The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website.
Twenty-one of them (listed below) are either part of the global arms industry or actively working on its behalf.
Ten are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations. They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos – all five are in the global top 20. BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.
In 2023, these five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter – 23.8 per cent (US$150.4 billion (A$231.5 billion)) – of total weapons sales (US$632 billion (A$973 billion)) made by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.
Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces. The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel. None has done so.
Another of the Club’s sponsors – Thales – is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.
Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.
Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.
Mr Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about…proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”
Wherever the arms trade operates it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”. – Andrew Feinstein, author of Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
National Press Club board
The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.
The Club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.
The other board members are: vice president Misha Schubert (CEO, Super Members Council of Australia; formerly with The Age and The Australian); treasurer Greg Jennett (ABC); Steve Lewis (senior adviser, SEC Newgate; formerly with NewsCorp and the Financial Review); Jane Norman (ABC); Anna Henderson (SBS); Julie Hare (Financial Review); Andrew Probyn (Nine Network); Gemma Daley (Media & Government Affairs, Ai Group); and Corrie McLeod, the sole representative from an independent media outlet – InnovationAus.
At least two board members have jobs that involve lobbying.
Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra. SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.
Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Ms Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey and, before that, for media outlets the Financial Review and Bloomberg. Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and in 2017 appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it. The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.
Undue Influence asked Ms Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”
Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff.
Mr Reilly responded:
The Club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.
Undue Influence is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article. Our objective, as always, is to shine a light on, and scrutinise, the weapons industry’s opaque engagement in public life in Australia.
While Mr Reilly declined to disclose the Club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.
The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:
[Westpac] … gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese… Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.
Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.
Mr Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 per year, with a few paying extra as partners in the Club’s journalism awards.
The 21 arms industry and related sponsors therefore contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23% of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the Club’s largest revenue line, as shown in its 2024 financial statement.
“The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the Club’s website.
“Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.”
In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the Club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges (covered below), Mr Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt [sponsors] do not receive any rights to speak at the club [nor are they] able to influence decisions on speakers.”
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors – Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group) who gave an address on 7 September; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on 15 October. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.
While both speakers are considered experts in their field, the sponsorships should have been disclosed as a matter of public accountability.
“Priority seating and brand positioning”
On its website, the Club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including, “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.
The Club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses, as the following examples show. (As principal sponsor, the logo of Westpac appears on every table and on the podium.)
The local subsidiary of British giant BAE Systems has benefited handsomely from its modest $25,000 annual sponsorship. It had the best table – behind the microphone from which journalists asked questions – at then defence minister Peter Dutton’s address in November 2021. The BAE logo appeared on the national public broadcaster – which has strict rules against advertising – eight times during the half-hour question period following Mr Dutton’s address, giving BAE Systems extended ‘brand positioning’ with its target market: senior politicians, defence public servants and military officers.
On 28 November 2023, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy spoke about AUKUS. The logos of Press Club sponsors DXC Technology and Deloitte were also well-situated for the camera during question time. Both companies are significant contractors to the Defence Department. Deloitte also works for the weapons industry, including BAE Systems.
Cancelling Chris Hedges
The Press Club recently drew significant attention to itself after it cancelled a planned address by the Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist, and former long-term war correspondent, Chris Hedges. Mr Hedges reported for The New York Times for 15 years, from 1990-2005, including long stints as its bureau chief in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He was to have appeared at the Press Club on 20 October.
However, in late September, Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly cancelled Mr Hedges’ appearance. This occurred two weeks after the Club was sent details of what Mr Hedges proposed to cover, including a link to an article he had entitled The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. In that article, Mr Hedges wrote:
Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another… No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct 7 [2023], Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
Mr Hedges also intended to cover what he has described as the “barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press”, examples of which he provides in the above article.
Following a scathing post from Mr Hedges about the Press Club’s cancellation of his address, and significant public disquiet, the Press Club issued a statement denying it had come under external pressure to cancel his address. Inexplicably, the Press Club also denied it had confirmed the Hedges address. This claim was easily checked and soon reported to be false. Undue Influence has seen the emails showing that the Press Club had confirmed the address.
National Press Club funded by companies profiting from genocide
In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.
Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.
Numerous members of the public posted their concerns on the Press Club’s Facebook page. Here are three examples: [on original]
Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms – all of which have arms industry corporations as clients – are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.
EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – a Press Club sponsor until 2024 – has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.
Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.
Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel military capability.
In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.
Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contain Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.
National Press Club sponsors from military-industrial complex
# Rankings compiled by SIPRI at December 2023 (published December 2024)
^ NOTE ON US COMPANIES: The Defence Department procures weapons/military goods directly from Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and other US corporations via the US Government’s Foreign Military Sales program. The value of FMS contracts is not included in the table.
Note on the use of the word ‘genocide’
Three independent experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Commission – the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel – issued a report in September that concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. One of the Commissioners – Chris Sidoti – speaking at the Press Club recently, said the Commission’s report will remain the most authoritative statement on this issue until the world’s highest authority, the International Court of Justice, makes its ruling.
In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality.
the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US
The October 20 performance saw few transgressions and many feats of compliance. As a guest in the White House, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in no mood to be combative, and US President Donald Trump was accommodating. There was, however, an odd nervous glanceshot at the host at various points.
The latest turn of events from the perspective of those believing in Australian sovereignty, pitifully withered as it is, remains dark. In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality. The objective “is to assist both countries in achieving resilience and security of minerals and rare earths supply chains, including mining, separation and processing.” The necessity of securing such supply is explicitly noted for reasons of war or, as the document notes, “necessary to support manufacturing of defense and advanced technologies” for both countries.
The US and Australia will draw on the money bags of the private sector to supplement government initiatives (guarantees, loans, equity and so forth), an incentive that will cause much salivating joy in the mining industry. Within 6 months “measures to provide at least $1 billion in financing to projects located in each of the United States and Australia expected to generate end product for delivery to buyers in the United States and Australia.”
The inequality of the agreement does not bother such analysts as Bryce Wakefield, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He mysteriously thinks that Albanese did not “succumb to the routine sycophancy we’ve come to expect from other leaders”, something of a “win”. With the skill of a cabalist, he identified the benefits in the critical minerals framework which he thinks will be “the backbone for joint investment in at least six Australian projects.” The agreement would “counter China’s dominance over rare earths and supply chains.”
Much of what was agreed between Trump and Albanese was barely covered by the sleepwalking press corps, despite the details of a White House factsheet. There were more extorting deals extracted from Canberra, with agreements to purchase US$1.2 billion in Anduril unmanned underwater vehicles and US$2.6 billion worth of Apache helicopters. Of particular significance was the agreement to push Australia’s superannuation funds to increase investments in the US to US$1.44 trillion by 2035, which would increase the pool by US$1 trillion. “This unprecedented investment will create tens of thousands of new, high paying jobs for America.
