This week in Australian news.
Australian news -week to 27 June 2026 :
- Macdonald Witch Hunt. Melbourne Uni cancels cardiologist – Israel lobby pressure
- How the Iran War Fuel Crisis Is Reshaping the Pacific
- Friends of the Earth Adelaide has made a submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry.
- Underestimating the potential impacts of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities
- AUKUS has a big waste issue – and not only money.
- Montebello nuclear test 70 years on: Australia still in the dark over UK mega-bomb.
- Australia’s coal and gas exports violate our human rights, group says in new UN case.
- AUKUS and democracy: why both matter.
We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres
What is certain, though, is that the land cannot withstand these centres’ immense demand for water. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.
In 1993, she squeezed a $333m settlement from a Californian energy company in a scandal over contaminated water. Three decades later, she has a new target in her sights – and it’s global
Guardian, Mon 29 Jun 2026
When Erin Brockovich woke to find 30 emails from people from the same town, she realised something was going on. People email Brockovich all the time because of what happened in 1993, when she was instrumental in suing Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) on behalf of residents of the town of Hinkley, California, whose groundwater had been contaminated. The case resulted in a settlement of $333m – then the largest ever payout for a direct-action lawsuit. When she was immortalised by Julia Roberts in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, she became the hero we didn’t know we needed, a modern day Joan of Arc. She had won against PG&E with no formal legal training.
The emails she received a few weeks ago were about datacentres. In April, she put a callout on her website asking for anyone with concerns about one near them to get in touch. Within a month, 3,862 people had replied. Tech companies have needed datacentres to power their technology “for ever”, she says, but the new ones being built to power AI? “This feels like Hinkley on steroids.”
This isn’t a story about AI, she says. “That genie is out of the bottle: it’s here, it’s an effective tool, you can use it or not,” Brockovich says matter-of-factly. This is about the massive structures being built to house the vast computing facilities AI requires. These datacentres, she says, stretch over “hundreds and hundreds of acres”. In May, Utah gave approval to a centre twice the size of Manhattan.
Some of the emails Brockovich gets from people near datacentres express genuine bafflement: “Why did I not know about this? How did this construction just start? Why am I now getting a notice from the city council that this has already passed when I didn’t even have a voice in it?” Others reflect concerns about the impact of the centres: “What about our resources? What’s happening to the water? Who’s paying for all this energy and am I going to foot that bill? What will the future impact on health be from these monstrosities? What’s going to happen to the wildlife?”
From the emails, Brockovich built a map of significant AI datacentres in the US that are either operational or under construction, overlaid with locations where community members have emailed in concerns. This open-source document is chilling: as of 24 June, 33 AI datacenters have been completed and are operational, 68 are under construction and 41 are proposed. And there had been 7,005 reports submitted through the online form, which is to say, all that is known about them is what people have seen. As a post on her Substack blog is headlined: “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?”
“It’s happening in every US state, multiple counties, rural areas, ranches, farms and neighbourhoods. People watch nature because they respect it, they need it. And they’re watching it being destroyed,” says Brockovich. She has heard from people saying: “I’m concerned this is where the bald eagles nest,” “I’m watching wildlife disappear,” “I’m seeing dead animals.” Some communities learn about a centre months after it has been approved; others don’t hear anything about them and watch as a vast building emerges.
What is certain, though, is that the land cannot withstand these centres’ immense demand for water. According to analysis by the Guardian, two-thirds of planned datacentres in the US are in drought-stricken areas. The larger centres need up to 5m gallons of water a day for cooling, equivalent to the average usage of 50,000 people. It is unclear what the plan is and whose needs will take priority between AI, agriculture and everyone else.
“People are reporting bill spikes,” Brockovich says, reading an email from someone who says their monthly water bill went from $22 (£17) to more than $350 (£265). The threat of these centres is about more than money – it feels existential. “How will the water use disrupt the balance of nature? People are asking: “What will happen to us?”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..After Hinkley, she worked on other environmental pollution cases against PG&E related to hexavalent chromium, the chemical that contaminated Hinkley’s water. More recently, she has focused on Pfas (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), “forever chemicals” that are a component in firefighting foam used heavily on US military bases. Pfas have been linked to health problems, including fertility issues and some cancers. In 2017, communities living near military bases reported worrying levels of these chemicals in their drinking water.
Brockovich’s renown is plainly the reason people email her when they have concerns. This is what led her to north-west Georgia last year, where staggeringly high levels of Pfas were found in the water and the wider environment. It was believed that they came from carpet factories that used stain-resistant chemicals. The major carpet factories say they complied with all regulations and no longer use Pfas. She is still supporting people there with their campaigns.
Unlike toxic chemicals leaking into water, nothing about datacentres is discreet. Signs that might be subtle one day – an absence of birdsong – the next day will be a centre up and running at full volume. “It really becomes about the noise, the decibels,” Brockovich says. People will write to her and say: “We’re going insane 24/7,” “It’s got to stop,” “It’s humming, it’s hissing, it’s buzzing.” She says: “It’s generators. It’s increased electric bills. It’s power surges.”
These structures are appearing without the consultation you would need to erect a new sports hall, as if people won’t notice. But people certainly will notice, because the buildings are vast. It feels like a step into post-democracy, which is a tech bro fantasy, a world in which laws and regulations have been obviated. The big tech companies seem to have blueprinted their fantasy and started building it.
Alternatives are now being mooted. “People are talking about putting them at the bottom of the ocean,” says Brockovich. “They’re talking about having barges and putting the datacentres there, using waves as the energy in cooler climates. Elon Musk wants to put them in space.” But with innumerable Earth-based datacentres already built or in the works, this feels like puff – the future you could have had, had you not sleepwalked into the one that has arrived.
For Brockovich, this is all a distraction. The first thing she wants is a case-by-case moratorium on approving datacentres. ( (She is collating these cases through her open-source mapping site and says councils vary in the action they are prepared to take, according to how surprised by, or receptive to, local complaints their officials are. Many states are only now stopping to consider whether there should be state-level regulation and oversight of datacentres – and, if so, what implications that would have for local decision-making and autonomy.
This takes time. Seventy-nine municipalities in the US have so far have issued moratoriums, many immediately being hit with lawsuits for breaking their original deal. Pauses have been introduced in Georgia, Maryland, Michigan and South Carolina – one introduced in Maine was then vetoed – but these are early interventions against tech behemoths.
When I ask Brockovich about the political climate – a president committed to AI and blatantly dismissive of environmental concerns – she is careful to stress that opposition to datacentres is bipartisan. She knows from her work fighting Pfas, though, that a change in administration can make an enormous difference to the success of these campaigns. In the final days of Joe Biden’s presidency, a clean-up operation was announced by the Pentagon. However, this plan has quietly been delayed by Donald Trump’s Department of Defense: in some areas, it won’t start until 2039.
Yet the nature of Brockovich’s campaigning is not to go straight to the top and demand policy change, but rather to build lawsuits from the ground up. Victory, to her, is won by way of a pragmatic to-do list. To start, she would go to local government and say: “I’d like to see an environmental-impact report. I’d like to see how you propose to power all this. Are you going to build your own power? Are you relying on our already strained resources?” She says: “Let’s get that information first and then have a town hall meeting where the people can be a voice in it.” She has a degree of confidence that the law still has teeth. “Lawsuits aren’t settling for $333m any more; they’re settling for billions,” she says.
Brockovich’s datacentre work goes beyond the US; she has been contacted by people in Australia, India, Scotland and Ireland. There is already a moratorium on any more datacentres in Dublin; even by 2023, such centres were accounting for a fifth of Ireland’s electricity usage. “This is a planetary thing,” she says. “It’s overwhelming. We have to have some courage to show up, and it’s difficult to do that when you’re up against forces that have all the money and all the intelligence and all the bandwidth in the world.” She, meanwhile, is “getting too old for this, by the way. I’m in my legacy phase. I have six grandchildren.”
She is smiling. All that may be true, but even if this is her final campaign, she won’t walk away until it’s over. She can beat this – she just can’t beat it on her own. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/29/were-up-against-forces-that-have-all-the-money-in-the-world-erin-brockovich-on-her-battle-against-ai-datacentres
Macdonald Witch Hunt. Melbourne Uni cancels cardiologist – Israel lobby pressure
by Wendy Bacon | Jun 27, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/witch-hunt-melbourne-uni-cancels-surgeon-israel-lobby-pressure/
The University of Melbourne has cancelled a prestigious lecture by eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald after Zionist pressure. Wendy Bacon reports.
Eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald, who was scheduled to give a prestigious lecture at University of Melbourne in July, has been ‘cancelled’ due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Zionists.
In April, Macdonald, who is a pioneer and innovator in heart transplant medicine, was invited by University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital to deliver the annual Memorial lecture in honour of surgeon John Clarebrough.
The lecture is delivered at the Surgical Forum, which is the premier event for the partnership between University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Second time cancelled
This is the second occasion on which Macdonald, who supports Palestinian rights and has attended rallies, has been cancelled due to pressure from Zionists.
Last year, he was on forced leave from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for seven weeks before the complaint against him by doctors associated with the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance ( AZHA) was dismissed following an independent investigation.
Macdonald was contacted but declined to comment for this story.
In early May, a Melbourne University staff member posted a promotion for the Surgical Forum on Facebook, where Macdonald’s name remained on the program until yesterday, when it was removed and replaced with St Vincent’s surgeon Dr Elizabeth Paretz.
A promotional brochure was produced and remains in circulation.
“Unnamed accusers” – invite withdrawn”
On June 12, more than a month after the lecture was first promoted, University of Melbourne Acting Head of Surgery Professor Justin Yeung and St Vincent’s surgeon and Adjunct Professor Matthew Read, who chairs the Surgical Forum, sent a letter withdrawing the invitation.
“concerns” were raised regarding remarks“
They informed Macdonald that “concerns” were raised regarding remarks attributed to you that have been “widely interpreted as antisemitic”.
