Wait, What?!
Racket cartoons, by Daniel Medina, https://racketcartoons.substack.com/p/wait-what?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=549592&post_id=181841928&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email, Dec 17, 2025
After the devastating massacre at Bondi Beach on Sunday, Australia’s PM and leaders promised to tighten gun laws to help make sure it never happens again. As an American reading this, and hearing more than just “thoughts and prayers,” I sat at my desk and felt deeply sad. Our country is so dysfunctional that we cannot handle even the basics of governing, let alone face the leading cause of death for American children: firearms.
What stood out to me was how quickly Australia’s leaders responded and how they seemed to agree that the government should act after something so terrible. In the United States, mass shootings are often followed by sadness but no action. It can feel like we accept these deaths as normal instead of trying to prevent them. Seeing another country treat gun violence as a problem they can fix makes our inaction even harder to understand.
Israel Apologists Hasten To Use Bondi Shooting To Attack Anti-Genocide Activists
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 15, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-apologists-hasten-to-use-bondi?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=181641440&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Two shooters attacked a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing fifteen people and injuring dozens of others. Police report that the shooters were a father and his son; the father was killed by police, and the son was captured.
The shooters appear to have been Muslim, but, much to the inconvenience of those who would like to use this incident to fan the flames of western Islamophobic hysteria, the man who selflessly risked his life to disarm one of them was also a Muslim father of two named Ahmed al-Ahmed.
As usual we’re seeing a lot of speculation about false flags and psyops regarding this incident, but I prefer to hang back from such commentary until I’ve seen some solid evidence.
I do have some thoughts about the public discourse we are seeing about the shooting right now, though.
Point 1: Obviously it is evil to massacre civilians for being Jewish.
Point 2: Obviously Israel’s massacring of civilians must continue to be opposed, and will continue to be opposed.
Today the worst people in the world are trying to pretend Point 1 and Point 2 are contradictory.
It’s so gross watching the tail-wagging excitement of Israel supporters in response to this shooting. They’re so happy they have another rhetorical weapon with which to bludgeon pro-Palestine voices into silence. They can barely contain their glee.
Benjamin Netanyahu immediately scrambled to hold a press conference proclaiming that the attack was the result of Australia taking some steps toward the recognition of a Palestinian state.
New York Times warmonger Bret Stephens penned an article titled “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like,” arguing that the shooters “were taking to heart slogans like ‘resistance is justified,’ and ‘by any means necessary,’ which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over.”
Iraq-raping war propagandist David Frum wrote a similar article for The Atlantic titled “The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach,” saying the beach “has been repeatedly targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators” and denouncing the fact that “Many in the western world have interpreted post-October 7 anti-Israel actions within the framework of free speech.”
The virulently Islamophobic Australian senator Pauline Hanson swiftly slapped together a statement claiming that “the weekly anti-semitic protests across our nation” and “our obnoxious universities” were “warning signs” that such an attack was coming.
Sky News hastened to give a platform to Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sharren Haskel in an interview where she declared that “this is what it means” to allow protesters to chant “globalize the intifada”, saying that “if you let that continue and run in your streets” you are inviting further terrorist attacks. Haskel has previously called pro-Palestine protesters in Australia “useful idiots” for Hamas.
Political dynasty princeling Chris Cuomo took to Twitter to assert that people who’ve been accusing Israel of genocide helped “fuel the hatred on bondi beach.”
The Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard tweeted a video of pro-Palestine protesters in Birmingham with the caption “It you deny the connection between this and what happened at Bondi Beach you are part of the problem.”
A viral tweet from Australian right wing social media personality Kobie Thatcher features a video of a pro-Palestine protest with the caption “This was Sydney, Australia just 6 months ago. These scenes should have been an urgent warning.”
Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has used the attack to demand that Prime Minister Albanese shove through the authoritarian speech suppression plan put forward by Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal earlier this year, arguing that “We have seen public landmarks turned into symbols of antisemitic hate. We have seen campuses occupied and Jewish students made to feel afraid.”
From the earliest moments after this attack Israel apologists have taken it as a given that it was an act of terrorism in response to Israel’s genocidal atrocities in Gaza, but then framing the people peacefully protesting those atrocities as the problem.
They’re openly acknowledging that the genocide is violently radicalizing people, but instead of coming to the obvious conclusion that Israel should therefore not commit genocide, they’re citing it as evidence that people should stop protesting the genocide.
The Shadow Cabinet: How Encrypted Lobbying and the Erosion of Record-Keeping Are Undermining Australian Democracy
14 December 2025 Andrew Klein AIM , https://theaimn.net/the-shadow-cabinet-how-encrypted-lobbying-and-the-erosion-of-record-keeping-are-undermining-australian-democracy/
This article examines a developing crisis in Australian public integrity: the systematic use of encrypted and unminuted communications between lobbyists and the highest levels of government to evade transparency laws. Drawing on recent investigative reporting and parliamentary analysis, it argues that this practice, occurring alongside legislative efforts to weaken the Freedom of Information (FOI) framework and a failure to implement robust anti-corruption measures, represents a calculated retreat from ethical transparency. This creates a “dark space” in policymaking, fundamentally at odds with the stated mission of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the basic democratic contract of public trust. The article concludes that this constitutes a form of institutionalised obscurity that protects political interests at the expense of democratic accountability.
Introduction: The Promise and the Practice
The election of the Albanese government was heralded with a promise to restore trust and integrity after a decade of scandals. The establishment of the NACC was its cornerstone. However, a parallel track of conduct suggests a different priority: the management of political risk through the control of information. This article synthesises evidence revealing a pattern where commitments to transparency are actively undermined by operational secrecy, creating a profound dissonance between public rhetoric and private practice.
The Architecture of Evasion: “Going Non-Traceable”
At the heart of this issue is a reported, routine practice within the Prime Minister’s office. Lobbyists and stakeholders are advised to use encrypted messaging applications (such as Signal) and direct phone calls for substantive policy discussions, explicitly to avoid creating a discoverable record under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth). This guidance creates a two-tiered communication system: a formal, sanitised record for public consumption, and a shadow, substantive dialogue where real influence and negotiation occur. The justification – protecting “fluid thoughts” – is a stark departure from the principle that the formation of public policy should be a matter of public interest, not private conjecture.
Weakening the Scaffolding: Legislative and Systemic Failures
This operational evasion is not occurring in a vacuum. It is reinforced by systemic and legislative actions that degrade the infrastructure of transparency:
- The FOI Amendment Bill: The government is pursuing amendments that experts from the Australian Law Council and the Grattan Institute describe as “the most significant retrenchment” of transparency in decades. Key changes include a strict 40-hour processing cap – a logistical impossibility for complex requests – and the introduction of new, subjective grounds for refusal. This legally enshrines the difficulty of access.
- Chronic Record-Keeping Failure: A 2023 National Archives of Australia report found systemic failure across the Commonwealth in managing digital records. In 90% of recent audits, agencies received negative comments. Only one agency had a clear policy on capturing ministerial and departmental messaging for the official record. This is not negligence; it is a pervasive institutional disregard for the archival compact.
- Rejecting Anti-Cronyism Reforms: The government sat for two years on a review into “jobs for mates” in public appointments. When released, it rejected core recommendations to depoliticise the process, such as banning last-minute appointments before elections. This demonstrates a preference for preserving patronage networks over implementing substantive integrity reform.
