Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Barnaby Joyce — nuclear energy not as cheap as he thinks it is

Independent Australia, By Belinda Jones | 14 September 2024, 

Barnaby Joyce jumps on the nuclear energy bandwagon but gets his facts wrong, writes Belinda Jones.

THE COALITION’S NUCLEAR PLANS suffered another setback this week when it revealed that the Member for New England, Barnaby Joyce, got key nuclear facts wrong in a recent debate.

As part of the annual Bush Summit, presented by Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting and News Corp, Joyce took part in a debate with Chair of the Climate Change Authority, Matt Kean.

The Bush Summit has been an annual event on the bush calendar since 2019, which meets in rural and remote locations around the country and brings together leaders in politics, mining, agriculture and many other fields……………………………………..

Joyce had jumped on the nuclear energy bandwagon a few years earlier and has been there ever since. Joyce’s position was supported in 2019 with a push for an inquiry into the feasibility of nuclear energy by fellow National Keith Pitt and L-NP Senator James McGrath.

In 2022, Coalition donor Rinehart invested $60 million in Arafura Rare Earths. Arafura’s Nolans Project outputs involve exploration and processing of rare earths, including uranium ‘as a minor product’. A minor product that could be very lucrative if Australia had nuclear energy.

According to the Minerals Council of Australia ‘Australia’s uranium reserves are the world’s largest, with around one-third of global resources’, which might explain mining billionaire Rinehart’s embrace of nuclear energy as the transition away from coal continues…………..

Joyce’s passion for nuclear energy does beg the question — why didn’t the Coalition seize the opportunity to begin a transition to nuclear energy while they were in government from 2013 to 2022? One government minister said at the time it was because ‘financially it doesn’t stack up’.

In 2021, Morrison rejected nuclear energy because of a lack of bi-partisan support. Joyce revealed at the recent Bush Summit debate with Matt Kean that the real reason Morrison had rejected nuclear energy was because internal polling said nuclear energy was unpopular, as it still does, not because of a lack of bipartisan support.

During the recent Bush Summit debate, Joyce claimed that France and Finland’s energy is cheaper than Australia’s because they use nuclear energy.

This claim has since been fact-checked by AAP as wrong:

‘The National Party MP was responding to a suggestion that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had driven up power prices globally.

When asked to provide evidence for the claim, Mr Joyce’s office sent AAP FactCheck an article from the Australian Energy Council comparing household electricity prices internationally.

The analysis is from February 3, 2022, which predates the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by three weeks.’

Currently, the Coalition has released scant details about their nuclear energy ambitions. In the absence of a clear, comprehensive, costed nuclear energy plan from which Coalition politicians can work, misinformation or disinformation is more likely to spread on the nuclear issue…………………………….

Joyce has become the self-appointed poster boy for groups opposing renewables, particularly the New England, Illawarra and Hunter regions. He will be a panelist on ABC’s Q and A next Monday. Advertised shuttle buses will likely be ferrying anti-renewables activist audience members from Muswellbrook and Port Stephens to the Newcastle studio. Joyce will be at his theatrical best, knowing he has an audience full of supporters………………………… more https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/barnaby-joyce–nuclear-energy-not-as-cheap-as-he-thinks-it-is,18977

September 14, 2024 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Award-winning Australian film-maker David Bradbury detained in India (he exposed India’s repression of its peaceful anti-nuclear activists).

The police used riot tactics and baton charges, mace and teargas to bludgeon the good people of Indinthakarai into submission. Which is the situation today. They are too scared to come out of their homes in mass protest. The Government of India, of Prime Minister Modi  has become a terrorising state of its own people. 

David Bradbury 14 September 24

I flew from Bangkok to Chennai Tuesday night with my two children – Nakeita Bradbury (21) and Omar Bradbury (14).

We all have visas issued by the Indian Govt in Australia before we left Sydney, last Saturday, Sept 7th.

After three days in Bangkok we flew to Chennai to begin what was to be a family holiday to remember: five major tourist destinations in two weeks.

Accommodation and internal flights (non refundable…) booked in advance in several locations.