Back in Australia, attention was focused on other things. The mock affair known as the opposition party tried to make something of the personal ribbing given by Trump to Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd. Small minds are distracted by small matters, and instead of taking issue with the appalling cost of AUKUS with its chimerical submarines, or the voluntary relinquishment of various sectors of the Australian economy to US control, Sussan Ley of the Liberal Party was adamant that Rudd be sacked. This was occasioned by an encounter where Trump had turned to the Australian PM to ask if “an ambassador” had said anything “bad about me”. Trump’s follow up remarks: “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” The finger was duly pointed at Rudd by Albanese. “You said bad?” inquired Trump. Rudd, never one to manage the brief response, spoke of being critical of the president in his pre-ambassadorial phase but that was all in the past. “I don’t like you either,” shot Trump in reply. “And I probably never will.”
This was enough to exercise Ley, who claimed to be “surprised that the president didn’t know who the Australian ambassador was.” This showed her thin sheet grasp of White House realities. Freedom Land’s previous presidents have struggled with names, geography and memory, the list starting with such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Not knowing the name of an ambassador from an imperial outpost is hardly a shock.
The Australian papers and broadcasters, however, drooled and saw seismic history in the presence of casual utterance. Sky News host Sharri Markson was reliably idiotic: “The big news of course is President Trump’s meeting with Albanese today and the major news story to come out of it is Trump putting Rudd firmly in his place.” Often sensible in her assessments, the political columnist Annabel Crabb showed she had lost her mind, imbibing the Trump jungle juice and relaying it to her unfortunate readers. “From his humble early days as a child reading Hansard in the regional Sunshine State pocket of Eumundi, Kevin Rudd has been preparing for this martyrdom.”
Having been politically martyred by the Labor Party at the hands of his own deputy Julia Gillard in June 2010, who challenged him for being a mentally unstable, micromanaging misfit driving down poll ratings, this was amateurish. But a wretchedly bad story should not be meddled with. At the very least, Crabb blandly offered a smidgen of humour, suggesting that Albanese, having gone into the meeting “with the perennially open chequebook for American submarines, plus an option over our continent’s considerable rare-earths reserves” was bound to come with some human sacrifice hovering “in the ether.”
In this grand abdication of responsibility by the press and bought think tankers, little in terms of detail was discussed about the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US. It was all babble about the views of Trump and whether, in the words of Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Rudd “did an extremely good job, not only in getting the meeting, but doing the work on the critical minerals deal and AUKUS.” For the experts moored in antipodean isolation, Rudd had either been bad by being disliked for past remarks on the US chief magistrate, or good in being a representative of servile facilitation. To give him his due, Wakefield was correct to note how commentators in Australia “continue to personalise the alliance” equating it to “an episode of The Apprentice.”
Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people
Australia is paying for America’s submarines, striking a deal with a President we still have to fact-check. Dr Kim Sawyerreports.
HE IS THE MASTER showman. He knows where to position the actors, where to position the cameras, where to position the lights. He knows how to spray on his make-up and the make-up of others. Every press conference, every Cabinet meeting is the reality show of the showman.
“Young Donald Trump had been an athlete as a teenager, and he aspired to a career in Hollywood. He ultimately fulfilled his father’s desire for a successor in the family business in real estate. But what the son really always wanted was to be a star.”
The reality show The Apprentice made him a star. The Apprentice was his apprenticeship. Trump knows who is willing to be conned; he knows their price or how to determine their price. He thinks he knows the price of everything and everyone, but really knows the value of nothing. He is the confidence man.
Trump is the confidence man of fiction best understood by reading Ibsen’s Master Builder or by viewing the 1958 episode‘The End of the World’ of the CBS series Trackdown that featured a character who wanted to build a wall, and who had all the confidence of the confidence man. Sound familiar? The fictitious character was called Trump. He was finally exposed as a fraud. The fictitious Trump was finally arrested.
The meeting of Trump and Albanese was his latest reality show, the Master and the Apprentice. The Master got what we wanted. He got the deference he craved. He got the deal he wanted. The Apprentice got what he wanted. He got the endorsement of power of the Confidence Man.
The art of the deal.
Perforce, the deal is a con. Turnbull and Keating understand. Morrison and Albanese do not. We should never have agreed to AUKUS. It’s not just the cost of $368 billion over 30 years that includes $123bn as a contingency for the risk of a cost blowout. The risks are everywhere.
We have already paid more than $3 billion, the premium for a very uncertain insurance policy. As Turnbull has noted, the submarines are currently being produced at a rate of 1.1 per year.
“They need to get to two by 2028 to be able to meet their own requirements, and to 2.33 to meet their own, plus Australia’s. And they have not been able to lift production rates despite expenditure of over $10 billion over the last six or seven years. So, they’ve got a real problem.”
We’ve got a bigger problem.
Governments are like portfolio managers. The government needs to understand diversification, that you do not put all your eggs in a basket of submarines. The defence budget is so tied up in submarines, we don’t have room to invest in emerging defence technologies, in patrol boats, frigates or the amphibious landing craft we need for immediate problems like evacuations. The budget is being skewed towards submarines that will not be supplied until the early 2030s, away from writing off the $70 billion of student debt that three million young Australians face. The cost of the deal.
We have become so inured to the lies of the conman, we have to fact-check everything he says. When Trump said he had been to Australia, I thought it was another porky, but no, he had visited Australia, not as the President but as a spruiker to the National Achievement Congress in 2011. The conman spruiked the message of the grifter as to how to get everyone else to pay his debts. It wasn’t Trump’s first visit to the antipodes. In August 1993, Trump visited Auckland as part of a consortium bidding for a casino operator’s licence. At the time, Trump was mired in debt. The bid was unsuccessful.
Truth and falsity are transactional for Trump. He has always used the mantra. “If you say something often enough, it becomes true.” Interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011, Trump criticised Obama’s job plan as doomed and unlikely to have any impact. At the time, the unemployment rate was nine per cent, at the end of Obama’s term, unemployment was 4.9 per cent. Trump was always anti-Obama. Trump was always false.
The other leading actor in the show that we watched last Monday was our own Prime Minister. Albanese had a lot to thank Trump for; perhaps that’s why he had wanted so much to meet him. The polls in February 2025 had the coalition leading 51–49, and then the Trump-Dutton factor came into play. Dutton was Albo’s trump card. No wonder he wanted the selfie with Trump. He invited Trump to visit, perhaps to spruik why Australia is paying for America’s submarines.
Albanese wore a lot of make-up to the meeting. The real Albo shared his confidences in private, perhaps with the other actor who sat opposite Trump, the Ambassador who Trump did not like. Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
The risk was everywhere to be seen. Two days before, 7 million joined the No Kings’ protests. Thirty years ago, when Albo was a man of principle, he may have joined those same protests, but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
On the day that Albo met Trump in the Whitehouse, the East Room was being demolished. In 1984, on a tour of the Whitehouse, we were asked to stand still, as the President appeared. Reagan had just left the East Room, where he had given a speech, where Carter, Obama, and FDR gave speeches. The East Room was built by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902.
Apparently, there was no heritage overlay, at least for Trump. Betty Ford reflected on its significance. “If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.” Confirmation that Trump is heartless.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people. However, most will never get to see the submarines, not like the HECS debt on their tax bill. Australia has been too subservient, too sycophantic, too risk-averse in our dealings with Trump. There is a cost to being risk-averse just as there is a cost to being a risk-taker.
The Democrats paid the price for not dealing with Trump as they should have dealt with him. Dealing with Trump is like dealing with the devil; you must deal on your terms, not his terms. He is a convicted felon, a fraudster, a showman, the confidence man who became President.
