In a recent briefing with Illawarra industry, community and business leaders, Assistant Defence Minister Matt Thistlethwaite said other locations would be considered.
“Everything is on the table,” he said.
“There are a number of factors — deepwater ports are essential, ensuring that there is a domestic industry base that can service a base like that, ensuring there is a skilled work force.
…………………….. “We are looking at close to a decade before that decision is made.”
Other locations ‘hot potatoes’
The announcement opens the door for defence to reconsider the Garden Island naval base in Sydney and Jervis Bay on the NSW south coast.
The sites were among the top locations identified by Defence in a 2011 report obtained by former South Australian Senator and submariner Rex Patrick under freedom of information laws.
“I think the other sites are political hot potatoes and the government is seeking to diffuse those aspects of this particular AUKUS program,” Mr Patrick said.
“Garden Island in Sydney is a significant population site surrounded by the residents of Sydney who simply will be uncomfortable with the stationing of a nuclear submarine in the harbour.
He said winning community support for a base in Jervis Bay would also be a difficult proposition due to the environmental sensitivity of the site.
“There have been many campaigns over the years to stop the navy conducting activities in Jervis Bay, even though it is a pretty good environmental tenant,” he said.
“I can see huge problems with government trying to impose a nuclear base in that pristine environment.”
‘The air has to be cleared’
The government is also facing a challenge at Port Kembla, where the Illawarra community also has a long history of opposing nuclear projects and has already begun rallying opposition to a base.
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review has recommended Australia adopt a new strategic conceptual framework dubbed ‘National Defence’ that incorporates a ‘strategy of denial’. This approach is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. ‘National Defence’ is consistent with American force structure designs to develop the northern Australian expanse as an increasingly important base of operations for force-projection.
From ‘Defence of Australia’ to ‘National Defence’
The recommendation by the 2023 Defence Strategic Review (DSR) to abandon the long-standing strategic doctrine known as ‘defence of Australia’ (DoA) has been met with approval by the Albanese government, even as the doctrine had been previously eviscerated to conform with the requirements of the US alliance.
DoA reached its zenith with the release of the 1986 ‘Dibb Review’ that recommended a shift in Australia’s defence strategy from dependent expeditionary combat to ‘self-reliant’ protection of the continent and the air and maritime approaches to Australia. This was to be achieved by adopting ‘an essentially defensive posture in our region’ and employing a ‘strategy of denial’ with strike capabilities strictly limited in range to accomplish that objective………………………………….
However ………… long-standing aspirations for Australia to be an influential ‘middle power’ in international affairs, or more accurately, a ‘sub-imperial power’, which required undertaking regional ‘burden sharing’ responsibilities to preserve ‘stability’ on behalf of the US-led global order.
………………. A major turning point came in late 2001 when the Howard government committed Australia to America’s ‘global war on terror’. ……………….
……. While DoA and ‘self-reliance’ remained official strategic guidance, operationally the Australian Defence Force (ADF) largely came to serve as an adjunct to the US military.
DoA has now been jettisoned entirely by the DSR in favour of ‘National Defence’, a new strategic conceptual framework based on the prospect of higher-level direct threats to Australia’s ‘national interests’ arising from US-China competition………….. This entails abandoning a ‘balanced’ force in favour of a force structure that is ‘focussed’ on preparing for major war – with China.
…………………….. Today, it is the supposed threat to the ‘rules-based order’ that functions as the new ‘domino theory’, where legitimate concerns about Chinese assertiveness in long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea is imagined as a direct military threat to Australia and our ‘national interests’.
………… maintaining a ‘balance of power’ has long been a euphemism in Australian political discourse for sustaining American military dominance or ‘primacy’…………..
……………….. achieving ‘balance’ translates into an agenda for Australia to work even more closely with the United States, and key American security partners like Japan, to further encircle China militarily.
…………………………………..Unlike the strategic approach articulated in the 1986 Dibb Review, the ‘strategy of denial’ adopted by the DSR is tied to a broader concept of ‘collective security’ in the Indo-Pacific and is aligned with America’s framework for ‘integrated deterrence’ of China. It is consistent with American force structure designs to develop the northern Australian expanse as an increasingly important base of operations for force-projection
………..The biggest change foreshadowed by the DSR is to the Army, which will have its infantry fighting force dramatically scaled back and be optimised for littoral operations and enhanced long-range fire.
……………………………… This is the great strategic folly of AUKUS. It will equip the ADF with a potent capability to strike the Chinese mainland and, in coalition with the United States, play a frontline role in hunting China’s nuclear-armed submarine force and its critical second-strike nuclear deterrent capability.
While AUKUS risks contributing to an existential nuclear threat to China, the DSR reassures Australians that we remain safe from nuclear annihilation under the protection of America’s ‘extended nuclear deterrence’, for which there are no credible assurances, and in efforts to pursue ‘new avenues of arms control’, of which there are none, except that which the Albanese government has yet to join – the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons – despite assurances by the Labor Party to the contrary
Finally, climate change is belatedly recognised as a significant national security issue in the DSR, but largely as a distraction that risks detracting from Defence’s primary objective of defending Australia against China…………………..