The NACC in the Dark: An Integrity Watchdog Without a Trail
The establishment of the NACC was meant to be a circuit-breaker. However, its efficacy is premised on the existence of evidence – a paper trail, a digital record, a minute of a meeting. The practices detailed above are designed to eliminate that trail. The NACC’s own definition of “serious or systemic corrupt conduct” includes breaches of public trust and any conduct perverting the impartial exercise of official functions. Influencing policy through hidden channels, deliberately shielded from public and archival scrutiny, aligns precisely with this definition. The NACC’s first major survey, finding 15% of public officials were aware of corrupt conduct in their area, hints at the scale of the challenge it faces in a culture of obscurity.
Analysis: The “Trust Gap” and the Corruption of Process
The outcome is a critical “trust gap.” The public is asked to trust in institutions that are architecturally designed to avoid being held to account. This goes beyond traditional corruption (bribes for favours). It represents a corruption of process, where the very mechanisms for democratic oversight – FOI, archives, parliamentary scrutiny – are rendered inert. The government controls not only policy but the narrative of how that policy was formed, presenting a fait accompli to the public while hiding the machinery of influence. This creates a space where the lines between lobbying, policy development, and undisclosed conflicts of interest dangerously blur.
Conclusion: Gestures Versus Substance in the Democratic Contract
Australia is at an integrity crossroads. It has the gesture – the NACC – but is dismantling the substance required for that gesture to be meaningful. A democracy cannot function on a “need-to-know” basis where the government decides the public does not need to know how it is governed. The use of encrypted lobbying and the erosion of record-keeping are not administrative quirks; they are political strategies that sacrifice long-term public trust for short-term political convenience. Rebuilding trust requires not just new institutions, but a radical recommitment to transparency as the default, not the exception. Until the “dark space” of policymaking is illuminated, the promise of integrity will remain, like the lost records themselves, unfulfilled.
References……………………..
Grief is not a licence for hate
15 December 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Helen Reynolds https://theaimn.net/grief-is-not-a-licence-for-hate/
Australia is grieving.
The mass killing at Bondi has shaken Sydney and stunned the nation. In the immediate aftermath, there should have been space for mourning, solidarity, and quiet reflection. Instead, the noise arrived almost instantly – loud, cruel, and deeply familiar.
Within hours, social media filled with demands that Muslims be deported, that whole communities be treated as suspects, that fear be repackaged as policy. As if a tragedy can be explained by pointing at a faith followed peacefully by more than a billion people worldwide, including hundreds of thousands of Australians who are our neighbours, colleagues, doctors, teachers, and friends.
This reflex is not about safety. It never is.
It is about finding someone convenient to blame before the bodies are even buried.
Australia has walked this road before. We know where it leads. Collective punishment does not prevent violence – it multiplies it. Bigotry does not heal trauma – it extends it. And scapegoating minorities in moments of national shock is not strength; it is moral cowardice.
As if this wasn’t enough, a second chorus joined in from overseas. Americans – many of them – took it upon themselves to lecture Australia about gun laws. According to them, our strict firearms regulations “don’t work”.
This claim is not just wrong. It is offensive.
Australia reformed its gun laws after Port Arthur. The result was not theoretical, ideological, or symbolic. It was measurable and human: mass shootings largely disappeared. Gun deaths fell. Families were spared the kind of routine horror that now barely registers as news in the United States.
To be told, in the wake of fresh Australian bloodshed, that these laws “failed” is grotesque. What the critics really mean is that such laws would never survive the political system they are trapped in – a system paralysed by gun lobbies, identity politics, and a mythology that mistakes firepower for freedom.
Australia chose fewer coffins.Australia reformed its gun laws after Port Arthur. The result was not theoretical, ideological, or symbolic. It was measurable and human: mass shootings largely disappeared. Gun deaths fell. Families were spared the kind of routine horror that now barely registers as news in the United States.
To be told, in the wake of fresh Australian bloodshed, that these laws “failed” is grotesque. What the critics really mean is that such laws would never survive the political system they are trapped in – a system paralysed by gun lobbies, identity politics, and a mythology that mistakes firepower for freedom.
Australia chose fewer coffins.
America chose excuses.
There is a deeper sickness at work here, one that connects the Islamophobia at home with the gun evangelism abroad. It is the refusal to accept evidence when it conflicts with ideology. The refusal to sit with complexity. The demand that every tragedy confirm a pre-existing narrative.
Violence is not a religion.
Grief is not a policy platform.
And shock is not permission to abandon our values.
If there is anything to be defended in moments like this, it is not borders, weapons, or slogans. It is the fragile idea that a decent society responds to horror with humanity – not hate, not smugness, and not lies dressed up as certainty.
Australia can grieve without turning on itself.
We have done it before.
We must do it again.
AUKUS Caucus
The AUKUS agreement allows any party to withdraw with one year’s notice. But here’s the lethal asymmetry: Australia’s payments are subsidies, not deposits; they are not refundable, and there is no guarantee that the submarines will ever be delivered.
How the AUKUS Caucus built a cargo cult and called it strategy.
14 December 2025 David Tyler Australian Independent Media
There’s a certain kind of Australian politician who never quite grew out of childhood. You know the type: Richard Marles, Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne. Peter Pan to a man. Their eyes light up whenever a Pentagon staffer remembers their name. They sit bolt upright like kelpie pups on the back of the ute, ears pricked for master’s return. They mistake condescension for intimacy, patronage for partnership, obedience for relevance.
Marles, Pat Conroy (Defence Industry), and Brendan O’Connor (Veterans’ Affairs) along with “Rear Admiral-Albo” and Wayfinder Penny Wong make up the AUKUS Caucus: a dream team. Not bound by evidence, timelines, or arithmetic; only by faith. Faith that if Australia sends enough money, bases and deference across the Pacific, the Great Mate in the Sky will someday descend bearing nuclear submarines and strategic salvation.
Australia’s $368 billion imaginary friend.
The Cargo Cult Playbook
Cargo cults arise when isolated societies witness advanced powers arrive with miraculous technology. Locals build imitation runways; light signal fires hoping the planes will return. The AUKUS Caucus has updated the ritual for the modern age. Our runways are ports. The offerings are our sovereignty. The signal fires are AUSMIN pressers. And the planes, as ever, do not land.
Richard Marles, Labor’s embattled Defence Minister, is the cult’s high priest. Asked about implementation delays, he smiles wanly and intones the sacred words: “Full steam ahead.” Full steam ahead to where is never explained.
AUKUS is sold as strategic realism. In practice, it operates as faith: belief substituted for capacity, ritual for delivery, loyalty for leverage.
The Hegseth Problem
This week Marles and Wong flew to Washington for the annual, ceremonial abasement known as AUSMIN. Their opposite number is Pete Hegseth. Former Fox News shouter, veterans’ charity mismanager, and a chap once carried from a strip club by mates after trying to storm the stage. Now improbably directing US defence as Secretary of War.
Hegseth’s character matters because AUKUS asks us to entrust our strategic future to decision-makers whose judgment, attention span and institutional grip are already demonstrably strained. His own mother calls him as an “abuser of women” who “belittles, lies and cheats,” urging him to “get some help and take an honest look at yourself.”