The No Kings protests showed the divergence between the people and the institutions, between those who will not defer to Trump and those who will defer to him; between right and wrong. History may rewrite some of the story, but not the story of the Master and the Apprentice.
Joy and delight! Australia is to have a booming rare earths industry, mining and PROCESSING – jobs jobs jobs! Money money money!. And we can stick it up to China, confronting its near monopoly on the industry!
The reality is something very different.
Apart from the enormous and time-consuming problems involved in establishing this industry, and in competing economically with China, there’s that other unmentionable problem – RADIOACTIVE WASTES.
Western Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths company knows all about this. They’ve had no end of trouble with their rare earths processing and its radioactive wastes. They were smart enough, had the foresight, to set up processing in another country. Lynas moved its rare earths processing to Malaysia because of Malaysia’s less stringent laws. But what they didn’t reckon with, was Malaysia’ ‘s history, and awareness of radioactive waste danger. As Lynas’ plant started operations in 2012 – in Kuala Lumpur: 10,000 marched for 13 days, rally against Lynas rare earths processing plant. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad imposed stringent conditions on Lynas’ operations.
Malaysians remember the environmental and health disaster of Bukit Merah; where, early this century, rare earth processing left a toxic wasteland.
A longer explanation is provided in this documentary –
It is very hard to get information on Lynas’ processing operations in Malaysia. I remember that a few years ago, there was a controversy, and an Australian protest movement against Lynas’ plan to dump these wastes into an old growth forest in Malaysia. I can now find no record of this. And indeed, many news items of the controversies of Lynas’ Malaysia operations have now vanished from the internet.
If Malaysia’s history of radioactive pollution from processing of rare earths is scandalous, – what about China’s history?
I know that in recent years, China has cleaned up its act on industrial pollution. But its history is shocking – with a legacy of “cancer villages” –
Whole villages between the city of Baotou and the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia have been evacuated and resettled to apartment towers elsewhere after reports of high cancer rates and other health problems associated with the numerous rare earth refineries there. – China’s legacy of radioactive pollution from rare earths processing.
Well, is everybody now pretending that that to introduce rare earths processing in Australia is a good thing, no problem, it’s progress – blah blah?
This new development comes just as Australia’s government introduces its new reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – including the aim to simplify and speed up approvals for development. We wait to see what that entails – could it be the weakening of environmental standards?
Coincidentally, Mr Trump’s USA is changing the standards on radiation safety. An Executive Order from the White House states:
“In particular, the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard, which is predicated on LNT. Those models are flawed”, – ORDERING THE REFORM OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION.
This will likely result in a significant weakening of the current standards at a time when the evidence strongly suggests that they are in need of further tightening.
The environmental movement fights on – but with a wave of enthusiasm for renewable energy development. A recent article discussed recycling of rare earths from our many digital devices. That’s an idea that seems to be ahead of its time, especially given the extreme difficulty of retrieving those elements from mobile phones, laptops etc.fficulty of retrieving those elements from mobile phones, laptops etc.
Well, it’s the (?) futuristic idea of the circular economy. It fits in with those unfashionable concepts of energy efficiency, energy conservation. We used to hear about them, in the early days of action on climate change.
These concepts are anathema to our billionaire leaders, as we are all drawn into the mindless rollercoaster of ever more artificial intelligence, with its ever more energy use.
Australia, federally and in each State has strong restrictions on radioactive processes. The nuclear lobby has tried for decades to weaken or overthrow those restrictions, and to introduce radioactive waste dumping in a big way.
We’ll be pitched the story that the radioactive wastes from rare earths processing are “minor” “low key” – acceptable. Let’s not worry – after all, the whole rare earths thing is so complex, and so far into the future.
But Albanese so readily agreed with Trump, that Australia can have both the mining and the processing of rare earths – it opens the door up to radioactive waste dumping,
Meanwhile, the issue is also relevant to Australia’s agricultural industry, particularly in Victoria. Victoria being blessed with rich agricultural land, regions like the Wimmera and Gippsland could be threatened by these new industries. The nuclear lobby, too, has long salivated on the possibility of a thorium industry there, too
It’s a sad thing – that history is forgotten, in these days of super-fast “progress’ into the Age of AI. We are being led by the nose by those technobillionaires surrounding Donald Trump – to believe that we don’t need to do much working, or thinking – as we race into this golden age, and embrace this new radioactively-polluting industry.
Sydney’s record October heat; high winds battering both Melbourne and New Zealand, causing death and destruction; the algal bloom caused by South Australia’s marine heatwave wreaking havoc on our marine environment; coral in both the Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs suffering horrific bleaching.
There’s barely an Australian who hasn’t been affected by one extreme weather event or another, some badly. Some have lost their lives, their homes or both. The seas around our country are suffering a marine heatwave. Just a few degrees above normal is causing these climate change-fuelled warmer oceans to put our weather on steroids, intensifying heat, rainfall and wind.
And that intense rainfall will lead to increased plant growth, so another record bushfire season is inevitable at some point. But this is really only the beginning: global warming has reached an average of nearly 1.5C, and we’re set to see warming of at least 2.7C by the end of the century if we don’t take more action.
Australians have an obvious interest in action against global warming. Focusing on gas instead of renewables for the energy transition risks sabotaging our future.
The Australian Conservation Foundation acknowledges Environment Minister Murray Watt’s announcement today that the Albanese government intends to establish a national Environment Protection Authority (EPA).
The details announced fall short of creating a fully independent EPA. A better model than the one announced by Minister Watt would be one in which the Environment Minister makes nature protection rules, and the EPA assesses and approves projects and enforces the rules based on strong National Environmental Standards.
“For decades, ministers have been able to be influenced and pressured by developers. Tragically, this has resulted in millions of hectares of valuable bushland and habitat being razed by bulldozers, and Australia’s natural wealth significantly degraded,” said ACF Acting CEO Paul Sinclair.
“We remain strongly of the view that independent, expert decision making by the EPA on assessments and approvals is the best way to the deliver the consistency and certainty that is needed under our national nature protection laws. Arm’s length decision making is better for nature and better for business. We will carefully consider the details of the model proposed in the context of the entire reform package by the government once we see the legislation.
“A strong EPA is an important step in addressing the woeful lack of enforcement under the EPBC Act, especially in relation to agricultural deforestation. But an EPA alone will not be enough. We need stronger nature protection laws, we need all decisions to account for climate harm, and deforestation loopholes that allow rampant clearing of precious habitat must be closed. An independent referee is only as good as the rules they have to follow”
Prime Minister Albanese’s plan to amend FOI laws and increase government secrecy may be unconstitutional, and the LNP, Greens, and Independents are all opposing it. Rex Patrick reports.
Sussan Ley’s opinion piece in the Canberra Times this week, coupled with strong statements of rejection from Greens justice spokesperson Senator David Shoebridge, looks to be the final nail in the coffin for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s hypocritical and evil attempt to clamp down on the ability of citizens to participate in democracy and review the performance of their government.
Every document the government produces is generated for public purposes and on the taxpayer’s coin. The Freedom of Information Act itself states that:
“information held by the Government is to be managed for public purposes, and is a national resource.“
Of course, there is information we should not see; defence secrets, law enforcement tactics, commercially sensitive information shared with government, and citizens’ personal information held by government.
