“The System” needs to change. War crimes whistleblower David McBride
by David McBride | Apr 20, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/the-system-needs-to-change-war-crimes-whistleblower-david-mcbride/
Afghan war crimes whistleblower David McBride languishes in prison while war crimes perpetrators roam free. David McBride writes for MWM on politics and whistleblowers.
As most of MW readers will know, I’m presently serving a five year sentence for the crime of being a whistle blower. From within my prison I watch the much vaunted National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) continue to do nothing, the Office of Special Investigator (OSI) continue its fumbling, and Ben Roberts-Smith travels the world.
While there is much more to government than simply law, justice and transparency, the fact that Labor promised so much in this space but delivered so little shows they can’t be trusted to deliver what they promise in any area. They certainly don’t deserve to be re-elected to office on the basis of their promises versus their actual treatment of whistleblowers.
Over the next three weeks Labor will promise the world, and announce a raft of ideas that will sound plausible, one of which is likely to be the Whistleblower Protection Authority. While this sounds good, as the idea of the NACC did before it, it is likely be just as much a disappointment. At least if historical performance is any guide.
As with the NACC and the OSI, the WPA will likely be staffed with specially appointed government-friendly staff who are well aware of their unwritten brief: act busy, do nothing.
It’s the system
Probably only one thing is guaranteed about this election: that in three years time Australia will be in worse shape that it is now. That is because our system promotes ‘window-dressing’: pretending to do good things with expensive PR and media campaigns, while actually doing the opposite. The party which tells the biggest boldest lies, and makes promises that it has no intention of keeping, will win. Australia will lose. A hung parliament is our only hope for progress.
If you want to understand the concept of window-dressing, all you have to do is consider how Labor came in on a promise of more transparent government, a better deal for women and climate action. Its hard not to smile in a black-humoured way when those three things are now considered in light of the last three years.
The Albanese Government is now in the process of offering a similar package of plausible and attractive policies to voters. Chances are they will be returned, just. But its a certainty that they won’t keep their promises this time any more than they did last time. A strong cross-bench however may compel them to keep their word.
We don’t need a new government in Australia, we need a new system of government. Nor is this an impossible dream. The only thing that makes this impossible right now is that the two major parties act in concert to stop it.
They are on a good thing, and they don’t want anything to change much to change. When Labor wanted the NACC to remain secret they went to Dutton, their supposed ‘sworn enemy’. They both love AUKUS in equal measure, claiming its a good deal for Australia, when it’s really just a good deal for the major parties.
Merry-go-round
MWM readers will know all this. The only way to get real change in this country is with a minority Labor government. Despite the fact that the media give them equal air time to the government, there is now little chance of Dutton forming a government. This time.
But 2028 will be a different prospect. We need to act now to keep ‘Morrison 2.0’ out in 2028, and putting Albanese back in charge, unfettered will make a Dutton victory inevitable. Albanese likes to style himself as the Joe Biden of Australian politics, and he is. But all know what happened after Joe Biden, and why.
I’m reluctant to tell anyone how to vote, its their choice, and the individual characteristics of each electorate are their own to decide. That said, I can’t be accused of not putting my money where my mouth is. I’m in jail because I stood up to Govt who has lost respect for truth and law, and the nation of Australia, and sacrifices our nation for their own selfish re-election campaigns.
So it is not hypocritical of me to ask MWM readers to vote strategically this election: for independents and minor parties. Nor do they have to be on ‘the left’. Don’t forget those conservatives who stood up for Julian Assange for example. But a vote for Labor is a vote for Liberal, next time, and it keeps our nation on this awful merry-go-round of sleaze, pretence and inaction that will surely destroy what we, and our parents worked so hard to create for our children. Australia can do better. But it starts with us.
Editor’s Note: David has appealed his conviction and sentencing and is awaiting a decision by the Bench of the ACT Supreme Court. In the event of a loss on either, he intends to appeal to the High Court. You can help to fund his legal defence here.
Dotty and Cretinous: Reviewing AUKUS
April 20, 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/dotty-and-cretinous-reviewing-aukus/
It was a deal for the cretinous, hammered out by the less than bright for less than honourable goals. But AUKUS, the trilateral security alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is now finally receiving the broader opprobrium it should have had from the outset. Importantly, criticism is coming from those who have, at points, swooned at the prospect of acquiring a nuclear-powered submarine capability assuming, erroneously, that Australia somehow needs it.