The DSR overstates the threat China poses to Australia, appears wilfully blind to the risks of nuclear escalation inherent in the defence strategy it recommends, and understates the existential threat of climate change which it fails to confront. What’s more, ‘National Defence’ dictates an acute focus on preparing Australia’s armed forces to integrate in a substantial way with American force structure plans to carry out what should be utterly unthinkable: a high-end war with a nuclear-armed China that risks wreaking a global catastrophe. https://johnmenadue.com/labors-serial-betrayal-of-australia/
Make no mistake, the Albanese government knows that in joining the US fight against China, Australia will be left defenceless on American withdrawal. And only a dodo could not know this risk is high. Maybe the government doesn’t appreciate that war for America is different. It is the war which matters, not the result. “Winning” is incidental.
Thinking deeply about Australia’s future is simply beyond the Albanese/ Wong/ Marles triumvirate.
Originally my editor requested a survey of Australia’s media response to the government’s Defence Strategic Review (DSR) – tackily released during the ANZAC devotions. It became clear that this was a trivial exercise. The bulk of our mainstream print, TV and radio accepted the tenet that Australia should treat China as an emerging military threat, and spend heavily against the prospect of war. None challenged it.
A sane assessment would find that China presenting a military threat to Australia is fabrication – to rival that of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Thereby America itself has become a great danger to Australia. Its propensity for conflict and brutal self-interest is amply evidenced, over decades. To Washington’s strategists, Australia exists foremost as another object to be exploited for their world wide web of wars. With some distinguishing attributes. We are an ally which profitably pays it way, eagerly, for which the US is un-obligated. Meaning the US can freely entwine Australia in a war with China, then just go home when things get tough, responsibly in its view. As it does, with practised facility.
Despite our hapless, shameful experiences and ever-mounting evidence of America’s implacable hegemony our governments increasingly have conflated Australia’s interests with America’s.
Once Australians rightly could have expected a Labor government to be discerning of our unique interests. But we have to go back to Hawke and Keating to be confident of it. When America’s interests would not swamp our own. Today, it matters not which major political party holds the reins. Bipartisanly, our leaders are preparing Australia for war against the fresh superpower of China. At America’s instigation. While America complains that it lacks the resources for the job, and must rely critically upon allies. And the massive stakes unique to Australia are subordinated to those US interests.
How could anything else rate higher as an issue for Australia?
The seeds of betrayal
We are told by Defence Minister Marles that the DSR comes at a “watershed moment” and that “Australia has lost ten years of warning time.” That is, Australia should have been preparing for war long ago. In fact, Labor created the watershed moment more than ten years ago,………………………………………
Perhaps those years of Labor hand-sitting while our defences were being turned over to US objectives might have been tolerable, if the Albanese government had set about securing Australia’s interests upon gaining power. But the opposite has unfolded. Labor is accelerating spending for war.
Those with long faith in Labor had assumed that the lie of a China military threat to us would be scrutinised once the LNP government fell. Intelligence advice had to be assessed independently. Because on official Pentagon advice to the US Congress China’s forces are stretched just in trying to meet America’s threat to its periphery. But no, Labor didn’t want to know. Instead of getting to the heart of the matter promptly, a defence review was commissioned. And that same conflicted intelligence apparatus provided the foundation for it. Thereby another year has slipped by, in war preparation.
“The review’s outcome was set before it started by the politics of Labor signing up in a matter of hours to carry Scott Morrison’s Anglophone burden. Paul Keating’s charge remains unanswered that Labor’s defence policy was set by wanting to provide no target when blindsided by Mr Morrison’s submarine adventure.”
Unsurprisingly, the stench of political duplicity intensified as the review proceeded.
America’s wars are not about winning
The big betrayal is Labor’s doubling down on the path to war once in power. It is clear now that this was always the intent. What is new in the DSR is that finally a government admits that Australia is entirely dependent on the US:
4.7 However, Australia does not have effective defence capabilities relative to higher threat levels which can only be achieved by working with the United States…..
Make no mistake, the Albanese government knows that in joining the US fight against China, Australia will be left defenceless on American withdrawal. And only a dodo could not know this risk is high.
Maybe the government doesn’t appreciate that war for America is different. It is the war which matters, not the result. “Winning” is incidental. There is always Stateside to come home to. What matters is disempowerment of the adversary – degradation of state, polity, economy, infrastructure and population. That is grist-to-the-mill for the US State Department. Constantly played out by lounging analysts on buttoned leather sofas in the palatial “map room” at Foggy Bottom. Australia’s fate is amongst those gamed there, incidentally.
Even if it did, there can be little doubt now that the Albanese government has chosen to look straight ahead. It has Australia comfortably settled on America’s accelerating train to war with China. To meet a vigorous superpower on its home ground. The war is unwinnable. Impossible to imagine the residual mess. Which will endure in many dimensions for us. But that is of no matter to America. Who in the government knows, or would care?
Here is the future which the Albanese government is steering Australia into. Without a whimper within the Labor party. Thinking deeply about Australia’s future is simply beyond the Albanese/ Wong/ Marles triumvirate. Creative dimensions such as our former ambassador in Beijing Dennis Argall has espoused are beyond Labor.
The way out
While our nation is engulfed in a spiral to war, Foreign Minister Wong has demonstrated no capacity to protect it. In opposition Wong claimed to appreciate the effect of conflict with China. But now talks merely of “lowering the heat” while lining up stoically behind Marles’ indulgent militarism. Paralysed by politics.
Australia’s prospects are unthinkable. We have no alternative but to embrace wider geostrategic options. To give self-interest and self- belief a real shot.