When a nation stakes $368 billion on the judgment of a man disqualified by his own mother from trust, it has crossed from strategy into pathology.
8 December, Marles and Wong are pictured nodding earnestly as Hegseth endorses a $368 billion submarine fantasy he cannot possibly deliver. He barks approval of AUKUS as “pragmatic hard power.” Wong, cryptic as ever, merely echoes Trump’s mantra: “full steam ahead.” The boats are not coming, so who cares what fuels the boiler?
The Pragmatic Hard Power Con
Pragmatic hard power? It could be a new brand of laundry detergent. The absurdity runs deeper than performance.
Australia is trading real sovereignty for imaginary submarines.
AUKUS legislation effectively transfers operational priority and access over key Australian military bases to the US. The terminology is pure institutional dissemblance: “expanded US rotational presence” and “integrated command arrangements.” In plain English: we concede control over our own strategic assets. We slip a few lazy billion to US and British shipyards to “expedite” production; meaning we subsidise their accumulated backlogs. We bind our “defence posture” so thoroughly into US command that when Washington sneezes, Canberra catches cold.
But we do get to wave flags. Hum anthems. Pay invoices.
Each concession merits national debate. Yet, the AUKUS Caucus has sealed the deal without meaningful parliamentary inquiry, without detailed public costings, only an “oversight” committee denied subpoena power, denied independent costing, and so carefully neutered it might as well be chaired by a shredder.
The Legal Trap
And yes, the legal architecture is exactly what critics feared. Under the agreement, Australia provides $4.7 billion (with more coming) to US and UK submarine builders, and according to questioning in Senate Estimates, there is no clawback provision; Australia does not get its money back if the US fails to transfer nuclear submarines.
The AUKUS agreement allows any party to withdraw with one year’s notice. But here’s the lethal asymmetry: Australia’s payments are subsidies, not deposits; they are not refundable, and there is no guarantee that the submarines will ever be delivered.
The US and UK can walk away at any time. They keep the cash, the upgrades, the expanded industrial bases and the sovereign right to prioritise their own needs. Which, as serious countries, they will do.
Australia, meanwhile, is padlocked like a rental fridge in a share-house. Jiggle the handle all you like, but the thing won’t open unless the bloke with the key decides you’ve paid up.
A Big Perhaps
At some point, the more unsettling explanation has to be entertained. Perhaps the submarines are not delayed. Perhaps they are not even expected. Perhaps AUKUS is not failing at all, but performing exactly as intended. The money flows early and without clawback. The bases open. Command structures integrate. Strategic dependency is formalised. The submarines remain permanently over the horizon, always promised, never required. If this were a ruse designed to secure American basing access and regional posture while outsourcing the political pain to future governments, it would be hard to design it differently. Whether Australia’s political class believes its own story, or merely finds it convenient, becomes almost beside the point. The outcome is the same.
And whatever the truth of the submarines, Defence needs a bit of a rescue.
Defence’s House of Horrors
Marles’ predicament worsens when you look at Defence itself: a moral, administrative and institutional nightmare he inherited and, like his predecessors, Linda Reynolds and Peter Dutton, has failed to master. Could anyone? Australia’s predicament worsens also.
The Brereton inquiry exposed 39 unlawful killings in Afghanistan. The stain remains. Atop this moral wreckage sits administrative farce: a Defence official leaked confidential information before walking straight into a job with a private weapons contractor.
The Hunter class frigates tell the broader story. What began life as a $45 million per ship concept has metastasised into $2.6 billion per ship, with hundreds of millions in variations already locked in, and the program at least 18 months late due to design immaturity.
When Labor took office, 28 major Defence projects were running a combined 97 years behind schedule, with roughly a quarter of procurement unfunded. Over it all looms $368 billion we’ve agreed to throw at AUKUS, as a $60 billion annual defence budget swells toward $100 billion by 2034, absorbing failure without correcting it. (AUKUS costs are a guess, announced without consulting Treasury, Parliament or any other authority.)
What Do We Actually Get?
And what does Australia receive for this tithe?
- Not submarines.
- Not even capability.
- A promise.
Five SSN AUKUS boats to be built in Adelaide at some conveniently indeterminate date. Early 2040s if all goes well. If Britain remembers how to build submarines at scale. If the US has spare industrial capacity. If history pauses politely to accommodate our fantasy.
The BAE Systems Track Record
BAE Systems, cast as AUKUS’s industrial saviour, spent two decades struggling to deliver the UK’s Astute class submarines……………………………………………………..
The Pillar Two Mirage
When reality intrudes, the faithful point to Pillar Two, the sideshow of defence tech collaboration; AI, cyber and hypersonics; meant to suggest strategic depth where there is only debt. Scott Morrison dubbed it “AUKUS in Space,” as if adding a preposition and some stars transformed a lopsided submarine purchase into visionary strategy.
But the real achievement is rhetorical: substituting buzz-words for credible policy. In this sense, AUKUS is Scott Morrison’s most enduring legacy.
The Question Marles Won’t Answer
No-one likes a smart-arse but the pitiful Richard Marles still cannot explain why nuclear submarines are worth this ruinous spend when modern diesel-electric boats exist.
Modern diesel-electric submarines provide maximum range, endurance and stealth, operating underwater before having to resurface to snorkel and recharge batteries. Australia’s own Collins-class diesel submarines demonstrated during 2003 multinational exercises that they were comparable in underwater warfare to US Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered attack submarines, trading roles and achieving , successful attacks despite being smaller and less powerful……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The Runway at Dusk
For $368 billion, AUKUS is not a procurement program. It is a wager on dependency.
Australia is paying staggering sums for submarines that do not yet exist, to be built by industries in chronic difficulty, on timelines that belong to fantasy, while ceding real autonomy over real assets in the present. In return, we receive reassurance. Access. Attention. The comforting sense that someone larger, louder and more heavily armed is standing somewhere behind us………………………………………………………………………………
History will not ask whether the submarines eventually arrived. It will ask why a nation willingly surrendered so much, so early, for so little certainty in return. And it will judge us not by the promises we believed, but by the choices we made when the risks were already plain. https://theaimn.net/aukus-caucus/
The Israel Lobby’s War on Aussie Doctors
Since recording this video, the Victor Change Cardiac Research Institute has finally allowed Professor Macdonald to return to work. Thank you to everyone who helped achieve this important victory for free speech and our healthcare system.
Will the lights go out if we don’t have baseload? “No, absolutely not,” say those whose job it is to keep them on
Giles Parkinson, ReNewEconomy, Dec 12, 2025
Australia’s green energy transition is continuing apace – not as quickly as many would hope, and possibly not as fast as we could. But it is certainly happening more quickly than nearly everyone imagined a decade ago, and at a speed some still find hard to digest.
The release of the Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest multi-decade blueprint, the draft 2026 Integrated System Plan, underlines what nearly everyone now accepts to be true – that the lowest cost option to replace Australia’s ageing fleet of coal generators is with wind, solar, battery storage, a bit more gas capacity and some transmission.
It’s been the case since the first ISP was produced in 2018, at the instigation of the then Coalition government, and the main thrust of the ISP has varied little since then (three were produced under the Coalition and this is the second under Labor).
