AUKUS has escaped proper scrutiny for five years. That is about to change.
Doug Cameron, Former Federal Senator for New South Wales, October 26, 2026
The independent public inquiry into AUKUS will report on 4 November after examining the project’s implications for Australia’s security, economy, sovereignty and international standing.
Five years on from the announcement of AUKUS, a project founded on subterfuge and evasion, the public inquiry into AUKUS will launch its report at the National Press Club in Canberra on 4 November. This inquiry has gone where both the Coalition and the ALP have failed to go. It has revealed the depth and breadth of this project for Australia’s national security, economy and international credibility.
I am proud to have been part of the Inquiry Secretariat providing support to our eminent and talented team of inquiry commissioners. In my view it is now clear that AUKUS is about militarising Australia in the interests of the US, ensuring the grifters in defence and the arms industry are well fed. It is an act of self-harm and madness on the part of the Australian government.
The secrecy that lies at the heart of this $368 billion fiasco was maintained by federal or state governments that refused to appear before the public inquiry to make the case for the biggest transfer of sovereign wealth in Australia’s history. That is some kind of contempt for the Australian community.
To recap, if this project goes well it will result in the cost of $368 billion, plus over $120 billion to manage the weapons-grade nuclear waste. It will put at least four Australian cities in the cross-hairs in the event of a conflict between the US – now an international wrecking ball – and our largest trading partner, China.
That’s if these nuclear submarines ever materialise. AUKUS is looking increasingly like a distraction from the main game, which is about turning Australia into a compliant base for the US military.
Meanwhile the Australian government continues to dodge any accountability and simply responds to criticisms by muttering about protecting sea lanes and our alliance with the US. Meanwhile AUKUS critics have been variously accused of communism, appeasement and failing to understand ‘changed circumstances’.
The government’s determination to avoid any scrutiny reached absurd proportions when delegates to the ALP National Conference were denied the opportunity to debate AUKUS (and Palestine) at the national conference.
So, I was shocked to see that while federal and state governments are unwilling to have an honest conversation with the people funding this project, us, they were very forthcoming in the submissions the federal and South Australian governments gave to the UK Parliament through the UK defence committee inquiry.
Forelock tugging to the ‘mother country’ while denying Australians the right to government accountability on AUKUS is reprehensible, undemocratic and politically dumb.
Despite these submissions putting an unjustified gloss on AUKUS, and our almost pleading submissions, the UK defence committee has given our parliamentarians a masterclass in scrutiny, honesty and accountability.
Among the findings of this UK inquiry are that the alliances that have underpinned global security for decades can no longer be taken for granted; that even the UK public has little confidence in the project; that the investment pipeline is already faltering; and that the development of new SSN facilities in Adelaide and Perth could pose a risk to workforce retention at the UK’s equivalent facilities in Barrow-in-Furness and Plymouth.
The town critical to the delivery of the SSN-AUKUS, Barrow-in-Furness, is in dire need of total regeneration, with major issues of poverty, crime, alcohol and drug abuse and unemployment. Convincing the highly skilled workforce to move there is considered a huge challenge to the project. The report found this will require additional funding from central government to provide the investment in housing, healthcare, transport and education which the town urgently needs.
The AUKUS deal demands the UK increase port visits and later rotate an Astute-class submarine out of Australia to maintain credibility within AUKUS. But the UK report notes that the arrival of HMS Anson in Western Australia, while welcome, pushed the Astute class beyond its limits.
Nor did Pillar 2 escape criticism, with the report finding that progress to date has been disappointing and inadequate. It now faces an uphill battle to restore credibility. In the short term, the UK government must press for swift agreement within the trilateral on priority projects which provide tangible benefit to the “war fighter”, and their subsequent delivery at pace. It concludes the UK’s approach to Pillar 2 has so far been disjointed.
This was a report on the UK’s side of the agreement. This is the country we have committed over $4.5 billion to, and they are still struggling with almost every element of the project.
The scale of the problems in the UK further demonstrates that AUKUS is a defence, economic and social disaster for Australia. It is driven by naïve politicians, lobbyists, arms industry think tanks and a revolving door of retired politicians, public servants and military personnel.
Jargon such as “progressive patriotism”, “steady progress, all on track, historic opportunities, creating jobs”, beggars belief when compared with the faltering UK and US submarine industries that are destined to fail to deliver.
It is time for the Australian community to tell the Albanese government to stop treating all of us as mugs; enough is enough with this madness.
UN puts media giants on notice over Gaza as journalists’ death toll spirals
by Aleta Moriarty | Oct 27, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/un-puts-media-giants-on-notice-over-gaza-as-journalists-death-toll-spirals/
UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese has released a blistering report on media complicity in war crimes as Israelis head to the polls. Aleta Moriarty reports.
United Nations Special Rapporteur report.
The report, Truth under the rubble: media in the time of genocide, by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, was presented to the General Assembly recently and publicly launched today. It finds Israel’s failure to stop incitement on its airwaves is a continuing breach of the Genocide Convention and defies the International Court of Justice’s January 2024 order to prevent and punish it.
It also puts broadcasters and social media companies on notice: since that order, saying no platform can claim ignorance of the risk, and where a company knowingly provides practical assistance that has a substantial effect on international crimes, “questions of complicity arise”.
Massive toll on Palestinian journalists and their families
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls Gaza the deadliest war for journalists ever recorded. Israeli forces have wounded more than 400 journalists, and the report finds around
“70 of those killed were killed as reprisal for their work.“
More than 150 journalists’ homes and media offices and institutions have been destroyed, and Israel has completely destroyed 81 per cent of Gaza’s information and communications infrastructure. This devastation has not just been focused on the journalists, with around 710 journalists’ relatives also killed, 436 of them in the first four months alone.
More than 150 journalists’ homes and media offices and institutions have been destroyed, and Israel has completely destroyed 81 per cent of Gaza’s information and communications infrastructure. This devastation has not just been focused on the journalists, with around 710 journalists’ relatives also killed, 436 of them in the first four months alone.
Deliberate targetting
Photojournalist Fatma Hassouna was killed with five family members when precision-guided munitions struck their apartment in April 2025, a day after her documentary about life during the genocide was selected for Cannes.
In August 2025 a “double-tap” strike on Nasser Hospital killed 22 people. The first strike killed Reuters cameraman Hussam Al-Masri, and the second killed four more journalists who’d rushed to the scene. Israel said it had hit a “Hamas camera”. It belonged to Reuters.
Israel’s military says it doesn’t intentionally target journalists. In October 2023 the Israeli military reportedly set up a “legitimisation cell” that has systematically recast Gaza-based journalists as Hamas operatives, the report says, creating a pretext before attacks and a justification after them.
More than 100 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been detained since October 2023, and around 30 are still held. Those released describe physical assaults, sexual violence including rape, forced stress positions, sensory deprivation and medical neglect.