That new road will be complex to map. And long. Our nation no longer possesses the administrative machinery critical for an independent State. Intelligence is compromised, foreign policy and defence gutted, politicised and Americanised. Fixing that is the basic first step. No doubt the nation still possesses independent, experienced, cultivated minds up for it. We can grow up. Again. https://johnmenadue.com/labors-serial-betrayal-of-australia/
While no threat from China exists, media propagandists are trying to ignite a war the likes of which we’ve never seen. John Pilger reminds us that we need to raise our voices before it’s too late.
“IN 1935, the Congress of American Writers was held in New York City, followed by another two years later. They called on ‘the hundreds of poets, novelists, dramatists, critics, short story writers and journalists’ to discuss the ‘rapid crumbling of capitalism’ and the beckoning of another war………………………………………………
The journalist and novelist Martha Gellhorn spoke up for the homeless and unemployed, and “all of us under the shadow of violent great power”. ………………………….
On 7 March, the two oldest newspapers in Australia – The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age – published several pages on “the looming threat” of China. They coloured the Pacific Ocean red. Chinese eyes were martial, on the march and menacing. The Yellow Peril was about to fall down as if by the weight of gravity.
No logical reason was given for an attack on Australia by China. A “panel of experts” presented no credible evidence; one of them is a former director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a front for the Defence Department in Canberra, the Pentagon in Washington, the governments of Britain, Japan and Taiwan, and the West’s war industry.
There is no threat to Australia. None. The faraway “lucky” country has no enemies, least of all China, its largest trading partner. Yet China-bashing that draws on Australia’s long history of racism towards Asia has become something of a sport for the self-ordained “experts”. What do Chinese-Australians make of this? Many are confused and fearful.
The authors of this grotesque piece of dog-whistling and obsequiousness to American power are Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott, “national security reporters” I think they are called. I remember Hartcher from his Israeli government-paid jaunts. The other one, Knott, is a mouthpiece for the suits in Canberra. Neither has ever seen a war zone and its extremes of human degradation and suffering.
How did it come to this? Martha Gellhorn would say if she were here. Where on Earth are the voices saying no? Where is the comradeship?
The voices are heard in the samizdat of this website and others. In literature, the likes of John Steinbeck, Carson McCullers and George Orwell are obsolete. Post-modernism is in charge now. Liberalism has pulled up its political ladder. A once somnolent social democracy, Australia, has enacted a web of new laws protecting secretive, authoritarian power and preventing the right to know. Whistleblowers are outlaws, to be tried in secret. An especially sinister law bans “foreign interference” by those who work for foreign companies. What does this mean?
Democracy is notional now; there is the all-powerful elite of the corporation merged with the state and the demands of “identity”. American admirals are paid thousands of dollars a day by the Australian taxpayer for “advice”. Right across the West, our political imagination has been pacified by PR and distracted by the intrigues of corrupt, ultra-low-rent politicians: a Johnson or a Trump or a Sleepy Joe or a Zelensky.
“The Albanese government is giving Defence a totally unprecedented $122 billion stuff-up fund. This is a license to fail on contract negotiations and project delivery for the AUKUS submarine deal.
“It’s extraordinary that a whopping one third of the $368 billion nuclear submarines budget comes with no strings attached.
An extraordinary $122.9 billion, that’s one-third of the $368 billion dollar price tag for nuclear submarines, has been allocated to a so-called “contingency” budget, according to new figures released by the Parliamentary Budget Office, commissioned by the Greens.
The PBO analysis, which is based on Defence figures, for the first time shows that $122.9 billion dollars has been earmarked for “contingency” funding as part of the government’s projected budget. The amount of contingency funding is setting off alarm bells about the sheer scale of no-strings-attached public funding allocated to the deal.
The PBO figures also show the unfair intergenerational impact of the AUKUS subs. Hundreds of billions in costs will be heavily skewed to future budgets, forcing deep cuts to public spending for decades.
Australian Greens Defence Spokesperson Senator David Shoebridge said:
“The Albanese government is giving Defence a totally unprecedented $122 billion stuff-up fund. This is a license to fail on contract negotiations and project delivery for the AUKUS submarine deal.
“It’s extraordinary that a whopping one third of the $368 billion nuclear submarines budget comes with no strings attached.
“The scale of this contingency fund demonstrates that the government has no real idea how they will deliver these hugely expensive submarines or what the true costs of the nuclear sub deal will be.
“No serious project planner in any other industry would be allowed to have a third of the total budget as contingency – this is worse than a blank cheque, it’s an incentive for profligate Defence spending.
For the AUKUS subs deal Defence has persuaded the Albanese government to take away any restraint on future spending or project delivery. When you add in the repeated failures of Defence to deliver past projects on time or on budget this is worse than negligent.
“To help sell the deal the Albanese government is burying the most exorbitant expenditure across future budgets, in a brazen attack on future generations. This is deceptive and reckless budgeting and it means young people and future generations will inherit a savage debt.
“Babies who haven’t even been born yet will spend their lives paying for these nuclear subs rather than getting essential public services and support because Labor has signed up to this toxic deal.
“It’s grossly unjust to steal from future generations to pay for today’s political mistakes, but that’s exactly what is happening here with our children and grandchildren saddled with the bulk of the $368 billion bill, ” Senator Shoebridge said.
retired U.S. military figure” generally means someone who used to be paid by the U.S. government to advance the interests of the U.S. empire, and is now paid by corporations and/or foreign governments to advance the interests of the U.S. empire.