Nicola Falcon, now the executive general manager of system design at AEMO, has been working on the ISP since the first was finalised in 2018, and points to its remarkable consistency, despite – or even perhaps because of – the technology changes that have occurred in that time.
“Even with those changes that are going on around us, it continues to be that that least cost mix is renewable generation, connected with networks firmed by storage and backed by gas,” Falcon tells Renew Economy in the latest episode of its weekly Energy Insiders podcast.
See: Energy Insiders Podcast: A blueprint to quit coal, and go green
Yet the biggest hurdle to the ISP’s success remains political – whether it be the political rhetoric and misinformation from the Coalition at the federal level that proves a lightning road for local opposition, or the destructive acts of new conservative state governments such as the LNP in Queensland.
The basis of this is almost entirely dependent on a red herring – that the future of Australia’s economy and the reliability of its electricity supplies can only be guaranteed by what they call “baseload”, by which they mean existing coal and future nuclear.
That’s not what the energy industry says, unless they have a particular vested interest in perpetuating that myth. The future is now focused on bulk renewables – wind and solar – supported by storage, mostly batteries but also some pumped hydro and other technologies – and some peaking gas as the last fall-back.
The big energy players, and the market operator itself, have been consistent with this line, but on Energy Insiders we wanted to hear it again, and asked Falcon if the absence of “baseload” means the lights will go out.
“No, absolutely not,” Falcon replied.
………………………………………………………………………………….. the plunging cost of battery storage has had profound implications – both for its ability to store excess power and send it into the grid in the evening peaks, create demand in the middle of the day, and provide lower cost “virtual transmission” instead of new power lines.
The latest ISP models more battery storage, more solar and battery hybrids, more household PV (backed by more batteries), and less wind, less gas, and fewer new transmission lines.
But the fundamental story remains the same.
“There’s still going to be in a five fold increase in solar and wind that we need from now, where we’ve got about 23 gigawatts on the system to 120 gigawatts by 2050,” Falcon says……………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Then, of course, are the customers themselves, with households expected to host some 87 gigawatts of capacity.
“By 2050 the consumer energy resources that we call them, which is your rooftop PV, your batteries and your electric vehicles, combined, will be providing half of the capacity supplied for the entire NEM, so, you know, a huge role,” Falcon says.
“They’re really at the heart of the transition. And to be fair, they’re setting the pace at the moment. As Australians, we’ve got 4 million households with rooftop PV on them.
We’ve seen with their household home batteries, huge uptake in the amount of CzeR storage and so forth. We’ve got, from a power system perspective, there’s opportunity through those investments, opting in to really provide value, not just for themselves, but also for all Australians……………….. https://reneweconomy.com.au/will-the-lights-go-out-if-we-dont-have-baseload-no-absolutely-not-say-those-whose-job-it-is-to-keep-them-on/
Marles’ new Defence agency – rearranging deck chairs on the HMAS Titanic
Look how much taxpayers’ money is gobbled up by weaponry, compared to all other services
Earlier this week Defence Minister Richard Marles announced a big reform in Defence Procurement. Except it wasn’t a big reform, rather a rearranging of deck chairs. Former senator Rex Patrick reports.
by Rex Patrick | Dec 7, 2025 https://michaelwest.com.au/marles-new-defence-agency-rearranging-deck-chairs/
And the needle returns to the start of the song …
On 22 June 2000, then Minister for Defence John Moore approved the establishment of the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO), a single organisation that was to be charged with the responsibility of acquisition and through life support of equipment and systems used by the Australian Defence Force.
But the DMO didn’t work.
On 01 April 2015, then Minister for Defence Kevin Andrews announced that he had accepted the recommendations of a Defence First Principles Review and that the DMO would be disbanded – it wasn’t working – and that its functions would be transferred to a new Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).
But the CASG didn’t work.
On 01 December the Defence Minister, Richard Marles, announced he was merging CASG, Defence’s Guided Weapons and Explosives Ordinance Group and the Naval Shipbuilding & Sustainment Group into a single organisation to be called the Defence Delivery Agency (DDA).
DDA won’t work
Rearranging deck chairs
During the week Marles sought to assure that there would be no job losses as a result of his reforms and, in an absolute admission that all he was doing was rearranging the deck chairs, he advised that existing public servants who worked for Defence would simply be transferred over to the new agency.
The biggest problem that Defence has, and which Marles doesn’t have the ability to solve, is the fact that the very senior uniformed people who are running Defence acquisition, while undoubtedly being good war-fighters, don’t have the experience in project management to understand that it is risk that brings down projects.
You would not take an experienced project manager and assigned them command responsibility of a warship, and you should not take a warship captain and assign them responsibility for a large project. But the latter is exactly what happens inside Defence.
Political risk (political change), economic risk (pressure on budgets), management risk (inexperience) and technical risk (novelty, uncertainty and complexity) – that’s what causes projects to go off the rails.
Changing the label on the front door of the equipment procurement office won’t do a thing to get better value-for-money or reliable capable equipment for our defence force.
E.G. AUKUS
AUKUS is classical Defence risk taking.
It’s not a hidden fact that the United States is not building enough Virginia class submarines to meet US Navy needs, let alone supply the Royal Australian Navy with some. The US Government’s AUKUS review report is now with the Australian Government. The Minister is talking up the contents, albeit in very general detail.
“If the US were honest, they’d tell us to do something different.”
But with $1.6 billion already paid to the US Department of War and another billion dollars set to be gifted to the US in the next couple of weeks, the temptation would be difficult.
Senate Estimates this week was instructive. When Senator David Shoebridge read from the evidence given by Lord Case, the Chair of ‘Team Barrow’ (the organisation entrusted with ensuring the town of Barrow is able to support the UK’s and AUKUS submarine build needs) telling the UK Parliament he was not happy with his team’s progress, Vice Admiral Jonathon Mead indicated he did not know about it.
Experienced project managers spend their time looking for bad news – looking for risk that is materialising. That doesn’t seem to be happening. ‘Talking’ AUKUS is the order of the day, not ‘walking’.
Real change
If Marles knew what he was doing he would look to the culture in Defence procurements.
“No more ‘special’ or ‘expensive monolithic’ projects.“
Defence needs to develop a force optimised first for Defence-of-Australia and second for near regional security (and conduct other work from that order-of-battle). It needs to focus on proven designs/capabilities when fulfilling Defence Force needs.
This is something that has been recommended to Defence in the past, in the 2003 Kinnaird Review and the 2008 Mortimer Review. They are not new ideas; they are old ideas ignored.
Even those not currently interested in Defence need to be a little bit interested. Putting national security imperatives to one side, so much public money is spent on Defence.
One of the most telling signals that nothing substantive will come from Minister Marles’ announced changes came when Senator Shoebridge asked the question of Defence Secretary Greg Moriarty will the new ‘National Armament Director’ come from outside the current organisations?
There was no way Moriarty was going to answer that question. He employed bureaucratic doublespeak and avoided a direct answer. The secretary is an experienced public service hand, and will want someone in the seat that he can ‘guide’.
Marles needn’t worry too much though. He has what he needs – a dodge over failing projects for the rest of the parliamentary term, and possibly the next as well. “All those problems were caused by the old system,” Marles will say.