Dehumanisation and incitement to genocide
Dehumanisation and incitement to genocide
Under Article III of the Genocide Convention, direct and public incitement to commit genocide is a crime in its own right, the report explains, “complete upon utterance or publication and applicable to officials, broadcasters and private media actors”. No one has to act on it. Albanese finds that some statements broadcast in Israel meet that threshold.
Most people picture arms manufacturers when they think of business entities complicit in genocide. However, according to a 2024 Israel Law Review paper on Ben & Jerry’s exit from Israeli settlements, only two cases before international criminal tribunals since Nuremberg have held individual corporate defendants accountable, and both arose from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
The best known is the Media Case. In December 2003 the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda convicted RTLM executives Ferdinand Nahimana and Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, whose station became known as “Radio Machete”, along with Kangura owner and editor Hassan Ngeze. A third case, against RTLM founder Félicien Kabuga, collapsed when he was found unfit to stand trial.
Broadcasters culpable
Albanese leans on the Nahimana judgment to argue that when presenters’ calls for genocide go unchallenged and unrepudiated by the broadcaster, the people who control the outlet carry the responsibility.
There are several worrying examples cited in the report. Channel 14 aired singer Eyal Golan’s call to “erase Gaza, don’t leave a single person there”, along with statements calling for a “Holocaust”, including “gas chambers”, and urging viewers to “destroy, kill, and obliterate”.
Three Israeli civil society groups listed hundreds of instances of incitement on the channel in a May 2025 High Court petition, yet the broadcasts continue unchecked. Channel 12 journalist Yehuda Schlesinger, who argued sexual violence against Palestinian detainees should become state policy, was temporarily suspended, then joined Channel 14.
Mainstream and pro-government Israeli media have described Palestinians as “Amalek”, “monsters”, “a cancerous growth” and
“even “cannibals” who “must be eradicated”.“
The report says this rhetoric comes with a denial of civilian status, with Israeli media asserting that “there are no innocents” in Gaza, that Palestinians are “not civilians” and that Gaza is inhabited by “two and a half million terrorists”.
Double standards and censorship
Double standards and censorship
The report highlights how western outlets widely reported unverified claims, including that Hamas beheaded babies on October 7 and that Palestinian journalists killed by Israel were “terrorists”, the report says, while corrections received far less prominence.
German broadcaster ARD’s editorial guidance presents civilian casualties as primarily a consequence of Hamas’s alleged use of “human shields”. Much of the media reproduced what Albanese calls “humanitarian camouflage”, presenting so-called safe zones and evacuation orders as civilian protection.
Content analysis cited in the report found the BBC downplayed or omitted Israeli responsibility in 83 per cent of relevant headlines, and The New York Times in 65 per cent. The BBC still runs its story on six-year-old Hind Rajab, killed by Israeli forces, under the headline
“Hind Rajab, 6, found dead in Gaza days after phone calls for help“.
lp“.
Between October 2023 and August 2025, the Times invoked Hamas “human shields” 176 times and the BBC 81 times. The Times mentioned sexual violence against Israelis 76 times and against Palestinians four times across two sample periods.
At Germany’s ZDF, 90.7 per cent of uses of “barbaric” referred to Israeli victims, and the word was never applied to attacks on Palestinians. Palestinian children made up about 99.7 per cent of child deaths, yet appeared in just over half of CNN’s personalised stories about child victims.
Israel’s most important ‘weapon’
Alongside propaganda, high levels of censorship are also reported. Israel’s military censor banned 1,635 articles in 2024 and redacted another 6,265, 21 interventions a day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described social media to US-based influencers as Israel’s most important “weapon” in what he calls the “battle for truth”.
“The report also explicitly names Antoinette Lattouf,“
itly names Antoinette Lattouf,
unlawfully dismissed by the ABC after reposting a Human Rights Watch report on starvation in Gaza.
The report saves some of its sharpest findings for tech companies.
With Palestinian journalists killed and foreign media shut out of Gaza, Meta, X and Alphabet Inc. (Google) became the principal gatekeepers of information on Palestine, and the report finds recurring patterns of discriminatory moderation, censorship and amplification of Israeli government narratives.
Leaked Meta data shows about 38.8 million Facebook and Instagram posts have been removed, banned or suppressed since late 2023, and engagement with major Palestinian news outlets has fallen 77 per cent. TikTok and Meta reported compliance rates of 99.2 and 94 per cent with Israel’s takedown requests.
“Meta had been warned before.“
In 2018 the UN fact-finding mission on Myanmar found Facebook had been “a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate,” a conclusion Meta’s own commissioned assessment accepted.
Israel signed contracts worth roughly US$50 million, including with Google and X, for ads dismissing famine reports, among them a message telling viewers “There is food in Gaza. Any other claim is a lie“.
Platforms kept taking that money after famine had been confirmed and the ICJ had ordered aid let in. Google reportedly concluded the famine-denial ads didn’t breach its policies, and it carried paid ads calling the ICJ genocide case a “blood libel”, discouraging donations to UNRWA and attacking Albanese’s previous report.
Platforms also left up campaigns smearing Palestinian journalists before they were killed, including claims that Reuters and AP reporters had advance knowledge of 7 October, which both agencies refuted.
What the Report demands
What the Report demands
Albanese wants the International Criminal Court prosecutor to investigate direct and public incitement to genocide by government officials and media figures, and the General Assembly to set up an independent mechanism to preserve evidence of crimes against journalists, secure the release of detained journalists and open Gaza to international media and human rights monitors.
Governments are urged to prosecute attacks on Palestinian journalists, treat their footage and archives as evidence, and review public funding and partnerships with media organisations and platforms that spread incitement or help conceal atrocity crimes.
Media organisations and platforms are told to stop “laundering propaganda through the journalistic form”, verify belligerents’ claims before publishing, run corrections as prominently as the original story and stop retaliating against journalists. “Accountability depends on the survival of the record,” the report concludes. “Without it, neither justice nor the prevention of future atrocities remains possible.”
Aleta Moriarty
Aleta is a practitioner researcher in human rights, disability inclusion and gender. She is completing a PhD at University of Melbourne and has twenty years of experience working across agencies including the United Nations, UN Women, World Bank, and the University of Melbourne. She is currently standing as an Independent Candidate for Western Victoria. Her website is www.aletamoriarty.com
4 November -Watch the AUkUS Public Inquiry Report launch live on ABC at 11.30 AEDT
The Inquiry asked:
Will AUKUS keep us safe – at what cost?
On Wednesday 4 November, the Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry present their findings at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.
The consequences of AUKUS will shape Australia’s national security for generations, and a decision of that size demands genuine, transparent public consultation. Since June 2026, the Inquiry has received over a thousand submissions. Commissioners have travelled nationwide to hear directly from former prime ministers, defence ministers, senior military leaders, academics, union representatives and concerned community members.
Lead Commissioner The Hon. Peter Garrett AM FTSE and Admiral Chris Barrie AC RAN (Ret’d), former Chief of the Australian Defence Force, will present the report. They’re joined by Commissioners the Hon Dr Carmen Lawrence AO, Ms Karina Lester and Ms Leanne Minshull.
