Royal Commission or Lobby Show? | The West Report.
The Royal Commission into anti-Semitism has a problem: it is not credible.
The evidence is not being tested. Instead, it has descended into a storytelling farce about hurt feelings, while the data shows Muslim and Arab hate is worse than Jewish hate in Australia — in many cases, not all.
Why Australia’s new office marks a turning point for AI governance
15 July 2026 , RMIT University, https://theaimn.net/why-australias-new-office-marks-a-turning-point-for-ai-governance/
The Federal Government has today announced a new Office of AI within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, alongside plans for a national artificial intelligence framework. An RMIT expert says this stronger oversight of the rapidly evolving technology is a welcome step.
Lisa Given, Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences
“As technology companies increasingly look to build data centres in Australia, communities have expressed significant concerns about energy and water use, and placement near residential neighbourhoods.
“Australians are also worried about disruption from AI technologies, raising concerns about potential job losses, copyright infringements of material used to train AI models, and data privacy.
“Addressing such varied challenges, particularly when AI technologies are evolving at such a fast pace, warrants the coordinated approach this office will take.
“Given the known risks posed by generative AI technologies like deepfake images that mislead customers or hallucinated content that misinforms chatbot users – Australians need government intervention to protect them from harm.
“The creation of this office marks a significant shift in the government’s overall approach to governing AI, towards being more hands-on and proactive.
“In 2024, the government planned to regulate high-risk AI implementation, which was later abandoned. It also proposed – and then paused – digital duty of care legislation, to hold technology companies to account for harmful content and tool designs.
“By creating this office, and reintroducing digital duty of care legislation this year, the government has recognised the need for coordination and intervention to address the varied risks posed by AI, while also supporting its potential benefits.”
Lisa Given is a Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences at RMIT University. She is director of RMIT’s Centre for Human-AI Information Environments and the Social Change Enabling Impact Platform
Antisemitic, really? Jewish leader speaks out on Royal Commission hypocrisy
by Jeffrey Loewenstein | Jul 14, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/antisemitic-really-jewish-leader-speaks-out-on-royal-commission-hypocrisy/ |
Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,The tide has turned a little at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism with a second Jewish witness breaking from the Israel narrative. Jeffrey Loewenstein reports.
Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.
I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.
Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.
But, the elephant in the room?
Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.
I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.
Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.
But, the elephant in the room?
“Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,”
or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?
Take the example of a uni student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.
No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is – a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the ECAJ in Australia – that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.
Why the rise in antisemitism?
What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism sinceOctober 7?
Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?
The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.
Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media
“the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.
Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation
“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”
The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like ‘Free Palestine’ as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat – who acts as a spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students – either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!
And that is the rub.
Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped acrosss their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader” ?
“Really? I thought we were Australians.”
The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.
The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being ‘anti Jewish?”
They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.
Not be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel. It’s simply untrue!
There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.
A climate of fear
Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.
Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.
Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.
My Israel question
I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son’s book “My Israel Question”. The book flew off the shelves.
The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community – including a Jewish Federal member of Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book – bordered on feral.
Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail – which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence – one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.
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The tide has turned a little at the Royal Commission into Antisemitism with a second Jewish witness breaking from the Israel narrative. Jeffrey Loewenstein reports.
Sarah Schwartz, co-founder of the Jewish Council of Australia (JCA), gave evidence at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion last week.
I venture to suggest that it will come to be seen that Schwartz gave seminal evidence which the Commissioner is going to find hard to ignore when she is writing her report; evidence supported yesterday by the compelling testimony of Jewish university peace activist Yasmine Johnson.
Until Schwartz gave her evidence, we had seen testimonies given by members of the Jewish community – some of which can only be described as very troubling in terms of evidence – which sometimes bordered on hysterical.
But, the elephant in the room?
Were the ‘attacks’ described really attacks of an antisemitic nature,
or were they people venting their anger and outrage at Jews seen to be rusted-on, unquestioning supporters of Israel’s egregious actions in Gaza?
Take the example of a uni student in Canberra who just yesterday was reported in the Nine media thus: ”Liat told the Commission she had felt “very physically unsafe” during the long encampment at her university campus … when people would laugh and leer at me and say, ‘Look at the baby killer, look at the genocide supporter’”.