Segal Secrets: docs reveal Antisemitism Envoy’s big pay day
by Stephanie Tran | Dec 9, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/segal-secrets-docs-reveal-antisemitism-envoys-big-pay-day/
Jillian Segal, Australia’s controversial Antisemitism Czar and Israel lobbyist, procured an extra $12.9m funding from PM Anthony Albanese, heavily redacted FOI documents show. Stephanie Tran reports.
The Albanese government has blocked key details about the appointment of Jillian Segal as Australia’s special envoy for antisemitism, with freedom of information documents (FOI) revealing a process almost entirely obscured by redactions.
The documents, released by the Department of Home Affairs in response to an FOI request, show the government relied on wide-ranging secrecy exemptions to withhold internal briefings, candidate assessments, deliberative advice to ministers, and all correspondence between Segal and the Prime Minister’s Office.
Beyond a set of boilerplate terms of reference, the documents shed little light on why Segal was chosen. What’s deliberately missing, however, is the real story.
Selection process almost entirely redacted
One of the key questions the FOI sought to answer was how Segal came to be selected. In correspondence to staff in March 2024, Home Affairs officials described an intention to provide the Prime Minister with “up to 6 candidates” reflecting “the demography of Australia”, diverse identities and gender, and “trusted relationships” in their communities.
But every document detailing assessments or the rationale for selection was either heavily redacted or withheld in full, primarily under the FOI Act’s deliberative processes exemption under s47C.
The Information Officer’s decision letter notes that Home Affairs undertook “extremely thorough” searches, but still located no resume, no risk assessments and no evaluation criteria.
The Department’s claim that it could not locate a copy of Jillian Segal’s CV appears to be at odds with the government’s own records. In a June 2024 letter to the Prime Minister, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles explicitly stated that Segal’s “Curriculum Vitae, Private Interest Declaration and Appointments Details pro-forma are at Attachment D.”
(Original article copiously shows the government documents)
Urgency and budget blowouts
What survives the redactions paints a picture of a high-speed, politically sensitive process.
The documents reveal the existence of an “Israel Hamas Social Cohesion Taskforce” within Home Affairs, headed by Giles.
In February 2024, Giles wrote to Anthony Albanese seeking “urgent agreement” to appoint envoys to combat Antisemitism and Islamophobia, citing the “immediate and significant rise in Antisemitism and Islamophobia … exacerbated by the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel [and] the ongoing conflict and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
On 21 June 2024, Giles personally recommended Segal as the preferred candidate for the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
In a letter dated 25 June 2024, Albanese agreed to Segal’s appointment. Albanese also approved an additional $12.9 million of funding for the two envoy roles.
“The 2024-25 Budget provided $4.0 million over two years from 2023-24 for the appointment of the Special Envoys, as a decision taken but not yet announced. Noting the appointments will now be for three years instead of one and additional support staff may be required, I agree to provide up to an additional $12.9 million in total over three years from 2024-25 for up to 12 staff, with offsets to be agreed in the 2024-25 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) context, subject to agreement with the Department of Finance.”
Public interest outweighed by need for secrecy
In its decision, Home Affairs argued that releasing deliberative material would hinder officials’ ability to provide “full and frank advice” on future appointments, and that releasing names or details of candidates would be an unreasonable breach of personal privacy.
The Department explicitly acknowledged that disclosure would “promote the objects of the FOI Act” and “inform debate on a matter of public importance” but still maintained the public interest favoured secrecy, particularly to avoid “prejudicing” internal government processes.
The information officer stated the following:
“I consider that the public interest in protecting the process of the provision of free and honest confidential advice by a Department to its Minister has, on balance, more weight, than the public interest that might exist in disclosing the deliberative matter. Endangering the proper working relationship that a Department has with its Minster and its ability to provide its Minister with honest advice confidentially would be contrary to the public interest.”
The Colby Review, AUKUS and Lopsided Commitments
9 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/the-colby-review-aukus-and-lopsided-commitments/
In one of his many cutting observations about the fallibility of politicians, H. L. Mencken had this to say about the practical sort: “It is his business to convince the mob (a) that it is confronted by some grave danger, some dreadful menace to its peace and security, and (b) that he can save it.” Regarding Australia’s often provincial politicians, that grave danger remains the Yellow Peril, albeit it one garbed in communist party colours, while the quackery they continue to practise involves the notion the United States will act as shield bearer and saviour in any future conflict.
The AUKUS trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States has turned the first of these countries into an expectant vassal state, mindful of security guarantees it does not need from a power that can, and would at a moment’s notice, abandon it. But more dangerously, the expectation here is that Canberra, awaiting Virginia Class (SSN-774) nuclear-powered submarines from the US, will offer unconditional succour, resources and promises to the projection of Washington’s power in the Indo-Pacific. Without any guarantee of such submarines, Australian money is underwriting US submarine production, which remains consistently tardy. (Currently, 1.3 boats are being produced annually, when 2.3 are needed.)
The 2023 National Defense Authorization Act makes it irrefutably clear that Congress shall be notified that any transfer of boats “will not degrade the United States underseas capabilities.” Pursuing AUKUS still entailed “sufficient submarine production and maintenance investments” on the part of the US to meet undersea capabilities, with Australia advancing “appropriate funds and support for the additional capacity required to meet the requirements” along with Canberra’s “capability to host and fully operate the vessels authorized to be transferred.”
This true steal for US diplomacy, and sad tribute to Homo boobiens on the part of the Australians, has continued with the review of AUKUS conducted by Undersecretary of Defense Policy Eldridge Colby. The review is not available for public eyes, but Colby had previously released smoke signals that the AUKUS pact would only “lead to more submarines collectively in 10, 15, 20 years, which is way beyond the window of maximum danger, which is really this decade.”
The Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles told reporters on December 4 that the review had been received. “We’re working through the AUKUS review, and we very much thank the United States for providing it to us.” (Surely that’s the least they could have done.) He had identified unwavering support for the pact. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also released a statement to the media expressing enthusiasm. “Consistent with President Trump’s guidance that AUKUS should move ‘full steam ahead,’ the review identified opportunities to put AUKUS on the strongest possible footing.” No doubt opportunities have been identified, but these are likely to be consistent with the lopsided arrangements Australia has had with the US to date.
Australia has so far provided A$1.6 billion in funding to the US submarine base, with the promise of more. What remains unclear is how much of this is also going into training Australian personnel to operate and maintain the vessels. “There’s a schedule of payments to be made,” explained Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in July. “We have an agreement with the United States as well as with the United Kingdom. It is about increasing their capacity, their industrial capacity.” As part of such arrangements, “we have Australians on the ground, learning those skills.”
The joint fact sheet on the 2025 Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN), held between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and their Australian counterparts Penny Wong and Marles in Washington, makes one reference to AUKUS and nothing in terms of substance to Colby’s recommendations. There is, however, this bit of unpardonable gibberish: “In line with President Trump and Prime Minister Albanese’s direction to move ‘full steam ahead’ on AUKUS, the [ministers] recognised the work underway to deliver priority infrastructure works and workforce uplift plan in support of an enhanced trilateral submarine industrial base.”
Given such statements, it is hard to see what opportunities identified in the Colby report could possibly be advantageous to Australia, a mere annexure of the US imperium. There is bound to be continued pressure on Australia to increase its defence spending. There are also unaddressed concerns about how sovereign the SSNs in Australian hands are going to be when and if they ever make it across the Pacific. In a conflict involving the United States, notably in the Indo-Pacific, Canberra will be expected to rush in with that mindless enthusiasm that has seen Australian soldiers die in theatres they would struggle to name for causes they could barely articulate.