WHEN? Wednesday 4 November 2026, 11:30am AEDT
WHERE TO WATCH? Watch free on ABC iview: iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address
WHERE TO LISTEN? Listen: www.npcpodcast.org.au
Social licence for AUKUS lacking as Public Inquiry report and recommendations due
28 October 2026AIMN Editorial, https://theaimn.net/social-licence-for-aukus-lacking-as-public-inquiry-report-and-recommendations-due/
The Public Inquiry into AUKUS
Social licence for AUKUS lacking as Public Inquiry report and recommendations due
The Lead Commissioner of Australia’s independent, crowdfunded Public Inquiry into AUKUS has warned the Federal Government about growing community unease about the project, ahead of the release of the Inquiry’s report and recommendations next week in Canberra.
Lead Commissioner Peter Garrett said today that the Inquiry hearings showed successive Governments had comprehensively failed to make the case for the AUKUS submarine pact, and that the sheer scale and cost of the project meant it risked becoming a threat to social cohesion in Australia over time.
“In the absence of any social license for this deal I fear Australians struggling through the current cost-of-living crisis will come to see the AUKUS expenditure going to the US and the UK in a very poor light.
“People aren’t mugs. As well as helping fund overseas shipyard construction these submarines will generate high level nuclear waste, which remains Australia’s responsibility. Once people understand this highly dangerous material needs to be stored somewhere safely, at great expense and for a very long time, they are bound to seek answers that have simply not been provided through the AUKUS process.
“Where is the Government’s plan for this massive waste management undertaking? It would be negligent not to have a plan, but up to now the community has been kept in the dark.
“That is unsustainable.”
A substantial number of Australians – including a former Prime Minister, former Foreign Affairs and Defence Ministers, senior academics and military experts, community groups and citizens – have presented to the Inquiry across 10 day-long hearings in 8 cities around Australia since it launched in the middle of the year.
Nearly 10,000 people watched the proceedings, either attending in person or via the live-stream. Over 1,000 written submissions were received.
$220,000 was raised by crowdfunding, from individual donors and from civil society organisations, in order to hold the inquiry.
The Commissioners have now drafted a comprehensive report which will be presented at the National Press Club next Wednesday November 4.
Friends of the Earth Adelaide – Submission on Australian Radioactive Waste Management Framework
Philip White October 23, 2026
Friends of the Earth Adelaide has lodged a submission on the government’s new draft Australian Radioactive Waste Management Framework (ARWMF). The draft would update the current Framework, which was published in 2018.
The new draft ARWMF has some improvements compared to the existing Framework, notably a recognition that “the most effective way to manage radioactive waste is to avoid generating it”, an acknowledgement that “Australia’s nuclear history has significantly impacted Indigenous Australians”, and a reference to the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), including participation in decision-making and the objective of free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) for measures and projects that affect Indigenous peoples’ lands, territories, resources and culture.”
Our concern is that, in the absence of clear commitments to upholding these principles, these references may amount to little more than lip-service.
We made the following 10 recommendations:
1. A commitment should be made in the ARWMF to report regularly on what steps have been taken to avoid generating radioactive waste and what radioactive waste has thus been avoided.
2. The government should avoid generating unnecessary radioactive waste by cancelling the AUKUS project and not accepting waste from foreign owned nuclear-powered vessels visiting Australian ports and spent nuclear fuel generated by US Virginia class submarines.
3. ARWMF should explicitly exclude acceptance into Australia of foreign radioactive waste.
4. If the government does not cancel AUKUS, it should clearly inform the public what it plans to do with the radioactive waste.
5. The government should immediately drop its Federal Court appeal against Rex Patrick’s freedom of information win in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
6. The government should inform the public about the status of Defence Minister Marles’ promise that “there will be a process that we will determine within the next 12 months for how the [high-level radioactive waste] site will be identified”.
7. The ARWMF should include a specific commitment to honour and uphold the FPIC principles. It should also indicate how it intends to go about fulfilling that commitment.
8. The National Radioactive Waste Management Act 2012 should be amended to withdraw the over-rides of the Native Title Act 1993 and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and to mandate that UNDRIP and the FPIC principles are followed. The over-ride of State and Territory laws should also be removed.
9. Any involvement of the private sector should be made conditional on three key principles: (1) the polluter pays principle, (2) final responsibility rests with the government, regardless of who produced the waste, and (3) the highest level of transparency.
10. ARWMF should explicitly reject misleading or incrementalist approaches that seek to establish an initial foothold, then expand the scale and/or type of waste beyond what was initially proposed.
Click here to read the full submission.
Israelis mislead Royal Commission into Antisemitism
by Wendy Bacon | Oct 19, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/israelis-mislead-royal-commission-into-antisemitism/
investigates the Israel lobbyists, PR people and astroturfers behind the Combat Antisemitism Movement targeting local councils and the Royal Commission.
The Commonwealth and NSW governments are supporting a national local government conference organised by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), whose Israel-based CEO was head of the IDF’s social media unit.
The IDF is widely accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by international bodies such as the United Nations, human rights organisations, and legal investigators.
The key goal of CAM, which operates in 40 countries, is to enforce the IHRA definition of antisemitism across all fields and levels of government;
“a definition which restricts criticism of Israel.”
CAM’s global headquarters are in Kansas, with CEO Sacha Roytman running the show from Tel Aviv. Chairman of its Board of Advisors, Natan Sharansky, was Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.
In a submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Roytman accused this publication of attacks on the CAM Summit and its organisers, among other unsubstantiated claims and imputations of antisemitism.
The submission went on to claim that “the publications that attacked the event” did not contact CAM beforehand.
This is false. In line with standard journalistic procedure, MWM tried to contact CAM on multiple occasions and sent questions prior to publication of the story to its chief executive, Sacha Roytman, which received no response. Here are the questions:
MWM also tried to contact CAM organiser Justine Williams by LinkedIn and another organiser by phone on more than one occasion.
Further, we also endeavoured to contact chairman of the board of advisers, David Gonski, who is co-chairing this year’s conference. Having been directed to UNSW Media for a response, we sent questions to UNSW Media and UNSW Media did not respond.
The lead author of CAM’s submission to the Royal Commission is Sacha Roytman – a Belgian communications expert who made Aliyah to Israel in 2004.
The second author is Israeli Yigal Nissel, who is currently CAM’s executive director in Australia. In 2015, he was sent to Australia as an ’emissary’ for the Jewish National Fund (JNF Australia). He returned to Israel and has been working for the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Antisemitism’s Mosaic Project until he returned to Australia to work for CAM.
Planning for the last Australian CAM conference became public in January 2025 when the then Deputy CEO of CAM, Yigal Nissel, published a story, “From Paradise to Peril,” in the Jerusalem Post, stating,
“Thousands of [Australian] extremists, spanning the radical left, the far right, and parts of the Muslim community, seized on the conflict in the Middle East as a pretext to unleash their latent antisemitism.”