“It is unacceptable in our democratic society that there should be a restraint on the publication of information relating to government when the only vice of that information is that it enables the public to discuss, review and criticise government action.
“Accordingly, the court will determine the government’s claim to confidentiality by reference to the public interest. Unless disclosure is likely to injure the public interest, it will not be protected.”
This judicial declaration was made in 1980, two years before the Freedom of Information Bill was enacted. The principles laid down by Justice Mason were subsequently incorporated into the Act, whereby the default position is that requested information is to be made available to applicants “unless access to the document at that time would, on balance, be contrary to the public interest” – although this default position is:
“effectively being defeated due to a flourishing culture of government secrecy.”
Horse trading risk
Could the Coalition opposition falter in their resolve – maybe in exchange for less stringent environmental regulations for industry? Could the Greens seek to do a deal – maybe in exchange for tighter emission controls?
The problem is that when you horse trade, you sometimes end up with a donkey.
But anything is possible in politics. The Bill is not scheduled to be debated this year. A week in politics is a long time; a few months an eternity.
Unconstitutional?
The fallback, if the Bill passes, would be to mount a constitutional challenge to the prospective crackdown on public access to government information. There is force in the proposition that the:
“Bill intrudes on the implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution.“
In the 1992 High Court case of Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd & New South Wales v Commonwealth, the court ruled that the implied freedom is a necessary incident of the representative democracy which the Australian Constitution provides. Communication is protected because it is the means by which electors inform themselves about government and political matters, which allows them to exercise an informed choice at elections.
Anthony Mason, by then High Court Chief Justice, said in that case:
“… The point is that the representatives who are members of Parliament and Ministers of State are not only chosen by the people but exercise their legislative and executive powers as representatives of the people. And in the exercise of those powers the representatives of necessity are accountable to the people for what they do and have a responsibility to take account of the views of the people on whose behalf they act. Freedom of communication is an indispensable element in representative government.
“Indispensable to that accountability and that responsibility is freedom of communication, at least in relation to public affairs and political discussion. Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen communicate his or her views on the wide range of matters that may call for, or are relevant to, political action or decision. Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen criticise government decisions and actions, seek to bring about change, call for action where none has been taken and in this way influence the elected representatives. By these means the elected representatives are equipped to discharge their role so that they may take account of and respond to the will of the people.
“Communication in the exercise of the freedom is by no means a one-way traffic, for the elected representatives have a responsibility not only to ascertain the views of the electorate but also to explain and account for their decisions and actions in government and to inform the people so that they may make informed judgments on relevant matters. (Author’s emphasis.)
“Absent such a freedom of communication, representative government would fail to achieve its purpose, namely, government by the people through their elected representatives; government would cease to be responsive to the needs and wishes of the people and, in that sense, would cease to be truly representative.”
The FOI Act recognises this Constitutional foundation, with the Parliament declaring one of the objectives of the legislation is to… “promote Australia’s representative democracy.” In 1988, in the High Court case of Egan v Willis, Justices Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne stated:
In Australia, s 75(v) of the Constitution and judicial review of administrative action under federal and State law, together with freedom of information legislation (author’s emphasis), supplement the operation of responsible government in this respect.
Beyond reasonable secrecy
Although the High Court only declared freedom of political communication in the 1990s, it has existed in Australia since 1901.
Whilst the FOI Act only came into effect in 1982, it effectively codified a mechanism and a reasonable limit on what government information could be available to fulfil the Constitutional freedom of political observation.
The Cabinet provisions in Prime Minister Albanese’s FOI Amendment Bill depart from necessary confidentiality in Cabinet solidarity and collective responsibility, and, in a radical departure from established understanding and practice,
“wrap a secrecy blanket over all things being carried out at the top echelons of government.
Secrecy for the sake of secrecy is wrong. Exaggerated secrecy, that is, secrecy beyond the public interest, will warp the foundations of our democracy and will most likely be unconstitutional.
Sections 7 and 24 of the Constitution, which state respectively that the Senate and the House of Representatives shall be composed of senators and members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, imply that citizens have a right to be informed so that they can properly consider their vote.
As such, the passage of the Bill will likely give rise to a challenge as to the validity of
“laws that seek to hide what the public own and should reasonably be able to see.”
Complacency
So, although passage of the Bill through the Parliament looks set to fail, the Government will be working up a negotiating scenario – maybe offering something that the Coalition hates but the Greens really like or something the Greens hate but the Coalition really likes.
But no good could come from negotiation on this Bill. It’s a poison pill for democracy.
Information is to democratic participation as water is to life. We take the water for granted until it stops flowing. Complacency must not set in, and there should be no deals. Albanese’s toxic FOI suppression Bill should be voted down.
The Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Legislation is holding its first hearing into the Bill this Friday.
Australia is murdering people and threatening democracy. That’s the reality of Anthony Albanese kissing Donald Trump’s ring this week, writes Michael Pascoe.
Michael Pascoe.
Let’s be clear about this. If you support a criminal gang, provide it with weapons, keep schtum about its crimes, either pay bribes or accept being extorted, you are an accessory to everything the thugs and hitmen do.
That’s us, as represented by our government bowing before Donald Trump.
When Trump exercises massive economic coercion on Brazil because that democracy’s judiciary is dealing, as it should, with an attempted coup (unlike the United States), we’re supporting him.
When Trump threatens Brazilians with further unspecified pain if they don’t vote for his preferred right-wing candidate, we’re supporting him.
“We’re all the way with Donald J, all the way with the mob that is the US administration.“
When Trump, on zero legal basis, orders suspected smugglers to be summarily executed in international waters, we’re on his side. When he leans on corporations for a piece of their action, we’re okaying it. Heck, we’re joining the conga line offering a slice.
As a Trump vassal state, we’ve moved beyond merely being America’s Deputy Dawg in the South Pacific to active backers of Trump’s global shakedown.
The “rules-based international order” was always a façade for self-interest. Now it’s a pathetic joke, high farce, darkly ironic. Just as Trump’s Supreme Court has declared him above the law, Trump has declared the United States beyond any law, a piracy state free to exploit, extort, betray, reneg and kill at will.
Ready to kiss the ring
The local media demanding for months that the Australian Prime Minister have the opportunity to play a humble fool in the White House have their wishes fulfilled this week.
Embarrassingly, our major newspapers are reporting as a good thing that Albanese will either, depending on your perspective, bribe or be willingly extorted by Trump to curry favour with the lawless mob.
Rather than support free trade and that rules-based international order thing, we are expected to act like the sycophantic American companies and “give” Trump a large gift. Another billion dollars towards America’s military capacity is just an appetiser.
More galling, the reported main aim in compromising whatever moral stance Australia might once have had is to keep alive the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal. We’re compromising ourselves to further compromise our military sovereignty by locking into the American military’s strategic aims. “Integration”, as the American cheerleaders in the local security and military game call it.
And all complying with Paul Keating’s criticism that our governments keep seeking security from Asia when we should be seeking security within it.
As stated here before, contrary to the perspective of nearly all Australian media, most of the world is not in the Trump or China camps. Most countries recognise the failures of both those powers and seek to tread an independent path.
