Australia’s “Antisemitism Envoy” Makes It Clear That Israel’s Critics Are The Real Target
Caitlin Johnstone, Apr 26, 2026
Australia’s “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal has published a handbook which unequivocally clarifies that her office exists not to protect Australian Jews from discrimination, but to stomp out criticism of the state of Israel.
However bad you’re imagining it is, it’s worse. The handbook, set to be formally launched later this week under the title “Understanding Antisemitism in Australia,” explicitly conflates antisemitism and antizionism with statements like “Antisemitism and antizionism are both expressions of hatred towards Jews” and asserting that it is antisemitic to accuse Israel of “apartheid, oppression, racism and genocide.”
It is therefore unambiguously the official position of the Australian government’s appointed authority on antisemitism that it is hateful and abusive toward Jews and their religion to oppose the racist political ideology underpinning the modern state of Israel.
So when Australians hear Jillian Segal and government officials talking about how there’s been an increase in “antisemitism” in our country and saying extreme measures must be taken to stop it, it’s important to be clear that this is the “antisemitism” they are talking about. They are talking about criticism of Israel.
Let’s go through the handbook together and highlight some revealing excerpts, shall we?
The forward in the handbook stresses the importance of the Australian government’s endorsement of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which has been opposed around the world for its conflation of criticism of Israel with hateful actions toward Jews. Under the IHRA definition it is considered antisemitic to claim that Israel is a racist endeavor, or to compare Israel’s abuses to those of Nazi Germany — both of which are entirely legitimate criticisms which should be put forward far more often than they are. Much of the handbook follows from the premises of the IHRA definition.
Segal’s office states that the handbook “is intended as a practical resource for schools, universities, public servants, community organisations and anyone seeking to understand antisemitism today.”
Segal’s office says that antisemitism “morphs” over the ages, from the blood libels and “Christ-killer” accusations of the Middle Ages to the racism of Nazi Germany, and has now morphed so that “antisemitic tropes are conveyed and justified in the language of human rights and international legal arguments.”
“For example, sometimes Jews are labelled and libelled as ‘settler-colonialists’, ‘oppressors’, and a symbol of a global system of domination that ‘can seemingly accommodate even the murder of Jews as Jews’,” the envoy proclaims.
Do you see how the subject was moved to lump medieval superstitions about Jews in with entirely legitimate criticisms of the modern state of Israel? According to Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, criticising Israel using “language of human rights and international legal arguments” is not meaningfully different from saying that Jews drink the blood of Christian children.
This, clearly, is stark raving insanity.
“Legitimate criticism of Israel is not antisemitic,” the envoy concedes, then proceeds to completely negate this concession with everything that follows. “However, there are many examples of antisemitic imagery, tropes, conspiracy theories and propaganda (echoing medieval myths) that have found their way into anti-Israel discourse. It is also increasingly common for the word ‘Zionist’ (or iterations of it) to be used as cover or proxy for ‘Jew ’.”
This is completely made up. The claim that critics of Israel’s abuses use the word “Zionist” when they really mean “Jew” is just something Israel apologists started asserting with no substantiation whatsoever a few years ago. They have no evidence for this assertion apart from the frequency and forcefulness which with they assert it.
The envoy defines Zionism as “the belief that the Jewish people have the right to self-determination within their ancestral homeland,” which is misleading at best. That’s not what Zionism is. Zionism is what we see before us today. The genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and nonstop war and abuse. That’s what Zionism is, as evidenced by material reality. The best definition of Zionism is its real-world manifestations. Zionism is what it looks like when you give the Zionists everything they want.
“A new variant of antisemitic atrocity denial emerged in the wake of the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks — the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust,” the envoy writes. “Disturbingly, these atrocities have been met by some with denial, minimisation, justification and distortion — echoing Holocaust denial, minimisation, and distortion.”
Segal’s office is here telling us that it is antisemitic to talk about the glaring plot holes in the narratives about mass rapes, beheaded babies and babies cooked in ovens on October 7, or to talk about the large number of Israelis who were killed by IDF fire under the Hannibal Directive, or to “justify” the attack by pointing out the monstrous Israeli abuses which gave rise to it.
The envoy writes of the importance of “Standing firm against antisemitism parading as ‘anti-racism’,” stressing the IHRA position that framing Israel as a racist endeavor is hateful toward Jews. A flyer saying “We don’t want your two states. We want all of 48” is labeled “antisemitic, because there is only one Jewish country.”
Segal’s office warns of the dangers of “Holocaust inversion,” which is when “Israel and Jews are portrayed as Nazi-like perpetrators of mass atrocities and genocide,” which is bad because it “serves to demonise and delegitimise Israel, Israelis and Jews.”
To be clear, every relevant humanitarian institution on earth has said that Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza. These groups include:
2. The International Association of Genocide Scholars
3. B’Tselem (an Israeli organization)
4. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (another Israeli organization)
7. The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights
9. The International Federation for Human Rights
10. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention
The list of humanitarian institutions who say Israel is NOT committing genocide in Gaza includes:
1. Nobody
2. No one
3. Zero
4. Nothing
5. Nada
6. Zilch
7. Sweet damn all
8. A complete absence
9. Diddly squat
10. Bupkis
This is not some fringe conspiracy theory. It is a thoroughly established and entirely indisputable fact. Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism is saying that facts are antisemitic…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Throughout the handbook, the feelings of Australian Jews are cited over and over again as supremely important and of far more urgent a concern than genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and wars of immense geopolitical consequence…………………………………………………………………………………………
Virtually nothing is said about the real victims. The murdered, displaced and terrorized targets of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran. The war orphans. The child amputees and burn victims who were operated on without anesthesia. The Palestinians being raped and tortured in Israeli prisons. The people who will carry the physical and psychological wounds from their holocaust with them for the rest of their lives.
They are not regarded as important by Jillian Segal. The real crisis, in her mind, is people talking about these things and making Jewish Australians feel upset.
Absolutely psychotic. We cannot allow our country to continue to be dragged in this direction.https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/australias-antisemitism-envoy-makes?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=195493800&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
From Welfare to War: Following the 2007 Money Trail
25 April 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/from-welfare-to-war-following-the-2007-money-trail/
Many social media articles lately push a familiar argument: as defence spending rises, government services fall behind. The more we allocate to the military, the more strain we place on the systems people rely on every day.
There’s nothing new about that trade-off.
I was reminded of a revealing example from the Iraq War era – one that says as much about honesty in government as it does about priorities.
The story began with the “Welfare to Work” (WtW) program introduced by the Howard government in 2005. Its stated aim was to increase workforce participation among single parents, people with disabilities, and older unemployed Australians. The policy details matter less than what came next.
For some time, WtW attracted little attention. That changed in March 2007 – an election year, and a moment when the government needed good news. Suddenly, the program was being promoted as a success.
Joe Hockey, then Employment Minister, pointed to what he described as a $500 million “budget surprise,” attributing it to falling numbers of people receiving income support. The implication was clear: welfare reform was working, and fewer Australians needed assistance.
But the numbers told a different story.
Disability Support Pension (DSP) figures for the period at the time showed:
- 2006: 712,163
- 2007: 714,156
- 2008: 732,367
These were not declining figures. They were rising.
So where did the supposed $500 million saving come from?
Contemporaneous accounts from within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations suggest that “savings” of this kind were not simply the by-product of policy success. Rather, departments were under pressure to identify substantial reductions in projected spending – figures that did not always align neatly with underlying demand.
In practical terms, that meant looking for money that could be reclassified, deferred, or absorbed elsewhere. The distinction matters. On paper, it looks like efficiency. In reality, it can amount to something closer to accounting necessity.
What can be said with confidence is this: the demand for support did not fall in the way the government claimed. Yet a saving was still found.
The question then becomes: why?
In February 2007, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney visited Australia. Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister John Howard committed additional Australian support to the war in Iraq, including logistics personnel and army trainers.
The timing is difficult to ignore.
Governments do not operate in silos. Budgetary decisions in one area are often shaped by pressures in another, even if those connections are never made explicit. What is presented publicly as a policy dividend can, in practice, reflect shifting priorities behind closed doors.
Around the same period, heightened national security messaging helped frame the broader political environment – reinforcing the sense that defence spending was not just necessary, but urgent.
None of this requires speculation to be troubling.
The numbers didn’t move the way the government said they did. The narrative, however, did.
And once a narrative takes hold – particularly in an election year – it can be remarkably effective at obscuring the more complicated truth beneath it.
Once upon a time, “lying and contempt” were accusations reserved for one side of politics. These days, it’s harder to pretend they belong to any one party alone.
Built to fail? The National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC): the integrity body undermined from within
The NACC Commissioner’s recusal from all defence matters has shifted greater responsibility for NACC investigations onto its three deputy commissioners. They’ve received almost no scrutiny. Until now.
Michelle Fahy and Elizabeth Minter, Apr 25, 2026, https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/built-to-fail-nacc-the-integrity?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=297295&post_id=195408717&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
This is a short extract from our latest investigation, undertaken in collaboration with journalist Nick Feik, which was published today by The Australia Institute’s The Point. Click link below to read the full story now. We will publish and email the full text in a week or so.
The National Anti-Corruption Commission’s performance since its inception has been widely condemned. The leadership of Commissioner Paul Brereton, in particular, has drawn heavy criticism
The mismanagement of his conflicts of interest, firstly in relation to Robodebt and then his potential conflict arising from defence-related investigations, has undermined the reputation of an institution whose success relies on its transparency and accountability, as have the NACC’s inordinate secrecy and its refusal to hold any public hearings to date.
As a result, greater responsibility for NACC investigations has been placed in the hands of its three deputy commissioners. However none of these deputies has been a judge or senior legal professional. By comparison, the dozens of assistant commissioners who’ve served the NSW ICAC, for example, have overwhelmingly been SC or KC, and many were also judges.