No, that is not pleasant, but the fact is – a fact unchallenged aside from the state of Israel itself and the likes of the ECAJ in Australia – that more than 20,000 Palestinian children have been killed by the state of Israel and more than 44,000 injured since October 2023.
Why the rise in antisemitism?
What was more than significant, is that many of those who gave evidence of alleged antisemitism demonstrated absolutely no introspection. Why had there been a rise in anti-semitism sinceOctober 7?
Not because Hamas attacked Israel. No, it was, in many cases people showing their anger, yes, in some instances in a totally misguided way, at Israel’s actions in Gaza. Why did some 300,000 people from all walks of life and all ages, march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on a foul, wet and windy day?
The palpable anger by a significant part of the Australian community, including many Jews, at what Israel did in Gaza, and continues to do to this day, is reflected in the sober evidence given at the Royal Commission yesterday by Yasmine Johnson, a co-convener for Students for Palestine and a protest organiser.
Following her evidence, Johnson, who is Jewish, told the media
the idea that campus protests “create a dangerous atmosphere, fear for people, is farcical”.
Antisemitism, anti-genocide conflation
“What we’ve heard,” she said “so far is day after day after day of evidence which conflates legitimate anti-genocide, pro-Palestine activism with genuine antisemitism which exists in our society.”
The earlier mentioned witness Liat, and others like her, may feel uncomfortable about what is being shouted out at her as much as she probably sees posters like ‘Free Palestine’ as confronting and antisemitic, but has Liat – who acts as a spokesperson for the Australasian Union of Jewish Students – either personally or on behalf of her organisation ever publicly accused Israel of being responsible for war crimes in Gaza, even if not genocide? Almost certainly, not!
And that is the rub.
Might this alleged antisemitism just have had something to do with Jews so visibly parading around with Israeli flags draped acrosss their shoulders, waving Israelis flags at solidarity rallies for Israel, Jewish communal leaders excoriating those who called out Israel for engaging in genocide or starving children, and welcoming the Israeli President as their “national leader” ?
Really? I thought we were Australians.
The “average” person could be forgiven for concluding that members of the Jewish community were demonstrating that they identified with and supported Israel.
The question to be asked here is why it is that criticising Israel by Jews is said to make the speaker a self-hating Jew, a “kapo” a “Judenrat” or, as in the case of Schwartz, to even be accused on ABC Radio National as being ‘anti Jewish?”
They are shameful, offensive and disgraceful epithets. They are intended to be so.
Not be ignored in the above is that the likes of a Mark Leibler, the ECAJ, AIJAC, the Zionist Federation of Australia and similar groups see Jews who criticise Israel as a no-go area even if they, falsely, assert that Jews are free to openly express their views about Israel. It’s simply untrue!
There is the expectation from these quarters that all Jews will, as a matter of solidarity, support Israel as the Zionist/Jewish homeland. With this forked-tongue and double-speak it is no wonder that the sort of slurs and insults which Schwartz described at the Royal Commission are rife in the Jewish community.
A climate of fear
Conversely, those in the Jewish community who might otherwise speak out against Israel fear that they will be subjected to all manner of insults and even the break-down of family relationships.
Given the airing of Schwartz’s evidence, one has to also wonder why there has been total silence from the usually vocal Jewish organisations. Should they not be publicly calling out vilification of fellow-Jews, calling for vilification to be stopped and asking for respect for those Jews who are not Zionists, strident or not.
Proof of the “attitude” in the Jewish community to those who are not at one with supporting Israel is clearly demonstrated by the Australian Jewish News which, just last week, pulled a story attacking those in the Jewish community who attacked their fellow Jews with the the sort of offensive epithets directed at Sarah Schwartz.
My Israel question
I can speak personally to how the Jewish community reacts when Israel or the Israel Lobby comes under scrutiny. Back in 2006, Melbourne University Press published my son’s book “My Israel Question”. The book flew off the shelves.
The response from the so-called powers-that be in the Jewish community – including a Jewish Federal member of Parliament in Parliament, even exhorting people not to buy the book – bordered on feral.
Even putting aside the death threats to my son and his then partner, as an example of hate mail – which Schwartz has so clearly shown in her evidence – one early so-called correspondent wrote that he hoped that when the Nazis came to Australia that he and his parents would be the first to be marched into the gas chambers.