After “careful” consideration, the organisers had come to the conclusion that the remarks could distract from the forum event. This suggests that those who made the decision understood that if they did not withdraw their invitation, Macdonald’s unnamed accusers would conduct a public campaign against him.
The accusers were referring to a 30-second question that Macdonald asked at a Palestinian Justice community forum last year, during which he said that, before he had been informed by the Australian government that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, he considered that Mossad could be behind some antisemitic incidents.
(Mossad itself acknowledges that it conducts extensive covert operations, including embedding agents in other countries, including Iran.)
No right of reply
Unusually, given the vague and anonymous nature of the allegations and the fact that St Vincent’s knew the 2025 allegations had been dismissed, the organisers gave MacDonald no opportunity to respond to his critics before making their decision.
Following the withdrawal of the invitation and before it became public, MWM became aware that the Forum organisers were informed that the allegations had been dismissed in 2025, and St Vincent’s removed negative and defamatory statements about him from its website.
They were also aware that during reconciliation week, Macdonald presented a ‘Grand Round’ at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney about his monthly visits to run a heart health clinic for the Aboriginal community in Condobolin in NSW for two decades.
This lecture was attended by the CEO of St Vincents Health, Chris Blake and was positively received without anyone publicly raising last year’s incident.
Despite the facts
Despite knowing all these facts, University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s refused to reverse their decision.
Their decision denies those who would have attended the lecture the benefit of Macdonald’s first-hand and up-to-date report of his research findings and his practice, which has saved thousands of lives.
The event would have proceeded smoothly if it had not been for the determination of unnamed Zionists or those influenced by them to silence and punish Macdonald.
Uni’s tepid response
MWM put questions to the St Vincent’s Foundation, which is responsible for the bequest that supports the lecture. We were told that no questions would be answered.
MWM also put detailed questions to Professor Jason Yeung, but received no answers.
We also put questions to the Interim Vice Chancellor, Glyn Davis, asking whether he or other members of senior management were made aware of these events, and, having been made aware, whether he would investigate.
We got the following response from a Uni spokesperson:
“After careful consideration, the lecture organisers decided to withdraw the invitation to the guest speaker. This will enable the lecture to run smoothly so students, researchers and the wider medical community can focus on the important topics which will be discussed.
“Each year, faculties, schools and our partner institutes hold hundreds of events such as this. The University supports and encourages the organisers to make the appropriate judgements to ensure they are delivered without any disruptions.”
As a result of the decision, those attending the lecture will not hear about the “important topics” which would have been “discussed.”
“Antisemitic” or anti-Israel?
So the situation goes like this: A person is invited to participate in a public university event. Some unnamed individuals claim that the invitee has previously made a remark that some pro-Israeli people considered ‘antisemitic’.
These complainants convey a message that they will create a public fuss if the event goes ahead. The invitee is given no right of reply and is ‘cancelled’.
It’s a laissez-faire attitude to political censorship and potential bullying if ever there was one.
MWM also asked the Interim VC Davis: Do you agree that to cancel such a prestigious and publicised lecture on the basis of anonymous allegations without even giving Professor Macdonald a chance to respond does not meet the values of integrity, justice and transparency on which University of Melbourne claims to conduct its affairs?
We got no reply, but the answer is obvious. It doesn’t.
Macdonald attack an AHPRA concern
This second attack sends a disturbing message to Australian health workers who are already alarmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (AHPRA) joint statement with the Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, that the regulator will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its handling of complaints.
Over 1,400 health workers and 60 medical organisations have signed an open letter to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its decision. They warn that AHPRA’s new position will have a “chilling effect” on practitioners advocating for Palestine and have called on the regulator to reverse its decision.
Their concerns are similar to those of the British Medical Association, which this week voted to drop the IHRA definition amid growing concerns that “healthcare workers are being punished for having views on international conflicts
Pursuit of Macdonald
This second ‘canceling’ of Macdonald provides evidence that some of those who wanted his suspension from St Vincent’s last year did not accept the resolution of the incident in his favour. Macdonald’s seven-week absence from his patients at St Vincents for doing nothing wrong was not enough.
An organisation called the Australian Zionist Health Alliance (AZHA) has been a key player in both last year’s attack on Macdonald and the campaign to get APHRA to adopt the IHRA definition.
The Alliance was formed in August 2025, and since early last year, it has been attacking APHRA for failing to take action against antisemitism.
Dr Jeremy Goldin is one of AZHA’s members. He is a sleep specialist at St Vincents Private Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne.
Goldin was one of three named members of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC) who signed a letter calling for Macdonald to be immediately suspended and investigated following his comment at the Palestinian Justice Forum.
Goldin has welcomed APHRA’s decision on his LinkedIn account, on which he regularly reposts items supporting Israel, including a description of findings that Israel is committing genocide as a ‘fantasy.’
MWM asked both AZHA’s Public Affairs Officer, Sharon Stoliar, and Goldin if they had played any role in raising concerns about Macdonald’s planned lecture at the University of Melbourne. We received no reply from Stoliar, whose involvement in well-funded far-right political organisations, including the astro-turfing group Minority Impact Coalition, was revealed during last year’s Federal election.
Goldin responded, “You’d have to check with the University of Melbourne on this.”
Children and War event junked
Last September, another member of AZHA, Dr Doran Samuell, was involved in stopping a Grand Round on Children and War being held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In light of this week’s shocking UN Commission of Inquiry report, which found that Israel deliberately kills children, that cancellation is a glaring example of a poor decision to cancel.
According to Australian Jewish News, AZHA has been in overdrive collecting material for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
It has developed an AI tool that uses prompts to help health professionals to prepare submissions and evaluate them against the IHRA definition. The AZHA considers promoting boycotts of Israel, chanting ‘From the River to sea, Palestine will be free’ or “lack of Zionist voices in senior or diversity leadership roles” as examples of antisemitism or anti-zionism.
This week, the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its adoption of the IHRA definition, which it described as “inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive”. The IHRA definition … introduces an element of risk for health workers who speak out in relation to Israel’s actions, despite the widespread condemnation globally, including by governments, of those same actions,” wrote MAPW.
“This covert attack on Macdonald highlights those risks.“
If a senior and highly respected professor can be silenced in this way, what chance does a junior Palestinian or Lebanese health worker or student have?
Friends of the Earth Adelaide has made a submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry
Philip White, June 29 2026
FoE Adelaide’s submission added perspectives related to national security, safety, employment and radioactive waste. Click here to read the full submission.
Based on decades of experience regarding nuclear waste management issues and debates in Australia, our submission focused on those problems insofar as they relate to AUKUS.
By rights, the parliament should conduct a genuine public review of the AUKUS program, given that it commits Australian taxpayers to spending hundreds of billions of dollars for decades to come with dubious benefit to our security in return.
In the absence of an official inquiry, we are hopeful that this independent inquiry will shine a light on the many issues that should have been considered before the government committed Australia to AUKUS.
The first hearing, held in Melbourne on 11 June, received many high-quality presentations. Most of the points that we would make were covered in that hearing. In particular, we endorse the comments made by the expert witnesses: Gareth Evans,
Tilman Ruff, Richard Tanter, John Lander, Joseph Camilleri, Rod Campbell and Dave Sweeney. Their critiques of the flaws in AUKUS align with ours, including in regard to the following:
• sacrifice of Australian sovereignty,
• negative impact on national security,
• opportunity cost,
• questionable industrial and employment benefits,
• safety risks and environmental cost,
• challenge of managing and disposing of radioactive waste, including foreign-sourced waste,
• negative impact on First Nations people,
• nuclear proliferation and safeguards implications of military reactors powered by highly enriched uranium fuel,
• implications for our obligations under the Treaty of Rarotonga of ‘rotation’ through Australian bases of nuclear weapon-capable vessels and aircraft, and
• the uncertainty that nuclear-powered submarines will even be delivered.
FoE Adelaide’s submission added perspectives related to national security, safety, employment and radioactive waste. Click here to read the full submission.
Nuclear news – NOT from the Military-Industrial-Nuclear-Media complex.
I’m trying something a bit different this week – picking out a significant website. Also picking out a significant theme for the week –
WEBSITE – of the week – THE ONENESS of HUMANITY
THEME – of the week – Nuclear reactors shutting down because of climate change – extreme heat, but governments and the nuclear lobby enthuse over new nuclear reactors!
Some bits of good news –
Black Women Farmers Are Reclaiming the Land. Colombia passed a bill to outlaw Female Genital Mutilation. The global green economy has passed $10 trillion in value. How trade bans and local conservation helped save a dazzling blue gecko
TOP STORIESNuclear reactors taken offline in France, as extreme heat pushes river temperatures into danger zone.
In Historic First, Congress Passes Concurrent War Powers Resolution To End Iran War.
Senior U.S. Diplomats, Journalists, Academics and Secretaries of Defense Say: the U.S. Provoked Russia in Ukraine.
Ukrainian-Polish diplomatic crisis over Nazi collaboration exposes NATO war with Russia.
Rising to the challenge – building a global majority against war and nuclear weapons.
Nuclear powered shipping – a golden future or unrealistic claims?
Climate. ‘Extreme’ weather having ‘significant impact’ on Kent’s nuclear power stations.
Covering the Impact of Climate Change—Without Mentioning Climate Change.Noel’s notes. Memory politics – a tragic military strategy in Ukraine.
AUSTRALIA.
- Underestimating the potential impacts of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
- The tragedy of AUKUS.
- AUKUS has a big waste issue – and not only money.
- Montebello nuclear test 70 years on: Australia still in the dark over UK mega-bomb.
- Australia’s coal and gas exports violate our human rights, group says in new UN case.
- AUKUS and democracy: why both matter.
NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS
| ATROCITIES. UN report finds Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children. Israel takes perverse pleasure in torturing, raping, and murdering Palestinian hostages. |
| CLIMATE.Climate change matters. High French river temperatures expected to limit nuclear power output next week. France tries to cope with second premature heatwave in less than a month. Bonn climate talks: Key outcomes from the June 2026 UN climate conference |
| ECONOMICS Bechtel opens Polish office to oversee country’s first nuclear plant, to cost $37 Billion. Sweden has agreed first financing package for new nuclear reactors, PM says US federal loan to jumpstart AP1000 reactor supply chain, with initial $17.5 billion . Governments would have to foot the bill for nuclear shipping. Why X-Energy Stock Collapsed 19.2% This Week. |
| EMPLOYMENT. The hidden reality behind Britain’s homegrown nuclear age – ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/06/26/2-b1-the-hidden-reality-behind-britains-homegrown-nuclear-age/ |
| ENERGY. Even If the Strait of Hormuz is Open, it Ain’t Open. |
| ETHICS and RELIGION. Root Cause of Criminal War Against Iran: Islamic Law Prohibits Usury. |
| EVENTS. 1st July – Webinar Waste of Space: The Environmental Harm of Military and Civil Space Activity |
| HISTORY. ‘Poles, Russians, and Jews must be exterminated’: The bloody history of Zelensky’s heroes. |
| MEDIA. Edge of Armageddon: why does one of the world’s top thinkers believe we’re nearing nuclear apocalypse? |
OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR . U.S. Military Bases Around the World Are Facing Growing Protest From an Emboldened Antiwar Movement.
POLITICS .
- Canada – Federal Initiative to Fast-Track Approvals for Deep Geological Repository a Betrayal of Public Trust.
- Canada Initiates Process to List Major [Nuclear] Projects under the Building Canada Act.
- The NDAA Proposed Merger of the U.S. and Israeli Military is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional.
- Congress Is Preparing to Surrender American Sovereignty on the Eve of America’s 250th Anniversary.
- Reality bites – by Walt Zlotow. Should the State of Israel be defascistized?
- Israel’s Suicidal Rupture with the U.S.
- The Persistence of Israel First. Republican, Democratic criticism of Trump’s Iran peace initiative promotes renewed war not peace.
- This Is Why Trump Was Necessary.
POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.
- Iran deal grants access to nuclear inspectors, IAEA chief says.
- The Collapse of the Sacred Alliance: How Israel Is Losing America.
- Vance: Israeli Officials Need To Realize Trump Is the Only Head of State Still ‘Sympathetic’ to Israel.
- Taking a sledgehammer to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.
- The end of the Polish-Ukrainian love story.
| RADIATION. Radioactive cesium from 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster spread over wide area: study. |
| SAFETY. Substation damage delaying operation of repaired Zaporizhzhia power line, says IAEA. |
| SECRETS and LIES. Pentagon raised threat of Israeli spying on U.S. to highest level, sources say. |
| SPINBUSTER. Words Matter: What does “De-Confliction” Even Mean? |
| TECHNOLOGY. Canada just lowered a 953-tonne slab of steel and concrete into a 35-meter shaft in Ontario and ended a decade of talk, starting the Western world’s first grid-scale small nuclear reactor – [Excerpt] |
| URANIUM. The IAEA Faces a New Nuclear Puzzle Inside Iran. |
| WASTES. CORWM visits Sizewell A and Sizewell B, –92% of pond low level waste is diverted to landfill. Finland buried nuclear waste in copper canisters 430 meters down, but the metal may not survive as long as the promise. Spent Nuclear Fuel Management – The Inventory .Status IAEA produces global mapping tool of used nuclear fuel. Decommissioning. Nuclear Autopsy for Indian Point Decommissioning? |
| WAR and CONFLICT. UN Experts Condemn US Attack on Iran Nuclear Facilities. Washington ‘ends’ Israeli freedom of action inside Lebanon: Report. If Russia retaliated… |
| WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. UK Tests Long-Range Missile for Ukraine. Congress Quietly Moves to Merge U.S. and Israeli Militaries. |
The tragedy of AUKUS
AUKUS is a grotesque demonstration of the singular inability of Australian governments to question the value of these arrangements or the wisdom of America’s strategic outlook, especially when it comes to the Asia-Pacific region. All this at a time when US hegemonic power is in visible decline, and when such compliance will carry ever greater risks and financial costs.
And not the slightest attempt to consult with the public, let alone initiate a genuine national conversation on Australia’s security options, in what is a period of far-reaching change that is transforming both the regional and global landscape.
Joseph Camilleri, June 19, 2026, https://pearlsandirritations.com/post/2026/06/the-tragedy-of-aukus/
In his submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry, Joe Camilleri argues revoking AUKUS must be part of wider reassessment of Australia’s place in the world.
The decision to become a party to the AUKUS security agreement stands as one of the saddest decisions ever made by an Australian government.
It was a decision made for the wrong reasons, in the wrong way, with unfortunate outcomes in the last five years and dire consequences looming in the years ahead.
Will the submarines be delivered on time? Will they have the desired state-of-the-art capabilities? Will they deliver the desired number of jobs? These are no doubt relevant questions, but they hardly go to the heart of the matter.
What is it that makes the AUKUS pact such an ill-considered and harmful policy initiative?
The entire decision-making process from its birth to the present has been thoroughly undemocratic. The discussions that led to the agreement in September 2021 were conducted in complete secrecy. And since then, government has said or done little to take the Australian public into its confidence. The costs, be they economic, environmental, diplomatic or cultural have not been seriously addressed, nor have the alleged benefits, nor how the project will proceed in practice, nor indeed how future decisions will be made and by whom. All this has been justified by repeating the time-worn and utterly duplicitous mantra of national security.
The first statement announcing the establishment of AUKUS told us that the intention was ’to meet the challenges of the 21st century’, but with great care taken to leave the nature of these challenges unspecified. The partnership, it was claimed, would ‘deepen cooperation on a range of security and defence capabilities’, but little was said as to why enhanced defence cooperation was needed at this time, and even less as to what such cooperation would achieve in practice. Yet, within hours of being briefed the then leader of the opposition, Anthony Albanese affirmed Labor’s full support for AUKUS.
In the years that followed little has been said as to the function of the submarines, or the objectives to be served by trilateral defence cooperation. The concluding sentence of the Joint Leaders statement of March 2023 bears quoting in full:
We believe in a world that protects freedom and respects human rights, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states and the rules-based international order. The steps we are announcing today will help us to advance these mutually beneficial objectives in the decades to come.
The question ‘how was this to be done?’ was left conveniently unaddressed.
The closest thing to an explanation of Australia’s underlying strategy was the reference by Defence Minister Richard Marles to the ‘complex strategic landscape’ that now prevailed in the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region and what he described as ’the biggest conventional military build-up that we have seen since the end of the Second World War’. In subsequent statements, Marles made it clear that the offender was China. As a trading island nation, Australia had no option but to enhance its capacity ’to project with impact’.
In the days that followed, countless words have been uttered inside and outside Parliament, but to this day the justification offered for the AUKUS partnership remains riddled with ambiguity, inconsistency and evasion. At no time has it been made clear:
- What are the specific strategic contingencies for which the submarines are intended?
- How does AUKUS fit within Australia’s broader security policies?
- What alternative security strategies were evaluated?
- What are the assumptions regarding China’s future behaviour that underpin the AUKUS decision?
And not the slightest attempt to consult with the public, let alone initiate a genuine national conversation on Australia’s security options, in what is a period of far-reaching change that is transforming both the regional and global landscape.
The democratic deficit becomes even more troubling, given the failure to consult the First Nations despite the fact that AUKUS implementation, including submarine operations, infrastructure, training, industrial production, weapons support and maritime transit, will affect a large part of Australian land and seas. The simple fact is that AUKUS carries far-reaching implications for:
- Native Title rights recognised under Australian law
- Land rights under legislation such as the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act
- Indigenous interests in sea country and coastal waters
- Heritage protection relating to sacred sites and cultural landscapes
- Rights to consultation regarding the economic, environmental and cultural implications of land use and development projects.
As a consequence of the unfortunate experiences associated with earlier defence projects, Indigenous communities are especially concerned about the likely impact of AUKUS-related activities. These concerns cannot be adequately addressed piecemeal as individual facilities are about to be developed. An immediate and systematic assessment of Indigenous rights, needs and preferences with the full participation and oversight of Indigenous communities is the only viable approach. The consultation should extend to the very rationale of the AUKUS project, since it will impact so many spaces across Country, over which, let’s not forget, the First Nations have never ceded sovereignty. When dealing with the larger questions posed by the AUKUS adventure, a dose of Indigenous wisdom would not go astray.
The rationale for the AUKUS pact rests largely on the frequently insinuated assumption – never openly stated or adequately explained – that China poses a major threat to Australian security. This assessment rests on a questionable understanding of Chinese interests and intentions, and the methods by which China seeks to expand its influence regionally and globally.
Labor, it is true, has managed to stabilise somewhat the parlous state of relations with China, including the resumption of ministerial visits between the two countries, which eventually led to Albanese’s visit to Beijing in November 2023. Importantly, most Chinese trade sanctions imposed on Australian products in 2020–21 have been lifted.
However, after four years in office, the Albanese government still depicts China as a rising power whose aggressive posturing is matched by a much expanded capacity to flex military muscle.
China, it is true, has steadily increased its military spending, which rose from $286 billion in 2020 to an estimated $312 billion in 2025. Similarly, it has expanded its military presence both in the South China Sea and around Taiwan. None of this suggests that either its military spending or its ability to project military power regionally, let alone globally, are on a scale remotely comparable to that of the United States.
Successive US administrations have nevertheless used China’s increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea and the heightened tensions in relation with Taiwan to justify an expanded US naval presence on China’s doorstep, a position Australian governments have seen fit to support. AUKUS is therefore best understood as an expression of US strategic priorities, and Australia’s participation in AUKUS as yet another demonstration of Australia’s longstanding alignment with the United States.
Simply put, Australian governments remain wedded to the view that Australia’s security ultimately depends on protection by the United States. AUKUS begins to make sense once it is seen to be part of an overarching strategic orientation that includes ever higher levels of interoperability with the US military, multifaceted defence cooperation greatly facilitated by the 2014 Defence posture agreement, intimate links with US intelligence operations, and heavy reliance on the acquisition of expensive US military hardware.