Among the American swamp monsters hired by Canberra is the Obama administration’s spy chief, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the U.S. empire.
Australia has been paying insiders of the U.S. war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China.
For those who don’t speak imperialist, “retired U.S. military figure” generally means someone who used to be paid by the U.S. government to advance the interests of the U.S. empire, and is now paid by corporations and/or foreign governments to advance the interests of the U.S. empire.
These corrupt warmongers rotate in and out of the revolving door of the D.C. swamp, from government to war-industry jobs to punditry gigs to influential think tanks and then back again into government, advancing the interests of the U.S. empire the entire time and growing wealthy in the process.
This dynamic allows a permanent constellation of reliable empire managers to continually exert influence around the world in support of the U.S. empire, regardless of who gets voted into or out of office in the performative display of electoral politics. It’s a big part of why U.S. foreign policy remains the same regardless of who’s officially running the elected government in Washington, and it’s a big part of why the media and arms industry which support the U.S. war machine keep playing the same tune as well.
Among the American swamp monsters Australia paid for consulting work is the Obama administration’s spy chief James Clapper, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the U.S. empire:
In 2013 Clapper committed perjury by telling the U.S. Senate under oath that the NSA does not knowingly collect data on millions of Americans, only to have that lie exposed by the Edward Snowden leaks a few months later.
In 2016 Clapper played a foundational role in fomenting public hysteria about Russia with the flimsy ODNI report on alleged Russian election interference, which remainsriddled with massiveplot holes. He would later go on to repeatedly voice the opinion that Russians are “almost genetically driven” toward nefarious and subversive behavior.
In 2020 Clapper signed the infamous and now fully discredited letter from former intelligence insiders saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely a Russian disinfo op, falsely telling CNN that the story was “textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work” and that the emails on the laptop had “no metadata” on them.
Also among the American military consultants paid by Australia is a man we just discussed the other day, William Hilarides, who will be telling Australia how to reconfigure its navy because apparently no Australians are available for that job. We now know that according to the released Pentagon documents Canberra has already paid Hilarides almost $2.5 million since 2016 for his consulting work.
This information was originally reported by The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, who last year also broke the remarkable story that a former U.S. navy admiral named Stephen Johnson had actually served as Australia’s deputy navy secretary, a position which needless to say is not normally open to foreigners.
……………………………………… Australia has always seemed like a fairly irrelevant player on the world stage because of its impotent subservience to Washington. But it’s becoming clear it is exactly because of Australia’s blind subservience to Washington that Australia is worth paying attention to, since that relationship may well end up giving the nation a front-row seat to World War Three.
Australians are going to have to wake up to what’s being done and the abominable agendas the nation is being exploited to advance. Australians are being groomed for a military confrontation of unimaginable horror, one which absolutely does not need to take place, all in the name of something as trivial as securing U.S. planetary hegemony. Australians have got to start saying no to this, starting right now.
https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2023/04/27/free-julian-assange-member-of-our-organisations/ Our Italian FNSI affiliates were visited today in Rome by Julian Assange‘s wife, Stella Morris. The Italian journalists’ union, at the initiative of its Campania branch, presented Julian Assange with an FNSI membership card. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) passed on the initiative to its affiliates in Europe: 18 of them decided to follow the Italian example and grant Julian Assange membership (or honorary membership) of their organisations. The EFJ and its affiliates once again call on the UK authorities to release Julian Assange.
Here is the joint appeal delivered to Stella Morris in Rome this morning:
We, the undersigned European unions and associations of journalists, join the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) in calling on the US government to drop all charges against Julian Assange and allow him to return home to his wife and children.
We are gravely concerned about the impact of Assange’s continued detention on media freedom and the rights of all journalists globally. We urge European governments to actively work to secure Julian Assange’s release.
To show our solidarity, we declare Julian Assange a full member, an honorary member or a free member of our organisations.
Signed:
Maja Sever, EFJ President and TUCJ President, Croatia
Fabrizio Cappella, SUGC-FNSI Secretary, Italy
Satik Seyranyan, UJA President, Armenia
Borka Rudić, BHJA General Secretary, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Hrvoje Zovko, HND President, Croatia
Emmanuel Poupard, SNJ First General Secretary, France
Emmanuel Vire, General secretary SNJ-CGT, France
Tina Groll, dju in ver.di President, Germany
Maria Antoniadou, JUADN President, Greece
Laszlo M. Lengyel, HPU Executive President, Hungary
Activists in Wollongong are organising against plans for nearby Port Kembla to host the East Coast base for the AUKUS nuclear submarines. Solidarity spoke to Alexander Brown from Wollongong Against War and Nukes about local opposition and how unions have dedicated this year’s May Day march to opposing the plan
The cost is around $10 billion for an East Coast submarine base. The Treasurer says they can’t afford the $24 billion required to increase Centrelink payments above poverty levels and yet they can afford to spend $10 billion on a war base. And that’s a small part of the overall $368 billion dollars for AUKUS. It’s a gross waste of money.
The strategic justification for it doesn’t make any sense. That’s being picked apart even within the Labor Party by people like Paul Keating and Bob Carr. We’re now seeing current sitting MPs start to express criticism. The submarines may arrive in between ten to 30 years, when their supporters in ASPI and the Sydney Morning Herald say we’re about to have war with China in the next three years. If so the subs are not going to be much use.