Unhinged? Yes!
But as Schwartz spelt out in her evidence at the Royal Commission many in the Jewish community see attacking those who do not support Israel 100% as legitimate. And if that extends to thuggery, look no further than the Jewish group the Lions of Zion and their “activities” – an organisation supported by the powers that be in the Jewish community.
Thankfully the JCA has provided an ever-growing forum and voice for Jews who will not remain silent given Israel’s genocide in Gaza and breaches of multiple international laws and conventions.
Let’s not forget, while Israel denies what a slew of scholars, human rights organisations and aid and medical agencies have found – including those learned on genocide, some of whom even live in Israel itself – the facts on the ground speak volumes. We have all seen and read about it.
Israel clearly stands guilty as charged!
Starting from scratch on nuclear in Australia would take longer, cost more than first-time offshore wind
Sophie Vorrath, Jul 13, 2026, https://reneweconomy.com.au/starting-from-scratch-on-nuclear-in-australia-would-take-longer-cost-more-than-first-time-offshore-wind/
Building nuclear for the first time in Australia would take longer and cost more than building offshore wind for the first time in Australia, according to modelling by Australia’s premier science agency that once again rules out nuclear power from any and all cost-efficient scenarios for a net zero grid.
CSIRO each year delivers an annual GenCost report, a collaboration with the Australian Energy Market Operator that provides an “objective benchmark” on the costs of electricity generation, storage and hydrogen production technologies, to guide policy.
Last week, the chief economist at CSIRO’s Energy Research unit and the lead author of GenCost report, Paul Graham, discussed the findings of the draft report for 2025-26 to the Australian Wind Energy conference in Melbourne, ahead of the release of the final report, due this quarter.
So far in Australia’s journey to net zero emissions by 2050, the electricity sector has done the vast bulk of the heavy lifting on decarbonisation, as solar and wind firmed by storage supply close to half of the generation mix of the National Electricity Market (NEM).
Power plants critical to the country’s electricity production use river water to cool their reactors, which heats the water that is then released back into the river.
The job from here will be tougher, as the last of Australia’s coal fleet is ushered out. The job of the GenCost team at CSIRO is to work out what sort of contribution the electricity sector can continue to make to emissions reduction while still keeping costs as efficient as possible.
“What that means, in effect, is that the electricity sector should do enough abatement so that it doesn’t cost any more than abatement anywhere else in the economy, and to determine that, we can use scenario analysis,” Graham told the conference on Wednesday last week.
CSIRO’s draft GenCost modelling continues to find that a combination of wind and solar with firming technologies is the best way forward on both costs and emissions reductions.
On the flip-side, Graham also shared some of the numbers on where “first-of-a-kind” technologies landed in the modelling.
The below slide [on original] compares the construction times and cost premiums of a range of technologies not yet built at scale in Australia, before, including gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS), black coal with CCS, nuclear small modular reactor, nuclear large-scale, solar thermal and offshore wind.
It’s a timely reminder of why the federal Coalition’s nuclear focused campaign was such a disaster for the party at the 2025 election, and yet remains the favoured energy policy path for the LNP at the same time as it promises to deliver cheaper electricity while also putting the brakes on renewables.
As Graham told the conference, the numbers still well and truly rule out nuclear, while leaving offshore wind still “in the pocket” as a potential part of Australia’s future generation mix.
“All these technologies on the left, on the left there of that table, we’ve never really built at scale in Australia before,” Graham told the conference.
“We have to expect that there’s going to be some sort of premium associated with delivering first project and probably the second project. We tried to work through what we think that premium could be, based on this global analysis that will support projects and how they’ve fared.
“The highest premium seems to be associated with projects that take longer to build, and nuclear … takes the longest, so it’s at least six years, probably eight years. Six years is probably best case scenario, just for the construction stage.
“The data says that those sorts of [nuclear] projects where the first time the country tries to build them, generally costs at least 100% more than the international best practice,” he told the conference.
“And so we’ve got assumptions about what these first of a kind costs will be after we’ve developed the first few projects we can then assume that the workforce is able to build these close to the world best practice and then we can build things at lower cost after that.
“So when we model these different emission intensity targets and we allow for the model to build, either with mature technologies like onshore wind and solar, or onshore wind and solar plus some of these first-of-a-kind projects, then what this shows is the generation mix that the model says is least cost.