A report by the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank has found that AUKUS, despite the increasingly vain promise of supplying the Royal Australian Navy with nuclear powered submarines in 2032, has already become its own, insatiable beast. As beast it is, with the cost over the next four years for the submarine program coming in at A$17.3 billion, exceeding by some margin the capital budget of the Royal Australian Airforce (RAAF) at A$12.7 billion. One of the authors of the report, Marcus Hellyer, notes that “in terms of acquisition spending, the SSN [nuclear-powered attack submarine] enterprise has already become the ADF’s [Australian Defence Force’s] ‘fourth service’.”
The report notes some remarkable figures. Expenditure on SSNs is estimated to be somewhere between A$53 billion and A$63 billion between 2024-2034, with the next five years of the decade costing approximately A$20 billion. The amount left over for the following years comes in at $33 to $44 billion, necessitating a target of $10 billion annually by the end of the financial decade in the early 2030s. What is astounding is the amount being swallowed up by the ADF’s investment program in maritime capabilities, which will, over the coming decade, come to 38% of the total investment.
The SSN program has made its fair share in distorting the budget. The decade to 2033-4 features a total budget of A$330 billion. But the SSN budget of $53-63 billion puts nuclear powered submarines at 16.1% to 19.1% more than either the domains of land and air relevant to Australia’s defence. “It’s hard to grasp how unusual this situation is,” the report notes with gravity. “Moreover, it’s one that will endure for decades, since the key elements of the maritime domain (SSNs and the two frigate programs) will still be in acquisition well into the 2040s. It’s quite possible that Defence itself doesn’t grasp the situation that it’s gotten into.”
To add to the more specialist literature calling large parts of AUKUS expenditure into question comes the emergence of disquiet in political ranks. Despite the craven and cowardly bipartisan approval of Australia’s dottiest military venture to date, former Labor senator Doug Cameron, who fronts the Labor Against War group, is a symptom of growing dissent. “There are other more realistic and cost-effective strategies to protect our territorial integrity without subjugating ourselves to a dangerous, unpredictable and unworthy Trump administration.”
On the other side of the political aisle, former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is pessimistically inclined to the view that Australia will never get those much heralded submarines. “There will be Australian sailors serving on US submarines, and we’ll provide them with a base in Western Australia.” Furthermore, Australia would have “lost both sovereignty and security and a lot of money as well.”
The spineless disposition of Australia’s political cadres may prove irrelevant to the forced obsolescence of the agreement, given the scrutiny of AUKUS in both the United States and the United Kingdom. The pugilistic nature of the tariff system imposed by the Trump administration on all countries, friendly or adversarial, has brought particular focus on the demands on naval and submarine construction. Senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, told an AUKUS dinner in Washington this month that “We are already having trouble getting these ships and subs on time [and] on budget. Increase those prices – it’s going to be a problem.”
Taine’s point is logical enough, given that steel and aluminium have been targeted by particularly hefty rates. Given the array of products requiring exchange in the AUKUS arrangement, tariffs would, the senator reasons, “slow us down and make things harder.”
Another blow also looms. On April 9, the White House ordered the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to comb through the procurement of US Navy vessels in order “to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of these processes” and contribute to the Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan. Consistent with Trump’s near obsession of reviving national industry, the order seeks “to revitalize and rebuild domestic maritime industries and workforce to promote national security and economic prosperity.”
Australian taxpayers have every reason to be further worried about this, given the order’s emphasis that US departments and agencies pursue “all available incentives to help shipbuilders domiciled in allied nations partner to undertake capital investment in the US to help strengthen the shipbuilding capacity of the US.” Given that that US submarine industrial base is already promised $US3 billion from Australia’s pockets, with $500 million already transferred in February, the delicious exploitation of Canberra’s stupidity continues apace.
In the UK, the House of Commons Defence Committee this month announced a parliamentary inquiry into the defence pact, which will evaluate the agreement in light of changes that have taken place since 2021. “AUKUS has been underway for three years now,” remarked Defence Committee chairman and Labour MP, Tan Dhesi. “The inquiry will examine the progress made against each of the two pillars, and ask how any challenges could be addressed.”