Not Albanese’s ALP or whoever’s LNP. Having already surrendered sovereignty by inviting and hosting American military and espionage bases, we’re doubling down by funding the American military machine on a bipartisan basis and mutely approving Trump’s international transgressions.
There is no pride in this, only a stain. Acting without integrity, supporting a bullying criminal, we are
“accessories to everything that untrustworthy self-aggrandising joke of a US president does.”
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.
“Submarines in our time!” He didn’t say it, but Anthony Albanese might as well have, as he returned triumphantly from his meeting with Donald Trump this week.
AUKUS is indeed a fantastic deal. For the Americans, at least.
“Trump is not going to cancel AUKUS”, a well-connected industry source told MWM two weeks ago.
“AUKUS is so good for US industry – Australia is spending billions on their shipyards, and then there’s the purchase of the submarines themselves. General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries will see tens of billions of Australian dollars flow their way, as will Lockheed Martin and Raytheon”, said the source.
“And assuming things go well, the shipyard mess in the UK will see us going from three US Virginia-class subs to five, and then likely eight. Australia will abandon the UK AUKUS-designed subs, and even more Australian money will flow into the bank accounts of US companies.”
‘They’ll be lobbying the White House to ensure this cash keeps on flowing.’
And clearly, the lobbying has worked so far. Trump has endorsed AUKUS. It’s the sort of deal he likes.
As former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated in the lead-up to the meeting, it wasn’t going to be in Trump’s interest to withdraw, “The AUKUS deal is a fantastic deal for the Americans, a terrible deal for Australia, so there is no way Donald Trump will walk away from it because what does he get?” he said.
Turnbull was right. He was also right in his analysis after the meeting, “warm words don’t build submarines”.
Submarine woes
The United States is not building enough Virginia-class subs. They’re not building enough for their own Navy, let alone ours. That is the determining fact sitting in the middle of the AUKUS slipway.
For more than a decade, the US Government has been trying to build two Virginia subs per year. But they haven’t been able to move the shipbuilding dial. They’re currently struggling along at 1.1 submarines per annum, not enough to meet their own demand, let alone the 2.3 boats per annum they need to hit to be able to spare a submarine or three for Australia.
The spin from US and Australian politicians is turning in the opposite direction to the analysis of the United States Congressional Research Service, the US Government Audit Office and the US Chief of Naval Operations. No matter the spin from politicians, they can’t cause a change in the engineering and construction taking place at Groton, Connecticut and Newport News, Virginia.
Trump needn’t be worried though; he won’t be the President in the early 2030s when the first Virginia Class sub can’t be delivered because doing so,
will have a detrimental effect on the US Navy’s undersea warfare capability.
The US Congress has enshrined that “America First” requirement in their AUKUS legislation, and the crunch point is already less than a decade away – too little time for the US submarine industrial base to make the enormous strides that are so easily spruiked but so difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Eroding our sovereignty
Meanwhile, MWM’s industry source has foreshadowed the closing down of some Australian Defence companies struggling to make ends meet after Defence has cancelled a range of local programs, and is not initiating replacement work, so that they can meet the almost $10B in payments to both the US and UK governments to invest in their industry.
‘AUKUS is sending Australia into a sovereignty-eroding spiral.’
We are already tightly integrated into the US military with common hardware, common ordinance and common tactics. As the US turns its eye towards its superpower competitor, China (incidentally, our biggest trading partner), we are also seeing an expanding US military footprint on Australian soil, including:
and logistics storage in both Victoria and Queensland.
the long-standing Pine Gap joint communications and intelligence facility at Alice Springs,
the critical submarine very low frequency communications station at WA’s North West Cape,
a new mission briefing/intelligence centre and aircraft parking aprons at RAAF Darwin,
fuel storage at Darwin Port, infrastructure at RAAF Tindal near Katherine,
And there’ll be a forward staging base for US Navy Virginia-class subs out of HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027.
US nuclear-powered, and by the early 2030s likely nuclear-armed, submarines will be using Western Australia as a strategic base for operations extending from the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, to the South China Sea and the East China Sea and beyond.
‘All th’is is about strategic competition with China.‘
The Australian Defence Force, as it diverts money to AUKUS, will suffer in terms of independent capability. Industry will suffer. The taxpayer will suffer.
Best deal in history
Trump must be rubbing his hands together. This will play out well for the US.
Billions of Australian dollars will flow into the continental US to contribute to its submarine industry – this is a certainty. In contrast, the US will almost certainly not deliver. There is no clawback of expended money for non-delivery.
Australia’s Collins Class submarine capability will atrophy further, as will the general capabilities of the Australian Defence Force, starved of funds. More reliance on the US will see the US Navy station more subs in WA, the US Air Force stationing and staging additional air capabilities in our north, and an increase in the number of US Marines rotating through Darwin.
More than ever, Australia will be reduced to being “a suitable piece of real estate” in US war planning (to adopt the words of one of Australia’s most insightful strategic critics, the late Professor Des Ball).
Australia will have little choice but to let the US do this … and we might be pressured into much more.
‘There will be no choice but to follow the US into conflict with China.‘
We will have limited capabilities and will be left totally reliant on red, white and blue military capabilities. When Richard Marles talks of sovereign capabilities and decision-making, it’s just a political con job.
Trump will, in retirement, post on Truth Social his genius and how he suckered retired Prime Minister Albanese into what Paul Keating would call, in the view from the White House and Pentagon, the best deal in all of history.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”
Australia’s rare earth deal with the US fuels its military industry, not our sovereignty. Here’s why that matters.
Introduction: Australia’s Strategic Crossroads
In October 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed an $8.5 billion rare earth deal with the United States, promising closer economic and security ties. The agreement appears to be an opportunity to boost Australia’s resource sector. Yet beneath the surface, it reveals a deepening alignment with the US military-industrial complex through the AUKUS alliance.
As China restricts exports of key rare earth metals used in advanced weaponry, the US is turning to Australia for supply. The question is simple but profound: is the rare earth deal Australia signed a path to sovereignty, or servitude?
The Problem: How the Deal Strengthens Dependence
1. The Geopolitical Trigger – China’s Ban and US Pressure
China’s export controls on critical minerals such as gallium and germanium were a strategic response to the US using them for missile guidance systems, fighter jets, and submarines. Washington needed a reliable alternative, and Canberra complied.
Through the AUKUS alliance, Australia is being drawn into the US defence supply chain, undermining our ability to chart an independent foreign policy. Rather than investing in peaceful manufacturing and clean-energy industries, our resources are now fuelling a global arms race. (ABC News)
2. Resource Exploitation Without Return
Australia holds about 20% of the world’s rare earth reserves, yet most of our minerals are exported raw and processed overseas. This deal continues that pattern, foreign corporations’ profit while Australians bear the environmental costs. Public money is used to subsidise foreign ventures instead of funding domestic processing plants that create local jobs. (AP News)
The Impact: What Australians Are Experiencing
3. From Mining Boom to Dependency Economy
Despite decades of booms, Australia is still a “dig-and-ship” nation. The rare earth deal Australia signed solidifies our position as a key supplier of raw materials to the US military supply chain. Communities see little benefit while regional inequality and labour insecurity grow.