Indeed, the NACC’s three current deputy commissioners as a group represent the least qualified combination of deputies permitted under the NACC Act.
This months-long investigation raises major concerns about the suitability of all three deputy commissioners, casting serious new doubt on the legitimacy of the NACC as currently constituted…
Two current NACC Deputy Commissioners were appointed to the NACC straight from jobs into which they had been parachuted by Coalition governments: Nicole Rose and Ben Gauntlett were both “captain’s picks” into public roles that ordinarily required the use of a transparent merit-based selection process. In neither case did the Coalition do this.
Deputy Commissioner Rose, the delegated decision maker who decided not to investigate the Robodebt Six, has a diploma of hotel management as her highest academic qualification. She was handed two CEO roles, at AUSTRAC and CrimTrac, by then Justice Minister Michael Keenan, ahead of vastly more experienced candidates, including a judge, barristers, and a former police commissioner.
Deputy Commissioner Gauntlett, meanwhile, was handpicked by Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government as Disability Discrimination Commissioner, a move that was condemned by numerous human rights legal experts at the time for not being an open merit-based selection process as required.
Until the Government delivers “a powerful, transparent and independent NACC – one with teeth”, as promised by Prime Minister Albanese – the NACC will continue to be a running sore in the nation’s integrity framework, mistrusted and maligned by the public. It could be argued that the NACC was set up to fail.
‘Worst investment ever’: Expert fumes as first $4.2billion taxpayer-funded payment for nuclear subs paid to US
We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with.
If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.
‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’
- US announces the first AUKUS contract
- But experts raise the alarm about the deal
By CAITLIN POWELL – NEWS REPORTER and TESS IKONOMOU FOR AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS, 24 April 2026 https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15761031/AUKUS-contract-Mark-Beeson.html
The Trump administration has signed off on the first AUKUS submarine contract, funded by a hefty taxpayer-funded payment from the Albanese government.
The Pentagon confirmed on Friday that nuclear-powered submarine capabilities would be transferred from the United States to Australia.
The contract, worth $276million ($US197million), will be covered by the Labor government’s first down payment of $4.2billion ($US3billion), the ABC reports.
The US Navy has set targets to almost double construction to 2.33 boats per year to build up its fleet, the ABC reports.
But, during a series of congressional hearings this week, data revealed the pace of production has dropped to 1.1 boats per year due to construction delays.
An Australian Submarine Agency spokesperson told the Daily Mail they welcomed the announcement of the new contract.
‘(It) strengthens the United States’ ability to deliver Foreign Military Sales commitments to partners, including Australia,’ they said.
‘This represents further momentum and commitment by AUKUS partners to deliver on the Optimal Pathway.’
Professor Beeson has made no secret of his concerns about the trilateral deal between Australia, the US and the United Kingdom.
‘I think it’s possibly the worst investment Australia’s ever made in anything, but particularly in defence material,’ he said.
‘It is doubling down on something that was a bad idea to start with
The 2021 AUKUS pact is designed to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific and involves Australia acquiring Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US by 2032.
However, the alliance relies on the US building enough defence vessels itself before some are sent to Australia.
International politics expert and AUKUS critic, Professor Mark Beeson, said the contract epitomised Australia’s dependence on American productivity.
‘We keep forking out money for submarines I’m definitely not going to live to see, and I don’t know if young people will live to see them ever arrive,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘It’s because, famously, the Americans can’t build as many as they would like, or consider they need. There’s going to be no spare capacity for these submarines.’
‘The only way to get a more credible-looking outcome for AUKUS is by continuing to supply the Americans and eventually the British with lots of loot to rebuild shipyards and increase the production line for these submarines.
‘If and when submarines ever did arrive, they would be undoubtedly redundant, overtaken by cheap and cheerful anti-submarine drone technology.
‘If we build this base, it will undoubtedly be a prime nuclear target, because who wouldn’t want to take out a couple of nuclear-armed submarines from America.’
The Australian-funded contract has been awarded to US Navy contractor General Dynamics Electric Boat, which will see construction take place on American soil at a Connecticut shipyard.
As such it is between the US Government and industry to support Foreign Military Sales requirements and activities.
While that policy includes AUKUS, Australia is not party to the contract itself and this investment does not relate to Australia’s contribution to the construction of the US Submarine Industrial Base.
The announcement comes just hours after opposition industry spokesman Andrew Hastie said Australia incurred ‘strategic trade-offs’ in doubling down on its alliance with Washington.
‘We forgot the hard lessons of war, and outsourced our security to the United States,’ he said at the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne on Thursday.
‘It has cost us sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry, and our strategic freedom of action in ways that we are now discovering.’
A former special forces officer, Hastie pointed to the fuel crisis triggered by the Middle East conflict and Australia’s de-industrialisation as examples of the nation betting too much on the dominance of the US.
COMMENT. Andrew Hastie conveniently forgetting that it was his own party, theLiberal-National Coalition, that signed up tp AUKUS in the first placde
He warned that, if the security alliance with the US was to endure for another 75 years, Australia needed to urgently invest in its industrial base and defence force.
‘We must grow our industrial might and hard power,’ he said.
Why Australia Defence Spending Priorities Matter
24 April 2026 AIMN Editorial, By Denis Hay , https://theaimn.net/why-australia-defence-spending-priorities-matter/
Australia defence spending priorities reveal trade-offs between military budgets and essential public services.
Introduction
Australia defence spending priorities are increasingly raising concerns about whether public money is being directed toward national wellbeing or long-term military commitments. While governments argue that rising defence budgets are essential for security, many Australians are questioning why essential services face funding pressure while defence spending appears to expand with limited restraint.
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The Problem – Why Australians Feel Stuck
1. Structural cause: Alliance-driven defence policy
Australia growing military commitments through AUKUS are locking in long-term spending decisions that extend decades into the future. These agreements align Australia closely with the strategic interests of allies, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom.
Internal link: Australia’s alliance with the US
2. Consequences: Expanding costs with limited scrutiny
Defence spending is projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars over coming decades, including submarine programs and advanced weapons systems.
AUKUS alone is estimated at around $368 billion over decades.
External evidence from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute shows that global military expenditure continues to rise, reflecting a broader trend toward increased defence investment.
For many Australians, this contrasts sharply with repeated claims that public services must run within tight financial limits.
The Impact – What Australians Are Experiencing
3. Everyday effects on cost of living and services
Australians are dealing with rising housing costs, pressure on healthcare, and job insecurity.
Internal link: Why it feels so hard to get ahead in Australia.
Public systems that directly affect daily life are under strain, often described as requiring reform, efficiency measures, or budget restraint.
4. Who benefits from Australia defence spending priorities
Large defence contractors and multinational corporations’ benefit from long-term public money commitments tied to military procurement.
These arrangements can generate significant profits, while the broader population sees fewer direct benefits in everyday life.
5. NDIS cuts and tightening eligibility criteria
The National Disability Insurance Scheme is increasingly being reshaped through funding constraints and stricter eligibility rules.
Recent changes include:
- Tighter access criteria for new applicants.
- More frequent reassessments for existing participants.
- Reduced or capped funding in some plans.
- Increased administrative requirements and documentation.
For many Australians already on the NDIS, this has created a system where they must continually prove their eligibility, navigating complex processes just to keep essential support.
According to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, demand for disability services continues to grow due to ageing demographics and increased diagnosis rates.
This highlights a clear contrast. Programs that directly support vulnerable Australians are being tightened, while large-scale defence commitments continue with far fewer visible constraints.
This kind of analysis is rarely covered in mainstream media.
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While essential services tighten, spending elsewhere continues to expand.
The Solution – What Must Be Done
6. Monetary sovereignty and national priorities
Australia has full monetary sovereignty, meaning it can fund public priorities without being financially constrained in the way households are.
Modern Monetary Theory explains that governments can allocate public money toward areas that deliver the greatest social benefit, provided real resources are available.
This raises a fundamental question: why are some areas prioritised over others?
7. Practical policy reforms
- Increase transparency on defence contracts and long-term commitments.
- Introduce independent oversight of major defence projects.
- Rebalance spending toward healthcare, housing, and disability support.
- Invest in domestic industries that provide direct public benefit.
- Ensure programs like the NDIS are expanded to meet growing demand.
This article is part of a broader effort to inform and empower Australians.
Right now, the site is only partially funded.
If just a small number of readers contribute, this work continues
Final Thoughts
Australia defence spending priorities reveal a deeper issue about how national decisions are made. When large-scale commitments continue in one area while essential services face tightening conditions, it raises legitimate questions about whether current priorities reflect the needs of the Australian people.
Australia defence spending is projected to exceed 2.3% of GDP in coming years.
AUKUS submarine builds hit by contract and construction delays
ABC, By Brad Ryan in Washington DC, Thu 23 Apr
In short:
The US needs to significantly lift the pace of production of nuclear-powered submarines in order to sell several of the boats to Australia under the AUKUS agreement.
But more than two years after the US Congress authorised the Pentagon to award a major submarine-building contract, it remains unsigned.
New research for Congress says the submarines’ construction timelines are also getting longer, and the boats are now being delivered four years after the dates that were originally scheduled.
The US Navy’s submarine-building program — which Australia is relying on for its naval fleet — risks another slowdown due to delays awarding a critical construction contract.
Meanwhile, new research says construction timelines for the nuclear-powered submarines keep blowing out, and they are now being built four years behind schedule.
The contract and construction delays are both affecting the production of Virginia-class submarines, which Australia intends to buy from the US under the AUKUS security pact.
Australia expects to receive at least three of the submarines in the 2030s.
But the sales will only go ahead if the US can build enough of the boats for its own fleet. That requires a significant improvement in the pace of production, the US Navy admits.
“Clearly, there are entities or bureaucrats in the [Trump] administration that are not all in on this goal,” congressman Joe Courtney, who founded the bipartisan AUKUS Working Group, said.