“And what that looks like from a cost perspective is that the mature technology scenario is the lowest-cost scenario. It is a bit more expensive to have offshore wind and CCS, and but not too much more, but the most expensive in each case is nuclear,” Graham said.
“The modelling didn’t want to build … particularly a lot of CCS or nuclear, because it’s quite significantly higher than the cost we need to get to net zero, so adding those technologies would only increase the cost of getting to net zero.
“As offshore wind goes, it’s in the pocket. Potentially it would be better if the costs were at the lower end of the range … but we certainly can’t rule out, we certainly wouldn’t say that offshore wind is necessarily in or out, it just depends on where we land on that on that cost uncertainty range.”
From colonial forts to nuclear submarines, Australia’s response to distant conflicts reveals a recurring pattern that continues to shape its defence strategy, writes Professor Vince Hooper.
By Vince Hooper | 13 July 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/from-crimea-to-aukus-how-distant-wars-reshape-australia,21293
IN THE EARLY MONTHS of 1854, as news of Britain’s entry into the Crimean War reached the Australian colonies, an extraordinary panic took hold.
Newspapers debated, in full seriousness, whether Russia would attack Sydney or Melbourne, whether the objective would be occupation or merely the seizure of gold from colonial banks. Fort Denison was commissioned on Pinchgut Island in Sydney Harbour. Victoria passed legislation to establish a Volunteer Corps of up to 2,000 men. A war fought thousands of miles away over a peninsula in the Black Sea was catalysing Australia’s first independent military capability.
The panic did not end with the peace. In 1863, the Russian corvette Bogatyr, flagship of the Pacific squadron under Rear Admiral Popov, sailed into Melbourne undetected. More than 8,000 Melburnians visited the ship during a goodwill tour.
After the corvette departed, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the crew had been surveying the coastal fortifications of Port Jackson and Botany Bay. The revelation deepened the following year when a Polish officer who had deserted from the Bogatyr disclosed that Popov had received orders to attack British naval targets near Australian shores in the event of war.
Russian invasion scares recurred in 1870, when the corvette Boyarin appeared at Hobart; again in 1882, when three Russian warships entered Melbourne and in 1885, when Bare Island Fort stood guard over Botany Bay. For three decades, Crimea’s aftershock kept reshaping Australian defence thinking.
That a war triggered by a dispute over the custody of holy sites in the Holy Land could produce this cascade of consequences at the furthest edge of the British Empire is the analytical point. Australia’s strategic environment is not normally distributed. It is characterised by long periods of apparent stability punctuated by sharp, regime-changing shocks from quarters no plausible risk model would have flagged.
The original Crimean War also embedded its human residue in the colonial landscape. After hostilities ended, the British Government actively encouraged veterans to migrate, investigating New South Wales and Tasmania as suitable destinations. In Western Australia, Crimean veterans populated the pensioner guard force and the broader settler community.
Two Victoria Cross recipients of the 77th Regiment, Sergeant John Park and Private Alexander Wright, received their awards in Sydney.
Russian trophy guns arrived in Adelaide in 1859 and were fired to mark the Duke of Edinburgh’s visit in 1867. Suburbs named after Crimean battles, Balaclava in Melbourne, Sebastopol near Ballarat, Alma and Inkerman across New South Wales and Victoria, wrote the war into the geography that Australians still walk through daily.
Fast forward 160 years and the pattern repeats with unsettling fidelity. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 might have remained a European affair in Australian strategic consciousness. The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014, killing 298 people, including 38 Australian citizens and residents, ensured it did not.
The Abbott Government imposed sanctions, co-sponsored the UN Security Council resolution and pursued accountability through international courts. Abbott publicly vowed to “shirtfront” Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Brisbane G20 just months later, an Australian Rules football term for a front-on collision. The register was antipodean. The underlying dynamic, a distant Crimean event triggering a visceral response at the periphery, was not.
A decade on, the aftershock continues to propagate. In May 2025, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council found Russia responsible under international law for the downing of MH17. Russia appealed; Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the response “deplorable”. The 2014 trigger, like the 1854 trigger before it, has not finished reverberating.