AUKUS is a grotesque demonstration of the singular inability of Australian governments to question the value of these arrangements or the wisdom of America’s strategic outlook, especially when it comes to the Asia-Pacific region. All this at a time when US hegemonic power is in visible decline, and when such compliance will carry ever greater risks and financial costs.
The root of the problem lies in the addiction to imperial power that holds sway in the minds of many among Australia’s political, bureaucratic, military and intelligence elites. They see themselves as having unique access to an exclusive and powerful club that confers not just safety, but status and privilege – once the British club, now the American club. They have reluctantly accepted the demise of the former, but are not reconciled to the slow but steady decline of the latter. They feel most comfortable when connected to the anglophone world and, at best uneasy, when dealing with the East. This is the meaning and tragedy of AUKUS.
Senior Labor ministers, with an eye on the next election, see no value in provoking the ire of the security establishment that includes influential voices in the armed forces and the various security and intelligence agencies but also powerful elements in the civil bureaucracy, the media, think tanks and an array of other pressure groups, not least the defence industry.
Ultimately, the greatest cost of AUKUS and associated entanglements is not the financial outlay, but the continued entanglement with an imperial power in decline. Technological sophistication, high levels of military spending, and the flexing of military muscle on a global scale do not readily translate into military victory or political control. The deadly and largely ineffectual war on terror, the disastrous war in Iraq, the protracted conflict and humiliating retreat in Afghanistan, the unholy mess in Libya and Syria, and the unfolding tragedy in the Middle East, not least the folly of the Iran war, all point to the fragility and limits of US power.
The AUKUS misadventure is a highly damaging distraction that prevents Australia from addressing the crucially important task of assessing and responding to the pressing regional and global threats ahead.
Revoking the AUKUS agreement is an urgent necessity. Such a step, however, must be part of wider reassessment of Australia’s place in the world. Australia as a nation needs to pause and consider the very meaning of security in the light of the profound geopolitical, environmental, economic, technological and cultural transformation currently under way. The militarisation of security discourse and practice poses new and unprecedented dangers.
The overemphasis on military threats needs to give way to notion of human security where the accent is on reconciling divergent histories, interests and grievances within and between countries, rather than on fuelling arms races between expanding and ever costlier military arsenals.
What Australia needs more than ever is to strive for a security policy framework founded on three key principles: common security (Australia cannot be or feel secure unless its Asian and Pacific neighbours also feel secure); cooperative security (security can be achieved only when countries act in concert, bringing to the table diverse energies, resources and insights); comprehensive security (there is more to security than protection from external military threats – security also includes economic, cultural and ecological security).
Crucial to this enterprise is finding a pathway to a substantive and durable Australia–China security and cultural dialogue – to be developed in close consultation and cooperation with Asian and Pacific neighbours.
Conveying this perspective and recommendations that flow from it to the Australian government and more generally to the Australian parliament may serve some useful purpose. But such an exercise is unlikely to achieve a great deal in the short-to-medium term. The more pressing need is to address this assessment of the road ahead to the nation as a whole, and to the diverse organisations that make up Australia’s civil society.
In the light of the AUKUS fiasco, the urgent challenge before us is to cultivate an informed, respectful and ongoing national conversation about Australia’s place in the world, and the contribution it can and should make to its own security in tandem with the security of its neighbours, the security of the entire human family, and, of course, the security of the planet.
Nuclear reactors taken offline in France, as extreme heat pushes river temperatures into danger zone
Sophie Vorrat, Jun 26, 2026, https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-reactors-taken-offline-in-france-as-extreme-heat-pushes-river-temperatures-into-danger-zone/
As Pauline Hanson seizes a moment of winter dunkelflaute to wax philosophical on the folly of weather-dependent energy, French utility EDF is busy explaining what happens to nuclear power – Hanson’s preferred power generation source – when record-breaking heatwaves, intensified by climate change, just won’t let up.
EDF has taken a series of its 57 nuclear reactors offline this week – around EDF has taken a series of its 57 nuclear reactors offline this week – around 6.2 gigawatts in total, and nearly 10 per cent of its total fleet – in response to the heatwave gripping France, part of a weather system described as an Omega block which allows temperatures to build over an area, without relief.
EDF has taken this action because its nuclear plants are subject to strict environmental regulations limiting the use of rivers to cool the plants if the river water passes a certain temperature threshold.
The nuclear shutdowns included two reactors at the Nogent-sur-Seine plant on the Seine river, north of Paris, “to limit the temperature increase between the water withdrawn from the Seine and the water discharged back into it, thereby protecting aquatic plant and animal life,” EDF said.
According to Reuters, the heat has also reduced output at the Saint-Alban 2 and Bugey 3 reactors on the Rhône river in eastern France, and the Nogent 2 reactor on the Seine southeast of Paris. The Golfech 2 reactor on the Garonne river in southwest France went offline late Monday due to the heat.
As AAP reports, much of France has been under severe heat alert this week, with temperatures hitting 40°C on Tuesday, and up to 43°C in some parts of western France.
The country recorded its hottest afternoon and night since records began in 1947, and 54 departments are under red alert in what forecasters said was unprecedented.
Météo-France said conditions were comparable to the August 2003 heatwave, which lasted 16 days and led to an estimated 80,000 excess deaths across Europe, according to the EU.
According to Reuters, wholesale spot power prices in France this week reached their highest level since mid-January 2025, while exports dropped to around 3 GW during the afternoon on Wednesday compared to 10-12 GW a week earier, reducing the cheap supply for neighbours.
“Climate change is demonstrating how extreme heat can be as disruptive as the (price spikes from cold weather and low renewables) witnessed during winter,” Kpler analyst Alessandro Armenia said.
“We are surprised now, but we should expect next summer to exhibit similar dynamics, as climate change is undeniable.”
Memory politics – a tragic military strategy in Ukraine
23 June 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/memory-politics-a-tragic-military-strategy-in-ukraine/
I came across the views of Marta Havryshko in a YouTube video on June 15th, in a lengthy audio essay.
What struck me about this speech, was that it comes from a Jewish Ukrainian woman, who is describing her own observations, living in Ukraine today. I also found the title of her speech very interesting – The tragedy of Memory Politics in Ukraine, Israel & the West. That’s because I cannot help noticing that in the prevailing commentaries on Ukraine, the commentators seem to have forgotten the complexity in Ukraine’s recent modern history.
Marta Havryshko is aware of this complex history. She has been living through the most recent part of it. She sees it from a Jewish perspective, and she is no fan of Putin’s Russia. But – she also brings her awareness of history to current affairs in Ukraine, and she is no fan of Volodymyr Zelensky either.
I tried to transcribe the entire 95 minutes of her speech. It is too long for an article, but I will include excerpts here, to illustrate her themes. She discusses Ukraine’s troubled history of anti-semitism, and the Nazi period in Ukraine. She focusses on Zelensky and the current accepted views on Ukraine’s history – the apparent forgetting of the facts in that history, as Ukrainian extreme nationalism now flourishes.
Marta describes her childhood, and education in Ukraine. She learned at school the history of Soviet Russia’s oppression of Ukrainians, and of the heroic freedom fighters who resisted the Russians:
“I was was raised on this nationalistic myth about glorious fighters, members of the Ukraine underground movement the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the organisation of Ukraine nationalists. We learned all these patriotic songs. Our family gatherings involved histories about Soviet repressions and actually, the house that my parents built was on the territory on the land that was seized by Soviets in 1939. Some of my family were involved on the ground in the Ukrainian nationalist movement and they were oppressed. Some of them were booted in prison and some of them were sent to Siberia. So I was raised in this highly nationalistic environment.
When I became a student at Lviv National University actually I met almost the same atmosphere. Lviv is a very nationalistic city with the biggest monument to Stepan Bandera (leader of the UPA). My home was close to Bandera street, and many streets had these partisan names.”
Marta explains how the memories of wartime events have now become confused, enmeshed into present day views and anti-Russian fervour.
“After 2014 this very western Ukraine nationalistic historical myth started to move eastward. After 2022 it became really the national myth promoted on the very national level. That’s why for example under President Zelensky we nowadays have streets named Bandera and Shukhevych (another UPA leader) in Kirik, home town of our president Zelensky.
This myth is cultivated in Ukraine in war time. Another dimension of this very troubling development in is that Nazi apologism is flourishing because many members of the Ukraine nationalists on the ground during the second world war were members of auxiliary police under German occupation and some of them occupied chief positions, so they were not just ordinary rank and file policemen – they were chiefs of police. Vasyl Levkovych, for example, is a very glorious figure in this nationalist pantheon. Those people nowadays are celebrated as freedom fighters and their direct participation in the holocaust is obscured, is marginalised and silenced and even denied.
At the holocaust memorial I was really shocked. I saw these fancy souvenir magazines with Daddy Bandera socks and Daddy Bandera bags. In one day I spent almost three hours in the city center and I saw an amount of different hate symbols like SS bolts, like black sun like Nazi eagles, like swastikas. I never saw in my life. in Western Europe, this concentration of these Nazi hate symbols. and the amount of different hate symbols – SS bolts, black sun, Nazi eagle, different combinations of swastikas. In Ukraine it’s so normalised – why? Because it’s a part of military culture nowadays. Those symbols are adopted primarily by military actors and by soldiers. The trust in Ukraine military is so high in Ukraine society – approximately more than 90% of Ukrainians nowadays trust Ukraine military. That’s why they just accept this.
Ukraine military nowadays is full of different far right groups. They are sponsored and they are celebrated as freedom fighters. In the Ukraine military we have overt Nazi apologists. For example we have the Niga named after the Nachtigall Battalion formed by the Germans and this battalion participated in the Nazi Barbarossa plan against Russia in 1941. From the documents of some participants of this unit we know that they participated in anti-Jewish pogroms.
Especially after 2022 so many neo-Nazis and far right groups neo-Nazis and far right groups were empowered and they openly promote their agenda. They openly celebrate Nazi units. Why? Because their ideology is.” Those guys are lesser evil because they fought our eternal enemy, meaning Russia. And they compare themselves with Nazis.So it’s not only Putin who compares them with Nazis, but that they themselves compare themselves with Nazis, and it’s ridiculous, it’s just crazy.”