More importantly, it’s a ridiculous approach to peace making in the region to say we will arm ourselves to the teeth and that will deter China. China and its regime have many problems but they’re not a military threat to Australia now and they’re unlikely to be in the future. And if these subs are supposed to be to defend shipping, we are shipping most of our exports to China anyway, so who are we defending it against?
We need to build people-to-people solidarity with ordinary people in China to ensure peace and democracy in the whole region—not get drawn into a US provocation and starting a regional arms race.
What kind of actions have you taken to build opposition?
When Scott Morrison suggested that Port Kembla could be a site for an East Coast submarine base there was a protest called by the Student Association at Wollongong University, and different groups and individuals including unions and local councillors came to that.
We started organising a dedicated campaign group called Wollongong Against War and Nukes (WAWAN) and held a successful rally about a year ago to support the local council renewing the declaration of Wollongong as a nuclear free zone, which goes back to 1980.
We held a public meeting with former Greens Senator Scott Ludlam and the South Coast Secretary of the Maritime Union.
We had a rally here two weeks ago, because some local business interests held a defence industry conference and want to build a war industry down here.
This year when the Labor government so fully endorsed continuing AUKUS, after I think many people hoped they might back away, it created shock.
Then there was also a report in the ABC that Port Kembla was firming up as the most likely location for the submarine base. So the campaign has really picked up in the last two months.
The local South Coast Labor Council endorsed a motion to oppose having a nuclear base here.
Unions like the maritime union have put a lot of work into trying to plan for a renewable energy industry here to survive the big shocks that are coming in terms of the decline of coal and steel. They’re interested in expanding offshore wind and potentially green steel through hydrogen.
WAWAN has a community meeting in Port Kembla on 29 April, and we are calling for everyone who can get there to come and support the South Coast May Day march on Saturday 6 May, which will include opposition to the nuclear base alongside the slogan of “Peace, Jobs and Justice”.
Wollongong and Port Kembla steel works have been hotbeds of militancy since the beginning of last century and that tradition continues. The Dalfram dispute in the 1930s saw waterside workers refuse to load pig iron bound for Japan, because they knew that it would be used to make bombs and bullets for the Japanese invasion of China. Pig iron exports to Japan more or less stopped after that struggle.
In the Vietnam War there was a strong movement here and in the 1980s the anti-nuclear movement was really big in Wollongong and the unions were a major part of that. A lot of people in Wollongong have seized the opportunity to say that fighting unionism needs to look beyond the workplace at the environment that workers are going to be living in and creating.
We are wasting money and resources on the defence industry when we could be spending that money on addressing climate change and jobs through a Green New Deal.
Unions back renewable energy jobs over nuclear subs
The South Coast Labour Council, which represents unions in and around Wollongong, is opposing the submarine base as a threat to alternative jobs in the area.
Port Kembla has been assessed as an ideal spot for offshore wind developments, due to wind conditions, grid connections and the working harbour. The area is one of the NSW government’s priority Renewable Energy Zones, with at least two companies already carrying out scoping work for multi-billion dollar offshore wind projects.
Even NSW Ports and the Port Kembla Chamber of Commerce have warned that the Outer Harbour site is needed for wind turbine assembly as well as a new container port, and should not be taken by defence. This is also the likely site for the submarine base. Even the two offshore wind projects already proposed would create thousands of jobs in construction as well as over 500 ongoing jobs.
March against the nuclear base in Port Kembla
12pm Saturday 6 May, Wentworth St, Port Kembla, more details here Sign up for travel from Sydney here
The federal government is paying retired senior American military officials up to $7500 a day for advice on major defence projects such as the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact.
The government this week announced that, following its sweeping defence strategic review, retired United States Navy vice admiral William Hilarides would be hired to lead a snap review of the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet.
The review, to be handed to the government later this year, will examine whether planned fleets of Australian-made frigates and patrol vessels should be cut to free up money for smaller and more nimble vessels.
Hilarides has previously charged the Australian government US$4000 ($6000) a day for his consulting services, according to US Navy documents first reported by The Washington Post.
Hilarides has won naval consulting contracts from the federal government worth up to $1.6 million ($2.4 million) since 2016, according to figures from the Department of Defence.
Hilarides serves as chair of the Australian naval shipbuilding expert advisory panel and advised the government over the past 18 months while it finalised the deal with the United States and Britain to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy defended Hilarides’ appointment to the new navy fleet review this week, saying he had “a long association with Australia” and would do a good job.
In an investigation published last yearThe Post described Hilarides, a career submariner, as part of a large group of former senior US officials that Australia had relied upon heavily to guide its naval policies.
“To an extraordinary degree in recent years, Australia has relied on high-priced American consultants to decide which ships and submarines to buy and how to manage strategic acquisition projects,” The Post said.
Retired admiral John Richardson, who headed the United States Navy from 2015 to 2019, has received US$5000 ($7570) a day as a part-time consultant to the federal, according to documents released by the Pentagon to the US Congress.
Richardson was hired by the Department of Defence last November to provide advice on the best pathway for Australia to acquire a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
According to the documents, Richardson receives travel and lodging expenses to complete his work in Australia.
Richardson, the former US navy chief, told The Post: “I spent most of my life helping to keep America and our allies and partners safe and secure.
It’s a privilege to be invited to be able to use my experience, and help where I can to continue that work.”
Defence Minister Richard Marles on Thursday said outside advice was crucial to ensuring the government makes the correct decisions about significant defence policies.