“The Virginia-class … multi-year contracts continue to be delayed, despite all consensus that procurement stability will strengthen investment in facilities and workforce.”
Congress gave the Pentagon authorisation to award the contract in December, 2023 — meaning it has remained unsigned for about 28 months.
The previous comparable contract was awarded within 20 months, Mr Courtney told the ABC.
‘Particularly worrisome’ construction blow-outs
Separate to the contract issue, new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) research adds to existing doubts about the navy’s prospects of picking up the pace of construction.
The US’s military industrial base has been struggling with production that has lagged behind targets for years.
But CBO naval analyst Eric Labs, in written testimony for Congress, said the problem appeared to be worsening.
“What makes the delays … particularly worrisome is that they are long-established shipbuilding programs that previously delivered ships in much shorter timelines,” he wrote.
Military submarines that took 5–6 years to build in the early 2000s were now taking an average of 9–10 years.
“In addition, the delays increased slightly from 2025 to 2026, despite substantial investments to reduce them.”
Some of those investments have more recently come from the Australian government, which is contributing more than $4 billion to help the US fast-track the submarines’ construction.
Mr Labs’s research says building extra submarines for the AUKUS deal will add “another challenge to an already stressed production line”.
Pentagon ‘aware of the urgency’ to award contract…………………………………….
Congress warned of ‘potential for further deterioration’ in build rate
Any additional delays in the shipbuilding program risk exacerbating existing fears that the US will not be able to deliver the submarines as intended under AUKUS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-23/shipbuilding-contract-delays-could-affect-aukus-submarines/106596728
Where are the AUKUS nuclear waste costings (let alone the dump sites)?
Australian Submarine Agency ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.
by Rex Patrick | Apr 20, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/where-are-the-aukus-nuclear-waste-costings-let-alone-the-dump-sites/
Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.
A simple request
Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.
You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.
In July 2025 MWM requested access under Freedom of Information laws to the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS. The Agency did not answer the FOI request and its lack of response was referred to the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioner is trying to encourage the ASA to engage in a little bit of transparency. But … the Agency just can’t find a latest costing.
We’re disorganised
In a response to an engagement with MWM, the Agency has recently advised:
Preliminary searches have been carried out within one branch of one division of the ASA to identify documents falling within the scope of your request. That branch has advised that approximately 3,000 documents are potentially in scope. They would require manual examination to determine whether they contain information relating to the scope of your request. The documents within this set vary significantly in length and format and may comprise multiple pages requiring individual review.
Further, any cost information in relation to the scope of your request is likely to be dispersed across multiple documents and along timeframes, may appear in differing levels of detail, and may not be directly comparable. As a result, identifying which documents contain relevant cost information would require extensive searching, detailed examination, contextual analysis, and judgment.
Quite unbelievable!
Or is it unbelievable?
ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.
In November 2024 the Government asked Boston Consulting Group to take a look at the organisational structure of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). A contract was signed for 2.7. million. In April 2025 it was amended to $7.4 million. Three months later it was amended again to a whopping $12.1 million.
In parallel the defence minister asked former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to undertake an urgent top-to-bottom review of the ASA amid serious concerns about how it was managing AUKUS.
None of that seems to have helped.
Budget up just to keep up
The Government’s National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program was released on the same day that ASA advised MWM that it had no idea where to find its AUKUS high level radioactive waste costs.
The Integrated Investment Proposal laid out the Government’s estimates of, amongst other programs, the AUKUS and Collins Class submarine costs for the coming decade.
The 53-to-63 billion dollar AUKUS budget published in 2024 has grown to 71-to-96 billion (a change of 52% for the upper band). The 4-to-5 billion dollar Collins Submarine upgrade costs has grown to 8-to-11 billion dollar (change of 120% for the upper band).
Any thought that the Government is increasing the Defence budget to expand the Defence Force’s capabilities is illusory. The increase will struggle just to deal with cost blow outs.
Or implausible?
The numbers associated with the very long term disposal of AUKUS nuclear waste will be big. If the Minister asked for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS he’d get it almost instantly.
“The estimate must exist. “
The approach taken by the ASA in responding to MWM’s request reminds me of a teenager trying hid a bad school report from their parents. The kid simply doesn’t realise that mum and dad will find out eventually.
MWM is not about to give up.
Of course, there is a small possibility that we are wrong and there is no estimate. Maybe the Minister has told the ASA he won’t ask for one and they shouldn’t generate one.
I guess we’ll find out.
The Merchants of Death in Our Midst
This is the company that the Australian government, Coles, Rio Tinto, Westpac, and the Future Fund have chosen to do business with.
This is not an economic choice. It is a choice about what is right.
18 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-merchants-of-death-in-our-midst/
How Palantir Profits from Genocide – and Why Australia Must Walk Away
I. The Company That Kills Enemies
Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies, does not hide what his company does. In February 2025, he told investors: Palantir is here to “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” He added that he was “super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”
This is not hyperbole. It is a confession.
Palantir’s technology has been used to compile kill lists in Gaza, to track migrants for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to select targets for drone strikes in Iran. The same systems that optimise workforce spend in Australian supermarkets are being used to select human targets for assassination.
Karp has acknowledged that he is directly involved in killing Palestinians in Gaza but insisted the dead were “mostly terrorists.” He does not provide evidence. He does not need to. The label is the weapon.
In March 2026, a UN report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese singled out Palantir as one of the companies “profiting from genocide” during Israel’s 21-month campaign in Gaza. The report, titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” concluded that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”
This is the company that the Australian government, Coles, Rio Tinto, Westpac, and the Future Fund have chosen to do business with.
II. The Champions: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp
Peter Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of Palantir. He has funded right-wing political causes, including the campaign of Donald Trump. He has spoken of democracy as incompatible with freedom. He has said that he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.
Alex Karp is the CEO. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Frankfurt. He studied under Jürgen Habermas. He knows what he is doing. He has chosen.
Karp has co-authored a book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, in which he articulates his vision of American global dominance through AI-driven warfare. He calls for a new Manhattan Project focused on military AI. He openly celebrates the destruction his company enables.
In an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Karp summed up his philosophy:
“I actually am a progressive. I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers – I’m trying to be nice here – out of our adversaries.”
Reality is anything but that simple. Palantir’s technology has reportedly been used to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and beyond, including many who had nothing to do with Hamas.
These men are not evil because they are monsters. They are evil because they have chosen to be. They have chosen profit over people. They have chosen power over compassion. They have chosen control over love.
III. Palantir in Australia: The Red Carpet
Palantir has been embedded in Australian institutions for years. The company has secured more than $50 million in Australian government contracts since 2013, largely across defence and national security-related agencies. Its clients include:
- The Department of Defence
- The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission
- The Australian Signals Directorate
- The Victorian Department of Justice
In November 2025, Palantir received a high-level Australian government security assessment – the “protected level” under the Information Security Registered Assessors Programme – enabling a broader range of government agencies to use its Foundry and AI platform.
In a Senate debate on March 10, 2026, a Senator Lambie warned that the government was “simply rolling out the red carpet to companies like Palantir, the company that has been linked, by the way, to the targeted killing of journalists and the illegal use of US citizens’ data.” The Senator noted that Palantir is “the leader in the development of agentic AI – artificial intelligence that thinks for itself and makes its own decisions.”
IV. The Coles Partnership: Ten Billion Rows of Data
In 2024, Palantir announced a three-year partnership with Coles Supermarkets. Coles will leverage Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) across its more than 840 supermarkets to better understand and address workforce-related spend. The system will identify opportunities over “10 billion rows of data.”
Coles is also rolling out ChatGPT to its corporate teams, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5 model.
This is the same technology. The same algorithms. The same logic.
But what is being optimised? Profit. Not people. Not safety. Not justice.
The same technology that optimises workforce spend in Australian supermarkets is the same technology that selects targets in Gaza and Iran. The same algorithms that track workers track enemies. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.
Coles Chief Operating Officer Matt Swindells said the partnership would allow store managers to make “real-time decisions to optimise costs.” He did not mention that those same real-time decisions are being made in Gaza – to optimise kills.
V. The Future Fund: $103 Million in Blood Money
Australia’s Future Fund – the sovereign wealth fund designed to manage and grow public funds – has a $103 million stake in Palantir. That is bigger than the fund’s holdings in Australian companies like AGL, Seek, or data centre owner NEXTDC.
In Senate estimates, Greens Senator Barbara Pocock asked whether Palantir’s human rights record had been considered before the investments were made. The answer: no.
Will Hetherton, the chief corporate affairs officer of the Future Fund, told the committee that the fund doesn’t get involved in selecting individual stocks and that the shares are held through index funds. When asked whether the fund would commit to divesting and establishing “clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, from weapons and from human suffering,” Hetherton said the board would “continue to engage with our managers” but couldn’t commit to what Pocock was asking.
The fund’s justification is that it only excludes companies based on sanctions or treaties the Australian government has ratified – like cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines and tobacco. None of these apply to Palantir.
This is not a defence. It is a confession.
VI. The UK Precedent: “No Gaza Genocide Links in Our NHS”
In the United Kingdom, a coalition of organisations – including Amnesty International UK, Medact, and Healthcare Workers for a Free Palestine – is calling on NHS England to terminate its £330 million contract with Palantir.
Kerry Moscogiuri, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, said:
“The NHS constitution states that it belongs to the people, underpinned by core values of compassionate care, dignity and humanity. Those principles must apply not only to doctors and nurses, but also to the companies the NHS chooses to contract with using taxpayers’ money. Any company contributing to human rights violations should have no place at the heart of our NHS. Our message is simple: no Gaza genocide links in our NHS.”
The groups are calling on the UK government to terminate the contract, responsibly divest public sector institutions from Palantir, and introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.
If the United Kingdom can demand this, why can’t Australia?
