Pacific concerns: Nuclear weapons and the peace movement in Australia, 1960–1967

This chapter explores the early 1960s history of anti-nuclear activism in Australia. It argues that the early developments in Australia helped establish the model for a more sustained campaign against French nuclear testing that gained greater traction, popularity, and governmental support in the early 1970s. The chapter examines the evolution of key concepts of public health and environmental thought to the Australian peace movement, and how this movement attempted to utilize these ideas in its limited engagement with the Pacific. This early history of anti-nuclear activism occupies a key place within the historiography of the broader "peace movement" in Australia, especially because the existing literature contains few studies that specifically examine the role and significance of nuclear weapons to Australian peace organizations. Growing ideas about environmentalism, public health, and the dangers of nuclear testing for the peoples of the Pacific began to stimulate a new direction for Australian anti-nuclear activism.