The first pillar, perennially spectral, stresses the submarine component, both in terms of transferring Virginia class SSNs to Australia and the construction of a bespoke nuclear-powered AUKUS submarine; the second focuses on the technological spread of artificial intelligence, quantum capabilities, hypersonic advances and cyber warfare. While Dhesi hopes that the inquiry may throw up the possibility of expanding the second pillar, beady eyes will be keen to see the near non-existent state regarding the first. But even the second pillar lacks definition, prompting Kaine to suggest the need for “some definition and some choices”. Nebulous, amorphous and foolish, this absurd pact continues to sunder.
The real cost of living fix is renewables, not nuclear.
Rebecca Huntley, 17 Apr 25, https://www.theage.com.au/national/the-real-cost-of-living-fix-is-renewables-not-nuclear-20250416-p5ls6g.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJugrVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHtL82zfItVvTzl1Whe-Xljzky1fA18I2OzDTIwenfyKp9DOUjyNmJ66-LmtG_aem_hNiWeGlA3t9nFn0LY_ilkQ&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook
Right about now in the election cycle, you would be expecting the Coalition to double down on its energy policy. Labor made a whopping announcement to bring down the cost of batteries for all Australian households, but we have had radio silence from the Coalition on its much-touted nuclear policy.
Why? Because Australians know it won’t bring down bills. And this is a cost-of-living election. Despite what Peter Dutton and other pro-nuclear forces would have you believe, polling consistently shows strong public support for renewable energy. In some places, it’s even growing.
In my own polling from February this year, 70 per cent of Australians supported a shift to renewables such as solar, wind and hydro. But what’s even more interesting is that even amid the escalating attacks on renewables from fossil fuel interests, almost half of people we surveyed said they felt more supportive of renewables now than they did a year ago.
Australians see renewables delivering tangible benefits in their daily lives. They notice solar panels slashing bills on rooftops across their neighbourhoods. They hear about large-scale battery projects stabilising the grid during peak demand. They understand that wind and solar, paired with storage solutions, offer a clear path to lower power costs – one that’s clean and safe.
Voters want cost-of-living solutions that will really bring down energy prices today, not in 20 years. A striking 72 per cent of Australians believe that renewables such as solar, wind and battery storage are the fastest way to cut power bills. Sixty per cent say they’re more likely to vote for political candidates who can help them access energy upgrades like rooftop solar.
Contrast that with nuclear. Recently touted as the solution to our energy challenges by the Coalition, nuclear power is now conspicuously absent from the national conversation. The reason is simple: Australians don’t buy it. Only 15 per cent believe nuclear reactors would lower energy bills. It’s no surprise, then, that its political champions are quietly retreating from the spin.
Nearly 40 per cent of voters blame profit-seeking by energy companies for rising power prices – more than any other factor. And 60 per cent say the federal government has a responsibility to step in to bring bills down. The message is clear: voters want leadership that prioritises their needs over corporate interests.
This presents an undeniable opportunity for political leaders to connect with voters across demographics. But it also demands courage – a willingness to challenge the status quo dominated by fossil fuel companies and their record-breaking profits at the expense of struggling households.
This election will be even more of a power struggle than usual and if politicians want to come out on top they will need real policies that voters believe can deliver cheaper energy now.
Six months ago, I wrote in this paper that “if you give voters free solar and batteries, they might keep you in power, Mr Albanese.”
There’s a winning strategy staring our pollies in the face: embrace renewables as the foundation of Australia’s energy future and deliver solutions that cut bills now, and for decades to come.
Australians are already on board. Labor is catching up. And it’s clear. Australians don’t want nuclear. They simply want the solution that brings bills down now.
Dr Rebecca Huntley is one of Australia’s foremost researchers on social trends and a Fellow of the Research Society of Australia. She is Director of Research at 89 Degrees East.
Almost 7 months underwater pushes UK nuclear submariners to the limit.
Nuclear-armed HMS Vanguard spent 204 days underwater, finally docking last month — and such gruelling conditions are causing experienced personnel to quit
Charlie Parker, Friday April 18 2025, The Times
Guarding Britain’s most powerful weapons deep beneath the waves are sailors who have not seen sunlight, breathed fresh air or spoken to their families for months.
Operating in total isolation on increasingly long patrols, submarine crews are enduring “mind-boggling” marathons underwater to ensure nuclear missiles can be launched at any moment.