Marta explains “memory politics” as a strategy, a weapon of war:
Those who are against military mobilisation are not a minority any more, Those who want to have peace with Russia, those who want to build a relationship with Russia on good terms, who don’t want to be engaged in eternal war with Russia, they are “bad Ukrainians” – you need to view Russia as the eternal enemy. For our children, this means only permanent war. With the anti-Russian project and narrative we will be in constant war with the superior angry and very powerful aggressor., in constant destruction.
We don’t want to spend our lives, sacrificing our life for what? – for our political elites. Ukraine is now a colonial client of the West, The West is deciding what money will go where, what laws will be adopted. In our fight against the Russian imperial state we are becoming a colony of Western imperialism. No-one is talking about this, because it’s a “good” empire.
We still have enormous casualties, and those casualties are hidden.
Memory politics is the main issue. They make movies etc about Russian atrocities but never about Ukrainian atrocities. Ukraine killed Ukrainian students in occupied Donbass, in Spring 2022. It was painful to see how many people denied it, and then justified it, blaming those students for “collaboration with Russia,” some were trying to present this as collateral damage.
The state is pouring so much money into commemorating this war. It’s about producing, inflicting emotions. First of all it’s always in both Ukrainian and English language, It’s for Western audiences, to inflict emotion, to inflict empathy, to present Ukraine as poor victim, to present a black and white picture when Ukraine is of course presented as the forces of good, and Russia as the forces of evil. Nothing of course about what happened to the people of Donbass in 2014, 2015, 2016 – always about guilt of Russia, bad Russia, crazy Putin, imperialism in Russian blood, and angels Ukraine.
So memory politics is a part of Ukraine war propaganda. Many intellectuals are engaged in this propaganda, and many receive grants from abroad. And it supports the Western agenda: Many many Western people – who discovered Ukraine only in February 2022 – see Ukraine as this angel, who was unjustifiably attacked, and is bleeding, and needs support to continue resistance. Nobody is asking those people kidnapped in the vans. Nobody asking those women, their sisters, their mothers, their wives – “Do they want to fight, to be sent to the meat-grinder against their will?” This myth of resilience, of this nation, who would rather die than live under Russian occupation. But this myth is produced by Zelensky propaganda. I must admit they’re doing a very good job in this, because Zelensky is very good at entertainment – it’s his profession.
Underestimating the potential impacts of attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities
| Tilman Ruff, Jun 24, 2026 |
I worked with Kristina Kukolja, a journalist who obtained (heavily redacted) FOI files about the Australian government’s assessment and responses to Israel/US attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities in 2025 and 2026. Its clear the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency underestimated the possible resultant radiological releases. Australia was one of the first countries to support those attacks both in 2025 and 2026 on the basis that any measures to avoid Iran acquiring nuclear weapons were a good thing, despite criticising Russia’s attacks on nuclear facilities in Ukraine.
Close monitoring of developments and modelling of possible scenarios including worst-case scenarios from attacks on nuclear facilities is something one would expect any responsible government to undertake and to use as the basis for informing and protecting their staff and the public, particularly the substantial number of Australian citizens in the Middle East (at least 115,000).
An additional reason for Australia to thoroughly assess attacks by allies on nuclear power plants is that during 2025-6 Australia chairs the IAEA board of governors. In relation to both Ukraine and the Middle East, the IAEA Director General has been consistently calling out the severe radiological risks of military attacks on nuclear facilities and calling for such attacks, in violation of international law, to end. Australia’s position here was clearly divergent from the IAEA’s.
One wonders whether underestimating the potential risks and keeping the assessments secret might be connected with an incentive to downplay the risks for political reasons. See article in the last Saturday Paper (below)_ o you don’t get stuck behind a paywall.
A year ago the government began receiving modelling on radiation risks from the war in the
Middle East, which experts say understated the danger and should be made public.
Exclusive: DFAT’s secret nuclear briefings
By Kristina Kukolja, Jun 24, 2026
Documents obtained under freedom of information show that a year ago the
Australian government began secretly receiving detailed modelling of radiation risks
from the war in the Middle East and the protective action Australian citizens may
need to take, but did not share this with Australians in the region.
American and Israeli strikes on sites in Iran and Iran’s retaliation against US targets
prompted the Australian government agency responsible for nuclear safety to
produce numerous reports to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) –
at times, on a daily basis – detailing “credible worst-case scenarios” for possible
nuclear incidents in Iran, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
The reports outline protective measures such as evacuation, sheltering and
restrictions of food and drinking water. Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear
Safety Agency (ARPANSA) experts also briefed the Inter-Departmental Emergency
Task Force (IDETF), convened to manage Australia’s response to the war, chaired by DFAT and attended by top government agencies including the Australian Defence
Force.
The Saturday Paper asked DFAT whether it had informed citizens about the
government’s monitoring and modelling for nuclear worst-case scenarios; whether
diplomatic staff were told to prepare food and water supplies; whether other
Australians, including military personnel, received the same advice; and whether
Australian embassies had secured supplies of potassium iodide tablets for
distribution.
DFAT declined to respond to these questions. A spokesperson said the department
“maintains internal contingency action plans at all Australian embassies and
consulates, intended to respond to crises and support Australians overseas.
Requests for technical advice, such as modelling, are part of prudent, scenario-
based planning and help inform our understanding of how an incident could affect
Australians in different locations.”
As the strikes escalated around nuclear facilities this year, an email to ARPANSA
staff from the emergency management project leader on March 9 said: “DFAT is
facing a major consular crisis, with many Australians unable to return home.
“It’s important to be supportive and respectful of their situation … We should also not
overwhelm DFAT or crowd their decision space unnecessarily.”
At the time of that update, there were about 115,000 Australians in the Middle East,
says DFAT – 24,000 in the UAE.
The results of ARPANSA’s modelling should be made “widely and promptly publicly
available … to inform Australians in making travel or evacuation decisions and be
better equipped to take timely protective measures”, says Dr Tilman Ruff, co-founder
of the Nobel Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
(ICAN), based in Australia.
The radiation assessment reports and electronic correspondence released under
freedom of information are heavily redacted, including on the grounds that disclosing
certain information could damage the Commonwealth’s defence or international
relations.
In a statement, ARPANSA says the reports were prepared “for a specific operational
purpose but shared more broadly across government, including through the IDETF”
and “informed public-facing messaging, including through Smartraveller”.
The Smartraveller website provides general advice on nuclear incidents. Despite the
Middle East war, Ukraine is still the only country where Australians have been
specifically warned about a nuclear risk, stating that Russian actions “pose a threat
to Ukraine’s nuclear power plants”.
ARPANSA’s reports to DFAT began in June 2025 after Israel attacked Iranian
nuclear sites and scientists, followed by US strikes the Trump administration
declared had obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
said Australia, which had just taken over chairing the International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors, supported the attacks, on the grounds they were
designed to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon.
The assessments contain plume modelling – how far radiation could spread – and
exposure estimates for 48 hours after a possible incident at facilities such as the
targeted Natanz and Fordow fuel enrichment plants and Isfahan nuclear technology
centre. Projected plumes from Israel’s Dimona nuclear research facility and Iran’s
Bushehr nuclear power station – potentially causing the “greatest radiological
hazard” – reached neighbouring countries, including Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia,
Qatar and the UAE.
“A military attack, even unintentional, could cause a catastrophic
nuclear accident such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.”
One simulation on June 20 last year showed radiation from a potential Bushehr
incident extending hundreds of kilometres into the Persian Gulf to Abu Dhabi and
Dubai, where Australian civilians and diplomatic staff are based, and the Al Minhad
Air Base, where Australian troops are stationed. While the report noted low
radiological risks for Australian “embassy locations in Kuwait City, Doha, Riyadh and
Bahrain”, the unredacted section did not address cities that would be affected by the
plume.
At the same time, IAEA director-general Rafael Grossi told the United Nations
Security Council an operating nuclear power plant hosts thousands of kilograms of
nuclear material, and a direct hit, or hits to electricity supply, could cause its reactor
core to melt, potentially causing “a very high release of radioactivity to the
environment”.
In the worst case, Grossi said, protective actions would be required: “evacuations and sheltering of the population or the need to take stable iodine, with the reach
extending to distances from a few to several hundred kilometres. Radiation
monitoring would need to cover distances of several hundred kilometres and food
restrictions may need to be implemented.”
“Are we getting this wrong?” asked ARPANSA’s emergency project leader in an
email to a redacted recipient on June 21 referencing DFAT concerns that Grossi’s
comments differed from earlier assessments.
ARPANSA’s subsequent report assured there was no conflict, citing findings of
“similar distances for urgent protective action”. Declassified text messages between
agency staff acknowledge that environmental damage “would be a big issue
following the event”.
The agency’s worst-case scenario for Bushehr involved a “station blackout due to
loss of power after damage to plant infrastructure and backup power supply”.
“Although it is not an ideal state for a nuclear reactor, the backup systems mean that
a core meltdown would not be an immediate concern,” the report stated.
Tilman Ruff says this assessment “unduly downplays the real risks, particularly when
the cause of loss of external power is a major aerial bombardment, which risks
widespread and uncontrolled damage to plant systems.”
Ruff says the reports show the “greatest radiological risks in Iran and Israel arise
from damage to the Bushehr power plant, with 3000 megawatts of thermal capacity,
much larger than the next largest facility between the two countries, the Dimona
nuclear site, with a reactor estimated at 150MWt. Yet in none of the scenarios is the
possibility of damage to reactor containment included for Bushehr, as it is for smaller
reactors at Soreq, Tehran and Dimona.”
He says the reports also fail to specify scenarios involving a core meltdown, reactor
explosion or fire, “or consideration of spent fuel pools, which often contain larger and
longer-lived amounts of radioactive materials than are present in reactor cores”.
Professor Tatsujiro Suzuki, former vice-chairman of Japan’s Atomic Energy
Commission, agrees spent fuel pools are “the most vulnerable part of the nuclear
power project”.