The objection writes itself: MH17 was contingent. A plane happened to be in the wrong airspace. That is not a structural transmission mechanism; it is bad luck. But this objection misunderstands what “fat tails” mean. The whole point of heavy-tailed distributions is that the specific trigger is unpredictable while the class of events is not.
Nobody in 1854 predicted that a dispute over church keys in the Holy Land would catalyse Australian volunteer militias. Nobody in 1863 predicted that a Polish deserter from a Russian corvette would reveal contingency plans to raid Melbourne. Nobody in 2014 predicted that a Buk missile in Donetsk would kill 38 Australians in a sunflower field.
The triggers were contingent. The vulnerability, a peripheral state deeply integrated into alliance networks but geographically remote from their theatres, was structural. Fat tails do not require predictable triggers. They require structural exposure to extreme events.
Russia’s broader invasion of Ukraine in 2022 confirmed the pattern rather than creating it. AUKUS, announced in September 2021, predated the invasion, but the war validated its logic. Le Chatelier’s principle holds that an external shock to equilibrium triggers a compensating response. In 1854, that response was a volunteer corps: modest, reversible, low commitment.
Nuclear-powered submarines, serviced at Plymouth’s Devonport dockyard, are none of those things. The Plymouth connection closes a circle: one of the handful of Australian colonists to fight in the original Crimean War was Spicer Cookworthy, a subaltern in the First Regiment of Foot, bearing the surname of that city’s most famous son, William Cookworthy, the Quaker who discovered china clay in Cornwall and founded the Plymouth porcelain works.
The colonies of the 1850s built forts and raised volunteers. Australia of the 2020s is acquiring nuclear submarines and reorienting its entire defence procurement architecture. The scale has changed, but the mechanism, the propagation of distant shocks through alliance networks to force option exercise at the periphery, has not.
Policymakers who assume mean reversion, or price Australian security using a normal distribution, will be caught out by the next Crimean shock. They always are.
The hypersonic hypocrisy of Pacific nuclear politics
Australia and New Zealand rightly criticise China’s nuclear-capable missile tests in the Pacific. Their silence on repeated US tests exposes a glaring double standard.
In March, the US launched a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile from the Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. Travelling at speeds of more than 24,000 kilometres an hour, it landed near the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands 6,700 kilometres away 24 minutes later.
Minuteman III missiles can deliver up to three separate nuclear warheads, each more than 20 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
On 3 March, 2025, the Marshall Islands formally announced its intention to join the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone by signing the Treaty of Rarotonga.
Searches of the NZ Herald and Stuff websites for stories about the missile test, and the signing of the treaty come up empty.
And yet, on Tuesday, both the NZ Herald and The Post led with news that China had test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile in the Pacific. Neither report made any mention of the 15 ballistic missile tests fired into the Pacific by the USA since 2021.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters and his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong, were both quoted as saying the Chinese missile test went against the intent of the Treaty of Rarotonga.
“The Pacific Islands Forum leaders have made clear that they want the Pacific to be an ocean of peace. We believe this test is inconsistent with that objective,” Wong said.
Wong isn’t wrong.
In 2024, Kiribati publicly criticised an earlier test of a Minuteman III missile that also landed in the Ronald Reagan Space and Missile Test Range located near the Kwajalein Atoll. As the name suggests, the tests are a regular occurrence.
A statement from the President’s office, reported by RNZ, said Kiribati objected equally to China and the US using the South Pacific for test-firing nuclear-capable missiles.
“Kiribati continues to advocate for the cessation of weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean and urges global cooperation to ensure the peace, security, and stability of our shared environment. We remain committed to protecting the peaceful future of the Pacific and safeguarding the well-being of future generations.”
It’s a thought – almost – echoed by Winston Peters in his response to the Chinese test: “This missile was fired into the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone established by the Treaty of Rarotonga. China’s action goes against the object and intent of that Treaty.”
You’ll search long and hard to find any similar criticism of the US missile tests by Ministers Peters and Wong. That’s despite the people of the Marshall Islands themselves and the leaders of neighbouring countries making it clear any testing of ballistic missiles in the Pacific goes against the spirit of the Treaty of Rarotonga.
The Chinese missile test is widely being reported as a response to Australia and Fiji’s signing of the Ocean of Peace Alliance the previous day.
