Melbourne Town Hall displays Peace Prize

Melbourne Town Hall has taken temporary possession of and put on display a medal presented to the winners of Australia’s only ever Nobel Peace Prize.

The gold medal was awarded in Oslo in 2017 to the Australian team behind the creation of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) whose efforts had resulted in a weapons treaty.

Groups from other countries involved in the ICAN network also received medals, while a larger version of the prize was presented to its international office in Geneva.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) after it was adopted by the UN in 2017, came into force in 2021.

It has now been signed by more than half the countries in the world, although not the nine declared nuclear weapon states and not Australia.

On display with the Nobel medal at Melbourne Town Hall is a fragment of a porcelain bowl recovered from Hiroshima and an ink painting by a Sydney-based Hiroshima survivor and artist, Junko Morimoto, with the start of the items’ display timed to coincide with the 81st Hiroshima Day anniversary.

Hiroshima Day, on August 6, marks the 1945 bombing of the city in which 140,000 people are estimated to have been killed.

In answer to a recent public question about the council’s commemoration of the day, Greens councillor Dr Olivia Ball pointed out that the City of Melbourne had “a long and proud history” of supporting nuclear disarmament, having declared Melbourne a nuclear-free zone in 1983, more recently joined international organisation Mayors for Peace and last year marked the 80th anniversary of the horrific bombings by calling on the federal government to ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

According to one of the prize’s recipients, ICAN founding member Dave Sweeney, Melbourne is one of 50 councils around Australia calling for the federal government to sign the TPNW.

This is urgent, he argues, in view of AUKUS arrangements which after the recent expiry of the US-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty, look set to see Australia host six B-52 bombers and four US nuclear submarines retrofitted to be nuclear weapons-capable.

The anti-nuclear campaigner says the Nobel medal has already been shown off locally in libraries and schools, and has travelled the country in backpacks and “been passed around bush meetings in regional Australia”.

“ICAN Australia has very much got a view that this is the people's medal,” he said.

“It was ordinary folks getting together collectively to try and pull off something pretty extraordinary, and we are actually … on the way.”

A cheque for US$1 million, which was also part of the prize, was divided up among ICAN’s international groups, with greater shares going to those in most need.

Cr Dr Ball said later this month, the council would consider renewing the call for the federal government to ratify the TPNW. •