“When we seek expert advice in relation to critical issues and challenges that we face, we have a global perspective in terms of where we seek that advice from and that’s really important because we want the very best advice,” he said.
“We make no apology for that because the kinds of challenges and decisions we’re making are profoundly important for the future of our country and where we have sought advice from those former officials in the US Navy that has been on issues of profound importance for our nation’s future.”
Greens defence spokesman David Shoebridge said he was shocked that Australia could seemingly not find local experts available to do these jobs.
“If that is true then it’s a pretty extraordinary failure on the part of the government and the ADF,” he said.
“You can only really explain this by Defence’s ongoing dependence on, and deference to, the US.”
He said it was remarkable that the US government had been more transparent than Australian government contracts than the federal government.
The Greens party, which commissioned the analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office, said it showed the “huge” uncertainty over the project.
U.S. President Joe Biden, Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled details in March of a plan to provide Australia with nuclear-powered attack submarines, a major step to counter China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
Under the deal, the United States intends to sell Australia three U.S. Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines, which are built by General Dynamics, in the early 2030s, with an option for two more.
In a second phase, Australia and Britain will build an AUKUS class submarine, with Australia receiving its first submarine in the early 2040s. The vessels will be built by BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.
Australia’s Parliamentary Budget Office has reported the cost estimate over three decades includes a contingency of A$123 billion. A contingency is a future cost not currently known due to delays, budget overruns and other factors.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge said in a statement the scale of the contingency fund was “unprecedented” and highlighted “the huge level of uncertainty in the AUKUS submarine deal”.
Defence Minister Richard Marles said the plan to build a nuclear powered submarine in Australia by the early 2040s was a “massive challenge for the country” and the government was “prudently budgeting here for the unexpected”
“We have sought to be as upfront and transparent as we possibly can be,” he told ABC radio.
The Department of Defence did not release the sale price of the U.S. Virginia Class submarines that Australia will initially purchase, the budget office said.
The report showed most of the cost of the submarine programme will be incurred in the two decades from 2033.
Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China.
For those who don’t speak imperialist, “retired US military figure” generally means “Someone who used to be paid by the US government to advance the interests of the US empire, and is now paid by corporations and/or foreign governments to advance the interests of the US empire.” These corrupt warmongers rotate in and out of the revolving door of the DC swamp, from government to war industry jobs to punditry gigs to influential think tanks and then back again into government, advancing the interests of the US empire the entire time and growing wealthy in the process.
This dynamic allows a permanent constellation of reliable empire managers to continually exert influence around the world in support of the US empire, regardless of who gets voted into or out of office in the performative display of electoral politics. It’s a big part of why US foreign policy remains the same regardless of who’s officially running the elected government in Washington, and it’s a big part of why the media and arms industry which support the US war machine keep playing the same tune as well.
Andrew Greene – “Former US director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who resigned after Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, was then paid to work for Australia’s new Office of National Intelligence”
Among the American swamp monsters Australia paid for consulting work is the Obama administration’s spy chief James Clapper, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the US empire:
In 2013 Clapper committed perjury by telling the Senate under oath that the NSA does not knowingly collect data on millions of Americans, only to have that lie exposed by the Edward Snowden leaks a few months later.
In 2016 Clapper played a foundational role in fomenting public hysteria about Russia with the flimsy ODNI report on alleged Russian election interference, which remainsriddled with massiveplot holes. He would later go on to repeatedly voice the opinion that Russians are “almost genetically driven” toward nefarious and subversive behavior.
In 2020 Clapper signed the infamous and now fully discredited letter from former intelligence insiders saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely a Russian disinfo op, falsely telling CNN that the story was “textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work” and that the emails on the laptop had “no metadata” on them.
Also among the American military consultants paid by Australia is a man we just discussed the other day, William Hilarides, who will be telling Australia how to reconfigure its navy because apparently no Australians are available for that job. We now know that according to the released Pentagon documents Canberra has already paid Hilarides almost $2.5 million since 2016 for his consulting work.
This information was originally reported by The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, who last year also broke the remarkable story that a former US navy admiral named Stephen Johnson had actually served as Australia’s deputy navy secretary, a position which needless to say is not normally open to foreigners.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to witness the information environment of Washington’s next military proxy from the inside — what it would be like to be a Ukrainian with an ear to the ground during the lead-up to the 2014 coup or whatever. Well, now I know. Now all Australians with an ear to the ground know.
I’ve been generally dismissive of Australian affairs throughout most of my commentary career despite living here, since my focus is on resisting the disasters that humanity as a whole is headed toward, and Australia has always seemed like a fairly irrelevant player on the world stage because of its impotent subservience to Washington. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it is exactly because of Australia’s blind subservience to Washington that Australia is worth paying attention to, since that relationship may well end up giving our nation a front-row seat to World War Three.
Australians are going to have to wake up to what’s being done to us and the abominable agendas our nation is being exploited to advance. We’re being groomed for a military confrontation of unimaginable horror, one which absolutely does not need to take place, all in the name of something as trivial as securing US planetary hegemony. We’ve got to start saying no to this, and we’ve got to start right now.
Is there no end to the Richard Marles-Christopher Pyne double act?
The Albanese government’s defence minister has agreed to speak at a ticket-only networking event hosted by former MP Pyne, Marles’ old sparring partner, who has become one of Australia’s leading defence industry lobbyists. The so-called DSR Summit will be held In Sydney next week, according to an invitation received by Crikey.