“A military attack, even unintentional, could cause a catastrophic nuclear accident
such as Chernobyl or Fukushima.”
Over time “the radiation consequences could reach India or Pakistan, potentially the
Mediterranean area or even northern Europe”.
When the US and Israel launched new attacks on Iran in February, ARPANSA’s
Radiation Emergency Coordination Centre (RECC) in Melbourne was placed “on
heightened readiness”.
New reports from the RECC warned a large release of radioactive material from
Bushehr or the UAE’s Barakah nuclear power plant could see “radioactive
contamination deposited on land used for food production and in water bodies” in the
region. In worst-case events, they say, embassy staff may need to take protective
actions including sheltering in place with doors and windows sealed and awaiting
further advice.
“Use of potassium iodide tablets may be directed. As a precautionary measure, and
if feasible, having a short-term stockpile of food and water (seven days) at the
Kuwait and Doha embassies may be prudent to avoid ingesting potentially
contaminated food and water … And to provide additional reassurance to embassy
staff as they are within several hundred kilometres of the reactor site.”
Throughout March and into April, the period covered by the 2026 documents, Iran
reported strikes on multiple nuclear sites to the IAEA, including the Bushehr power
plant. Missiles were also reported near Israel’s Dimona facility. No off-site radiation
was recorded, but Rafael Grossi repeatedly warned attacks on Bushehr threaten a
“major radiological accident affecting a large area in Iran and beyond”.
In late March, DFAT requested radiation projections for possible nuclear incidents in
Pakistan, Türkiye, Syria, Armenia and Iraq. The 2026 modelling generally indicated more severe off-site releases than the 2025 assessments, says Tilman Ruff.
“The maps also depict higher levels of radioactive fallout, with potential exposure
near multiple facilities, including the relatively small research reactors at Soreq and
Tehran reaching over 50 mSv [millisieverts]. The estimated exposures are
significantly greater for Isfahan, Natanz and Fordow enrichment sites.”
Kristina Kukolja is a Walkley Award-winning journalist and broadcaster.
AUKUS has a big waste issue – and not only money
The fundamental problem is that the AUKUS agreement was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of the three countries involved, Australia, Britain and the US.
Not one of those leaders is still in office. There has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia.
While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.
Hidden in the fine print of the AUKUS agreement is the need for Australia to manage the nuclear waste produced by new submarines, writes Ian Lowe.
The New Daily, Jun 22, 2026,
Many people are shocked by the price of the AUKUS agreement. The government has budgeted a staggering $368 billion, hundreds of times the cost of a new hospital.
But hidden in the fine print is a further huge cost. If the proposal goes ahead, we will have to manage the nuclear waste produced by the submarines.
Nobody knows what that will cost. The US and Britain have operated nuclear submarines for more than 50 years, but still have not worked out how to manage the intractable radioactive waste.
The decommissioned boats are sitting alongside docks, with British and American scientists trying to work out what to do.
We can get some idea of the possible extra cost from the work done 10 years ago by the South Australia Nuclear Royal Commission. I was a member of the expert advisory group for that inquiry.
It commissioned a study of what it would cost to build and operate a facility to store radioactive waste from nuclear power stations in Asian countries.
It came up with a figure of $145 billion, in 2016 values. Scaled up to 2026 dollars, it is equivalent to $190 billion – half as much again as the budget for the submarines.
That figure is almost certainly an underestimate because the royal commission was considering management of waste from nuclear power stations.
The proposed submarines use highly enriched uranium, weapons-grade material. The resulting waste is much nastier. It also poses serious security issues.
At the end of its life, the reactor in a Virginia class submarine still has enough enriched uranium for about 20 bombs. So the waste management facility will need military guarding to prevent misuse of the uranium.
It is also unclear how our government expects to find an acceptable site for waste storage.
There have been three attempts to find a place to store the comparatively benign low-level waste from nuclear medicine and industrial applications.
All have foundered because of opposition by the affected First Nations groups. They have not forgotten the harm done by British testing of nuclear weapons on their land.
The government has made vague suggestions about Defence property, but it is hard to see how it could obtain free prior informed consent from the Indigenous people whose land would be used.
There are also questions about whether acquiring nuclear submarines powered by highly-enriched weapons-grade uranium would be a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Some Pacific Island leaders have expressed concern, arguing that it would certainly not be consistent with the spirit of our treaty obligations.
The fundamental problem is that the AUKUS agreement was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of the three countries involved, Australia, Britain and the US.
Not one of those leaders is still in office. There has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia.
It continues to be shrouded in secrecy, despite the high stakes and eye-watering projected cost. Retired major-general Michael Smith has described the arrangement as “the worst defence decision since we relied on Britain to defend us in World War II”.
A public inquiry into the agreement is being conducted under the auspices of the Australian Peace and Security forum.
It is considering the fundamental question – would AUKUS keep us safe? At what cost?
The inquiry is headed by five distinguished community leaders, headed by Peter Garrett, who was lead singer of Midnight Oil before becoming a Cabinet minister.
The critical question is whether owning and operating eight nuclear-powered submarines would actually enhance our security.
I participated in a one-day seminar run by the Submarine Institute of Australia well before the AUKUS agreement was negotiated. The submariners were clearly divided about the question of whether the next generation of submarines should be nuclear-powered.
While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.
That observation poses an obvious related question about sovereignty and independence.
Would the AUKUS arrangement move Australia away from being an independent middle-sized country like Japan or Indonesia, locking us into the US war machine and increasing the risk of being dragged into great-power conflict with China, our major trading partner?
Some observers fear that AUKUS could actually make Australia a nuclear target. Given that China is our major trading partner, it seems bizarre to imagine that we need to protect our ocean-going trade from the Chinese navy, but that has been proposed as a reason for acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
All these questions are being considered by the public inquiry, which is receiving submissions from the community and holding a series of hearings in major cities.
Its October report should provide the basis for a serious re-examination of the AUKUS agreement.
Montebello nuclear test 70 years on: Australia still in the dark over UK mega-bomb
Aaron Bunch (AAP), June 22, 2026, https://nit.com.au/22-06-2026/24934/australia-still-in-dark-over-uk-mega-bomb-70-years-on
It’s been seven decades since Britain detonated the largest ever nuclear explosion on Australian soil, dwarfing the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WW2.
Yet secrecy continues to shroud the exact force and fallout of the massive blast, triggered during the depths of the Cold War, on June 19, 1956.
It was in fact the final in a series of tests conducted on the remote Montebello Islands, 1400km north of Boorloo / Perth.
The UK government carried out a series of nuclear tests at various sites across Australia in the 1950s, often causing the permanent displacement and deaths of Indigenous people near the test sites due to exposure to radioactive material.
Recently declassified documents shed new light on the mystery of Operation Mosaic and G2 bomb but two reports remain under lock and key, controlled by the British Ministry of Defence.
“The British do keep their secrets,” according to James Cook University researcher Elizabeth Tynan.
“The Australian government did not know what the British were doing and still to this day does not really know what was done on our territory.”
Some estimates put the explosive strength of G2 as high as 98 kilotons or about six times that of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.
It’s been seven decades since Britain detonated the largest ever nuclear explosion on Australian soil, dwarfing the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WW2.
Yet secrecy continues to shroud the exact force and fallout of the massive blast, triggered during the depths of the Cold War, on June 19, 1956.
It was in fact the final in a series of tests conducted on the remote Montebello Islands, 1400km north of Boorloo / Perth.
The UK government carried out a series of nuclear tests at various sites across Australia in the 1950s, often causing the permanent displacement and deaths of Indigenous people near the test sites due to exposure to radioactive material.
Recently declassified documents shed new light on the mystery of Operation Mosaic and G2 bomb but two reports remain under lock and key, controlled by the British Ministry of Defence.
“The British do keep their secrets,” according to James Cook University researcher Elizabeth Tynan.
“The Australian government did not know what the British were doing and still to this day does not really know what was done on our territory.”
Some estimates put the explosive strength of G2 as high as 98 kilotons or about six times that of the bomb that devastated Hiroshima in 1945.
But the official yield figure is 60kT, just under the 62.5kT maximum Britain assured Australian authorities it would not exceed.
Three days after the blast, a top-secret message exchanged between British scientists working on the Mosaic project disclosed that G2’s explosive yield may have been as high as 120kT.
Notably, it’s estimated the cloud from the explosion rose to at least 14,000m rather than the predicted 11,000m. It eventually drifted inland and into the Arafura Sea, north of Darwin, almost 1500km away.
Documents also show the British never intended the G2 yield to be 62.5kT and were planning for about 80 or more but the actual figure can’t be confirmed until the data is released, Professor Tynan tells AAP.
Such was the expected size of the blast that the same document suggested flying be suspended within a distance of 600km for 10 hours.
“I don’t know why the British won’t come clean,” she says.
G2 erupted a decade after Britain departed the US-led Manhattan Project in the wake of WW2.
Forced to forge its own path in a bid to maintain its status as a major power, it was intent on showing the Americans and Soviets it had mastered nuclear technology and could defend itself.
The program started with crude atomic bombs using nuclear fission but the aim was to develop a much more powerful thermonuclear hydrogen bomb using fusion technology.
Mosaic was a stepping stone and also involved the earlier G1 detonation, similarly using boosted fission weapons.
It was triggered in May 1956 and had a yield of 15kT. G2 used the same technology a month later but was wrapped in uranium to enhance its force.
Both bombs were dead-end designs used to rule out the technology and clear the way for a British doomsday H-bomb measured in megatons, or one thousand times a kiloton, to be tested in the Pacific a year later.
Defence force personnel who witnessed the events described a blinding flash of light, intense heat and a powerful blast-wave before the mushroom cloud rose into the sky.
Milton Ward who was an electrical mechanic first class in the Royal Australian Navy was ordered on deck on HMAS Tobruk in his summer uniform of shorts and a short sleeved shirt.
“They told us we had to turn our back, shield our eyes and the next thing this heat went straight through your body,” he tells AAP.
“When it went off you were actually looking at an x-ray of your hands.”