As reported here last year, Nissel, who was based in Israel, announced that a CAM conference of hundreds of Mayors would address the problem. Previously, Nissel was the Israeli ‘emissary’ to the Australian branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Envoy Jillian Segal to co-host
The conference will kick off with messages of support from the Commonwealth and NSW governments. The first speaker is Alex Ryvchin, Co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australia Jewry (ECAJ), who labelled thousands of Australians who marched for Palestine last weekend as “obsessive, extreme and hateful”.
The conference follows the initial CAM Local Mayors’ Summit held on the Gold Coast last September. This year’s event will be held in Sydney on November 26 and 27 at a location that has not been publicised.
It will be co-hosted by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal and delivered in partnership with Waverley Council.
This week Segal addressed a meeting of the global network of Special Envoys supported by the World Jewish Congress calling for the enforcement of her National Plan at an international legal. CAM is a “trusted US State Department partner” within the Special Envoy network.
Pro-Israel conference sponsors include ECAJ, the Dor Foundation and the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, which last week received a grant of $100,000 from the NSW government to contribute to the conference.
Sheina Gutnick, whose father died in the Bondi massacre, was appointed CAM’s public affairs officer in March and since then has been the public face of CAM. She told the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that she has been the victim of many antisemitic attacks since then.
Labor backing council campaign
Recently, she has been collecting supportive videos from Councillors and MPs, including the federal Minister for Local Government Kirsty McBain, who urged CAM to “take back Bondi”. McBain is not attending the conference.
Two Labor Mayors, the Inner West’s Darcy Byrne and Bayside’s Christina Curry, are speaking at the conference. Lord Mayor Clover Moore will not attend, which is scarcely surprising given that CAM organised a rally at which Moore was attacked as a terrorist sympathiser because she joined last year’s March for Humanity.
The City of Sydney told MWM that the Labor Deputy Mayor Ollie Arkins will attend. While it presents a bipartisan image, CAM is being driven, both internationally and in Australia, by some influential conservative Zionists with a right wing agenda.
The players behind CAM
CAM Australia claims that its activities are funded by its Australian partners but MWM has been unable to find any business name, company or charity which accounts for its finances. There is a Board of CAM Australia which is chaired by the hugely influential businessman David Gonski.
We sent questions to CAM including asking which entity the Board governed but got no acknowledgement or reply.
Gonski is close to Jillian Segal and heads the Special Envoy’s Education task-force. He was recruited to CAM by Yigal Nissel who was moved to CAM from his job at the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Antisemitism and sent to Australia to help organise CAM’s first conference. He was dispatched back to Australia this year to head CAM in Australia.
Alex Polson is CAM’s senior advisor. He was originally a national officer of the Australasian Union of Jewish students. After that for eight years he was an advisor to Liberal Ministers and MPs.
PRs, astroturfers and lobbyists
In early 2024, Polson established his boutique advisory and investment company DBK. DBK registered the name Better Councils and Polson was the key Liberal organiser of the major parties’ ‘Put the Greens’ Last’ astroturfing campaign for ‘Better Councils’, and its successor for the Federal election ‘Better Australia’. (ALP member Sophie Calland was the Labor end of Better Australia.)
Bipartisan Better Australia raised at least $1.3 million (with no donors disclosed) much of which must have been spent on its slick electoral materials. For this, Better Australia partnered with strategic communications company Agenda C.
Agenda C was established by strategist Carrington Brigham in 2019. Earlier, Brigham developed his skills working under Yaron Finkelstein at Crosby Textor, known for its role in conservative electoral wins in Australia and the United Kingdom.
Finkelstein was a founding member of NSW Liberal friends of Israel and played a powerful role in the Morrison government as the PM’s personal private secretary. After the Coalition defeat in 2024, Finkelstein worked for NSW Premier Dominic Perrotet and then founded Society Advisory Pty Ltd, which has been granted a $200,000 contract to advise Special Envoy Jillilan Segal until April 2027.
Trickery claims
Polson and Brigham worked together on the Better Australia campaign. Finkelstein attended a meeting where campaign materials and a detailed campaign strategy were discussed with Labor party members of Better Australia. Everyone listed as present was a committed pro-Israel Zionist – but the campaign messages were
‘Don’t be Tricked by Teals’ and ‘Put the Greens Last’.
Agenda C claimed its campaign successfully defended four major seats and won back another four.
Brigham celebrated when his friend Tim Wilson narrowly defeated Teal Zoe Daniel in Goldstein after his campaign branded her as untrustworthy.
With the success of Better Australia behind them, Alex Polson and his DBK consultancy again linked up with Brigham and Agenda C for the CAM’s first conference. Polson and Brigham both signed the media release for the conference, along with a PR person in the US.
Agenda C aimed to deliver a “fully integrated, multi-channel strategy that positioned the summit as a credible, necessary platform for national leadership.”
Agenda C and CAM continue to work together, partnering on exclusive polling for The Sunday Telegraph about levels of fear in Australia, which was featured in a piece promoting the CAM conference.
CAM’s political agenda
The 2026 conference program promotes CAM as being all about interfaith, inclusive and sharing cultural approaches. Everyone is expected to commit to goals in the final session.
There are no speakers from Jewish, Palestinian or other human rights organisations that favour broad anti-racism strategies and do not accept that anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism (unlike CAM).
CAM’s actual political agenda is clarified in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which was published on the Commission’s website in mid-September.
The CAM submission has four authors – the first is CEO Roytman and the second is CAM’s Australia CEO Nissel. Nowhere is it mentioned that Roytman is in Israel or that Nissel is on leave from an organisation that partners with the Israeli state. The other authors are Polson and Gutnick.
Despite their ‘grassroots’ talk, CAM’s agenda is a top down one.
CAM wants the Royal Commission to recommend training police to enforce IHRA as it is doing in several US states where CAM trains police in “evolving forms of antisemitism”.
It favours passing laws which prohibit posting online material viewed by CAM as antisemitic. It wants a National Local Government Partnership Against Antisemitism and for Social Cohesion, delivered through Australian Local Government Association LGAs built on CAM’s Action Plan’s four pillars.
Even by Zionist standards, CAM’s version of IHRA is wide. A symbols document that they distributed to conference attendees last year is attached to their submission. It takes in everyday symbols like ‘keffiyehs’ and ‘watermelons’ and a broad range of pro Palestinian slogans.
In the submission CAM attacks union and activist campaigners who wrote letters (including one to Darcy Byrne signed by 700 people) urging a boycott of last year’s conference.
They accuse them of intimidation, harassment and antisemitism – for example by referring to a Zionist Lobby or Israeli propaganda. It asks the Royal Commission to conclude that the albeit peaceful action of critics demonstrates the need for a Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
Peace protestors to blame
CAM blames peaceful protesters for costing them thousands of dollars and forcing them to bring in a counter-terrorism squad.