For between $500 and $800 defence industry types will be able to rub shoulders with “ministers, thought leaders, and department decision-makers” while hearing from key speakers from government “and other defence sector stalwarts” on the impact of the government’s Defence Strategic Review, released this week……(Subscribers only)https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/04/27/marles-pyne-mates-probity-questions/?su=TlVkbFRSU3Zya0trMlF3M0JHckdPZz09
China is not a military threat to either the US or Australia. The military threat is trumped up by the US and its acolytes with their own agenda.
There is one critical and urgent thing the Australian Government should do, and that is to make it clear to the US that we will not be involved in any way with a war between China and the US over Taiwan and that none of our facilities can be used for that purpose – Pine Gap, Darwin or Tindal.
The US must be told that we will not be involved in any way in a war with China over Taiwan.
After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan the signs of our entrapment again in US war planning are everywhere.
The 2014 Force Posture Agreement with the US cedes control of certain military operations from our territory to the US eg Marines in Darwin and US B52’s in Tindal.
The 2021 AUSMIN ministerial meeting endorsed :
Enhanced air cooperation through the rotational deployment of U.S. aircraft of all types in Australia and appropriate aircraft training and exercises.
Enhanced maritime cooperation by increasing logistics and sustainment capabilities of U.S. surface and subsurface vessels in Australia.
Enhanced land cooperation by conducting more complex and more integrated exercises and greater combined engagement with Allies and Partners in the region.
Establishment of a combined logistics, sustainment, and maintenance enterprise to support high end warfighting and combined military operations in the region.
The 2021 AUKUS agreement was a clear sign to our region that instead of building bridges to our region we have decided to be a spear carrier for the US and UK- the Anglosphere. AUKUS is not to defend Australia but to support US operations against China in the South China Sea.
Our Defence Strategic Review (DSR)released this week has been’ authored’ by the United States Studies Centre(USSC), an arm of the US government. It is a tainted review. Have we no national pride in letting this happen!
Our Washington centric media don’t seem to think that it is unusual or even outrageous for a foreign agency to author an Australian defence review!!
Our seduction by the US is assisted by our Department of Defence with its close links to the Pentagon. It secretly employs US Admirals to advise on submarines. And if that is not enough we are now going to have a retired US Admiral heading the coming Naval Review. What is wrong with our Navy that an Australian can’t do the job? Has integration gone so far that we don’t have a Navy of our own that is worth the name.
And don’t think for one moment in this humiliation that Albanese and Marles thought up this US Admiral. They would have been put up to it by our defence establishment in lock step with the Pentagon.
The ADF has become a unit of the US military machine.
There is more.
The Government has rejected the Australian War Powers Reform proposal that Parliament approve any commitment to war. This is essential because we have an awful history of rushing to war. In 1914, we decided to send troops to WWI before Britain declared war. Menzies committed Australia to war in Vietnam before we even received a request. Howard committed us to the illegal war in Iraq based on false intelligence. Now the Labor Party has committed us to AUKUS in less than 24 hours despite the enormous implications. Albanese says he is proud of how quickly he agreed with Morrison!
Changes to our Defence Act are also being considered which would allow the ADF inter alia to conduct operations below the threshold of war, known as ‘grey zone’ operations. These amendments could have far reaching consequences.
At our universities, Peace Studies are run down in favour of ‘Strategic Studies’ with their US loyalists regularly appearing on our media. Think Tanks like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute are fronts for US defence interests.
Entrapment of our minds in the anti China hysteria is the work in progress of our Main Stream Media. Our fourth estate has been captured and imbedded in the US propaganda machine. The US cultural and media domination is everywhere. Alternative views are shunned. The White Man’s Media is on full display.
The disgraceful ‘Red Alert’ is the tip of a giant iceberg. The anti China propaganda is an every day event in our media including the ABC and SBS .
In the past, the ALP said NO on Vietnam and Iraq even though it was difficult at the time. As Paul Keating put it at the National Press Club recently ‘Labor has invariably got the big international (decisions) right’. But today the ALP has gone AWOL. Concerns about entrapment by the US and loss of sovereignty are brushed aside. What many of us thought were Labor policies and values count for little.
Penny Wong suggests that Keating has not kept up to date and has not had the benefit of Intelligence briefings!! But the reverse is true. The Labor Government is reverting to our colonial past, our colonial cringe – Five Eyes, AUKUS and the Anglosphere.
Wong plays with words to avoid asking or knowing whether B52’s in Tindal will be nuclear armed against China. She tells us that US forces are ‘rotated’ though Darwin and Tindal and not ‘based’ there.
The US is persistently goading China into war over Taiwan. This is consistent with US behaviour over centuries. It is driven by its self righteous belief in its ‘exceptionalism’ and the pressure of its military/industrial/security complex for endless wars. It expects other major powers like China to behave as aggressively as it has. China has no Monroe Doctrine which Americans believe gives them the God given right to interfere in other country’s affairs.
Australia has a sorry history of fighting other empires wars, first with the British and now with the US. The great risk and problem for us is that imperial powers are almost always at war.
Since its founding in 1776, the US has been at war 93% of the time. Since the end of WWI, the US has launched 201 armed conflicts around the world. During the Cold War it tried to change governments 72 times. It assassinated foreign leaders and still assassinates with drones guided from Pine Gap. It has 800 bases around the world, many of them in Japan and ROK directed at China. With our cooperation, US fleets cruise and sight see up and down the Chinese coast. At the same time as criticising China, the US refuses to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The US would have national convulsions if Chinese vessels patrolled off the Californian coast or China established military bases in Mexico!