He was also part of the clean up crew, picking up all the equipment to take it back to Leeuwin naval barracks in Fremantle.
“When I was on the Tobruk we didn’t know what was going on,” he says of the secrecy surrounding the testing.
Afterward, Mr Ward says, while on board HMAS Karangi, they had British scientists on board.
“We were catching trevally and eating them, they had a Geiger counter and they ran it over the fish we were eating.
“You should have heard it go off.”
Now 95, he carries scars over his face and neck, the result of numerous cancer removals.
“No-one ever told us how bad it would be or what the effects would be,” he says.
“We just weren’t told anything.”
Jettisoning radioactive fallout into the atmosphere, the explosion left the pristine archipelago and surrounding marine environment with a persistent toxic aftermath.
Metal signs near the blast zones on Trimouille and Alpha islands now warn adventure-seeking visitors to spend no more than one hour in the vicinity.
In recent years, scientists have found plutonium remains in local marine sediment at levels up to 4500 times higher than other areas of the WA coast.
According to Ash Nesbit who runs commercial charters around the 174 islands, his passengers generally come for the world-class fishing and diving but are also keen to see the nuclear test sites.
“They can’t believe the British actually did it,” he says.
Rotting concrete bunkers, roads, a derelict command post, cabling and rusty machinery litter the low-lying islands.
“There’s a huge crater in the water where they let one go off,” Mr Nesbit says.
“You sort of drive along in 10 metres of water and then it drops down to 25 metres. It’s really weird.
“I haven’t seen any two-headed coral trout, though.”
The 18km-long island chain, about 120km west of Dampier, is a maze of narrow channels between rocky outcrops covered in spinifex and scrub.
Its isolation, harsh climate and, of course, reputation mean just a few thousand hardy types annually dare explore its coves and coral reefs.
“It’s just raw beauty and the British decided to set off a bomb; it’s just ridiculous,” Mr Nesbit says.
Now a conservation and marine park, the Montebellos were also the site of the first of 12 British nuclear weapons tests, which then-prime minister Robert Menzies agreed to without consulting his cabinet.
Operation Hurricane in 1952 detonated a 25kT fission device in the hull of frigate HMS Plym, which disintegrated, leaving a saucer-shaped crater on the seabed in Main Bay a few kilometres from the G2 site.
The tests then moved to Emu Field in the South Australian desert in 1953 for Operation Totem, with two detonations less than 10kT.
After G2, the testing returned to SA at Maralinga, with operations Buffalo in 1956 and Antler in 1957 producing seven detonations, the most powerful 26.6kT.
A royal commission into the tests in 1984-85 was scathing of Britain, Australia’s compliance and the safety of the program.
It found fallout had spread across the nation, increasing cancer risks among the general population, and large tracts of land were contaminated.
Vulnerable Indigenous people near the test sites were displaced and many died due to exposure to radioactive material, if not the blasts.
Thousands of Australians, mostly defence personnel working on the tests, were also exposed.
Many wore no protective clothing and suffered higher cancer mortality rates and more cancers than the general population.
The inquiry also found the Montebello Islands were not an appropriate place for atomic tests due to the prevailing weather patterns.
The Mosaic tests were conducted in a hurry under marginal meteorological conditions, it said.
The commission accepted the G2 yield was 60kT.
Prof Tynan says Britain didn’t see Australia as an equal partner and lied to it.
“Australia was a useful idiot,” she says.
“They fed us lines … they gave soothing words to make the Australian government feel it was all okay and all safe, when it really wasn’t.”
Prof Tynan’s book Nuclear Archipelago: Secrets, power and the biggest atomic blast in Australia will be published in August.
Australian Associated Press
Australia’s coal and gas exports violate our human rights, group says in new UN case
Lana LamSydney, 23 June 26, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8q5nx6jw6o
A group of Australians have accused the government of violating their human rights by continuing to export coal and gas and are asking the UN to take action.
The group say their lives have been harmed due to extreme weather in Australia – bushfires, floods, heatwaves, rising sea levels and toxic algal blooms – and the government’s support of fossil fuel companies is to blame.
It is the first legal claim taken to an international body or court since 2025’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that countries can be sued over climate change.
Any decision by the UN is not legally binding but Australia – one of the world’s largest coal and gas exporters – would be expected to respond.
The BBC has contacted Environment Minister Murray Watt for comment.
Dr Barry Traill, a wildlife ecologist and volunteer firefighter, is one of the ten litigants.
In 2009, several of his friends died during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, despite being prepared and experienced, he said.
“That deeply changed me,” Traill said, and “it became clear that the old rules around fires and survival no longer applied”.
In 2019, he was on the frontlines battling severe blazes in Queensland during the so-called Black Summer fires where he saw that climate change was not a future problem.
“It is already killing people and hurting lives, landscapes and communities across Australia,” he said.
“Continuing to allow coal and gas companies to increase pollution, while people face worsening disasters, is a profound failure of responsibility.”
Brendon Donohue has also joined the legal claim, describing how he was trapped in his home for 10 days in 2022 when floods in Brisbane damaged the power supply of his apartment block, meaning the lifts, intercom and exits were not accessible.
“Because I live with blindness and mobility challenges, climate impacts affect me differently and can make everyday life much harder to navigate safely,” he said.
Another case is that of Prof Anne Poelina, an Indigenous woman from the Kimberley region in Western Australia, who describes being displaced from the area around the Fitzroy River, one of the state’s most important waterways, because of catastrophic flooding.
“When the river is healthy, our people are healthy,” she said, and “when the river suffers, our people suffer.”
“What concerns me most is the intergenerational loss of cultural knowledge,” she added as “so much of our knowledge is not written down”, but passed on by being physically present on the land.
“They are asking the United Nations Human Rights Committee to declare that it’s unlawful for Australia to continue approving and subsidising coal and gas for export without a plan to protect people from dangerous climate change,” said Hannah White, senior lawyer with Environmental Justice Australia.
Last July, the ICJ – considered the world’s highest court with global jurisdiction – ruled that countries can sue each other for climate change, including over historic emissions of planet-warming gases.One of the lawyers helping the group with their claim said that “climate harm caused by Australia’s coal and gas doesn’t stop at a border, and neither does Australia’s responsibility for it”.
AUKUS and democracy: why both matter
Pearls and Irritations, Leanne Minshull June 17, 2026
A Commissioner on the Public Inquiry into AUKUS responds to Waleed Aly’s view that the inquiry will have no impact.
Waleed Aly is spot on in his Sydney Morning Herald article (5 June) when he observes that AUKUS is crystallising into a contest of competing worldviews, with Labor caught between them. However, his ideas about how this debate should be conducted, and who should be included in it, miss the mark.
The suggestion that mechanisms such as a public inquiry would not change outcomes is problematic. It overlooks the role that public scrutiny can play in shaping policy and risks presenting as fact the assumption that governments determine defence policy entirely independent of public sentiment.
In the absence of a parliamentary inquiry to interrogate a policy of this scale, the Public Inquiry into AUKUS provides a platform for all Australians to ask questions, safe in the knowledge that they will be listened to. Every submission will be read; all information synthesised, written up and provided to government. This is what we can do and this is why I decided to serve as a commissioner. There are five commissioners contributing their time to the public inquiry. We all already participate in public policy debates.
Aly describes all the commissioners as ‘fierce critics of AUKUS’. If our only goal was a coordinated attack on AUKUS, there are far simpler and more direct ways for us to achieve this. It’s no surprise that all commissioners have opinions on various parts of AUKUS; it’s hard not to. But if an opinion makes you ineligible to participate, who could? If a former Chief of the Defence Force is to be excluded from what is effectively the ‘square of public ideas’, then the standard for participation in a debate on defence becomes unclear and, ultimately, self-defeating.
Aly’s speculation about the likely findings – that the United States will not deliver the submarines on time, that the costs are excessive, that alternative investments would yield greater strategic benefit and that AUKUS risks constraining Australia’s sovereignty – is not controversial or novel. These arguments are already part of the public record, advanced by former prime ministers, senior defence officials and analysts across Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The real question is not whether these views exist but whether they should not be subjected to further scrutiny in a formal, structured process designed precisely to test contested assumptions.
Furthermore, the commissioners are not clones; we bring distinct and often conflicting perspectives, particularly on nuclear policy. That diversity alone makes the notion of a scripted conclusion difficult to sustain.
Aly says there is ‘a sense that AUKUS was never properly examined’. This is not a ‘sense’ but an observable fact. ……………………………………………………………….https://pearlsandirritations.com/post/2026/06/aukus-democracy-and-why-both-matter/
AUKUS inquiry exposes proliferation risks
The global landscape of nuclear weapons remains deeply concerning, as nuclear powers continue to expand and modernise their arsenals rather than disarm. Countries like the United States, Russia, and China are investing heavily in new nuclear capabilities, increasing the risk of an arms race with profound implications for global security. Australia, while not a nuclear-armed state, risks becoming complicit in this escalation through alliances that potentially involve hosting nuclear weapons or supporting nuclear strategies.
This growing nuclear threat underscores the urgent need for Australia to take a principled stand by promoting disarmament and rejecting policies that undermine global nuclear non-proliferation efforts.
In March, ICAN Australia launched the “No Nuclear Weapons in Australia” declaration for civil society organisations to sign on to, and we had a very strong response with over 160 organisations signing the declaration. We took the declaration to Canberra to share with federal politicians and remind them again of the strong opposition across community groups to nuclear weapons. We also partnered with GetUp! to amplify the campaign’s reach and impact through a national petition urging the government to reject nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Together, we also hosted a webinar in May featuring experts and activists discussing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons in Australia and the Indo-Pacific region. Across all of these activities the call remains strong – now is the time for Australia to sign the TPNW. Watch the webinar on Youtube .
Last week, ICAN Co-founder, Dr Tilman Ruff AO presented to the Melbourne Hearing for the Public Inquiry into AUKUS on the nuclear non-proliferation implications of AUKUS, warning that Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under this plan sets a deeply dangerous precedent for global disarmament efforts.