4. Who Really Benefits
The true winners are US defence contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, who depend on steady rare earth supplies for weapons production. Under AUKUS, Australia is obliged to supply these resources for military use while receiving limited technology transfer. Once again, public money serves private foreign interests. (Politico)
Who Owns the Processors: and Who Gets the Profits
The Albanese government’s rare earth deal, which Australia signed with the United States, has been presented as a boost to local industry. Yet a closer look at who owns the companies processing these critical minerals shows the profits often flow overseas or to private shareholders, not the Australian public.
1. Iluka Resources – Eneabba, Western Australia
Iluka runs Australia’s first integrated rare-earth refinery, funded by a $1.65 billion public loan from the federal government’s Critical Minerals Facility. The project includes a “no-China” clause to satisfy US and UK defence interests. Although Iluka is ASX-listed, profits go to private and institutional investors, not the public, while its supply contracts serve foreign markets.
2. Lynas Rare Earths – Kalgoorlie and Malaysia
Lynas, another ASX-listed firm, runs processing plants in Kalgoorlie and Malaysia. It received early investment from Japan’s Sojitz and JOGMEC, who keep offtake rights. A substantial part of Lynas’s refined output is exported to Japan and US defence manufacturers, making Australia a supplier in the AUKUS alliance rather than an independent producer.
Arafura promotes itself as an Australian company, but binding offtake agreements with Hyundai, Kia, Siemens Gamesa, and Traxys cover most of its planned production. This means much of its revenue will come from foreign contracts, while Australian taxpayers help fund infrastructure and environmental oversight.
4. Alpha HPA – Gladstone, Queensland
Alpha HPA’s high-purity alumina project has been hailed as a clean-tech success, supported by hundreds of millions in government loans. However, its customers are primarily offshore electronics and battery manufacturers, meaning the profits leave Australia even though public funds help build the facilities.
5. Australian Strategic Materials (ASM) – Dubbo, New South Wales
ASM’s Dubbo project has strong ties with a South Korean consortium, with potential equity and offtake arrangements already in place. While the plant is in Australia, most of the downstream manufacturing and profit realisation will occur in Asia.
The Sovereignty Gap
While several companies are headquartered in Australia and listed on the ASX, the real issue is who controls the value chain. With foreign investors and defence-aligned buyers dominating the market, Australia captures little of the long-term benefit.
Australia will make a second billion-dollar payment to boost U.S. nuclear submarine shipyards soon, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said in Washington on Tuesday, ahead of an official visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese next week.
The AUKUS agreement to transfer nuclear-powered submarines to Australia is being reviewed by the Pentagon, although Australia has expressed confidence the deal, which also includes Britain, will proceed.
In its first phase, Australia has pledged 3 billion U.S. dollars to boost U.S. submarine production rates, to later allow the sale of three Virginia submarines to Canberra, with a 2025 deadline for the first $2 billion.
Australian media coverage of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s meeting with US President Donald Trump was teetering on the brink of euphoria.
Emerging from the cabinet room where the meeting took place, the ABC’s reporter Jane Norman appeared breathless in her account of the big moment. Even Sally Sara, host of Radio National’s Breakfast, who is usually calm and is known to ask probing questions, seemed to have abandoned her cool. She pronounced: “Well, the bonds between the United States and Australia appear tighter than ever today.’
But our prime minister didn’t rest on his laurels, even after securing various assurances from Trump. Albanese seemed to feel he needed to further convince the Americans of our nation’s commitment to their nation. As he told a roomful of US Congress members: “We’ve already contributed a billion dollars to your industrial base; there’ll be a billion dollars on its way before Christmas.”
He went on to say there would be “a further billion dollars next year because … we want to uplift your industrial capacity. … We’ll be providing a capacity for maintenance of your subs from 2027 on top of the facilities that we have already in the West.” And just to ensure his audience understood his message, he added, “It will increase your capacity to forward project.”
In other words, he wanted to drive home that AU
When asked by Sara what securing a commitment from Trump meant, the ABC’s John Lyons said: “From America’s point of view, why wouldn’t you? When a country comes along and says we will pay you $380 billion to boost your manufacturing industry in America for submarines you may one day see, of course! America loves the deal.”
But Lyons didn’t mention that while the AUKUS contract commits the US to deliver eight nuclear-powered submarines to Australia by 2032, there’s a condition: under the US legislation, the president of the day can stop the transfer if the American government believes the sale could affect its undersea capabilities, thereby undermining the national interest. To put it plainly: Australia has no way of recovering its money, even if we end up with no submarines.
If AUKUS is such a good deal for the Americans, why does our prime minister feel the need to keep talking up AUKUS to them? KUS is really in America’s national interest.
Could the Albanese government be so desperate to secure a continuous commitment because it needs to convince Australian voters it is doing its utmost to persuade America to stay the course, so that their taxpayer money won’t go down the drain? Perhaps the government believes it can’t afford to let up on the PR surrounding AUKUS in both the US and Australia, even though it isn’t certain the submarines will eventually turn up, nor that they will deter Australia’s enemies?
Australia’s news media are prone to switch from pursuing a “public interest” mandate to a “national interest” mandate when covering foreign policy. For this reason, despite Trump’s assurances this week, they will doubtlessly continue to focus on the trope of “Is AUKUS on track or is it in trouble?” They are likely to keep ignoring or downplaying critical questions such as “What does Australia get out of the AUKUS deal?” and “Will the US submarines keep us safe?”
Although middle powers have less global influence, they nevertheless exercise agency strategically in the emerging multipolar world as great powers contest the rules of order. They gain influence by mediating between great powers through what international relations theorists call “hedging”.
Such scholars believe that hedging enables middle powers to engage with competing great powers, while avoiding alignment that limits their autonomy. Through hedging, less powerful states preserve sovereignty in a context of uncertainty by balancing engagement and resistance. Our Asian neighbours, such as India, Indonesia and Singapore, do precisely that.
Despite our leaders’ rhetoric, signing up to AUKUS seems to signal that Australia has somewhat voluntarily relinquished its capacity as a middle power to practise effective hedging.
For instance, Sydney University’s James Curran believes AUKUS could mean the US would expect Australia to join them in a potential war with China over Taiwan:
Similarly, the Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen argues that Australia’s deeper alignment with the US and the hosting of US bomber capabilities at Tindal and future nuclear-submarine infrastructure raises the likelihood of Australia becoming “an important target” in a conflict with China.
Neither of the major parties has ruled in or out the possibility that Australia would join the US in a potential war. But despite Defence Minister Richard Marles’ rebuttal of criticism from AUKUS critics over the issue of sovereignty, one thing is clear: unlike many Western European and Scandinavian middle powers, Australia’s constitution implies that decisions to engage in armed conflict are made by the executive government under prerogative powers, not by parliament as a whole.
In other words, the Parliament of Australia apparently has no power to stop Australia from going to war, even though it could be consulted.
It is for these reasons that Clinton Fernandes, in the Future Operations Research Group at UNSW Canberra, believes that “rules-based international order” is a “euphemism” for the US-led imperial order, and that Australia is really a “subimperial power upholding a US-led imperial order”.
Without giving a full account of the myriad concerns raised by critics of AUKUS, let’s just say here that with AUKUS, Australia’s capacity to function as a true middle power — one that is confident of its sovereignty, autonomy and capacity to exercise agency to influence superpowers — seems gravely in doubt. And signing up to AUKUS may be another case study that supports Fendandes’s argument.