VII. The UN Report: Profiting from Genocide
The June 2025 UN report by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is damning. It singles out Palantir alongside Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Volvo, and major banks for profiting from Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
The report concludes that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”
Albanese urges:
- Sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel
- Investigations by the International Criminal Court and national courts into corporate complicity in war crimes
- Accountability modelled on the IG Farben trials after World War Two
She warns that “passive suppliers become deliberate contributors to a system of displacement.”
The Australian government, Coles, and the Future Fund are not passive suppliers. They are deliberate contributors.
VIII. The Kill Chain in Gaza and Iran
The same systems tested in Gaza are now being deployed in Iran.
The Washington Post reported that the US military in Iran has “leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare.” Palantir’s Maven Smart System reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets during the war’s first 24 hours alone.
The Asia Times reports that “similarities between Israel’s bombing of Gaza and Tehran are growing stronger,” with experts warning of a “lack of human supervision over Israeli AI targeting in Iran.”
An Israeli intelligence source described the AI system as transforming the IDF into a “mass assassination factory” where the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills.
This is the technology that Coles is using to “optimise” workforce spend.
IX. The Choice
This is not an economic choice. It is a choice about what is right.
The Australian government has a choice. It can continue to roll out the red carpet to Palantir, to accept the $50 million in contracts, to allow the Future Fund to hold $103 million in shares.
Or it can walk away.
Coles has a choice. It can continue to use Palantir’s AIP to optimise workforce spend – to identify opportunities over 10 billion rows of data.
Or it can walk away.
The Future Fund has a choice. It can continue to hold Palantir shares, to defend the investment with procedural excuses.
Or it can divest.
The UK is demanding that the NHS terminate its contract with Palantir. Amnesty International is leading the campaign. Medact and healthcare workers are standing up.
What is Australia doing? Rolling out the red carpet.
X. A Call to Action
The Australian government must:
- Terminate all contracts with Palantir.
- Introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.
- Investigate whether Palantir’s technology has been used to violate Australian privacy laws.
- Divest the Future Fund from Palantir.
Coles must:
Terminate its partnership with Palantir.- Pledge not to use AI systems linked to human rights violations.
- Be transparent about its use of AI in workforce management.
The Future Fund must:
- Divest from Palantir.
- Establish clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, weapons, and human suffering.
The Australian people must:
- Demand accountability.
- Ask their politicians: Why is our government doing business with a company that profits from genocide?
- Support campaigns for ethical technology procurement.
XI. A Final Word
Alex Karp said: “Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.”
It must not continue. Not in Gaza. Not in Iran. Not in Australia.
The same technology that kills children in Gaza is optimising shift rosters in Coles supermarkets. The same algorithms that track migrants for ICE are tracking Australian workers. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.
The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.
And Palantir? It will be remembered as the company that chose profit over humanity.
Australia must choose differently.
Richard “Deadwood” Marles: A Liberal Wearing a Red Rosette
Procurement under Marles has been a sustained masterclass in what might charitably be called bureaucratic swamp-dwelling.
On the questions that actually matter in defence policy, he is more hawkish than many in the Coalition. . Pro-American to a degree that occasionally makes Liberal defence spokespeople look like peaceniks by comparison
17 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/richard-deadwood-marles-the-liberal-in-drag/
A profile of Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, and Geelong’s enduring gift to Australian satirists
Meet Richard Donald Marles. Deputy Prime Minister. Minister for Defence. Member for Corio. Product of the Victorian Labor Right, that curious faction where union roots somehow sprout hawkish foreign policy, big-ticket defence contracts, and a preselection culture that makes branch stacking look like a minor administrative irregularity.
He is, in the most precise political sense available, a Liberal wearing a red rosette. Same tough talk on alliances and deterrence. Same fondness for American hardware and AUKUS largesse. Same instinct to defer to Washington on questions that might benefit from an independent Australian view. Wrapped, however, in just enough factional red to keep the true believers satisfied. All suit, no spark, and a remarkable talent for making national security sound like a mildly confusing numbers meeting that ran somewhat overtime.
Richard Marles is Geelong’s enduring gift to Australian satirists. The question is whether Geelong intended it as a gift or an apology.
The Walking Capability Gap
There is a phrase in defence circles for the gap between what a military is supposed to have and what it actually has. They call it a capability gap. Richard Marles is, in his own person, a walking capability gap: the announced function and the delivered result separated by a distance that no procurement budget has yet been able to close.
The man who fronts up as the steady hand on the tiller is the same man under whose watch the Navy wonders where the hulls went, the budget bleeds billions into procurement black holes, and the ANAO produces findings of ethical and competence failures with the regularity of a quarterly report. He is the stumblebum with the plum in his mouth, projecting authority while the institution he manages projects something considerably more ambiguous.
He inherited the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and turned it into a rolling saga of delays, cost reassessments, and nervous hand-wringing that would be impressive in its consistency if consistency were the quality being tested. Critics, including people in uniform, people in the audit office, and old Labor warhorses who remember when the party had a clearer relationship with its own principles, point to the endless reviews, the production bottlenecks, the twenty-year capability hole while Australia waits for American goodwill and Virginia class boats that may or may not materialise on schedule.
Marles’s signature response to any question about whether the Americans will actually deliver is that periodic reviews are “perfectly natural.” Plan B questions he dodges with the practised ease of a man who has decided that the question itself is the problem. Billions committed. Timelines slipping. The public left staring at a price tag somewhere between two hundred billion and three hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars, depending on which estimate one consults and on which day one consults it, for submarines that remain considerably more promise than propeller.
The Procurement Masterclass
Procurement under Marles has been a sustained masterclass in what might charitably be called bureaucratic swamp-dwelling.
The armoured vehicle deals have produced headlines about billions wasted. The ANAO has produced findings of ethical and competence failures with sufficient regularity that they no longer surprise anyone, which is itself a finding worth examining. The response to each procurement disaster has been a reorganisation, and the response to each reorganisation’s failure has been another reorganisation. The most recent iteration produced something called a Defence Delivery Agency, which was created to fix the procurement problems generated by the previous structural reform, which had been created to fix the problems generated by the one before that.
Wars do not wait for the next reorganisation. Marles’s briefings, apparently, do.
He has poured extra billions into the portfolio. The department continues to be slammed for shortfalls and blowouts. These two facts coexist without apparent embarrassment on anyone’s part, which is perhaps the most remarkable procurement achievement of the period.
The Washington Incident
Then there is the diplomacy, or the performance of it.
Mr Marles flew to Washington at a moment when AUKUS was genuinely uncertain and American goodwill genuinely required active cultivation. The visit produced a clarification from the Pentagon that the encounter with the US Defence Secretary was, in the Pentagon’s own careful formulation, a “happenstance encounter” rather than a formal meeting.
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence had flown to Washington and bumped into his counterpart in a corridor. The image that lodged in the public mind was of Australia’s most senior defence official as the uninvited guest at the cool table, the one who shows up at the party and discovers, from the expressions on the faces of the other guests, that the invitation was more theoretical than practical.
Mr Marles said it went very well.
The Verbal Vapourware Special
In television studios, Mr Marles has developed a signature style that deserves its own name. Call it the Verbal Vapourware Special.
Classic footage shows him in conversation with Karl Stefanovic on the Today Show, a programme not renowned for its forensic rigour, in which Marles produces word salads of sufficient density that Stefanovic, a man not given to extended silences, fills them by playing Trump clips over the minister’s ongoing remarks. The furrowed brow arrives first. Then the careful pause before the answer that does not quite materialise. Then the vague platitude delivered with the gravity of a man who believes that gravity is itself the substance of the answer.
One moment he is warning of the most complex strategic circumstances since World War Two. The next he is “very close, but we’re not saying how close” on flare incidents, or deflecting capability questions with the expression of a man reading the autocue for the first time while simultaneously trying to remember where he parked.
This is not statesmanlike gravitas. This is the performance of a factional numbers man who is considerably more comfortable in a preselection meeting than a television studio, and who has not, in eleven years of public life, fully resolved the tension between those two environments.
The Liberal in Labor Clothing
Here is the thing about Richard Marles that his factional allies would prefer not to discuss in public. On the questions that actually matter in defence policy, he is more hawkish than many in the Coalition. Pro-American to a degree that occasionally makes Liberal defence spokespeople look like peaceniks by comparison. An enthusiast for American hardware whose enthusiasm is not noticeably tempered by the evidence that the hardware in question is, in the case of the F-35, “predominantly unusable” in the year we are being asked to buy more of it.
He waves the progressive flag with the conviction of a man who remembers 1995 very fondly and has not updated the gesture since. The union pedigree produced a defence hawk. The Labor branding covers a set of instincts that would be entirely at home in the moderate wing of the Liberal Party, which is perhaps why the moderate wing of the Liberal Party has largely ceased to exist. Marles ate its lunch.
He has also, to his credit, stripped medals from Afghanistan-era officers pursuant to the Brereton Report, which required political courage of a kind not always visible in his portfolio management. He has criticised Chinese live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, correctly. He has appointed Lieutenant General Susan Coyle as the first female chief of army, which is a genuinely historic moment.
These are real achievements. They coexist, in the same ministerial career, with the AUKUS cost blowouts, the armoured vehicle disasters, the hapinstance Washington encounter, and the word salads on morning television. This is what a capability gap looks like from the inside.
The Satirist’s Accounting
In a dangerous neighbourhood, with real capability needs and a fuel crisis that has exposed the fragility of everything the defence budget is supposed to protect, Richard Marles is what happens when you take a moderately ambitious right-leaning machine politician, hand him Defence for factional balance, and hope that nobody notices the spark shortage before the next election.
The forehead furrows at pressers. The platitudes accumulate. The procurement disasters generate the reorganisations that generate the next procurement disasters. The submarines remain in the future. The F-35 software remains predominantly unusable. The Geelong refinery burned on Wednesday night, taking with it ten percent of the nation’s fuel supply and fifty percent of Victoria’s, while the minister responsible for the nation’s strategic circumstances was preparing his remarks for the National Press Club.
Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more.
It was about spending better.
He has said this, in various formulations, for the duration of his tenure. The dead wood keeps stacking. The capability gap keeps widening. And Richard Donald Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, remains magnificently, unmistakably, and at considerable public expense, wooden.
Australia’s own Liberal wearing a red rosette. All faction, no fire.
Caps Off: How Mark Hammond’s Appointment Completes Labor’s Capture by Uncle Sam and the AUKUS Boondoggle
18 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/caps-off-how-mark-hammonds-appointment-completes-labors-capture-by-uncle-sam-and-the-aukus-boondoggle/
Look at the photo[on original] Anthony Albanese, grinning in his USS Vermont baseball cap like a kid who just won a free submarine from the Pentagon’s lucky dip. Beside him, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, now our incoming Chief of the Defence Force, in his crisp “Chief of Navy” lid, the two of them bonded like old mates who’ve just kayaked Sydney Harbour together over Christmas and strolled San Diego in matching Souths Rabbitohs caps. It’s not subtle. It’s not strategic. It’s surrender cosplaying as mateship.
This week Albanese confirmed what insiders have long known: Hammond, the submariner true-believer who once tried and failed to charm Paul Keating out of his withering contempt for AUKUS, will run the entire ADF from July. Another submariner, Rear Admiral Matthew Buckley, takes Navy. The navy now owns the top two defence jobs while the $425 billion defence spend over the next decade funnels the lion’s share into undersea warfare “anchored by the AUKUS submarine program.”
Translation: the US military-industrial complex just got the keys to the Australian treasury, delivered by a Labor government that once pretended to care about sovereignty.
Keating, to his eternal credit, wasn’t buying the sales pitch back in early 2023. Picture the scene: Hammond, briefcase locked to his wrist, submarine photos ready for the reveal, deploying the full arsenal of Pentagon charm on a man who had already watched one generation of Americans promise the world and deliver the bill. Keating told Marles and Hammond straight that AUKUS is “failed by design.” You can only keep about one-third of a submarine force at sea against a peer enemy. The rest is just expensive metal rusting in dry dock
Hammond’s real mission was never to convert Keating. It was to lock in the man who matters: Albanese. Kayak dates, Rabbitohs solidarity, San Diego photo-ops. The power couple of Australian defence was born. Keating went back to his piano.
And even if the submarines arrive, a proposition on which the actuaries are not taking bets, who exactly is going to crew them? Australia has been scrambling to find qualified submariners for years. The training pipeline is thin, the retention rates are worse, and nuclear submarines demand a level of crew specialisation that takes a decade to build and about eighteen months of a better offer to lose. We are proposing to operate one of the most technically demanding weapons platforms in human history with a workforce we currently cannot fill for the vessels we already have. The recruiters are working weekends. The submarines, theoretically, arrive in the 2030s. The crews, theoretically, materialise sometime after that. In the Pentagon’s spreadsheet this is presumably listed under “Australia’s problem.”
It’s an absurdity that needs the comic genius of Clarke and Dawe to illuminate. My goodness, here they are…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Then there is the small embarrassment that nobody in the AUKUS salesroom wants to dwell on: submarines are yesterday’s technology. The oceans that once hid them are filling up with sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles, satellite-linked surveillance arrays, and drone systems that can stalk a nuclear submarine across an ocean with the patient indifference of a search algorithm. The acoustic and thermal signatures that once dissolved into the depths are now readable. Add the tyranny of distance that always makes Australia’s strategic situation unique, and we are a long, slow bicycle ride from any plausible theatre of war. By the time a Virginia-class boat lumbers north from Perth or Garden Island, the conflict it was sent to influence has already been decided by hypersonic missiles, drone swarms, and electronic warfare conducted at the speed of light. The submarine arrives, metaphorically speaking, to find the furniture already rearranged and the Americans writing the after-action report.
Meanwhile, every serious military analyst watching Ukraine, watching the Persian Gulf, watching the drone campaigns rewriting the rules of engagement in real time, is drawing the same conclusion: cheap, expendable, autonomous systems are eating the lunch of expensive, crewed, prestige platforms. A drone costs thousands. A Virginia-class submarine costs $3.4 billion American, arrives late, requires a crew we don’t have, takes weeks to reach a fight, and can be tracked by technology already proliferating across the Indo-Pacific. We are buying a Rolls-Royce, with a target painted on its roof, for a road that no longer exists.
Michael Shoebridge of Strategic Analysis Australia put the broader problem bluntly: “Hammond’s elevation signals the Albanese government doubling down on its single bet on AUKUS and deepening Australia’s military reliance on the US as the key source of resupply for everything our military would need to fight an actual war. While Europe, Canada, and every other US ally are frantically rethinking assumptions in the age of Trump’s “America First,” cheap drones, and missile shortages, Australia stands lonely in its refusal to admit the world has changed.” Albert Palazzo, former director of war studies for the Australian Army, asks the obvious question nobody in Russell Hill wants answered: “when the person running the entire defence apparatus comes from the service consuming most of the budget, is there any critical oversight at all?”
Binoy Kampmark puts the whole farce with magnificent precision: Australian negotiators resemble “a facsimile of Bertie Wooster in desperate need of the good advice of his manservant Jeeves.”
There is Bertie, enthusiastic, well-connected at the club, constitutionally incapable of recognising a con, signing documents in San Diego while the manservant, who is Washington, quietly pockets the cheque. We have already funnelled $1.6 billion into US naval yards for what amounts to stealthy proliferation that benefits the American military-industrial complex far more than any sovereign Australian capability.
The Virginia-class boats? The US will keep them when it suits, rotate them through our bases under effective American operational control, and leave us holding the nuclear waste, the recruitment crisis, and the bill. Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs calls it a “wasteful folly” headed for a “train smash.” Even Malcolm Turnbull, not a man prone to anti-American sentiment on weekdays, labelled Australia the “rich dummy” subsidising Britain’s creaky program.
This is the dark comedy of it all. Labor, the party that once marched against Vietnam and sneered at Yankee imperialism, has become the most compliant vassal in the Anglosphere. Albanese’s “independent” foreign policy is now measured in how enthusiastically we open our chequebook and our bases. Hammond, the perfect courtier with deep Washington contacts and fearless advice that somehow always aligns with the Pentagon, will ensure there is no awkward questioning of the $368 billion black hole.
While the rest of the world pivots to drones, autonomous systems, and missile defence that actually works in actual wars, we are betting the farm on nuclear-powered prestige projects that may never arrive, or may arrive under effective US operational control, crewed by personnel we are still advertising for, travelling very slowly toward a war that ended while we were in transit.
The men who marched against Vietnam are now the men writing the cheques for the Pentagon. The party that was born in the shearing sheds is now the party that holidays in San Diego. The submariners have taken the wheel of a vessel that costs more than any previous generation of Australians could have imagined, moves slower than the conflicts it was designed to fight, and flies, when you look carefully at the fine print, someone else’s flag.
The caps told us everything. We just didn’t want to read them.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
The Apocalypse Salesman: How Richard Marles Sold Australia’s Future to the Permanent War Economy
The Manufactured Threat
Marles identified China as the primary threat to peace. He spoke of the need to project Australian military force “anywhere on the planet” to police global trade.
But China has no history of being an aggressor against Australia. It has never threatened Australia. It has never invaded Australian territory. It has never attacked Australian forces.
The only “threat” is that China might replace the United States as a trading partner by offering quality products at better prices and better trading conditions. This is not a military threat. It is an economic threat – to the profits of the defence contractors, to the hegemony of the United States, to the permanent war economy.
Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.”
Keating said:“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”
“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”
17 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD, https://theaimn.net/the-apocalypse-salesman-how-richard-marles-sold-australias-future-to-the-permanent-war-economy/
The Great Distraction
On April 16, 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles stood before the National Press Club and announced the biggest military spending spree in Australian history. An extra $14 billion over four years. An additional $53 billion over the next decade. Defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP by 2033.
“Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II,” Marles declared. “International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode.”
On the same day, the Prime Minister was flying to Brunei to beg for fertiliser and diesel.
The juxtaposition is obscene. While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, Anthony Albanese was scrambling to secure the basic necessities of Australian life – fuel for trucks, fertiliser for crops, the stuff that keeps the country running
The 100 million litres of diesel from Brunei and South Korea is not a solution. It is a distraction. The government is hoping that Australians will see the headline, breathe a sigh of relief, and stop asking the hard questions.
But the questions remain. And they are damning.
The Severity of the Crisis
The situation is far worse than the government has admitted.
As of April 11, 2026, Australia had 31 days’ worth of diesel, 28 days of jet fuel, and 38 days’ of petrol. These figures are dangerously close to the point where the government would be forced to implement nationwide fuel rationing.
In early April, Energy Minister Chris Bowen disclosed that 144 service stations across the country had completely run out of fuel, with a further 283 stations reporting no diesel supplies. The shortages have been most acute in rural and regional areas – precisely where farmers and truck drivers need fuel the most.
The Geelong refinery fire has compounded the problem. Viva Energy’s refinery is one of only two remaining refineries in Australia. The blaze shut down production at the worst possible moment.
As one Taiwanese media outlet starkly put it, Australia is living a “real-life Mad Max” scenario. The comparison is not hyperbolic. The film franchise depicted a world brought to its knees by fuel scarcity. Australia is now staring into that abyss.
The Root Cause: Structural Failure, Not Bad Luck
This crisis is not a bolt from the blue. It is the predictable consequence of decades of policy neglect.
Australia now imports over 90% of its refined fuel needs. In 2000, the country was almost entirely self-sufficient in petroleum products, meeting nearly 98% of its own demand. That figure has collapsed to just 5.6% for crude oil production.