(In Bangkok I showed my latest doco – a tribute to Neil Davis who was tragically killed in a 24 hour coup in Bangkok 39 years ago. Death is a Lady was shown at the Foreign Correspondents Club and we raised $Aust407 for the children of Gaza).

Arriving at Immigration counter at Chennai airport, my two children got their passports stamped and were able to go through no problem. When it came my turn, the perplexed official had to call for help as he laboured over his computer terminal.

Putting in my details had obviously triggered alarm bells. He called for his Supervisor who similarly winced as he looked over his shoulder. It was

2am in the morning. My kids waited patiently on the ot her side of the glass barrier between us. 

Eventually I was told it would not be possible for me to enter India. I asked why not? I had a legitimate visa I told them. 

And my kids were on the other side of the barrier separating us.

We were here on a family holiday we’d planned and saved for many months. With the usual Indian courtesy of avoiding the question: 

‘Why not? What is wrong with my visa..?’ 

My kids were on one side of the border…and I was on this side. I could not join them. As they waved sadly, reluctantly Goodbye to me, I was led off down a corridor to a small room with high ceilings. Pretty disgusting room with papers and rubbish on the floor under a bed which had a filthy mattress on it, no sheets. A metal grill window that looked out to a blank corridor wall. 

Occasionally a guard would come and stare through it at me. 

During the course of the rest of the day and into the night various Immigration 

Plainclothes police would come and interrogate me. What was I doing in India? What did I do here before in previous visit in 2012? Who did I know here in India and who have you been talking to before I came to India this time. Can you open up your phone and give it to us, please? Can we have their phone number?

I was cold and asked for my long trousers and socks which were in my suitcase and some medication I was taking for an enlarged prostrate. They never got them for me, only an hour before they forced me back onto the flight to Bangkok. My bag still hasn’t arrived here in Bangkok. 

I asked if I could make a phone call to the Australian embassy in Delhi but that request was ignored. 

As the plane took off from Chennai yesterday morning for Bangkok at 1.30am, it hurt my world weary heart to accept being separated from my kids and our plans to have a grand tour of the Indian subcontinent which included going to Varanasi to show my Omar how Hindus deal with death and farewelling their loved ones into the next life.(Omar lost his mum, my wife to breast cancer five months ago. We both feel strongly attached to each other). 


What had caused the cancellation of my Indian Visa? Over the course of the afternoon and being interrogated by Indian Immigration plainclothes,  I quickly concluded the Indian Govt had not forgiven me for writing an article for my local newspaper back in Australia and daring to enter a ‘No-go’ zone for both Indian national press and foreign media like myself in 2012.

Back then after I’d done my duties on the jury of the Mumbai International film festival, with wife Treena (Lenthall) and son Omar, then aged 3, we went and stayed in a small fishing village on the southern most tip of India. At a village called Indinthakarai where thousands of locals led by Dr Udayakamur, Catholic priests and nuns. Since the 1980’s the good fisherfolk of Indinthakarai had maintained a David and Goliath struggle against the pro-nuclear designs of the central Govt in far away New Delhi. 

These people embraced Treena, Omar and I because we felt for them in their struggle against the central Government 3,000kms away in New Delhi who had run roughshod over their rights and their community. We lived in the village for the next two weeks and filmed their everyday lifestyle, their fishing in the ocean which their livelihood depended upon. I interviewed their leaders on why they were so upset with the Government. One of them, a wonderful man called Dr Udayakamur stood out. He told me why they were determined to keep on with their struggle.

It was because their Government had signed a very dodgy deal with the Russians to build six nuclear powers plants on top of a major earthquake fault line. That faultline right where a cabal of corrupt senior Indian politicians and senior bureaucrats had signed the contract with the Russians had seen 1,000 villagers swept to their deaths when the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami hit.

He told me on camera how the humble fisherfolk of Idinthakarai 

whose ancestors had ploughed the ocean for millennia; 

How the Delhi Govt refused to have any community consultation and refused repeated requests by the people of Indinthakarai to be given access to environmental assessment reports.