Without confirmation from China, it’s impossible to know for certain, but it seems likely that the alliance – which New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has expressed interest in signing up to – is seen as a ratcheting up of military tensions in the South Pacific.
When it comes to the “object and intent” of the Treaty of Rarotonga, mentioned by Peters, few if any of the signatories would have countenanced one of their members purchasing nuclear-powered submarines.
But in 2023, Australia announced it was doing just that with the planned purchase of three nuclear submarines at an estimated cost of more than A$300 billion (about 15 times the combined GDP of the Forum countries excluding New Zealand and Australia).
Shortly after the announcement, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Damukana Sogavare told the UN General Assembly that his nation “would like to keep our region nuclear-free and put the region’s nuclear legacy behind us… We do not support any form of militarisation in our region that could threaten regional and international peace and stability.”
The legacy Sogavare mentions is nowhere felt more keenly than the Marshall Islands, where the US carried out 67 atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1956, resulting in sky-high rates of thyroid cancer.
The US has paid out just US$150 million in compensation despite the internationally mandated Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal having awarded over US$2 billion in personal injury and property claims.
A survey by the Asia New Zealand Foundation earlier this year found that just 23 per cent of New Zealanders viewed China as a threat, compared to 35 per cent who saw the US as one.
The US has more than 5,000 nuclear warheads with 1,700 actively deployed; China has 620 with 34 deployed.
China has a long-standing policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, while the US refuses to rule it out.
When our leaders claim to be supporting Pacific countries in their commitment to a nuclear-free Pacific by rightly criticising China’s missile tests while steadfastly refusing to criticise the USA’s regular testing of intercontinental nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, they’re indulging in hypersonic hypocrisy.
Cooperation yes, uranium no: planned uranium sales to India would facilitate certain nuclear waste and risk and possible nuclear weapons
Dave Sweeney | Nuclear Free Campaigner, Australian Conservation Foundation | www.acf.org.au, 9 July 26
In response to news of a major uranium deal between Australia and India, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Dave Sweeney said:
“There are serious and unresolved concerns about plans to elevate Australian uranium sales to India.
“For more than a decade there has been a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with India but regulatory concerns have constrained exports.
“A Joint Standing Committee on Treaties examination of the deal in September 2015 recommended a series of clear steps occur before any Australian uranium was supplied to India.
“It said important changes and checks and balances were needed, including independent review of India’s nuclear regulatory regime, improved safety standards, the full separation of India’s military and civil nuclear facilities, improved nuclear decommissioning planning and comprehensive on-site inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“These concerns remain relevant today. There are compelling reasons for Australia not to send uranium to India.
“Australian uranium would fuel radioactive risk and waste and potentially allow the diversion of domestic uranium reserves to fuel India’s nuclear weapons program in an already tense region.
Some in the Indian government basically have admitted as much, including the former head of New Delhi’s official National Security Advisory Board, K. Subrahmanyam who outlined to the Times of India that given ‘India’s uranium ore crunch, it is to India’s advantage to categorize as many power reactors as possible as civilian ones to be refuelled by imported uranium and conserve our native uranium fuel for weapon-grade plutonium production’.
“Australia regularly cites the importance of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet India – a nuclear weapons state – is not a signatory to the NPT.
“Australia should not facilitate atomic exceptionalism or risk in the region.
“Like Australia, India’s energy future is renewable, not radioactive. That is the policy area that the Australia and Indian prime ministers should be preferencing”.
Vile abuse, targeted by Murdoch – The cost of speaking out against Israel
by Stephanie Tran | Jul 2, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/hitlers-jew-judenrat-kapo-the-cost-of-speaking-out-against-israel/
Executive Director of the Jewish Council of Australia, Sarah Schwartz, has told the Bondi Royal Commission of sustained abuse by pro-Israel activists. Stephanie Tran reports.
Giving evidence on Thursday, Sarah Schwartz, a human rights lawyer, said attacks from pro-Israel groups sought to delegitimise Jewish people who criticise Israel.
“They rest on the idea that Jewish identity is inherently tied to Israel, and therefore Jewish people who don’t support Israel or who criticise Israel are not really Jewish and are traitors,” she told the Commission.