One of these protesters was Jewish anti-Zionist Veronica Sherman. Sherman told MWM that she was one of about five people who “travelled independently from around Australia to protest outside the conference …
“nothing about us could be described as intimidating.”
“Even the cops told me how surprised they were at how few protestors there were because they had been told there would be hundreds if not thousands. Which explained why there was such a heavy police presence. Including helicopters,” she said.
Protesting is a “basic Australian and democratic right. It’s important that Australians know that the Zionists don’t represent all Jews which is one of the reasons I flew up to hold a banner peacefully outside the venue”.
Pressure and complaints
Recently Polson exercised his democratic right to write on behalf of CAM to the organiser of an event at the University of Tasmania at which Nick Hanna, co-founder of the Civil Defence Legal Centre and lawyer at Hanna Legal was delivering the keynote address.
CAM claimed that Hanna had produced an antisemitic video and asked the University to reconsider its invitation. The University rejected CAM’s argument and said the event would go ahead. Hobart Synagogue, which is supporting the CAM conference, then wrote a letter complaining that while Hanna sounds ‘calm and reasonable’ he is ‘extremely dangerous’ for its Jewish community.
In releasing his video about this behind the scenes pressure, Hanna says it showed that people can resist pressure and win.
Polson has high hopes for the November conference, hoping that it will “scale a national movement already underway”.
But MWM hears applications to attend the conference, which this year costs $600 without accommodation, are slow – and a new campaign to discourage councillors from attending has just begun.
Detailed questions for this story were put to CAM, Polson and Waverley Council but we received no reply or acknowledgement.
Wendy Bacon
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Monazite – From Brazil to Chicago, Utah, and Nevada / The Brazil–Chicago–Utah–Nevada Connection
20.10.26 – Rio de Janeiro – Pressenza New York, https://www.pressenza.com/2026/10/from-brazil-to-chicago-utah-and-nevada-the-brazil-chicago-utah-nevada-connection/
Monazite sand mining and processing for the production of rare-earth minerals is a risky business and can contaminate people and environment with radioactive thorium, uranium and their decay products. All that was not known in the 19th century when the first Monazite mining boom happened at the coast of Brazil. Now the region and its indigenous peoples are facing the third rush for its thorium and rare earth elements containing sands.
One of the mining companies responsible for that is Energy Fuels Inc. Already in 2023 the U.S.-based critical minerals company acquired about 15,000 hectares at the coast of Southern Bahia, encompassing the municipalities of Alcobaça, Caravelas, and Prado. „The Bahia Project is an initiative that transcends traditional mining, playing a vital role in advancing the global energy transition. Specializing in the extraction of strategic minerals essential for the manufacture of clean technologies, the project strategically positions itself at the forefront of efforts towards a globally less fossil fuel-dependent economy“, writes Energy Fuels.
The company intends to mine between 3,000 and 10,000 tons of monazite sand per year that will be shipped to the US and processed at its White Mesa Uranium Mill in Utah, approximately five miles north of the White Mesa Reservation, home to the Ute Mountain Ute people. The operation is planned to start in 2028, when the expansion of its White Mesa Mill is completed.
However, for decades the Ute demand the closure of the mill, citing significant threats to Indigenous health, sacred lands, water, cultural heritage, and public health…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
The US Environmental protection Agency (EPA) first discovered thorium contamination at Lindsay Light’s Illinois Street location in 1993. Since then, further investigations found soil contamination at more than a dozen locations in the Streeterville neighborhood and additional locations on the south side of the Chicago River. Prolonged or high levels of radiation exposure can damage genetic material in cells and cause cancer and other diseases later on, especially for children, who are more sensitive to radiation. The EPA estimated that, before the waste was removed, radiation levels in some residential neighborhoods in West Chicago increased lifetime cancer risks up to 70 times.
To date, cleanups have been completed at more than a dozen properties. More than 55,000 cubic yards of thorium-contaminated materials have been removed and shipped to Utah. „Several properties known to have contamination remain to be cleaned up“, writes EPA on its website, last updated on March 10, 2026. „EPA’s cleanup at the Lindsay Light site is ongoing. „Because of the long-lived nature of thorium contamination, the need to know that these areas are safe for workers will continue far into the future.“
Norbert G. Suchanek — Journalist, author, photographer, and documentary filmmaker; co-founder of the International Uranium Film Festival, which since 2010 has organized more than 60 festivals across seven countries, bringing nuclear and uranium-related issues to public audiences worldwide.
Nuclear Kills Kids – by Tony Webb
To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition proposes to build if elected to government, nuclear kills kids.
Tony Webb,, April 2025, https://www.fabians.org.au/nuclear_kills_kids
One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory. I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union. The purpose was to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant. The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit. The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit. The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed. I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts. As I recall them the essence was:
“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow. I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . . It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and I have had all the family we want. If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “
It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment. What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.
We now have solid evidence(1) that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects. There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations. But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.
To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition proposes to build if elected to government, nuclear kills kids. It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future; these nuclear power plants will likely kill kids who live close by. They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results.
Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men; that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community; that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history. And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.
All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path. But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids.
Dr Tony Webb is a Fabian and a long-time community and environmental activist. He has worked on housing, unemployment, worker cooperatives, anti-nuclear, radiation and health, food policy, and energy/climate issues in the UK USA Canada and Australia. Along the way he picked up an MSc in Energy Resources Management and a PhD in Humanities.
(1) SOURCES……………………………………………………………….
The World is Not Trump’s Playground: Has the International Community Finally had Enough?
Australian Independent Media, 17 October 2026Michael Taylor
When the President of the United States mistakes global leadership for personal entitlement, the rest of the world eventually discovers that it has options.
There comes a point in every relationship when the other party stops making excuses for your behaviour.
You can forgive the occasional tantrum. You can overlook a misplaced insult, an unreasonable demand or even the odd diplomatic incident. You might tolerate somebody who thinks rather highly of themselves, provided they occasionally remember that other people exist.
But eventually, patience runs out.
Welcome to international relations in the age of Donald Trump.
The President of the United States appears to regard diplomacy as a peculiar game in which he makes the rules, changes them whenever circumstances become inconvenient, and declares victory regardless of the outcome. Allies are expected to demonstrate their loyalty through obedience. Adversaries are expected to surrender when threatened. International institutions are useful when they serve American interests and troublesome when they don’t.
And anyone who disagrees risks becoming the next target of a presidential outburst.
It is an extraordinary way to conduct relations between nations. It is also becoming increasingly expensive.
The world’s most powerful schoolyard bully?
Let’s be clear about something. The United States is entitled to pursue its national interests. Every sovereign country is. American presidents are elected to represent American citizens, not to spend their days worrying about whether foreign leaders find them agreeable.
But there is a considerable difference between defending national interests and behaving as though the interests of every other country are somehow subordinate to your own.
Trump’s approach appears to confuse the two.