Wanning Sun is a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Technology, Sydney. She also serves as the deputy director of the UTS Australia-China Relations Institute. She is a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Australian Research Council’s College of Experts (2020-23). She is best known in the field of China studies for her ethnography of rural-to-urban migration and social inequality in contemporary China. She writes about Chinese diaspora, diasporic Chinese media, and Australia-China relations.
A vast and highly trained workforce is needed to command, crew, supply and maintain nuclear submarines. Some say that’s impossible for Australia.
“Vice-Admiral Mead, you’re free to go home … good to see you cracking a smile.”
The head of the Australian Submarine Agency had spent a withering three hours before Senate estimates, parrying a barrage of questions about Australia’s ambitious Aukus nuclear submarine plan: interrogatives on consultants, on hundreds of millions of dollars sent to US and UK shipyards, on sclerotic boat-building on both sides of the Atlantic.
But while so much focus has been on Australia’s nuclear submarines’ arrival, their price tag and their “sovereign” status, the greatest challenge to the Aukus project, Mead told the Senate, would be finding the people to keep them afloat and at sea.
If Australia’s nuclear submarines arrive on these shores – and that remains a contested question, with expert opinion ranging from an absolute yes to a certain no – will Australia be able to crew, supply and maintain them?
“It is a challenge we are continuing to meet,” Mead told senators. “Australian industry and navy personnel continue to build critical experience through targeted international placements.”
Others are less sanguine.
“The Aukus optimal pathway is a road to a quagmire,” says a former admiral and submarine commander, Peter Briggs, arguing that Australia’s small submarine arm can’t be upscaled quickly enough. “It’s not going anywhere. It will not work.”
Onshore trades, too, are perilously short. Without an additional 70,000 welders by 2030, that trade’s peak body says: “The Aukus submarine program is at serious risk of collapse.”
Mead was asked directly by senators: “Are you still confident of meeting the government’s agenda and timings?”
“Yes,” he replied, “I am.”
‘An eye-wateringly long process’
Briggs, a past president of the Submarine Institute of Australia, says the Aukus plan reads like one “designed by a political aide in a coffee shop”.
The navy’s submarine arm is approximately 850 sailors and officers (the defence department declined to give exact figures). The former chief of navy previously told parliament it needed to grow to 2,300 by the 2040s.
But Briggs estimates that to crew and support Australia’s Virginia-class, and later, Aukus-class submarines, the navy will need to more than treble its existing complement to about 2,700.
Virginias are massive submarines – nearly 8,000 tons – and carry a crew of 134, more than twice the existing Collins-class crew of 56. The Aukus submarines to be built in Adelaide will be bigger again. More tonnage, more people.
“That’s a huge increase in what is already in very scarce supply,” Briggs argues…………………………………………………………
The new generation of submariners is needed for between three and five Virginia-class submarines, then up to eight Australian-built Aukus boats.
“To get to be chief engineer of a nuclear submarine takes 16 to 18 years,” Briggs says. “It’s an eye-wateringly long process and of course you lose people along the way.
“That’s why you need a broad base, a critical mass, and Australia simply doesn’t have that right now. There is no way a navy the size of ours can manage this mix.”
Briggs does not believe the US will withdraw from Aukus: the presence of nuclear submarine bases on Australian soil is too great a prize for a superpower wanting to project power into the Pacific. But Australia’s unreadiness could lead to nuclear submarines under domestic command being delayed.
“We’ve got no warranty clause, no guarantee of anything. The cop-out could come in 2031, the US might say, ‘Look, you’re not quite ready yet, let’s push everything back three years, check in again in 2034.’ And it’s Australia that’s left exposed.”
‘Beyond frustrating, it’s dangerous’
Beyond the complexity of commanding and crewing a nuclear submarine, the vessels need a vast and highly trained workforce to keep them supplied, afloat and at sea………………………………………………………………………
“This is not just a workforce challenge,” its chief executive, Geoff Crittenden, said in a statement. “It’s a full-blown capability crisis … If we don’t address this issue now, Aukus will fail.”
Aukus represented a “perfect storm”, he said, and failure to address worker shortages was “beyond frustrating, it’s dangerous”.
“A once-in-a-generation opportunity like Aukus demands a long-term, strategic response, not just investment in ships and steel, but in people. We estimate that Australia will be at least 70,000 welders short by 2030. Without immediate action, the project is doomed to delays, cost blowouts, or worse.”…………………………………………………………………………
The first cohort won’t be Australian. “In the short term there will have to be an influx of international talent, as we train and upskill our own people.”
Tier two is a nuclearised workforce of skilled professionals – scientists, electrical and mechanical engineers, technical managers, reactor operators and health physicists – with advanced training and between seven and 10 years’ experience. The majority of a submarine crew would sit in this tier. Obbard estimates that about 5,000 tier-two workers will be needed.
Tier three is a further cohort of “nuclear-aware” workers – between 5,000 and 6,000 again – tradespeople including machinists, fitters and welders, who will require some nuclear training.
“The Aukus plan cannot work without building this workforce and the wider engineering community this workforce is drawn from.”
Does it make sense?’
Jack Dillich is uniquely placed to observe Australia’s transformation to a nuclear submarine power. A former submarine officer, he holds an advanced degree in nuclear engineering and served on the executive of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, where he was responsible for the country’s sole nuclear reactor, and as head of the regulatory branch at the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. He now teaches a nuclear course at the Australian Defence Force Academy………………………………….
Australians generate around 20kg of e-waste per person every year
Some of the components inside this everyday waste include critical minerals, which can be reused and recycled
At the National Press Club in Canberra today, Professor Veena Sahajwalla called on policymakers, industry and communities to embrace our waste.
As Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese announce a new, multi-billion-dollar critical minerals pact, UNSW Professor Veena Sahajwalla will tell the National Press Club in Canberra how onshore recycling technologies can recover these critical minerals from our waste stream – making the adoption of this cutting-edge technology a strategic, economic and environmental imperative.
At the National Press Club in Canberra today, UNSW Sydney’s Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla called on policymakers, industry and communities to embrace a new vision for Australia’s waste. Instead of relegating waste to landfills, incinerators or stockpiles, she argued it can drive innovation, support local industries, create jobs and deliver environmental and social benefits.
“True sustainability demands we harness this potential and transform waste into a resource stream for advanced manufacturing,” Prof. Sahajwalla said.
Australians generate around 20kg of e-waste per person every year, but many of the valuable minerals inside are never recovered. Some of the components inside this everyday waste include critical minerals, which can be reused and recycled, meaning there is both a strategic as well as an economic and environmental need to adopt this technology.
Using techniques Prof. Sahajwalla has designed, those waste resources can be reused and turned into new and valuable products.
E-waste is one aspect of a waste management crisis Prof. Sahajwalla’s work seeks to remedy.
In communities across Australia, her team’s pioneering MICROfactorieTM technologies are already showing what this future looks like. In Sydney’s south-west, discarded mattresses are being turned into green ceramic tiles, supporting local manufacturing jobs and helping councils reduce waste management costs. In Taree in regional NSW, reclaimed aluminium is being reformed into new aerosol cans. While in Sydney’s north, e-waste is being remanufactured into 3D printing filament.