Schwartz said she had been referred to as a “self-hating Jew”, “Hitler’s Jew”, “kapo” and “Judenrat”, and had been depicted using Holocaust imagery, including “on a train to concentration camps” and with the yellow Star of David imposed on Jews under Nazi rule.
Holocaust weaponised
She said the atrocities of the Holocaust were a motivation for her Palestine solidarity work and the weaponisation by pro-Israel accounts of Holocaust imagery was “incredibly disturbing”.
“I was taught that never again meant never again for anyone, and that’s why I do the work that I do,” Schwartz said.
“To have the symbols of the Holocaust and Nazi imagery and Jewish persecution used against me has been incredibly disturbing and distressing, and I think it
Schwartz said the stereotype that all Jewish people are politically aligned with Israel “causes immense harm”.
“I speak … almost every day to Jewish people who contact me and who are terrified of speaking out, because they know that if they speak their political convictions, they face the risk of a similar sort of abuse and vilification and targeting that I have experienced.”
Murdoch media coverage fuelled abuse
Schwartz told the commission that reporting by The Australian undermined her safety and ultimately led her to abandon a police application intended to protect her from ongoing harassment.
She recounted an incident in March 2025 after police applied for a personal safety intervention order (PSIO) on her behalf against lawyer Zara Cooper, who targeted Schwartz on Instagram under the pseudonym “@clammy_fraud”.
Schwartz said she first learned of the application through a journalist from The Australian, who contacted her to say the newspaper was preparing a story.
“I informed him I hadn’t been informed of the nature of the PSIO,” she said.
“When I asked him if he could provide me with a copy, he said he couldn’t provide me with a copy … because I didn’t know its contents, I also couldn’t really respond to a lot of it, because it was a police application.”
Schwartz said the following day’s front-page article incorrectly suggested she, rather than police, had initiated the proceedings in an attempt to suppress free speech.
Free speech for me, not for thee
he told the Commission that The Australian subsequently published further articles about the case, including reproducing images and slurs that formed part of the material relied upon by police in seeking the intervention order.
“What was most distressing to me is The Australian chose to republish some of the offensive imagery that was the basis on which police applied for the PSIO,” she said.
“[The Australian] republished content that took my image and placed it on a train to concentration camps, content calling me a kapo and other various slurs.”
Schwartz said the coverage convinced her that pursuing legal protection would expose her to further public attention and place her at greater risk.
“It became very clear to me after that coverage that this was becoming a media circus,” she said.
“Having reported these matters to police … was actually something that was
“going to make me less safe because of the media coverage.”
She subsequently told police she no longer wished to proceed with the intervention order, and the application was withdrawn. She has since been reluctant to report further incidents because she fears doing so would attract similar publicity.
“It’s become very clear to me that, because of the media interest in me as a person, but particularly because of News Corp’s targeting of me, it’s not going to be safe for me to engage in reporting,” she said.
She also expressed concern that republishing the abusive material normalised antisemitic attacks against Jewish critics of Israel.
“I think that media reporting really normalises the use of these terms against other Jewish people … people see that coverage and think that it is legitimate to call a Jewish person Nazi-aligned or to place our face on a train to concentration camps.”
Being Pro-Palestine is not antisemitism
Schwartz dispelled suggestions that pro-Palestinian activism is a significant driver of antisemitism, stating that, despite attempts to portray Palestine solidarity spaces as hostile to Jews, that had not reflected her own experience.
“I know that there is a lot of public discourse … that suggests that human rights spaces and Palestine solidarity spaces, in particular, are spaces that might be hostile to Jewish people,” she said.
“That hasn’t been my experience at all.”
Instead, Schwartz said she had received “many messages of support and clear condemnations of antisemitism” from Muslim colleagues following the Bondi terror attack.
Government response
Schwartz criticised the government’s responses to antisemitism, which have disproportionately focused on the Palestine solidarity movement, including the banning of protest slogans.
“I think that government responses, which locate the source of anti-Semitism within the Palestine solidarity movement, suggest for Jewish people who are also part of that movement that either we’re not really Jewish or that we are somehow against Jewish people in our own communities.”
Asked what measures would most effectively combat antisemitism, Schwartz said governments should prioritise addressing far-right extremism and
“It’s really important for us to take the threat of far-right extremism really seriously … we know that it’s rising and it’s becoming more mainstream,” she said.