Tariffs become instruments of punishment. Military alliances become opportunities to demand tribute. Trade agreements become personal victories. Diplomatic disagreements become public feuds.
And the demands keep coming.
At NATO’s July 2026 summit in Ankara, Trump attacked several European allies over their positions on the war with Iran, threatened to halt trade with Spain and renewed his controversial claims concerning Greenland. The summit subsequently produced declarations of unity, but the public disagreements demonstrated just how difficult it has become for America’s partners to anticipate Washington’s next move.
Imagine running an international alliance on the principle that everyone must demonstrate their friendship by agreeing with you, while reserving the right to punish them if they don’t.
That isn’t a partnership. It’s a protection racket with considerably better stationery.
NATO members have legitimate disagreements about defence spending, military commitments and national priorities. Those disagreements are precisely why alliances require negotiation, established procedures and mutual respect.
The purpose of an alliance is not to eliminate differences of opinion. It is to enable countries to cooperate despite them.
Apparently, somebody forgot to explain that to the President.
Friendship is not a subscription service
One of the great ironies of Trump’s approach is that he seems to regard American power as an unlimited personal resource.
He can threaten tariffs against allies, question their commitment to collective defence, demand concessions and then expect them to turn up smiling at the next summit.
But international relationships do not work like a subscription service. Countries cannot be charged an additional fee every time the American president becomes dissatisfied with their behaviour.
Nor can decades of diplomatic cooperation simply be switched on and off according to the mood of the occupant of the White House.
Consider the implications for Australia.
Our alliance with the United States has been central to Australian defence and strategic planning for generations. It involves intelligence cooperation, military coordination, technology sharing and the (unpopular and finance-draining) AUKUS partnership.
These arrangements matter. They cannot be dismissed lightly, and Australia has good reasons to maintain a close relationship with Washington.
But an alliance is only as dependable as the trust underpinning it.
If an American president can threaten one ally today, impose economic penalties on another tomorrow and question established commitments the following week, Australian governments must ask an uncomfortable question.
What happens when our interests diverge from his?
Australia cannot simply assume that friendship, history and military cooperation will guarantee predictable American support under every conceivable circumstance.
That does not mean abandoning the alliance. It means approaching it with open eyes.
A sensible government maintains its relationships while ensuring that the country’s security does not depend entirely on the goodwill of one foreign leader.
That is not disloyalty. It is responsible government.
The curious case of the disappearing trust…………………………………………………….
International law is not an inconvenience
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of Trump’s approach is his relationship with the international institutions designed to restrain the arbitrary exercise of power.
On 9 October 2026, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, prompting criticism from the Court, United Nations officials, European institutions and several allied governments. The dispute raised further concerns about the independence of international justice and the willingness of powerful countries to accept legal scrutiny.
One need not agree with every decision made by an international court to recognise the importance of judicial independence………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Ukraine: another lesson in uncertainty
Ukraine offers another example of the difficulties created when diplomatic signals become unpredictable.
For European governments, the war is not an abstract negotiating exercise. It concerns the security of the continent, the future of European borders and the consequences of allowing military aggression to succeed.
Yet Trump’s shifting approach to American support for Ukraine has repeatedly forced European allies to consider how much they can rely on Washington………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://theaimn.net/the-world-is-not-trumps-playground-has-the-international-community-finally-had-enough/
All energy costs rise but small nuclear most reactive
29 July 2025, Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, Australian Associated Press, https://australian.museum/aap/all-energy-costs-rise-but-small-nuclear-most-reactive-1/
Next-generation nuclear reactors are the most expensive of all energy-producing technologies, a report has found, and would significantly increase electricity prices in Australia.
Establishing a large-scale nuclear power plant for the first time would also require more than double the typical costs, and estimates for wind projects had inflated by four per cent due to unforeseen requirements.
The CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, released its GenCost report on Tuesday, revealing rising construction and finance costs would push up prices for energy projects of all kinds in the coming years.
The findings come after a heated debate about introducing nuclear power to Australia and after members of the federal coalition questioned the nation’s reliance on renewable energy projects to achieve net zero by 2050.
The final GenCost report for 2024-2025 analysed the cost of several energy-generating technologies, including variations of coal, gas, nuclear, solar and wind projects.
Renewable technology continued to provide the cheapest energy generation, the report’s lead author and CSIRO chief energy economist Paul Graham said.
“We’re still finding that solar PV and wind with firming is the lowest-cost, new build low-emission technology,” he told AAP.
“In second place is gas with (carbon capture storage) … then large-scale nuclear, black coal with CCS, then the small modular reactors.”
Small modular nuclear reactors proved the most expensive technology of the eight options by a large margin, with the report basing its costs on Canada’s Darlington nuclear project, announced in May.
The 1200-megawatt development is estimated to cost $23.2 billion and will be the first commercial small modular reactor built in a Western country.
The new reactors produce one-third the power of typical nuclear reactors and can be built on sites not suitable for larger plants, but have only been built in China and Russia.
“This is a big deal for Canada – it’s their first nuclear build in 30 years,” Mr Graham said.
“It’s not just about meeting electricity demand … they’ve said a few things that indicate they’re trying to build a nuclear SMR industry and export the technology.”
In addition to the cost of different technologies, the report estimated “premiums” for establishing first-of-a-kind energy projects, with the first large-scale nuclear project expected to command 120 per cent more and the first offshore wind development expected to cost an extra 63 per cent.
The cost of wind projects also grew by four per cent as researchers factored in building work camps to accommodate remote employees, and capital financing costs rose by one per cent.
Developing energy projects was also expected to cost between six and 20 per cent more by 2050, the report found, due to the rising price of materials such as cement and wages, as detailed in a report by Oxford Economics Australia.
Findings from the CSIRO report would help inform the design of future energy infrastructure, Australian Energy Market Operator system design executive general manager Merryn York said.
“We’ll use the capital costs for generation and storage from GenCost in the upcoming Draft Integrated System Plan in December,” she said.
Nuclear technology is banned as an energy source in Australia, which has a target of achieving 82 per cent renewable energy in the national grid by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.
Nuclear needs to build up to 8,000 SMRs just to catch up with wind and solar. By 2035, they might have 5
Giles Parkinson, ReNewEconomy, May 27, 2026
Australia’s almost indistinguishable far right political parties – the Liberals, Nationals and One Nation – are pushing the nuclear barrow once again, not for climate reasons but because of the “anything but wind and solar” ideology demanded by their fossil-fuelled benefactors.
So it came as a timely reminder on Wednesday, when one of the world’s leading green energy analysts, Michael Liebreich, underlined just how useless nuclear energy is for dealing with climate change, and how far the small nuclear reactors championed by many are from competing with surging wind and solar.
Liebreich is the founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance and his address to the Energy Efficiency Council’s National Conference also touched on the perils of net zero targets (because it puts the focus on what’s really hard rather than what’s readily achievable), and the overwhelming push for electrification for “just about everything.”