“For the first time,” said Dr Ruff, “with the B-52s and AUKUS arrangements, Australia is becoming not just eyes and ears and communications and intelligence and targeting support, but an actual operational base on a continuing basis for forward operations, including nuclear-armed ones.” Watch the full recording via the AUKUS Public Inquiry website. AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
| As we head into a crucial few weeks before this year’s Australian Labor Party National Conference, we are ramping up our advocacy and will continue making these vital calls to ensure our message is heard loud and clear. |
This July marks a solemn double anniversary for our Pacific neighbours. July 1st, marks exactly 80 years since the flash of the first American nuclear detonation tore through the Marshall Islands. Just twenty-four hours later, on July 2nd, the region marks 60 years since France unleashed its first atomic detonation at Mururoa Atoll in Mā’ohi Nui. 80 years on from the first of some 300 nuclear explosions conducted in the Pacific, the impact on the fragile ecology of the region and the health and mental well-being of its peoples has been profound and long-lasting. The ‘testing’ on First Nations land in Australia at Maralinga, Emu Field and the Monte Bello Islands and across the Pacific, including in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati and Mā’ohi Nui (French Occupied Polynesia) has left behind radioactive legacies felt far beyond borders
One “family”: weapons multinationals, Defence bureaucracy and the military top brass
Shoebridge:
When members of the public look at this and they see someone who has been …responsible for making decisions about multibillion-dollar contracts with Lockheed Martin, managing multibillion-dollar contracts with Lockheed Martin, and see someone step out of that from the uniform and in less than a week take a job with Lockheed Martin, that doesn’t just miss the pub test, that brings Defence into disrepute, the Public Service into disrepute. They see people leveraging their very recent experience to maximise corporate profits in this case for the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer. Don’t you see how this looks to the public and see how this kind of behaviour stinks…?
Senior military officers working in the upper echelon of the defence department’s arms buying group regularly pass through the revolving door into a post-military career in the weapons industry. The Australian arms industry revolving door database that I have been researching and compiling contains numerous examples, including Jeremy King and Chris Deeble.
Defence shelves 12-month cooling-off period for staff departing for weapons industry and adopts ‘bespoke’ conflict management strategies in a move likely to facilitate more rapid revolving door moves
Michelle Fahy, Undue Influence, Jun 20, 2026
The world’s largest weapons maker, Lockheed Martin, has poached its new Australian chief executive directly from the upper echelon of the federal government’s weapons buying group.
The high profile appointment, made in January, continued the US weapons giant’s long-standing practice of recruiting its local chief executives from the senior ranks of Australia’s military and defence officials.
Lockheed Martin told major general Jeremy King late last year that he was in line for its top Australian job, yet King continued to oversee the Defence Department’s multibillion-dollar helicopter contract with Lockheed.
Having accepted the job, mere weeks separated King’s departure from Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) and his commencement at Lockheed Martin Australia.
Lockheed Martin’s global revenue in 2024 was US$65 billion ($91 billion), with 91 per cent of that coming from the sale of arms. Its Australian subsidiary has $4.6 billion in current contracts with the Australian Government (source: AusTender, 30.4.26).
As the head of aviation systems in CASG, major general King was responsible for managing Australia’s $2.8 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for the supply of 40 Black Hawk helicopters. Earlier, in 2023, King had played a critical role in Defence’s decision to replace its trouble-plagued Taipan helicopter fleet with the Black Hawks, but he was not the final decision-maker on the deal.
In October last year, King told his boss, Chris Deeble, head of CASG, that he was being considered by Lockheed for the chief executive role. According to the Canberra Times, he also told Deeble that he intended to work with Lockheed Martin’s offer.
However, it wasn’t until early November that King handed the required conflict of interest form to Deeble and was then removed from further involvement in Lockheed Martin’s contractual arrangements with Defence.
In his evidence to Senate Estimates in February, Deeble was vague as to exactly when in October King had advised him of Lockheed’s approach: “within the October time frame”.
In response to a direct question as to when King departed CASG, Deeble again lacked specificity: “at the end of last year”.
Chief of Army Simon Stuart was more forthcoming on the military side, stating that King had ceased his full-time service with the Australian Army on 5 January.
Having employed the well-worn delaying tactic of taking the question ‘on notice’ during a senate hearing, the Defence Department later revealed that King had departed CASG on 5 January as well.
The department did not respond to my questions as to precisely when in October King advised Deeble of Lockheed’s approach, nor when in November King submitted the required conflict of interest forms.
On 12 January, just one week after King had quit the public service, Lockheed Martin Australia announced that he was its next chief executive.
Senior military officers working in the upper echelon of the defence department’s arms buying group regularly pass through the revolving door into a post-military career in the weapons industry. The Australian arms industry revolving door database that I have been researching and compiling contains numerous examples, including Jeremy King and Chris Deeble.
……………………………………………..The Australian Public Service code of conduct is clear about the risks of public servants moving too rapidly into the private sector: they may use inside knowledge and contacts to benefit their new employer in influencing government, and they may use or reveal confidential or sensitive information that advantages their employer in dealing with government or the market generally.
The Defence Department had a longstanding rule requiring a 12-month gap between its officials leaving public service and joining the private sector in a related industry position (cooling-off period) to help mitigate such risks.
This timeframe was already insufficient for the risk-mitigation task – given that many defence procurement programs extend over many years and some of the largest can take a decade or more to finalise – yet no cooling off period at all was applied by Defence to buffer major general King’s transfer to Lockheed Martin.
Multiple objections to the lack of cooling-off period expressed by Greens’ senator David Shoebridge during Senate Estimates were swept aside, or ignored, by all officials present, from the Chief of the Defence Force (CDF) Admiral David Johnston down. No-one answered Shoebridge’s repeated question as to whether anyone in Defence had formally approved King’s move to Lockheed. Nor did Army Chief Simon Stuart or the CDF answer Shoebridge’s repeated question as to whether a cooling-off period still applies to Defence revolving door moves more generally.
Indeed, the remarks from both military leaders made it plain that as long as Defence’s claimed “clear policies” on managing conflicts of interest are adhered to, there is no longer any impediment to a speedy transition into the arms industry for senior Defence officials.
Defence did not respond to questions as to whether, and if so when, the 12-month rule has been scrapped. Further investigation revealed that this longstanding rule has been scrapped by Defence.
…………….The weapons industry is recognised globally as a very high risk industry for corruption. When asked by Shoebridge during Senate Estimates how the Defence Department had ensured Lockheed Martin managed its side of the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in hiring King, a Defence probity official said the weapons giant had provided a letter of undertaking outlining what it intends to do.
What wasn’t explained, or even mentioned, was how Defence intends to ensure Lockheed adheres to its undertakings.
……………10 years on, nothing has changed
Just as the Defence hierarchy welcomed the departure to Lockheed Martin, 10 years ago, of its senior defence scientist Tony Lindsay – who joined Lockheed one day after he left his senior public service post – the Defence leadership today continues to see no reason for concern about the rapid-fire revolving door moves of its senior staff into leadership roles in the weapons industry.
In fact, CDF David Johnston welcomed major general King’s move, telling Senate Estimates that King’s expeditious move to the private sector was to Australia’s benefit.
Shoebridge:
When members of the public look at this and they see someone who has been …responsible for making decisions about multibillion-dollar contracts with Lockheed Martin, managing multibillion-dollar contracts with Lockheed Martin, and see someone step out of that from the uniform and in less than a week take a job with Lockheed Martin, that doesn’t just miss the pub test, that brings Defence into disrepute, the Public Service into disrepute. They see people leveraging their very recent experience to maximise corporate profits in this case for the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer. Don’t you see how this looks to the public and see how this kind of behaviour stinks…?
……..The man responsible for reviewing both of King’s conflict of interest declarations and Lockheed Martin’s undertakings regarding the management of those conflicts was Chris Deeble, himself no stranger to the revolving door.As part of his 37-year career with the Royal Australian Air Force, Deeble spent the last decade or so of his time in the military managing complex multibillion dollar procurement programs inside Defence’s weapons buying ………………………….
In 2019, Deeble was wooed by the world’s third largest weapons-maker, US-based Northrop Grumman. Deeble agreed to head its Australian subsidiary, a job he held for more than three years. Northrop Grumman is deeply involved in the US government’s nuclear weapons program, amongst many other defence programs, including the Triton drone and the nuclear-capable B-21 stealth bomber.agency
In mid-2022, Defence was looking for a new head of CASG. Deeble got the job. Inside a month of leaving Northrop Grumman, he was back inside Defence as the nation’s top arms buyer, appointed by the Albanese government in August 2022.
When asked by Senator Shoebridge whether anybody had to sign off on King’s plan of “literally going from gamekeeper to poacher in less than a week”, and whether Deeble himself had approved King’s move to Lockheed, Deeble did not answer either question……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Auditor general’s revolving door concerns
The nation’s auditor general has repeatedly warned of the corroding influence of the revolving door, which leads to cosy, familial relationships between the Defence hierarchy and the weapons multinationals.
In evidence to parliament’s audit committee in November 2024, deputy auditor general Rona Mellor warned of the importance of keeping an “appropriate distance in our relationships” with multinational weapons contractors.
“There’s a really big challenge ahead for Defence. The biggest challenge … is that there is a culture in these very long-term contracts… There’s a real risk that you get captured by the provider.”………………………………………………………………….
The mega-spend AUKUS era makes stopping the revolving door urgent
Australian governments have long been susceptible to the revolving door process in which politicians, the military, and public servants move effortlessly between government, lobbying firms, and the arms industry. The movement of King to Lockheed Martin is more of the same behaviour that’s been occurring for decades…………………………..
Australia’s limp attempts at managing the revolving door have been completely ineffective, particularly in the Defence/arms industry domain. The arrival of AUKUS requires this unregulated and unmonitored democracy-eroding phenomenon to be brought under control.https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/one-family-weapons-multinationals?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=202535704&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
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AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
30 July – WEBINAR (Free) – Is Nuclear Power the Solution to Climate Change? https://my.acaw.org.au/event/acaw-is-nuclear-power-the-solution-to-climate-change
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PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
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