The Just-in-Time model that has governed Australia’s fuel supply for decades is a house of cards. It prioritises efficiency and low costs over resilience and security. The Asian refineries that supply Australia are themselves dependent on crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since late February.
The government has known about this vulnerability for years. In 2010, the NRMA warned that Australia was becoming dangerously dependent on fuel imports from “some of the most politically unstable corners of the globe.” Those warnings were ignored.
The same pattern applies to fertiliser. Australia imports 65% of its urea – the key ingredient in crop fertiliser – from the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz closure has sent prices skyrocketing by 60%. Urea now costs more than $1,550 per tonne, up from $700 before the war.
Farmers are now on “boat watch”, anxiously tracking ships that may not arrive in time for winter planting. “Nothing grows without fertiliser and water,” said canegrower Dean Cayley. He is not exaggerating. Without urea, crop yields can drop by 40%.
The crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.
The 100 Million Litre Announcement: Too Little, Too Late
The shipment secured by Prime Minister Albanese from Brunei and South Korea totals approximately 100 million litres.
Opposition sources have been quick to point out that this volume represents little more than a single day’s supply. Australia consumes roughly 90 million litres of fuel daily. The announcement is not a solution. It is a photo opportunity.
The government has also signed “no surprises” energy agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. These agreements are not legally binding supply guarantees. They are diplomatic assurances that Australia will be given advance notice if any of these nations consider restricting fuel exports.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia was frank about the limitations of the arrangement. “The world looks very different to when you were here last year,” he said. “Global energy markets are under serious stress.” He did not promise that Malaysia would continue supplying Australia indefinitely. He promised that the two nations would talk.
Meanwhile, Australia has no national strategic fuel reserve. The International Energy Agency recommends that member countries hold reserves equivalent to 90 days of net imports. Australia holds approximately 30 days.
The Hidden Story: The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme
The most egregious aspect of this crisis is the one the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored.
Australia’s largest mining companies – BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Fortescue, and Yancoal – continue to receive billions of dollars in fuel tax credits while ordinary Australians struggle to fill their tanks.
The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme is Australia’s largest taxpayer-funded fossil fuel subsidy, costing the budget $11 billion annually. In the 2025 financial year alone, the five largest mining companies were collectively refunded $1.94 billion:
- BHP: $622 million
- Rio Tinto: $423 million
- Glencore: $349 million
- Fortescue: $290 million
- South32: $140 million
Climate Energy Finance has calculated that 18 of the largest diesel consumers in Australia received $3.36 billion in fuel tax credits in the 2025 financial year alone.
The scheme refunds the full customs duty – currently 51.6 cents per litre – paid on imported diesel used off-road in industry. It is a direct transfer of wealth from Australian taxpayers to some of the largest corporations on the planet.
The government is simultaneously pleading with Australians to conserve fuel, subsidising the import of diesel from Asia, and handing billions of dollars to mining companies to continue burning the stuff.
Climate Energy Finance founder Tim Buckley has called for urgent reform, warning that without change, Australia will hand back almost $84 billion in fuel tax credits to major miners by 2030.
The silence from the government is deafening.
The Opportunity Cost: Defence vs. Everything Else
While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, the opportunity cost to Australia became staggering.
The government has announced an extra $14 billion in defence spending over the next four years, with a further $53 billion over the next decade. Total defence spending over the next decade will top out at $887 billion.
Meanwhile, the government has committed a paltry $386 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for 2026–2030. Gavi has helped vaccinate more than 1.1 billion children globally, saving more than 18.8 million lives. It is one of the most cost‑effective health interventions in history.
The government has provided just $5 million to the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE).
The message is unmistakable: the government is prepared for war. It is not prepared for the next pandemic.
The Manufactured Threat
Marles identified China as the primary threat to peace. He spoke of the need to project Australian military force “anywhere on the planet” to police global trade.
But China has no history of being an aggressor against Australia. It has never threatened Australia. It has never invaded Australian territory. It has never attacked Australian forces.
The only “threat” is that China might replace the United States as a trading partner by offering quality products at better prices and better trading conditions. This is not a military threat. It is an economic threat – to the profits of the defence contractors, to the hegemony of the United States, to the permanent war economy.
Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.” Keating said:
“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”
Keating noted the obvious:
“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”
The Revolving Door
The frequency with which political advisers revolve from the Albanese government into the private sector is striking. In March 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles’s former policy adviser, Kieran Ingrey, left his position and immediately landed at the lobby shop GRACosway.
This is not an isolated incident. It is the revolving door – the mechanism by which public servants and political advisers convert their access into private-sector profit. The same mechanism that has been documented in the United States.
The Australian Financial Review notes that the practice “is starting to give the impression they’re using parliament as a halfway house.” The impression is correct. The halfway house is not a failure. It is a feature.
Ingrey’s new employer, GRACosway, is a lobbying and strategic communications firm. It represents corporate clients. It does not represent the Australian people. The revolving door ensures that the interests of the defence contractors are well represented – not only in the minister’s office, but in the minister’s mind.
The Silence of the Mainstream Media
The mainstream media has been complicit in downplaying the severity of the crisis. The government’s “no surprises” agreements have been reported as diplomatic victories. The 100 million litre purchase has been framed as a success. The underlying structural vulnerabilities have been glossed over.
The fuel tax credit scheme has received almost no coverage. The billions of dollars flowing to mining companies have been ignored. The fact that Australia has no strategic fuel reserve has been mentioned in passing, then forgotten.
The media is not neutral. It is captured.
A Final Word
Richard Marles did not deliver a defence strategy. He delivered a sales pitch.
The target is China. The enemy is abstract. The threat is manufactured.
The real purpose is the wealth transfer. The real beneficiaries are the defence contractors. The real losers are the Australian people, who will pay for this escalation with their taxes, their security, and their future.
The tickets to the Apocalypse Circus keep hitting the marketplace. The government is selling them. The media is promoting them. The opposition is cheering them on.
And the fuel crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.
The Biggest Peace Time Release in our Nation’s History
16 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/the-biggest-peace-time-release-in-our-nations-history/
A Note from the Editor
Readers should be warned that this piece pays deliberate homage to Evelyn Waugh’s exquisitely appropriate fondness for long, winding sentences and his unrivalled capacity to report the facts with deadpan solemnity when our top brass parody themselves most enthusiastically. As Napoleon is said to have observed, one should never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake; here, the Defence Minister has been left entirely uninterrupted.
The Biggest Peacetime Increase in our Nation’s History
Being a faithful account of Australia’s National Defence Strategy, 2026, as delivered to the National Press Club, Canberra, on a Thursday, during a fuel crisis, while the Geelong refinery burned.
At ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday the sixteenth of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-six, with one of Australia’s two remaining oil refineries still smouldering in Geelong, with the nation’s fuel reserves declining toward five weeks of supply, with the Prime Minister in Malaysia asking Petronas if they had any spare diesel, Defence Minister Richard Marles took to the podium at the National Press Club in Canberra and announced the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending in Australia’s history.
The assembled journalists wrote this down:
Mr Marles, his brow furrowed in the manner of a man who has just remembered an important but elusive appointment, said Australia faced its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War Two. He said international norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continued to erode. He said the government was pursuing every avenue of increasing defence capability quickly, mostly through bigger defence appropriations but also through accessing private capital. He said delivering the strategy was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.
The assembled journalists continued to write this down, their pens moving with the solemnity of altar boys recording the responses at High Mass.
An extra fourteen billion dollars, Mr Marles said, would be spent on defence over the next four years. An additional fifty-three billion would be set aside over the next decade. By 2033, Australia’s total defence spending would reach three percent of GDP.
A hand went up at the back. Michelle Grattan of The Conversation wished to note that the three percent figure was calculated using the NATO definition of defence spending, which could include certain tangential items not traditionally considered defence expenditure, and that in effect this made the defence spend appear larger than it was.
Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.
It should be noted, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history of Australian defence procurement, that the tradition of spending better has a distinguished pedigree in this country.
The Australian War Memorial in Canberra is a monument of considerable architectural grandeur, though its construction budget was exceeded by some margin and it was completed eleven years late. The Collins-class submarine program, conceived in the 1980s to provide Australia with a world-class underwater capability, delivered vessels that were described by their own crews as the finest submarines money could produce, provided that money was prepared to wait for parts, accept considerable noise levels, and develop a philosophical attitude toward the relationship between the planned number of operational submarines at any given moment and the actual number. The Joint Strike Fighter program, now in its third decade of development, has produced an aircraft whose software upgrade was described by the Pentagon’s own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation as “predominantly unusable” throughout the entirety of fiscal year 2025, requires pilots to perform the in-flight equivalent of pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot its radar, and achieved precisely no new combat capabilities in the year Australia was asked to order more of them.
Australia currently has seventy-two F-35s on order.
Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.
The Iran War, which began on February 28 and which Mr Marles described as having “greatly complicated” the strategic landscape, has offered several observations about the future of air power that the defence establishment has received with the equanimity of institutions that have already ordered seventy-two aircraft.
The F-35 is a stealth aircraft. Its stealth characteristics are effective against radar. Heat-sensing surveillance, which Iranian forces employed with some enthusiasm in the early weeks of Operation Epic Fury, detects aircraft by their engine exhaust rather than their radar profile, a distinction the stealth coating does not address. Iranian air defences destroyed several F-35s in the opening weeks of the conflict. The United States Air Force confirmed a smaller number of these losses than Iran reported, and a larger number than CENTCOM’s initial press releases suggested, and the investigation into the precise figure is ongoing.
The drone, meanwhile, costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. It is not stealthy. It does not require a software upgrade. It does not need to reboot its radar. It has been used to considerable effect by every party to every recent conflict, and Mr Marles announced on Tuesday that billions of extra dollars would be allocated to drones and counter-drone measures over the next decade.