Now, after a Vanguard-class vessel returned from a record 204 days at sea, submariners tasked with maintaining the deterrent have revealed what life is like on board the boats.
The £6 billion “bomber” looked grey, barnacled and rusty as she docked at HM Naval Base Clyde, in Scotland, last month. Welcoming her home was Sir Keir Starmer, the only person capable of authorising a nuclear strike, who thanked the crew for completing the tour. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/life-on-britains-nuclear-subs-as-record-patrols-push-sailors-to-limits-m5m7q58p8
Dutton’s nuclear revival smells rotten to Gens Y and Z
By Glenn Davies | 19 April 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/duttons-nuclear-revival-smells-rotten-to-gens-y-and-z,19640
Forty years on from the first Palm Sunday anti-nuclear marches, Peter Dutton’s attempt to revive nuclear power is thankfully still a hard sell, writes history editor Dr Glenn Davies.
THIS YEAR, Palm Sunday, the traditional day of protest for peace, will occur on 13 April.
Australia has a long history of resisting uranium mining and nuclear development. During the 1980s, Palm Sundays in Australia were occasions for enormous anti-nuclear rallies all across the country, reaching a peak in 1985.
On 19 June 2024, Peter Dutton announced:
“…nuclear energy for Australia is an idea whose time has come.”
At the same time, he released “the seven locations, located at a power station that has closed or is scheduled to close, where we propose to build zero-emissions nuclear power plants”.
Nothing announced by Peter Dutton today changes the fact that nuclear energy is, according to reams of expert analysis, economically unfeasible in Australia. This is as true today as it was in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Palm Sunday peace march is an annual ecumenical event that draws people from many faith backgrounds to march for nonviolent approaches to contentious public policies. The event is based on the account of Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem, which some see as an anti-imperial protest — a demonstration designed to mock the obscene pomp of the Roman Empire. Palm Sunday is now considered an opportunity to join together to demonstrate for peace and social justice.
A major focus of activism in Australia during the anti-nuclear movement in the 1980s was the campaign against uranium mining, as Australia holds the world’s largest reserves of this mineral.
The Australian anti-nuclear movement emerged in the late 1970s in opposition to uranium mining, nuclear proliferation, the presence of U.S. bases and French atomic testing in the Pacific.
During the 1980s, Palm Sundays in Australia saw enormous anti-nuclear rallies all across the country.
The annual Palm Sunday rallies were organised by the People for Nuclear Disarmament (PND), beginning in 1982 and reaching a peak in 1985.
On Palm Sunday in 1982, an estimated 100,000 Australians participated in anti-nuclear rallies in the nation’s biggest cities. In Melbourne, more than 40,000 people marched to call for nuclear disarmament and highlight the multiple dangers associated with uranium mining and nuclear power. They were joined by a similar sized rally in Sydney. During the same week 5000 marched in Brisbane while numerous other protests were held across Australia.
While 1984 was the year of George Orwell’s dystopian future, the 1980s were less about a surveillance society than nuclear fear. In 1984, Labor introduced the three-mine policy as a result of heavy pressure from anti-nuclear groups. This was also a time when many Australians were concerned that the secret defence bases at Pine Gap, North West Cape and Nurrungar, run jointly with the United States on Australian soil, were “high priority” nuclear targets.
An estimated 250,000 people took part in Palm Sunday peace marches in April and the Nuclear Disarmament Party gained seven per cent of the vote in the December 1984 Election and won a Senate seat. In addition, the election of the Lange Labor Party Government in New Zealand in July, resulted in New Zealand banning visits by ships that might be carrying nuclear weapons and were also considered targets in a nuclear war
The refusal of New Zealand to permit a visit by the USS Buchanan in February of that year threatened the future of the ANZUS alliance.
Australia did not follow the example of New Zealand.
In 1985, more than 350,000 people marched across Australia in Palm Sunday anti-nuclear rallies demanding an end to Australia’s uranium mining and exports, abolishing nuclear weapons and creating a nuclear-free zone across the Pacific region. The biggest rally was in Sydney, where 170,000 people brought the city to a standstill.
In 1985, I was a first-year James Cook University student living at University Hall. JCU students in Townsville supported the massive Palm Sunday rallies by our southern cousins in a public protest by tagging on the end of the May Day (Labour Day) march along The Strand.