Dr Udayakamur is an earnest practitioner of Gandhi’s non violent protest actions to effect Change.

The locals under Dr Uday staged sit-down protests where they buried their bodies in the sand up to their necks on the foreshore where the nuclear plants were being built. Thousands of people marched into the sea out front of the power plants defying police orders. 

In the end their actions were in vain. The police used riot tactics and baton charges, mace and teargas to bludgeon the good people of Indinthakarai into submission. Which is the situation today. They are too scared to come out of their homes in mass protest. The Government of India, of Prime Minister Modi  has become a terrorising state of its own people. 

Dr Uday faces 58 criminal charges which includes ’Sedition’. He faces many years in gaol and long years before that in drawn out court proceedings. It has taken its toll on his health and his family. 

All this happening out of sight of reporter’s notebooks and cameras in the world’s largest ‘Democracy’. 

September 14, 2024 Posted by | secrets and lies | Leave a comment

 Australian nuclear news headlines 9 – 16 September

Headlines as they come in:

September 14, 2024 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The lucrative charity, yes CHARITY, running the Land Forces weapons expo

by Michael West | Sep 14, 2024,  https://michaelwest.com.au/the-lucrative-charity-yes-charity-running-the-land-forces-weapons-fair/

The promoters behind the Land Forces weapons expo are registered as a charity. This charity, AMDA, pays no tax but does pay high salaries and just tripled its income to $35m. Michael West

It was rubber bullets and tear gas for peace protestors but special police mollycoddling and a Victorian Government sponsorship for the merchants of death.

What do we know about the promoters of the Land Forces weapons fair which the Victorian government so avidly protected from anti-war protestors this week with a $15m police presence, stun grenades, pepper spray and batons?

We know from regulatory filings the promoter behind Land Forces is a charity called AMDA Foundation. We know from AMDA’s financial disclosures that this charity is highly profitable. Its income shot up from $13m in 2022 to $34.6m last year

That was for the year to June; at which point it was sitting on a financial investment portfolio of $43m in cash, stocks and bonds. AMDA even gets government grants – grant revenue is booked at $6.6m over the past 2 years. The principal sponsor for Land Forces expo this year was none other than the Victorian Government, which went to extraordinary lengths to protect and promote its investment.

The mainstream media was bizarrely strident in its anti-protest coverage, running the story (not disavowed by the government and Victoria Police) that protestors sprayed police with acid. That was later downgraded to ‘irritants’ and ‘low-level acid’ bringing speculation it might have been orange juice (citric acid) or maybe the chemicals in the bubble liquid from the bubble machine with which the outnumbered protestors entertained the police blockade at one point.


It’s all a rort on the public, on the very taxpayers and citizens the Victorian government had its police assaulting this week, because weapons companies – the likes of AMDA’s exhibitors BAE, Lockheed Martin, Thales and Boeing – are funded by governments globally.

In Australia, the Defence budget is soaring amid rising weapons sales; so it is a fair bet that the income of AMDA will be higher in 2024.

AMDA’s $30m in expenses last year included $8m in pay for its 31 employees (FTE equivalent), which averages out at almost $260k per employee. The 5 KMP – the crew at the top of the charity – shared $1.5m or almost $300k apiece in ‘charity pay’.

September 14, 2024 Posted by | secrets and lies, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The fake charity AMDA Foundation is exposed by Michael West Media’s Michelle Fahy.

Landforces’ brothers in arms: how a weapons peddler qualified for charitable status .  https://www.michaelwest.com.au/landforces-brothers-in-arms-how-a-weapons-peddler-qualified-for-charitable-status/

by Michelle Fahy | Jun 4, 2021  The Coalition is cracking down on charitable organisations. However, the Australian charity promoting arms deals on behalf of weapons makers that profit from humanitarian catastrophes is unlikely to be in the government’s sights. With the weapons expo LandForces wrapping up in Brisbane this week, Michelle Fahy delves into the charity behind LandForces.

The Morrison government has charitable organisations in its sights. It proposes to amend the legislation covering charities so that minor legal misdemeanours by staff or supporters of a charity could be used as a prompt by the regulator for a review of a charity’s privileged status.