Even the confident opinion of Joe Courtney, a Democrat member of the House Armed Services Committee and representative of Groton, Connecticut (the “Submarine Capital of the World”), should be viewed warily. “The statutory authority enacted by Congress in 2023 will remain intact, including the sale of three Virginia-class submarines starting in 2032,”comes his beaming assessment. The Colby review “correctly determined that there are critical deadlines that all three countries have to meet. Therefore, maintaining disciplined adherence to schedule is paramount.” That degree of discipline and adherence to schedules is unlikely to be an equal one. It is bound to favour, first and foremost, Washington’s own single perspective.
Nuclear Kills Kids
most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.
Tony Webb | April 28, 2025, https://www.fabians.org.au/nuclear_kills_kids
One moment from my work in the USA in the early 1980s stands out in my memory. I’d driven from Chicago to Cleveland at the invitation of the Health and Safety Officer of the US Boilermakers Union. The purpose was to speak to the members meeting held on the night ahead of the recruitment of members for work on the annual ‘clean-up’ of the local Nuclear Power plant. The hired workers would be ‘radiation sponges’ – short-term casuals recruited for the ‘dirty jobs’ that would result in significant radiation exposures sometimes up to the permitted annual exposure limit and ‘let go’ if they reached that limit. The practice offered some protection to the company’s full -time employees whose skills would be needed on an ongoing basis and whose exposures needed to be kept below the limit. The meeting was well attended , rowdy, with a lot of questions and discussion which spilled over into the carpark after the meeting closed. I noticed one man hanging back from the circle and invited him to join and share his thoughts. As I recall them the essence was:
“I will be going in to apply for work tomorrow. I understand what you shared about the risks . . . no safe level of exposure and chance of getting cancer perhaps 20 years from now . . . It will put a roof over my family’s heads and food on the table . . . BUT my wife and I have had all the family we want. If we hadn’t, what you shared about the genetic risks, the damage to our children and future generations . . . no I wouldn’t be going . . . “
It is a sad fact that workers, both men and women will choose, often from necessity, to put their health at risk from the work environment. What is however consistent in my experience of working on radiation and other occupational health and safety issues is that they are far more concerned, cautious and likely to prioritise safety when it comes to risks to their children.
We now have solid evidence(1) that workers in nuclear power plants routinely exposed to radiation face significantly increased cancer risks, risks of cardiovascular disease including heart attacks and strokes, dementia and potentially other health effects. There is also an increased risk of genetic damage that can be passed on to their children and future generations. But perhaps most significant of all there is now solid evidence of increased rates of leukaemia in children living close to nuclear power plants.
To put it simply and in language that will resonate with workers and their families in the communities around the seven nuclear power plant sites the federal Liberal-National Coalition proposes to build if elected to government, nuclear kills kids. It matters little whether or not these nuclear plants can be built on time, within budget, make a contribution to climate change, reduce electricity prices, or secure a long-term energy future; these nuclear power plants will likely kill kids who live close by. They cannot operate without routine releases of radioactive material into the environment and our young will be exposed and are particularly susceptible to any exposure that results.
Now add to that if you care that women are more susceptible than men; that workers in these plants face greater exposure and health risks than adults in the community; that nuclear plants have and will continue to have both major accidents and less major ‘incidents’ resulting in radiation releases, community exposures and health damage. Add also that quite apart from the workers and others exposed when these plants need to be decommissioned, the radioactive wastes resulting from perhaps 30-50 years life will need to be safely stored and kept isolated from human contact for many thousands of years longer than our recorded human history. And, again if you care, also add in the concerns around proliferation of nuclear weapons which historically has occurred on the back of, enabled by and sometimes concealed by countries’ developing so called peaceful nuclear power.
All these arguments add weight to the absurdity of Australia starting and the world continuing down this nuclear power path. But if we want a single issue that strikes at the heart of human concerns it is this – and forgive me saying it again, it needs to be repeated many times until the electorate in Australia hears it loud and clear – Nuclear Kills Kids.
SOURCES……………………………………………………………………………………………………
The people and environment of South Australia must be protected from Federal imposed storage of AUKUS High-Level nuclear waste:
by David Noonan Independent Environment Campaigner 10 Nov 2025.
South Australians have a Right to Say No to undemocratic Federal imposed storage of AUKUS
High Level nuclear waste in our State. All Federal MPs & Senators from SA, Members of the SA
Parliament and candidates for the SA State Election on 21st March should declare their position:
Q: Will you accept or reject Federal imposed storage of AUKUS nuclear waste in SA?
The Federal Government quietly took up new AUKUS Regulations (2 Oct) as powers to impose
AUKUS wastes by override of State laws that prohibit nuclear waste storage in SA, NT and WA.
AUKUS Regulation 111 “State and Territory laws that do not apply in relation to a regulated
activity” names and prescribes our SA Nuclear Waste Storage (Prohibition) Act 2000. The
Objects of this key SA Law set out what is at stake: “To protect the health, safety and welfare
of the people of SA, and the environment in which they live” from nuclear waste storage.
Federal Labor’s draconian powers to compromise public health, safety and welfare protections
in SA Law, lacks social licence, are an affront to civil society, and damages trust in governance.
This is also a threat to Indigenous People with a cultural responsibility to protect their country.
Community expects our State Labor Government to give a clear State Election commitment to
protect SA from the risks and impacts of untenable and illegal AUKUS High Level nuclear waste
storage, see “The lethal legacy of Aukus nuclear submarines will remain for millennia – and
there’s no plan to deal with it” (The Guardian, 10 August 2025, interview with Prof Ian Lowe).
Labor has a further key leadership test ahead of our Election: to commit to support Indigenous
People’s human rights, set out in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous
Peoples Article 29 (UNDRIP 2007), to “Free, Prior and Informed Consent” over storage of
hazardous materials on their lands. AUKUS wastes absolutely are hazardous materials!
a Question for Premier Peter Malinauskas: Will you respect and support Indigenous Peoples
Rights to Say No to Federal siting of AUKUS nuclear waste storage on their country in SA?
Call for full disclosure on a N-waste siting process after Labor breaks its commitment:
The public has a Right to Know what regions are being targeted for storage of High-Level
nuclear wastes. A secretive ongoing Defence review “to identify potential nuclear waste
disposal sites” (ABC News March 2023) must be made public ahead of the SA State Election.
AUKUS Minister Marles has broken his commitment to announce a process by early 2024 to
identify a site to dispose of AUKUS High-Level nuclear wastes. The failure by Defence to set out
any process – other than to take up powers to impose nuclear wastes – is unacceptable.
REPORTER: Is a high-level nuclear waste dump the price that South Australia will have to pay
for the jobs that go to the state? (Minister Marles Press Conference 14 March 2023)
MARLES: Well, as I indicated there will be a process that we will determine within the next 12
months for how the site will be identified. You’ve made a leap there, which we’re not going to
make for some time. It will be a while before a site is ultimately identified. But we will within the
next 12 months establish a process for how we walk down that path.