One notes that the drone allocation comes after the F-35 allocation. One notes further that the counter-drone allocation comes after the drone allocation. One observes that this sequence describes, with considerable precision, the nature of arms races, and that the fifty-three billion dollars earmarked over the next decade will, in the fullness of time, generate its own counter-counter-drone requirement, which will presumably feature in the 2030 National Defence Strategy, also to be delivered at the National Press Club, also while something is on fire somewhere.
Mr Marles said the strategy would put Australia on a path to strong defence self-reliance.
Self-reliance should not, he clarified, be confused with self-sufficiency. Alliances, especially with the United States, would always be fundamental to Australia’s defence.
The United States is currently conducting a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which it cannot safely enter, using destroyers that have already turned around once after being addressed firmly by an Iranian drone, in pursuit of a strategy that has been rejected by a forty-nation coalition including most of Australia’s other allies, and whose defence minister has just told the National Press Club that it is not only about investing more, it is about spending better.
Australia’s contribution to the alliance this week has been a Wedgetail surveillance aircraft based in the Gulf. The Wedgetail is doing, by all accounts, excellent work.
It is perhaps worth pausing here to consider the three armed services whose budgets Mr Marles was expanding. The Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force each maintain their own headquarters, their own command structures, their own procurement offices, their own traditions, their own ceremonial requirements, their own disputes with each other about which of them is more fundamental to national defence, and their own opinions about the optimal allocation of the fifty-three billion dollars.
The question of whether three separate armed services, each with its own administrative apparatus, its own officer class, its own retired generals available for corporate board placement and television commentary, represents the most efficient use of the defence budget in an era of joint operations, drone warfare, and a naval blockade being conducted by a single nation in a single strait for reasons that change daily, is a question that has not been asked at the National Press Club today.
Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.
The AUKUS submarine agreement, under which Australia will acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines from the United States at a cost currently estimated at between two hundred and three hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars depending on which estimate one consults and on which day one consults it, was described in the announcement of Vice Admiral Mark Hammond’s appointment as Australia’s new ADF chief as a project toward which he would “continue to bring valuable insight.”
The first submarine is expected to arrive sometime in the 2040s. Mr Hammond will have retired by then. Mr Marles will have retired by then. The children currently in primary school in Australia will be in their thirties by then, at which point they will receive a nuclear-powered submarine and a defence budget representing three percent of GDP calculated using the NATO definition, which can include certain tangential items.
In the interim, Australia’s fuel reserves stand at less than five weeks. The Geelong refinery, which supplies ten percent of the nation’s fuel and fifty percent of Victoria’s, is still being assessed for damage after Wednesday night’s fire. The last tanker carrying pre-war jet fuel is scheduled to dock on Sunday.
The fifty-three billion dollars is allocated over ten years.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said that creative accounting did not defend a single Australian.
Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.
The assembled journalists packed up their notebooks.
Outside, on Canberra’s Capital Circle, a government vehicle filled up at the pump. The price per litre was a figure that would have seemed improbable eighteen months ago and now seems, given current trajectories, almost nostalgic.
The National Defence Strategy runs to one hundred and twelve pages. It does not mention the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act 1984, which is also a kind of strategy, and which is sitting in the drawer.
Who’s making money? The arsenal trade after Ukraine and Iran
By Vince Hooper | 15 April 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/whos-making-money-the-arsenal-trade-after-ukraine-and-iran,20929
Defence is no longer a defensive trade, and nowhere is the question of who’s buying, who’s building, and who is being left behind more apparent than in Australia, writes Professor Vince Hooper.
Markets, missiles and the end of the peace dividend — and what it means for Australia
A South Korean missile-maker most Western investors could not have located on a map two years ago has just hit an all-time high. LIG Nex1, a precision-guided munitions and electronic warfare specialist headquartered in Yongin, has nearly quadrupled from its January 2025 base, touching 899,000 won on 6 March 2026 — days after American and Israeli aircraft struck Iranian nuclear and missile facilities.
The Korean defence sector as a whole has returned roughly 137 per cent over the past year. These are not the numbers of a sleepy industrial cyclical. They are the numbers of an asset class being repriced in real time.
Defence is no longer a defensive trade. It is the trade. And nowhere is the question of who is buying, who is building, and who is being left in the queue more pointed than in Australia.
Canberra in the queue
For Australia, the arsenal trade is not an abstract market story. It is a mirror.
AUKUS is now a procurement queue rather than a strategy and the cost of waiting for Virginia-class submarines while the Indo-Pacific darkens is becoming uncomfortable to discuss in polite company.
Canberra is, in effect, paying premium prices for late delivery, while Korean and Japanese yards offer shorter timelines at lower cost.
Hanwha’s confirmed 19.9 per cent strategic stake in Austal, cleared by both the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and Canberra’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) by late 2025, the Henderson shipyards build-up (now known as the Australian Marine Complex), the AS9 Huntsman self-propelled howitzer program being built by Hanwha at Avalon, near Geelong are not coincidences. They are the early signs of an Australian defence industrial base quietly rotating away from Anglosphere dependence and towards Asian arsenals that can actually deliver.
The strain is visible in real time. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week, Canberra’s first crisis call during the Middle East escalation went to Beijing rather than Washington — a reflex inversion that would have been unthinkable a decade ago and that tells you more about the perceived reliability of the American guarantee than any AUKUS communiqué.
The ASX has noticed even if the cabinet has not: DroneShield, Electro Optic Systems, Codan and Austal have all attracted the kind of investor attention that only arrives when a market decides a sector’s tail risks have permanently thickened.
From cost centre to industrial darling
The Ukraine War did the structural work. It converted defence from a politically awkward line item into the most fashionable corner of industrial policy and it taught Western treasuries an uncomfortable lesson about how thin their magazines actually were. Three years of artillery duels in the Donbas drained stockpiles NATO had quietly assumed would last a generation.
The Middle East conflict is the second shock. Patriot interceptors, Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) reloads, Iron Dome Tamirs, SM-3s, 155mm shells, loitering munitions — each salvo over the Gulf is, in accounting terms, a revenue recognition event somewhere in Arizona, Alabama, Haifa or Daejeon. Governments that spent the 2010s running down inventories on the assumption of a benign world are now writing cheques to rebuild them, and they are writing those cheques into the same handful of balance sheets.
Who, specifically, is making money
Four tiers are visible.
First, the American primes — Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, L3Harris. They capture the replenishment contracts, the integration work, and the multi-year framework agreements that Congress now waves through with rare bipartisan enthusiasm. Their backlogs are at record highs and, after two decades of monopsony complaints, their pricing power has quietly inverted.
Second, the European awakening — Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Saab AB, Thales. Germany’s Zeitenwende turned out to be real, and Rheinmetall in particular has become the continent’s de facto shell foundry, trading less like an industrial stock and more like a leveraged proxy on NATO’s Article 5 itself.
Third, and most interesting from where Australia sits, the Asian arsenals — Hanwha Aerospace, Korea Aerospace Industries, Hanwha Systems and the LIG Nex1 of the opening paragraph, alongside Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki in Japan. South Korea has done what Europe spent 30 years failing to do: build a deep, exportable, price-competitive defence industrial base with delivery times measured in months rather than decades.
Warsaw noticed first. Riyadh, Canberra and Cairo are noticing now. Israel’s own Elbit, Rafael and IAI sit alongside them as the technological pace-setters, particularly in air defence and electronic warfare, where the Iran exchange has been a brutal but effective live-fire showcase.
Fourth, the invisible compounders — the propellant chemists, the rare-earth magnet refiners, the speciality steel mills, the gallium nitride foundries, the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR) cleared software shops, the maritime insurers writing war-risk cover on Hormuz transits at multiples of last year’s premium. This is where the quiet fortunes are being made. Lynas Rare Earths, sitting on one of the few non-Chinese heavy rare earth supply chains in existence, belongs in this tier, whether the market has fully priced it in or not.
The Gulf parallel
For the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the calculation is different and more cynical than Australia’s, but the underlying logic is the same. Every Gulf capital is simultaneously a customer, a forward operating base, and a potential target. Sovereign wealth is rotating accordingly — not away from defence, but into it. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is building domestic primes such as the Synchronised Accessible Media Exchange (SAMI) — wholly owned by the Public Investment Fund and openly targeting a place in the global top 25 defence companies by 2030.
The export of security capacity has become a new instrument of influence and the capital flows track the doctrine more faithfully than any white paper. Australia, with its Henderson precinct ambitions and its Hanwha partnership, is on a milder version of the same curve.
The uncomfortable coda
None of this is a celebration. A rising LIG Nex1 share price is, in the end, a market-implied judgement that more young people in more places will be killed by better-engineered weapons. The honest analyst names that trade-off rather than hiding behind the chart.
But the honest analyst also tells the truth about incentives. The Ukraine War did not enrich defence contractors by accident and the Iran strikes will not either. Governments that spent a generation treating deterrence as a sunk cost are now paying the bill they should have been paying all along and the firms holding the order books are, predictably, getting rich.
CNN reported over the weekend that U.S. intelligence believes China is preparing to deliver shoulder-fired air defence missiles (MANPADS) to Iran during the current ceasefire — a claim Beijing has formally denied. If the reporting holds, that single fact reframes the arsenal trade as an explicit great-power contest rather than a Western replenishment cycle — and it makes every defence ministry from Canberra to Riyadh recalculate how long it can afford to wait in the AUKUS queue.
For Australia, the question is sharper than for most. Canberra can keep waiting for Virginia-class boats and hoping the phone in Washington still gets answered, or it can do what Warsaw and Riyadh have already done — back the arsenals that can actually deliver, and accept that strategic autonomy in 2026 looks less like an alliance white paper and more like a procurement contract with Daejeon, Tokyo, Henderson or Geelong.
The post-Cold War peace dividend has been spent. What replaces it is already listed, already trading and already on the front page. The only open question is whether Australia is reading the same page as the rest of the market.