St Vincent de Paul told The Saturday Paper that if an activist wearing a Vinnies T-shirt refused to move along when asked by police, Vinnies could risk having its charitable status removed.

Hands Off Our Charities, an alliance of Australian charities, said in a submission to government: “The proposal is a major overreach and the need for further regulation has not been (and in our view cannot be) properly explained.”

Yet consider the activities of a not-for-profit organisation that many Australians will be astounded to discover has gained privileged charitable status – AMDA Foundation Limited (AMDA).

AMDA is the organiser of Land Forces, a biennial military and weapons exhibition running in Brisbane this week showcasing organisations “operating across the full spectrum of land warfare”.

The 600 exhibitors at Land Forces include local and multinational weapons manufacturers and other suppliers to military forces. Event sponsors include global arms corporations such as Boeing, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Rheinmetall, General Dynamics, Saab and Hanwha, along with local companies Electro Optic Systems (EOS), CEA, and NIOA. Representatives from foreign governments and militaries are among the attendees.

Several of AMDA’s arms-maker sponsors have supplied their weaponry to the two countries leading the coalition fighting the war in Yemen – Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The UN has been pleading for years for countries to cease supplying weaponry to these countries.

In late 2018, the New York Times published distressing photographs of emaciated children in Yemen dying as a result of aid blockades during the war. The mass starvation continues. UNICEF has said more than 400,000 Yemeni children under five could die preventable deaths this year.

Promoting arms deals on behalf of corporations that have profited from this unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe is the antithesis of what an Australian registered charity should be doing.

But the political posturing evident in the government’s proposed changes is unlikely to result in any repercussions for the AMDA Foundation. Instead, it is ‘activist’ environmental charities that are being targeted by the changes. Which is precisely the problem with such sweeping broad powers. They can be implemented selectively to silence voices the government does not want heard.

“It is the principle that underpins the change that is wrong, regardless of who it is used to target,” said Matt Rose, Economy & Democracy Program Manager at the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Arms trade promotion a “charitable activity”?

AMDA runs numerous major military and weapons-related trade exhibitions around Australia. Its roster of events includes Avalon, a biennial aerospace military and weapons expo in Victoria, next slated for early December 2021. The Indo Pacific Expo, a maritime warfare exhibition, is scheduled for May 2022 in Sydney.

These and other industry trade shows bring together sellers and buyers of weaponry and other military and security-related equipment. “Doing business is easy at Land Forces,” says its website, noting that Land Forces serves as a “powerful promotional and industry engagement forum”.

AMDA says it exists to help the “general community in Australia”. But the general community is not permitted to attend Land Forces nor AMDA’s other arms exhibitions. (The public can attend the Avalon Air Show, a separate public event run at the same time as the Avalon arms expo.)

AMDA is part of a group of companies registered with ACNC which operates around the country. It had 24 full-time-equivalent employees and a gross income in 2020 of $11.7 million – 32% of which came from government grants and 61% from operating revenue. Its income in 2019 was $26.2 million, mostly from operating revenue.

Revolving doors and conflicted interests

The AMDA board is an all-male affair. Its chair is former chief of the Royal Australian Navy, Christopher Ritchie, who joined the board in May 2017 while concurrently sitting on the boards of Lockheed Martin Australia (until 2020) and German naval shipbuilder Luerssen Australia, both multibillion dollar contractors to the Defence Department.

Former chief of army Kenneth Gillespie sits on the AMDA board while also sitting on the board of Naval Group, the French multinational building Australia’s controversial new submarines. Gillespie is also chair of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) Council, the highly influential and supposedly “independent” think tank tasked with providing strategic advice to the government.

ASPI is sponsored by Naval Group as well as other global arms manufacturers including Lockheed Martin, Thales, Saab and Northrop Grumman. ASPI has been vocal in its anti-China ‘war drums’ rhetoric, stoking regional tensions, along with the Asia Pacific arms race.

September 14, 2024 Posted by | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, spinbuster, weapons and war | Leave a comment