But it was the nuclear hype that he was also keen to puncture, if only to underline the sheer scale and dominance of wind and solar, and its rapidly growing share of “useable” energy, as opposed to “primary energy” that ignores the massive inefficiencies of fossil fuels.
SMR are still not being built but they are championed by some of the world’s richest people, the AI and social media “tech bros” who are looking for ample energy sources to power their massive data centre needs (while contracting tens of gigawatts of wind and solar in the meantime).
“They (the tech bros) love nuclear, and they’re going to be very angry when they discover what everybody discovers, which is nuclear is kind of expensive and long and complicated,” Liebreich said.
“But even if they succeed, it’s not going to be a climate solution,” he said. And the reason is that simply to match the output of wind and solar in the 2024 calendar year, the industry would need 1,250 of the 470 MW SMRs that are being developed by Rolls Royce, or up to 8,000 of the much smaller SMRs pushed by the likes of Oklo.
“If they build five by 2035 that will be a big win,” Liebreich said. “And so, as a climate solution, by the time you did build 2000 Westinghouse SMRs, where do you think wind and solar is going to be?
“It’s obviously going to have grown. That green curve is not stopping, it is taking off, and you can see it’s taking off even in the countries that are really trying to build nuclear.”
The nuclear push is usually associated in Australia by calls to abandon net zero targets, with the main argument being – without evidence – that it is trashing the economy.
Net zero has been criticised by others supportive of strong action. Andrew Forrest, aiming for real zero at Fortescue’s giant iron ore mines by 2030, says net zero is an excuse to do not much and use offsets instead of cutting emissions, others say a 2050 target is used by an excuse to do not much anytime soon.
Liebreich’s criticism is that it makes everything sound too hard. “By focusing on zero, immediately your eye is drawn to doing the difficult bits, and the difficult bits are expensive, and we just don’t have to have those discussions right now…………………………………. https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-needs-to-build-up-to-8000-smrs-just-to-catch-up-with-wind-and-solar-now-by-2035-they-might-have-5/
Nuclear brawl erupts over powering Australia’s AI data boom
Ronald Mizen, Financial Review, Aug 25, 2026
A political fight has broken out over using small modular nuclear reactors to meet the soaring electricity demand from data centres, and new research shows that using renewable power could make Australia a regional hub for low-carbon computing power capacity.
On Monday, Coalition frontbencher Jonno Duniam said using SMRs to power data centres should be part of the conversation, and the government should end the moratorium on nuclear power.
Duniam is leading a push within the Coalition to land a largely bipartisan position on artificial intelligence.
Last week, he was appointed deputy chairman of a bipartisan committee on AI and recently travelled to the United States where he held talks with major AI and data centre companies.
“It was clear to me when talking with representatives of major AI and data centre operatives that, if the moratorium was not in place, these companies would be seriously looking to nuclear SMRs to power their operations and not drive up prices,” he told The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday.
The fresh brawl over nuclear power comes ahead of a meeting of the national cabinet on Wednesday during which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will seek support from premiers and chief ministers for his AI agenda.
The Albanese government wants to force the owners of next-generation, large-scale data centres – those that train and power artificial intelligence agents – to use renewable electricity, and to add more power to the grid than they consume.
This proposal is opposed by Coalition governments in the Northern Territory and Queensland, which want an energy-agnostic policy, including allowing gas.
Grattan Institute energy program director Tony Wood said that despite having as many SMRs today as there are unicorns, Australia needed a plan B to get its electricity emissions to zero.
“It could be [viable],” Wood said of using SMRs. If the technology is viable, it should be part of the energy mix, he said.
Industry Minister Tim Ayres labelled the idea “an ideological fantasy” and said “nobody in the real world with real money” was talking about nuclear power. Energy Minister Chris Bowen said he was opposed based on “cost and delay”, not safety.
“I’m not aware of any proposals to do that in Australia,” Bowen said.
But the AI sector, in Australia and overseas, is keeping a close eye on the development of SMRs, which some believe could power data centres in as little as three to five years.
In late 2024, Google signed a world-first agreement to purchase up to 500 MW of nuclear energy for its data centres from Kairos Power in the US. The first SMR is scheduled to be online in 2030, and the rest are targeted for 2035.
Local industry sources are reluctant to speak publicly on the topic, given how politically charged it is.
A report commissioned by Data Centres Australia from economic consultancy Mandala, being released on Wednesday, shows Australia could become a big exporter of green computing power capacity to the Asia-Pacific region because emissions from hosting this locally are far less than in other countries…………………..https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/nuclear-brawl-erupts-over-powering-australia-s-ai-data-boom-20260825-p60rce
Work begins on Coulport building for Dreadnought submarines a cost of £7.75bn each
15th October, https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/26637101.work-begins-coulport-building-dreadnought-submarines/
Built at a cost of £7.75bn per unit, four Dreadnought submarines will replace the current Vanguard ships
Work has started on a building which will arm the Royal Navy’s new multi-billion-pound nuclear submarines.
Naval Base Commander Clyde and Commodore Andy Bray recently broke ground on a new facility at Royal Naval Armament Depot (RNAD) Coulport to support future classes of Royal Navy submarines.
Building 300 at the Royal Naval Armament Depot will house the Vertical Embarkation System, or VES, a new facility used to load tactical weapons onto future Dreadnought-class deterrent submarines.
The House of Commons approved replacing the current submarines in 2016, despite opposition from anti-nuclear groups and campaigners concerned about the cost.
Built at a cost of £7.75bn per unit, four Dreadnought submarines will replace the current Vanguard ships, which constantly patrol the seas carrying ballistic missiles equipped with thermonuclear warheads.
2026 George Monbiot Nuclear Greenwash Award goes to the UK Green Party for Abandoning Nuclear Opposition
Image: The George Monbiot Nuclear Greenwash 2026 Award to The Green Party for Abandoning Nuclear Opposition. George Monbiot’s famous “I love nuclear” in the wake of the Fukushima disaster deflected an otherwise inevitable crisis of nuclear confidence and was of course key to the push for the building of the first new nuclear plant in the UK in decades at Hinkley C which he now says (after facilitating the damn thing) should be scrapped in favour of, even more dangerous. fast breeder reactors,
Lakes Against Nuclear Dump, Oct 12, 2026, https://lakesagainstnucleardump.com/2026/10/12/2026-george-monbiot-nuclear-greenwash-award-goes-to-the-green-party-for-abandoning-nuclear-opposition/
Just days before the 69th anniversary of the UKs worst nuclear accident to date , the Windscale Fire, the Green Party announced their abandonment of their opposition to nuclear, and with it their reason for being. The Green Party used to call the nuclear industry the “nuclear military industrial complex” for good reason, the “civil” nuclear industry is necessary in order to produce elements for military use, including plutonium, tritium and americium.