“Using our waste resources as feedstock develops a circular economy where supply chains are linked up and local jobs are created, with significant environmental and social benefits,” she said.
Prof. Sahajwalla is Director of UNSW’s Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) Centre, which is internationally recognised for pioneering the concept of ‘MICROfactories’. The SMaRT Centre is home to MICROfactories technology, turning small, modular recycling systems that transform discarded products such as mattresses, glass, textiles, and electronic waste into valuable materials and products.
Her team’s work with councils and industry partners shows how this transformation is already taking shape:
Creating tiles from waste
In her address, Prof. Sahajwalla shared details of how the Liverpool City Council in Sydney’s south-west has turned a major waste problem into a circular economy success story. When the Council realised it was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to dispose discarded mattresses it partnered with Prof. Sahajwalla’s SMaRT Centre to pilot a MICROfactorieTM to shred and re-manufacture the materials………………………………………………………………………………………………
She also outlined a vision in which MICROfactories could be established in cities, towns and regional communities across the country, each tailored to local waste streams and employment needs. In regional NSW, her team is working with the Aboriginal community in Wellington near Dubbo to use green ceramic tiles in sustainable housing projects, supported by the federal government’s Sustainable Communities and Waste Hub (SCaW).
Turning university research into real-world impact
Prof. Sahajwalla said Australia must do more to ensure university research translates into real-world impact. She called for governments to lead by example in adopting Australian-made sustainable technologies, and to reward companies that invest in local R&D.
It is clear to many that AUKUS, in particular its early fulfilment stages, is becoming a debacle. In February, Defence Minister Richard Marles lauded as a ‘very unique’ arrangement Australia’s gift to the United States of $4.7 billion to bolster America’s struggling submarine output, highlighting that such an arrangement hasn’t been seen in other defence pacts globally.
Of course such an arrangement hasn’t been seen elsewhere! Most other countries wouldn’t agree to hand over this massive sum without ensuring there were provisions for a refund should the promised submarines fail to arrive.
In an inept performance in Senate Estimates in June 2024, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, head of the Australian Submarine Agency, woodenly refused to answer a straightforward question from Greens’ Senator David Shoebridge about whether the agreement Australia has struck with the US contains a clawback provision should the promised submarines fail to be supplied.
Mead’s performance, as recorded in Hansard, is mordantly comical:
It is thus obvious that Australia has no contractual way of recovering its money should the current or a future US President block the transfer of the submarines, as the US President is entitled to do under US legislation.
Australia is certainly ‘very unique’ in its willingness to part with almost $10 billion (the UK is getting a similar amount) in public funds with no strings attached.
Australia made the first payment of $800 million to the US in February and quietly transferred the second payment, a further $800 million, in July. It has committed to paying a total of US$2 billion ($3 billion) by the end of 2025, with the remainder to be paid over the decade to 2035‒36.
Under the AUKUS deal, both major political parties have committed to spending vast public resources with no consultation and minimal transparency and accountability.
Even though the Australian National Audit Office has exposed, in report after report, serious probity breaches in defence procurement, including unethical conduct between global weapons companies and the Australian government, these transgressions are routinely ignored. The weapons deals continue regardless.
The big winners from AUKUS so far have been nuclear submarine manufacturers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia has committed to providing almost $10 billion to boost the output of these companies, helping secure jobs for workers in America and the United Kingdom.
As there are no clawback provisions in either of these agreements, should President Trump ditch AUKUS, or if the submarine manufacturing capacity in the US and UK doesn’t sufficiently increase, Australian taxpayers will be picking up another multibillion-dollar defence tab with nothing to show for it. We’ve already shelled out $3.4 billion for no submarines, following former PM Scott Morrison’s shredding of the pre-AUKUS French submarine contract.
This is far from the only example of waste, misdirection and incompetence in Australia’s dealings with the global arms industry. Take the Albanese government’s engagement with global arms giant Thales. In October last year, the government signed up Thales to a further munitions manufacturing contract and a ‘strategic partnership’ in the new domestic missile-making endeavour, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.
The new deal with Thales was struck despite the fact that Thales is currently being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. …………………….https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/nothing-to-see-here-says-australia………………………………………… The Thales example illustrates how a key democratic accountability mechanism, the National Audit Office and its reports, is routinely ignored.
…………………………………………………How is it that such imbroglios occur again and again? Australian governments are highly susceptible to the ‘revolving door’ process in which politicians, the military and public servants move effortlessly between government, lobbying and the industry itself.
In what follows, no suggestion is being made of unlawful activity by any person named, nor that any of the appointments noted was unlawful.
The problem for Australia is not one of legality but of the perfectly legal influence of industry insiders within government, the lack of transparency, and the absence of management of the ‘revolving door’.
The revolving door
The ‘revolving door’ describes the movement of public officials into related private roles, and industry executives into related public roles. It is a widespread problem that undermines democracy, yet in Australia it remains unmonitored and unpoliced.
A large number of Australia’s senior government ministers and their staffers, military officers, and defence department officials move through the revolving door into paid roles with the weapons industry. Such moves are not illegal but they require a robust management framework—with rules that are enforced—to mitigate the inherent conflicts of interest. Australia’s feeble attempts at managing the revolving door have been completely ineffective
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..In the lobby
There are also plenty of former senior military officers pulling strings on behalf of weapons companies too. Examples are listed below.
The federal register of lobbyists provides some transparency, but does not cover the majority of people who lobby politicians. The register applies only to third-party lobbyists. These people operate as paid professionals, either individually or as an employee of a lobbying firm, on behalf of clients. Third party lobbyists make up just 20% of all lobbyists. The remaining 80% include, amongst others, company CEOs and people employed by corporations as ‘government relations’ advisers. This enables employees of major weapons companies to lobby politicians easily and legally, with zero transparency.
Reverse cycle: private to public
The government’s engagement with UK weapons giant BAE Systems’ local subsidiary best illustrates how this works.
The government gave former senior BAE Systems executives influential behind-the-scenes roles both before and during the tender process for Australia’s largest ever surface warship procurement, the $46 billion Hunter class frigates, a contract BAE went on to win. Few of these roles were publicly acknowledged. https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/sinking-billions-revolving-doors
BAE Systems was awarded the frigates contract by the Turnbull government in mid-2018. The names of the people appointed to an expert advisory panel to oversee the tender evaluation process were not made public. Here’s why: serious conflicts of interest…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Lockheed Martin utilises the revolving door heavily in the US. Until recently, it had openly adopted the same strategy in Australia. From October 2013 until the end of 2021, the board of Lockheed Martin Australia boasted multiple former senior Australian public officials: at least two at any one time, more often three, and even four during one 20-month period.
They included a roll call of defence heavies from past decades,………………………………………………………………………………………
The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, released a report in July addressing the ‘economy of genocide’ in which she makes special note of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program…………………………….
Australia’s refusal to cease the supply of parts and components into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 global supply chain places the nation at risk of being found complicit in Israel’s genocide.
Complicity in the world’s worst international crime is just one of the democracy-undermining consequences of Australia’s deep enmeshment in the US and broader Western military industrial complex.
Antinuclear 