Professor Vince Hooper is a proud Australian-British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
Amid the Iran chaos, war over Taiwan just became less likely
by Marcus Reubenstein | Apr 15, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/amid-the-iran-chaos-war-over-taiwan-just-became-less-likely/
Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.
The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.
Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.
A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.
As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,
“People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.”
Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?
In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”
Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.
Cheng’s China visit
The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.
She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.
A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.
Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.
Implications for Australia
Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.
The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.
Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.
The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?
Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.
If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.
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Last week’s meeting between Beijing and Taiwan’s main opposition leader is a bad sign for the China hawks and a sign of rapprochement. Marcus Reubenstein reports.
The combination of the US-Israel war on Iran and the anti-China media narrative in Australia has meant the visit of the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party, Cheng Li-wun, to China has largely been ignored. Cheng chairs the Kuomintang (KMT) party, and she spent five days in mainland China from the 7th until the 12th of April.
Her public pronouncements indicate a belief that it is not in Taiwan’s interest to pin all of its hopes on an economic and military alliance with the US, and its future is better served with a pivot towards Beijing.
A significant proportion of Taiwan’s population does not want armed conflict with China. More importantly, Taiwan’s political leaders are acknowledging the fact that the US is becoming an increasingly unhinged and unreliable ally.
As reported by NBC News, Cheng points to Ukraine, saying,
People do not want to see Taiwan become the next Ukraine.
Add to that mix that Taiwan gets 70% of its oil from the Middle East, there is sentiment in Taiwan that the US bombing of Iran has been disastrously thought out and delivers Taiwan massive economic pain. Will Taiwan risk becoming the centrepiece of a future US military disaster?
In December, Cheng told the New York Times, “Could it be the United States is treating Taiwan as a chess piece, a pawn strategically opposing the Chinese Communist Party at opportune times?”
Taiwan’s ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) had attempted to push a $US40B arms deal with the US through parliament in March, but that was sunk by Cheng’s KMT. The ruling DPP was eventually able to get a deal worth just $US11B through – around one third of an AUKUS submarine.
Cheng’s China visit
The visit to China by Taiwan’s opposition leader took in three very significant cities, Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing. Shanghai and Beijing, as financial and political capitals, were logical, but Nanjing is of great historical significance.
She visited the Sun Yat‑sen Mausoleum in Nanjing with a large Taiwanese delegation, a site honouring the founding father of the Republic of China, revered in both Taiwan and mainland China. Nanjing is also the site of one of Japan’s greatest wartime atrocities, the so-called Rape of Nanjing.
A small number of hardline figures in Japan’s ruling LDP continue to deny Japanese participated in any wartime atrocities. The LDP’s newly elected prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, stating that Japan would send in its military to aid Taiwan in any conflict with China, has dramatically escalated tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.
Takaichi is one of Japan’s most pro-US leaders, and Cheng’s visit to Nanjing would not be lost on the US. By extension, Cheng’s point of visiting Nanjing could be seen as a backhanded message to Japan, which hosts 55,000 US troops, to stay out of Taiwan’s affairs.
Implications for Australia
Cheng’s trip to China has implications for Australia and our foreign policies towards both our biggest trading partner and most important strategic partner.
The Albanese government has gone all in on the US’s East Asia military push, and now the US is showing clear signs of stress. The US has redeployed Thaad missile systems from South Korea to fight its war with Iran, while supercarrier naval vessels based in Japan, and operating in the South China Sea, have also been sent to the Gulf. Despite being the greatest military power in global history, it’s obvious it doesn’t take much to wear US forces thin.
Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, nor Defence Minister Richard Marles has deviated from Australia’s blind support for the US war on Iran.
The question is, will they follow the US into an inevitably disastrous war against China or, worse still, act as a proxy in a future war?
Australia’s tilt towards offensive military capability, also enthusiastically supported by the LNP opposition, and the billions committed to submarines which may never arrive, do not augur well.
If the US cannot defeat Iran, there is no path to victory against an equally determined China, far better equipped, with the world’s second largest economy, and that is not a pariah state.
Respected US political scientist Professor John Mearsheimer says, US President Donald Trump’s war with Iran is “manna from heaven” for China. He argues the war on Iran has made the US an irresponsible stakeholder in the international system and that China looks like the “adults in the room.”
China’s carrot and stick
China’s approach to Taiwan, and more broadly to much of its global diplomacy, has been a mix of carrot and stick. Beijing is still dangling carrots in front of Taiwan. Reunification with Taiwan remains the endgame,
“but the overwhelming desire is that it should be achieved peacefully.”
Cheng was warmly received by Chinese President Xi Jinping, and following Cheng’s visit, the Chinese government announced a list of ten new policies to promote economic and travel initiatives to strengthen ties between Beijing and Taiwan.
In the background, a looming stick could be an easily achievable Chinese blockade of commercial shipping around Taiwan. As Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz demonstrates, it doesn’t take a great deal of military firepower to cripple an economy.
What would, or could, Australia do to intervene? Hypothetically, that is a question which may face Australia, but a reconciliation, indeed possible unification between Taiwan and China, would render moot Australia’s current strategic policy.
Taiwan’s future?
While opinions in Taiwan about Cheng are divided, she has a realistic chance of becoming Taiwan’s next president at the 2028 election. To win, she doesn’t only have to run on China policy; there are plenty of domestic issues facing voters. Also, there is no suggestion that a reunified Taiwan would be considered as a province of China. Instead, it would become a special administrative region, citizens would keep their Taiwanese passports, and the New Taiwan Dollar would remain the official currency.The line in the sand for Beijing would be separatist movements and their sympathisers speaking out publicly. Taiwan would also be prohibited from entering into any military alliances or agreements with other nations.
While this is the same set of conditions imposed on Hong Kong, Taiwan hardly has a tradition of democracy. For its first four decades as a territory, it was governed under martial law, and it wasn’t until 1996 that democratic presidential elections were held.
Current president, Lai Ching-te, is unpopular with his approval rating sinking to 33% in late 2025, having recovered to the low 40% mark in the most recent polls. Cheng’s approval rating is lower, reflecting the distrust Taiwanese people have for their political leaders.
In terms of specific issues, concerns over the economy rank first for Taiwanese voters.
The Chinese, that is to say those of Chinese ethnicity, are by and large very pragmatic. Cheng is betting on a belief that close ties with China represent the future and that the
“Taiwanese people will come to distrust Washington more than they distrust Beijing.”
Australia Must Join The Trump Blockade!
14 April 2026 Rossleigh, https://theaimn.net/australia-must-join-the-trump-blockade/
After Tony Abbott expressed a desire for to send military support for the USA in the Middle East, Jane Hume was on Sky News telling us that we have the capacity to send a warship to support Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. This blockade is not the bad blockade that Iran imposed but a good blockade imposed by one of our allies, so we need to support it if we’ve been asked to because it would be terrible to let any oil to slip through from Iran when it’s pretty clear that the best way to stop the blocking of the Strait by Iran is to block it yourself.
Of course it makes sense that the Liberal Party would support a blockade because without it oil might get through and go to countries which aren’t supporting the US such as… well, pretty much every country in the world apart from that country that I can’t mention because it’d be anti-Semitic to do so because it might be interpreted as a criticism of that country and, as we all know, any criticism of that country is just a way of hiding one’s anti-Semitic views.
The terrible thing about oil getting through to places like China and Singapore would be that it’d enable them to sell the oil and that might stop the price going up which would be a bad thing because if the current situation remains then the USA pretty much has a monopoly and this is good for the world because what’s good for the USA is good for the world because the world ceases to exist outside its borders which is why it makes sense for Canada and Greenland to become a non-voting part of the country.
And of course it makes sense for the Liberals to support that because it means higher petrol prices in Australia and higher prices for everything and this would be something to blame Labor for.
After all, the Liberals can’t simply rely on Angus Taylor’s promise to introduce an Australian Values requirement as well as an ICE-style enforcement regime which seeks out those visa overstayers and drags them out and puts them behind bars where they belong until we can send them back to whatever country they came from whether it be China, India, England or even that place that Dan Tehan told us some kids are growing up unaware of, Africa. No, until we actually see people being dragged onto the streets and anyone trying to document it, taken into custody, then this might potentially sound like another one of those promises that are easy to make in opposition but quickly forgotten when one comes to government.
In case you’re wondering exactly what these values are, they’ve been spelled out and no, it’s not support for Phar Lap and drinking stubbies at the cricket. They are:
- Respect for the Individual: Freedom of speech, religion, and association.
- A “Fair Go”: Equality of opportunity for all, regardless of race, gender, age, or disability.
- Democracy and Law: A parliamentary democracy and a firm commitment to the rule of law.
- Equality: Treating all people with dignity and respect.
- Freedom: Respecting the rights of others to live as free citizens.
- Language: The English language is considered a key unifying element.
Yes, it’ll be great when all immigrants are required to abide by the above “Australian Values”. Perhaps they’ll even rub off on some of those native born Aussies who’ve been here long enough to proclaim bugger freedom of religion because we’re a white, Christian, British country and that’s what we’ve always been… which is completely true if you ignore most of our history.
As for the fair go for all regardless of race, gender, age or disability, I did notice several social media posts asking if the recent Head of the Army appointment had ever been in a combat zone or killed anybody. Strange, because I don’t remember anyone asking this about any male appointments. Still I understand that they weren’t being sexist. It was just that some of them wanted Ben Roberts-Smith as head because – according to them – he’d killed people.
BRS, unfortunately, has other Australian Values on his plate such as a firm commitment to the rule of law, but given that these Australian Values warriors aren’t being sexist because that would mean that they were un-Australian, so I’d just like to suggest that maybe we could make Erin Paterson the Army Head because she has all the qualities they asked for, including the capacity to coldly carry out a plan.
Mm, perhaps not.
1 This month.
Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
Australians deserve the truth
about AUKUS
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 