The US is the most aggressive and violent country in the world . It lurches from one war to another. That violence abroad is mirrored in its violent gun culture at home. There is a pervasive sickness and it is not just Trump!
When we tagged behind imperial powers in the past there was little military risk to Australia. But that is not so today, with the reckless US goading of China over Taiwan. If we were involved in support of the US against China over Taiwan the results could be catastrophic for us.
China is certainly growing in influence and confidence. That is not surprising after over a century of western and Japanese invasion and humiliation. But China is not a military threat to either the US or Australia. The military threat is trumped up by the US and its acolytes with their own agenda.
In brazen mendacity Marles highlights the rapid increase in China’s military spending. But he failed to tell us that the US spends more on defence than the next nine countries combined. The US spends 3.5% of its GDP on defence. China spends 1.6%.
The Stockholm International Peace Institute only a few days ago put military spending in perspective – The United States remains by far the world’s biggest military spender. US military spending reached $877 billion in 2022, which was 39 per cent of total global military spending and three times more than the amount spent by China, the world’s second largest spender.
Surrounded by numerous US bases and the US Fleet -an itinerant naval power in the SCS as described by Paul Keating-it is not surprising that China is increasing its defence spending.
But China is a challenge to US hegemony and the US empire around the globe. The US is unwilling to come to terms with China’s success and share power and responsibility. The US insists on its own rules and domination across the globe. Empires are like that.
How do we break out of the US entrapment, the FPA, AUKUS, AUSMIN and a lot more? How can we cut through this maze of entrapment.
Peter Dutton has warned us that is ‘inconceivable that Australia would not join the US to defend Taiwan’.
There is one critical and urgent thing the Australian Government should do, and that is to make it clear to the US that we will not be involved in any way with a war between China and the US over Taiwan and that none of our facilities can be used for that purpose – Pine Gap, Darwin or Tindal.
For decades we have maintained that Taiwan is part of China.
Paul Keating has said many times that ‘Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest’. Even Defence Minister Marles, ever so close to the US, told ABC Insiders last month that ‘Australia has absolutely not given the US any commitment as part of the AUKUS negotiations that it would join (the US) in a potential war over the status of Taiwan’.
But we need to tell the US explicitly and well in advance of any possible conflict over Taiwan that we will not support the US. In a crisis it will be too late to assert our sovereignty.
Northern Territory and national environment groups have a clear message for Energy Resources Australia at ERA’s annual meeting in Darwin: focus on repair.
ERA is the former uranium mining company that operated the controversial Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu for 40 years, until the cessation of commercial operations in 2021.
The company, majority (86%) owned by Rio Tinto, is now responsible for delivering Australia’s costliest and most complex mine rehabilitation project.
ERA also holds the nearby Jabiluka mineral lease – the site of sustained and successful protest by the Mirarr Traditional Owners and civil society supporters from across Australia and around the world.
Despite Rio’s clear acknowledgement that any possible mining window for Jabiluka is now firmly closed, ERA continues to promote Jabiluka as an asset.
“Rio Tinto has formally accepted there is no credible business case or pathway to advance mining at Jabiluka,” said Environment Centre NT analyst Naish Gawen.
“Rio has stated it will no longer report a Mineral Resource for Jabiluka. It’s time for ERA to do the same.”
Environmentalists inside and outside the meeting will urge the ERA Board to drop the fiction of drilling at Jabiluka and address the fact of required repair at Ranger.
“Repairing the heavily impacted Ranger site is ERA’s legal responsibility,” said ACF’s nuclear policy analyst Dave Sweeney.
“ERA and Rio Tinto will be closely watched and long judged on their performance of this responsibility.”
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission 147
There are long-term issues with the use of nuclear materials which create more problems than the short-term solutions they are alleged to provide
Australia has nuclear medicine as an option for some specific needs and nuclear materials have uses in diagnostics. Australia has a nuclear reactor to produce some of these materials and in order to gain international recognition of the reactor and to be part of international nuclear safeguards we needed a regulations regime which was obtained through ARPANSA.
We do not now need to start developing nuclear power for electricity generation or for propulsion or nuclear weapons. There are far better options for achieving long-term goals
The main problem with nuclear options is the generation of waste, whether high, medium or lowlevel. Some nuclear waste must be managed for thousands of years; longer than the known life-span of any human civilization.
There is a need for further research on how to deal with nuclear waste but we do not need to produce more waste in order to study it. We already have enough and do not have a solution for that.
There are many sources of information on the costs and problems of nuclear power and I trust that the Committee will refer to these and that there will be many submissions that provide this detail. I suggest that particular respect be given to work which looks at the entire timeframe of the waste that needs to be managed. That is, the economics of nuclear projects must be considered over thousands of years. We should also consider the durability of maintenance regimes over those years and the likelihood of further capital input to upgrade and maintain systems which potentially no longer provide an economic return.
All nuclear options necessarily include a high level of support of public money from government in order to operate. Governments do not always make good economic decisions. Once they start something they find it hard to stop.
We should not now be starting on a long-term nuclear pathway which will be expensive, create longterm problems managing dangerous materials, and for which other and better options currently exist
Antinuclear 