As we marched behind the Townsville unionists with their hats and placards, remembering and publicly affirming the sacrifices their forebears had made – the mateship, the loyalty and the determination to build and protect the freedom and rights we now enjoy – we realised this march was about empowerment in a world where individuals still too often have little control over their own destiny when it comes to the workplace. And this was the lesson we young students learned on that day from our older working brothers, as we also were desperately looking for more say in the safety of our world.
May is a beautiful time of the year in Townsville, with breezy, high-skied blue days. Marching along The Strand, we were proclaiming our concerns for ensuring a better and safer world for all our futures.
It would be irresponsible for us not to chant:
Two, four, six, eight. We don’t want to radiate.
One, two, three, four. We don’t want no nuclear war.
By the late 1980s, the political, social and economic mood had swung firmly in favour of the anti-nuclear movement. Though it was clear that the three already functioning mines would not be shut down, the falling price of uranium, coupled with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, ensured that there would not be a strong effort to broaden Australia’s nuclear program.
During the 1980s, there was a mushroom cloud shadow cast over Australia. The protests of the anti-nuclear movement were successful in linking the horror of nuclear war to the zeitgeist of the 1980s. The anti-nuclear movement served an important function in Australian politics, where it visibly prevented any further pro-nuclear policies from being enacted by the Australian Government.
Former Labor Environment Minister Peter Garrett is the lead singer of rock band Midnight Oil and a prominent nuclear disarmament activist since the 1980s.
He recently stated in a Sydney Morning Herald op-ed:
Younger voters understandably won’t know that a generation their age once packed the Sidney Myer Music Bowl with Midnight Oil, INXS and other friends to “Stop the Drop”.
They won’t remember our Nuclear Disarmament Party campaign, which won Senate seats in Western Australia and NSW in the ’80s.
They can’t know what it was like to grow up during the Cold War era or live through horrific meltdowns at the Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima nuclear power plants, which were also “completely safe” until the day that they weren’t.
But generations Y and Z can still smell a rotten idea when they give it a good sniff.
The use of nuclear energy as a solution to Australia’s future energy needs is still a hard sell.
Times have obviously changed since the 1970s, but significant political and economic barriers remain — and the problem of cost is still unsolved. This is compounded by apocalyptic visions of global destruction as part of our contemporary zeitgeist. It’s just that in its modern incarnation, the apocalypse has become more varied.
Gone is the single event; now we have a multiple-choice-question-sheet worth of ways to end our time on Earth. In the 2020s, the apocalypse continues to figure heavily in social life with constant references to wild weather, global financial crises, lone wolf terrorism, environmental collapse and zombie plagues.
And perhaps the greatest fear of all is that in this fracturing of fear may come complacency.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will continue to struggle to get traction, not only during the current Federal Election campaign but as long as the spirit of the 1985 Palm Sunday protest march lives.
Nuclear Fantasies and Migrant Fearmongering: Dutton’s Debate Playbook Is a Fact-Free Zone
April 17, 2025 Lachlan McKenzie, Austrlian Independent Media
How Dutton Dodged, Distracted, and Drowned in His Own Déjà Vu
Snarky Essay Critique: Peter Dutton’s Greatest Hits (of Avoidance)
If leadership debates were Olympic sports, Peter Dutton would medal in mental gymnastics. The ABC Leaders’ Debate, moderated by David Speers – Australia’s answer to a human fact-checking algorithm – exposed Dutton’s campaign as a greatest-hits album of deflection, fearmongering, and policies reheated from the Tony Abbott Memorial Bin. Let’s dissect the carnage…………………………………………………………………………………………….
3. Nuclear Power: Dutton’s Radioactive Fairy Tale
When Speers asked if Dutton would cling to his nuclear pipedream, the Opposition Leader dodged like a TikTok influencer avoiding accountability. No costings. No timeline. Just vibes. Speers, ever the adult, reminded viewers nuclear plants take 15 years and $387B – funded by… checks notes … pixie dust?
Fact-check fail: Dutton’s energy chaos narrative collapsed when Albanese cited renewables’ grid share (40%) and falling bills in states with actual climate policies. Dutton’s reply? Crickets………………………………………………. https://theaimn.net/nuclear-fantasies-and-migrant-fearmongering-duttons-debate-playbook-is-a-fact-free-zone/
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 