It is now over 4 years since Federal Labor agreed with Morrison’s AUKUS nuclear sub agenda.
SA Labor to let ‘national security interests’ decide siting for AUKUS nuclear waste?
National press reported the Woomera Area to be a ‘favoured location’ for storage and disposal
of nuclear sub wastes back in August 2023 (“Woomera looms as national nuclear waste dump
site including for AUKUS submarine high-level waste afr.com). WA, Qld and Vic political leaders
have rejected a High-Level nuclear waste disposal site in their States, with WA suggesting the
Woomera Prohibited Area in SA: “would be one obvious location within the Defence estate,
however, we will await the outcomes of the federal review” (SMH 15 March 2023).
Premier Malinauskas has so far only said AUKUS nuclear waste should go to a ‘remote’ location
in the “national security interest” (see “Site for high-level nuclear waste dump under AUKUS
deal must be in national interest, SA premier says” ABC News 15 March 2023).
The Premier’s “Office for AUKUS” (Letter, 7 Oct 2025) accepts “safe and secure disposal” of
High-Level nuclear waste, including spent fuel, produced when subs are decommissioned. The
Office says no decision has been made on a location but declines to reveal what is underway,
expresses no concerns over unprecedented nuclear waste storage or ‘social license’, and
expects “community acceptance” (in SA?) for a nuclear ‘disposal solution’:
“I can confirm that no decision has been made on a location within Australia for the
disposal of intermediate, or high-level radioactive waste from nuclear-powered
submarines. Determining suitable locations and methods for safe and secure disposal
will take time, but Australia will do so in a manner that sets the highest standards … and
which builds community acceptance for a disposal solution.”
SA is left in the dark, without a say, as an ongoing target for an AUKUS nuclear waste dump.
AUKUS is to store US origin nuclear wastes from 2nd hand Virginia Class subs in Australia:
AUKUS aims Australia take on second-hand US Virginia Class nuclear powered subs in the early
2030’s loaded with up to a dozen years of US origin military High-Level nuclear waste and fissile
Atomic-Bomb fuel accrued in operations of US Navy High Enriched Uranium nuclear reactors.
Swapping an Australian flag onto this US military nuclear reactor waste places an untenable ‘for
ever’ burden on all future generations to have to cope these US nuclear wastes.
Scenario: an AUKUS nuclear dump imposed on SA, High-Level military waste shipped into
Whyalla Port to go north, nuclear subs to be ‘decommissioned’ at Osborne Port Adelaide.
Whyalla Port is back on a nuclear waste target range. How else could AUKUS nuclear waste get
to a storage site in north SA? The Woomera Area is expected to be on a regional short list for an
AUKUS dump, requiring nuclear waste transport routes across SA. Port Adelaide community has
a Right to Say No to nuclear decommissioning plans for expanded Osborne submarine yards.
SA politicians must protect SA and rule out both an untenable AUKUS nuclear dump and
decommissioning nuclear subs and nuclear reactors at Osborne or else-where in SA.
SA must respect Traditional Owners Human Rights to Say No to imposition of nuclear wastes.
The SA public have Rights to full disclosure and for politicians to have to declare their positions,
We need an informed public debate ahead of our State Election. Silence by our political leaders, while a path is paved toward nuclear decisions, makes a nuclear waste dump future more likely.
Info: see Rex Patrick & “AUKUS waste in perpetuity”, and David Noonan in Pearls and Irritations
Follow the money. A radioactive farce of failed land purchases
Rex Patrick | Dec 1, 2025, https://michaelwest.com.au/follow-the-money-a-radioactive-farce-of-failed-land-purchases/
The Federal Government is refusing to release any details of the land purchase for radioactive waste management. Rex Patrick follows the money trail.
n 2023, the current Minister for Resources confessed to the Senate that the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) had spent $108.6 million not finding a place for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).
In July 2023, Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth set aside a November 2021 declaration made by then Minister Keith Pitt that Napandee, a 211-acre property near Kimba in SA, was to be the future site of the NRWMF. Pitt’s declaration for this site was nine years in the making, but he and the Department had botched the site selection process.
Not the way to select a facility
If you wanted to select a site for a national facility to store radioactive waste, you’d look to the storage requirements, including technical, environmental, geological (such as earthquake tendency), social, and indigenous cultural and heritage considerations. And then you’d look for sites that met all those requirements.
That’s not what DISR did.
In September 2012, the Government released a notice of intention to conduct a nationwide request for land owners to nominate land for the NRWMF. The official call for nominations was conducted between 2 March and 5 May 2015.
A sweetener was added to entice landowners; the successful land seller would get four times the market value. It was quite an extraordinary proposition – it wasn’t as though the Government was intending to compulsorily acquire land from an unwilling seller.
But, why not? The geniuses who concocted the plan in DISR knew only too well that the extra money was just taxpayers’ money.
Buy, and then sell back
On 26 November 2021, the Government declared land in Napandee, owned by the Baldock family*, would be the site for the facility.
Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.
MWM is trying to get access to the land sale contract and the purchase price, using FOI. But access to it has been refused. You paid, but are not allowed to know.
The FOI decision is now the subject of challenge, where the Information Commissioner will be the adjudicator.
Last week, the Minister for Resources also refused to answer a formal “how much” question asked by Senator Lambie.
Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct.
Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct.
Or when the Department of Infrastructure acquired the Western Sydney Airport ‘Leppington Triangle’ land for $30m, when it was only valued at $3m.
Maladministration or something more sinister?
It’s unheard of that the Senate would be denied past expenditure information on land at Napandee.
The Government has surely overpaid for the site, even after meeting their own unexplained ‘4x price’ rule, by $4 million, but possibly by $9 million if the scuttlebutt is correct.
At best, the Government has engaged in a farce. The Department knew that the path they had taken to select Napandee was flawed.
On 1 February 2020, Senator Matt Canavan, who preceded Pitt as the Minister for Resources, announced Napandee as the site to host Australia’s NRWMF. But the Canavan decision was informal.
Realising the process would be found wanting by a Court, the Government changed tack and on 13 February 2020 introduced legislation into the House of Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
On 6 March 2020, a senior departmental official, Sam Chard, met with the Mayor of Kimba, during which he said words to the effect that (as recorded in Justice Charlesworth’s decision) ,
“parliamentary scrutiny would replace the mechanism for legal challenge under the NRWM Act.”
MWM can’t publish for legal reasons – but you can read about it here).
DISR and the Government thought they were onto a winning solution because the proposed legislation would shut down the option of challenging the decision in a court (Courts can’t overturn the decisions of Parliament unless they are unconstitutional). The problem was the Senate refused to pass it. So, they went back to the original plan, and Minister Pitt formally made the ministerial site decision on 26 November 2021.
What the FOI has revealed is an extraordinary fact – the land was actually purchased on 11 November 2021, 15 days before Pitt made the decision that it was the Minister’s chosen site.
* Editor’s note: MWM makes no allegation of wrongdoing by the Baldock family. They are merely a beneficiary of DISR maladministration or of their farce.
The Moral Hazard of Being US Deputy-Sheriff
6 December 2025 David Tyler , https://theaimn.net/the-moral-hazard-of-being-us-deputy-sheriff/
In a secure room in Washington last week, Australian officials watched what the world would soon see.
