuclear weapons

On August 28 this year, Greens senator Scott Ludlam put a number of questions on notice to the minister for finance, Mathias Cormann, on the question of the Future Fund’s nuclear weapons-related investments.

Although the fund is governed by an independent board headed by former treasurer Peter Costello, Cormann is ultimately responsible and the fund’s investment decisions are not always free from political interference. For example, Labor health ministers Nicola Roxon and Tanya Plibersek were influential in the Future Fund’s 2013 decision to divest from tobacco stocks.

However, to Ludlam’s questions, Cormann responded, “The Future Fund has not excluded any companies on the basis of involvement in the design, manufacture and/or maintenance of nuclear weapons.”………

Ludlam says these types of investments point to a bigger failure around the way markets are currently structured. “Investment decisions need pay no heed whatsoever to human welfare or risks to the environment. They operate in a complete moral vacuum,” he says.

“Australia states support for nuclear disarmament, yet we sell uranium to nuclear weapons states, and our very own Future Fund is up to its neck in nuclear weapons investments. That’s the broader hypocrisy that is beyond the remit of the board of governors of the Future Fund – we’re in it up to our necks.”…..http://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2014/11/22/future-fund-betting-the-nuclear-arms-race/14165748001274#.VHDmo9LF8nk