Australia yet to sign up to treaty banning nuclear weapons but will attend UN meeting as observer

Anthony Albanese has championed the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, saying in 2018 that ‘nuclear disarmament is core business for any Labor government worth the name’. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Australia will attend – as an observer – a UN meeting of countries that have outlawed nuclear weapons, parties to a treaty Anthony Albanese championed in opposition and committed Labor to ratifying in government.

Government backbencher Susan Templeman’s attendance at the meeting in Vienna on Tuesday comes as a group of 55 former Australian ambassadors and high commissioners have written an open letter to the prime minister urging the government to sign up to the treaty, which outright prohibits the development, testing, production and use of nuclear weapons.