Here in Cumbria we won’t notice much difference as the Green Party have spectacularly failed to publicly voice strong opposition or lead any charges against nuclear developments for many years with Green Party members seemingly much more concerned with the horrible nitty gritty of political advancement than protecting the health and wellbeing of the public and our environment from nuclear developments.
Having said that we wait more in hope than expectation to be surprised and delighted by vigorous, strong and principled Cumbrian Green Party opposition to the tsunami of nuclear developments coming our way.
It has not gone unnoticed that despite there being more Green councillors than ever before on Cumberland council, the Council as a whole is like never before, acting as a facilitating arm of the nuclear industry. Cumberland council and its Green Party members are partners in the geological nuclear dump plan and partners in the plan to bring Japanese sodium coolant to Cumbria amongst other things.
Bizarrely the Green Party in Cumbria even had to be persuaded long and hard by Radiation Free Lakeland to oppose the earth quake inducing coal mine near Sellafield with the Green Party’s candidate, in the 2017 Whitehaven hustings Jack Lenox actually saying he was “a big fan of coking coal” this despite its close proximity to Sellafield. The coal mine was finally refused largely on the grounds of induced seismicity.
Professor Chris Busby has this to say: “the Green Party began as an anti-nuclear party in Germany, with Petra Kelly. When I chained myself to the gates of Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station in Wales in 1992, Petra Kelly had agreed to come and support our campaign against opening the nuclear site, which was dangerous. The station operators had applied to run the reactors at a high temperature to anneal the cracks in the pressure vessel. This was not long after the experiment at Chernobyl. And the contamination of Wales by Chernobyl (which led to sharp increases in cancer and child leukemia)…..The nuclear police had pistols and we were told they would shoot us. Petra Kelly was assassinated a few months after this. How can I say this? How do I know? Well, of course I don’t know and cannot be sure. But here is something you don’t know about this. The story now widely accepted (look at Wikipedia) is that her man, General Gert Bastiaan killed her.
The police determined that Kelly was shot dead while sleeping by Bastian, who then died of suicide.
Well and Good. But I spoke with Prof Ernest Sternglass about this. He knew both of them, and said it was impossible that Bastiaan would have killed her and himself. They were full of positive energy and life, when he met them in Berlin some 6 weeks before she died. She was very excited. She had received an offer of considerable financial support by German TV to make a series of documentaries with Russian and Belarussian scientists including Dr. Shevchenko, to report on the real health effects of the Chernobyl accident contamination. At the time, the nuclear operators and their tame scientists in the IAEA and the WHO were stating that there were no measurable health effects. It was the same at Fukushima some twenty years later. But back in those days they killed you, rather than using media to destroy your credibility.”
“No economic case:” Global experts say nuclear has role in some countries, but makes no sense in Australia
Giles Parkinson, Oct 12, 2026, https://reneweconomy.com.au/no-economic-case-global-experts-say-nuclear-has-role-in-some-countries-but-makes-no-sense-in-australia/
As Australia’s ultra conservative political parties embark on a headlong race towards nuclear and away from renewables, a major new report by global experts says nuclear has a role in some countries, but makes no sense and will only cause delays and increased costs in Australia.
The new report from the Energy Transitions Commission, a think-tank comprising dozens of energy experts around the world, including those in the nuclear industry, says nuclear capacity could double over the next three decades or so, but it will stay play a relatively minor role in the overall transition away from fossil fuels.
And, they point out in the report – “The Role of Nuclear in the Energy Transition: Complementary but Limited” – it will only make sense in a few countries – a situation the report suggests will not be greatly changed by the hype and interest generated by AI and the push for massive energy-hungry data centres around the world.
For countries like Australia, rich in lower cost renewable resources like wind and solar, the report says nuclear makes no economic sense at all, and trying to build a system around them will simply lead to delays and increased costs.
“In these countries, which include most of Africa, and much of Latin America and Australia, renewables (particularly solar) and batteries will provide the fastest and cheapest option for scaling electricity supply at suitable increments to align with financing availability and system needs,” the report says.
“In these markets, investing in nuclear concentrates scarce capital in a small number of centralised projects, committed roughly a decade before operations, during which the power system could change substantially.
“Developing nuclear would deliver no total system cost benefit, and would require a reliance on foreign nuclear supply chains, which would reduce energy security. Pursuing nuclear programmes in these countries would divert resources from cheaper alternatives, and nuclear shares should remain close to 0%.”
These conclusions, of course, are well understood by the energy industry in Australia, from the Australian Energy Market Operator, the CSIRO, policy makers and regulators, the network operators, the renewables industry and the major utilities who currently burn coal and gas for a living.
But the global fossil fuel and climate denial industry still has its tentacles around the conservative parties in Australia – particularly One Nation and its less popular sidekicks in the Liberals and Nationals – all of whom are determined to slow or even stop the renewable transition in Australia, legalise nuclear and have the government invest countless billions into the tech.
The Energy Transitions Commission highlights the folly of such an approach, and the report would make sobering reading for those politicians, assuming they would be bothered to read it.
Like the World Nuclear Status report released more than a week ago, it punctures a major hole in the nuclear hype, including the assumption that small modular reactors (SMR) will somehow change the game.
- “Small modular reactors remain 1-2 decades away from wide deployment, despite attracting large investment and political attention amid surging AI-driven power demand,” the report notes.
“Early US cost estimates range from ~$US140–$US270 per MWh, well above the large reactor cost range of $US40–$US190 per MWh. Similar reactor designs can cost 4–9 times more to build in the US and Europe than in China and South Korea – financing costs are key factor.”
The report also notes that depending on nuclear power would intensify supply chain risks, rather than easing them. Russia, it notes, controls 40% of global uranium enrichment capacity in 2025, and key nuclear equipment manufacturing is concentrated in just six countries.
“Nuclear supply chain concentration poses the greatest risk, rather than safety and waste management,” the report says.
The report looks at the recent commitment to treble nuclear capacity across the globe by 2050 to around 1,500 gigawatts of capacity. This it says, would require around 500 GW of nuclear extensions (although that itself might be too optimistic), and it struggles to see how 1,000 GW of new capacity could be built.
It says that would require a six-fold increase in contraction compared to recent years. And even if it was delivered, it wouldn’t reduce the need for new wind and solar, which would still have to be built at a rate of 1,500 GW each year, rather than over the next 25 years.
“While this contribution to the energy transition is useful in targeted countries, even this scale of nuclear buildout would be dwarfed by the required scale of investment in renewables to transition to low-carbon energy systems,” the report says.
“An investment of $200 billion per year in new nuclear build is likely to be less than 10% of the $2,200 billion per year needed in renewables, grids and storage.”
The report is at pains to note that nuclear technology may make sense in some countries, those with limited renewable resources and also those with billions already invested in the nuclear industry, including those with nuclear weapons.
More importantly, nuclear’s system value is highest where land is scarce and solar and windresources are weakest
1 This month
4 November – Will AUKUS keep us safe – at what cost?
the Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry present their findings at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra. iview.abc.net.au/show/national-press-club-address
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