A small Venezuelan fisherman’s tinnie drifts, already incinerated by a first missile. Two survivors cling to a piece of the wreckage. A pause. Then a second flash. A missile is aimed at the living, not the vessel. Eleven men die. US officials insist it was legal. Congress wants answers. The survivors are dead either way. It is an act of primitive, barbaric cruelty. The purpose is to erase witnesses and to send a message of terror as a deterrence.
That second strike; the notorious “double tap” has a long historical precedence. It is now under investigation as a potential war crime, authorised by the same US defence secretary Australia is binding itself to more tightly than at any time since 1945. This is what AUKUS really entangles us with: not an abstract “rules-based order,” but a command chain learning to live with killing those who survive.
Hannah Arendt warned that “most evil is done by those who never make up their minds to be good or evil.” Australia is drifting into that moral fog; without even pretending to know the difference.
Our Hands Are Not Clean
When the footage broke, six US lawmakers, all military veterans, reminded troops they must refuse illegal orders. President Trump’s response? Their comments were “seditious behaviour, punishable by death.” His team later softened his threat, but the FBI still moved to interview the six.
No strike operators are under investigation. The dead Venezuelans are not discussed. The controversy, incredibly, is whether Americans are allowed to warn other Americans not to commit war crimes.
Australia, moreover, is not just an innocent onlooker to a Trump’s gung-ho vigilantism, a state which shoots first and asks questions after. We have ADF personnel embedded in US commands that carry out attacks of this kind. We host Pine Gap, described by senior intelligence analysts as a premier US targeting facility in the southern hemisphere, linking satellites to weapons systems across the Middle East and Asia. We tell ourselves we host it for “security.” In practice, we help aim weapons we never authorised, and cannot refuse.
It is not the brutality that shocks the alliance; it is the dissent.
Asymmetry on Steroids
AUKUS was sold as strategic maturity; an insurance policy against an uncertain Indo-Pacific. Instead, it could become a transfer of sovereignty disguised as procurement. Australia pays up to AUD 368 billion for nuclear submarines that may not arrive until the 2040s. Ships we can neither crew, service nor fuel.
Even then, we may service American boats before our own. The Parliamentary Library analysis makes clear the technology transfer remains subject to US export controls. We do not buy independence; we buy a permanent maintenance job.
Washington gains unfettered access to Australian ports, deeper control of our deterrence posture, and logistical reach into Asia. Canberra gets second-hand privileges wrapped in secrecy.
As Bernard Keane has observed, Labor governs as though office is something to occupy, not use. The result is an alliance that treats American commercial and military interests as interchangeable, while our interests and needs are politely deferred.
The Pattern Is Becoming Impossible to Ignore
In just two weeks:
- The administration signalled openness to watered-down Nvidia AI chip sales to China, over the objections of US China hawks who argued they could bolster Chinese military capacity.
- A leaked plan for Ukraine’s reconstruction envisaged turning frozen Russian assets into profit streams for US-led venture funds; Europeans were expected to accept territorial loss and pay a commission for the privilege.
- Trump stalled sanctions against a Chinese spy agency implicated in extensive hacking to protect an upcoming trade trip to Beijing.
In each episode, intelligence and human rights concerns are bent around the same question: What makes money now?
Imagine if Canberra behaved as crassly. When Australia signs quiet deals with Beijing, we call it “strategic naïveté‘. When Washington does it, we call it “the alliance.”
Australia Has Agency – or It Has Nothing
This is not an argument for abandoning the alliance, but for removing the leash. A self-respecting partner demands:
- Transparency: Parliamentary oversight of defence commitments, including rules of engagement affecting Australian personnel and facilities.
- Reciprocity: Partnerships beyond one power; ASEAN, India, Japan, South Korea, the EU, not an exclusive dependence.
- Sovereign capability: Shipbuilding and cyber defence that serve Australia first, not as a service station for US fleets.
- Moral Limits: If allies breach international law, we do not close our eyes; we close our ports.
Blind obedience is not strategy. It is outsourcing judgment. Surrendering autonomy.
The Choice Is Not Between America and China
Canberra’s defenders of AUKUS love a false dilemma: independence equals Beijing. They mistake sovereignty for treason. Malcolm Fraser warned of this decades ago, describing Australia as a “client state.” We have since upgraded ourselves; to a nuclear client state, paying interest on promises.
Independence is not abandonment. It is partnership without servility. It is the ability to say no. If a second strike on drowning men does not trigger such a boundary, nothing will.
The real danger is no longer foreign power. It is our refusal to imagine ourselves without permission.
Choose Leadership Before It’s Chosen For Us
The Caribbean footage will fade. The legal arguments will thicken. The bodies will be forgotten. What will remain is the alliance, tighter than ever, and a government too cautious to ask what we might be agreeing to on our behalf.
Gough Whitlam once feared Australia would become a nation of “toadies and bludgers” trading sovereignty for illusion. That future arrives quietly. It arrives not with invasion, but with permission slips. It arrives when the second flash on a foreign sea is someone else’s problem, and ours only if we ask.
Albanese must choose leadership while we still have a choice to make.
Labor backs ‘practical’ nuclear disarmament, Wong says
Anthony Albanese’s top diplomat has addressed a key question on Labor’s nuclear stance after a high-level defence official dropped a bombshell.
Joseph Olbrycht-Palmer, December 4, 2025 , https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/labor-backs-practical-nuclear-disarmament-wong-says/news-story/71ab3526def44ff9505452fb55bbc9f2
Labor backs “practical” efforts to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles across the world, Anthony Albanese’s top diplomat has said after a senior defence official revealed a naval base in Western Australia could host nuclear-armed US submarines.
Greens senator David Shoebridge on Thursday peppered Foreign Minister Penny Wong with wide-ranging queries during Senate estimates.
Among them was why Defence Minister Richard Marles refused to “endorse” the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) in an interview last month, as Senator Shoebridge characterised it.
He said it “caused deep despair” among nuclear weapons abolitionists “who have been pushing for this treaty for years”.
“Does the Albanese government support the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons?” Senator Shoebridge asked.
Senator Wong said Labor was “engaging constructively on the evidence on the TPNW” but that existing frameworks were the best bet.
“Our party has a very proud history of championing practical – I emphasise that – practical non-proliferation and disarmament efforts internationally,” she said, adding that Labor is “steadfast in our support for the NPT”.
“The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is the cornerstone of global disarmament and non-proliferation.”
Recognising the “devastating consequences for humanity” bore by nuclear arms and concerns around the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear command systems, Senator Wong said the NPT offered the “best pathway to advance non-proliferation and disarmament”.
Signing the TPNW would block Australia from hosting any US military nuclear assets, counteracting the Prime Minister’s offer to Donald Trump in October of expanding port access for the US’ roaming Virginia-class submarines.
The submarines are the nuclear-armed vanguard of the US Navy.
During Senate estimates on Wednesday, Department of Defence Deputy Secretary Hugh Jeffrey was asked whether US submarines docking at Western Australia’s HMAS Stirling would be armed with nuclear capabilities.
Mr Jeffrey would not rule it out.
“The United States is very clear about the Australian government’s treaty obligations and our policy on those (nuclear) weapons,” he said.
“We respect the United States’ position of neither confirming nor denying.”
NewsWire has contacted Mr Marles’ office for comment.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 