“It is critically important that governments and institutions don’t adopt policies in response to antisemitism that engage in that form of conflation itself that suggests that antisemitism is coming from the Palestine solidarity movement.”
She also called for progressive Jewish organisations to be included in policymaking on antisemitism.
“It’s really important that organisations such as the Jewish Council and other progressive Jewish organizations actually have a seat at the table” she said.
“It shows the broader community that
“the Jewish community, like every community, has a diversity of opinions.”
Former WA health chief warns AUKUS inquiry of ‘nuclear disaster waiting to happen’
A former Western Australian public health chief has warned the AUKUS inquiry that there is a ‘nuclear disaster waiting to happen’, arguing there is no safety plan to protect Perth communities in the event of a major nuclear accident at naval base HMAS Stirling.
By Tegan George,Tue 30 Jun 2026, https://thepoint.com.au/new/260630-former-wa-health-chief-warns-aukus-inquiry-of-nuclear-disaster-waiting-to-happen
A former Western Australian public health chief has warned the AUKUS inquiry that there is a ‘nuclear disaster waiting to happen’, arguing there is no safety plan to protect Perth communities in the event of a major nuclear accident at naval base HMAS Stirling.
Dr Colin Hughes, the former head of Public Health in Perth, told the independent inquiry that governments had failed to adequately prepare for the possibility of a nuclear accident involving visiting or serviced submarines.
“There is actually no nuclear safety plan for Rockingham, Kwinana, or the people of Fremantle and Perth in the case of a major nuclear catastrophe,” he said.
Dr Hughes described a worst-case scenario involving a major incident at a submarine servicing facility, triggering explosions, fires, radiation leaks and mass evacuations across Perth’s southern suburbs.
“Concrete slabs are scattered across access roads, twisted steel hangs from shattered structures,” he said.
“Sections of the reactor building are simply gone. Fires burn in dozens of locations.
He said emergency responders would be confronted by an “invisible threat”.
“Radiation cannot be seen. It has no smell, no colour, no warning.
“Radiation alarms on emergency vehicles begin sounding, and some responders stare at the readings, unsure whether the instruments are malfunctioning.
“Commanders quickly realise this is not a normal fire.”
Dr Hughes said the scenario had been developed with the assistance of ChatGPT and was based on historical nuclear disasters, including Chernobyl and Fukushima.
“The precautionary principle in medicine is always to take the worst-case scenario and to say, ‘we need to be able to plan for it and prevent it’,” he told the inquiry.
Under the AUKUS agreement, Australia will purchase three second-hand Virginia-class submarines from the United States, with deliveries expected from the early 2030s.
Dr Hughes argued governments needed to answer some fundamental questions before moving ahead with the trilateral security pact.
“Where is the hazard equipment for our first responders to be able to go down there and extract people who have been injured? And where do they go? What are the hospital facilities?” he asked.
“Where’s the map that says this childcare centre, that kindergarten, that school, that aged care centre — how many people are there? Where are they going to go, and how are we going to do it?
“Because that is what we need to know as a population.”
Commissioner Dr Carmen Lawrence, a former WA Premier, said comparisons with overseas nuclear submarine bases highlighted how little information was available to communities living near HMAS Stirling.
“I’ve had a good look at some of the material that exists in the UK and the US, in communities that are home bases for nuclear-powered vessels and, in some cases, nuclear-armed vessels,” she said.
“And I have to say on the basis of that comparison we’re not doing very well at this stage in terms of informing our population, let alone first responders.”
Dr Hughes told the hearing that Western Australia had navigated the COVID-19 pandemic successfully because the state had ‘listened to the science’.
‘We saved over 10,000 lives because government listened to health professionals,’ he said.
“But they’re not listening now. They’re ignoring the fact that we have a nuclear disaster waiting to happen.”
Commissioner Lawrence acknowledged that while the chance of an accident may be ‘low probability’, the consequences would be ‘high impact’.
Dr Hughes also raised concerns about the potential long-term health impacts of radiation exposure, citing studies that showed “people who serve on the submarine are 30 per cent more likely to develop cancers of various kinds.”
He argued governments needed to assess the risks associated with accidents, terrorism and military conflict and ensure communities were prepared.
“My plea is, please, if you are going to continue with this madness, at least tell the people of Rockingham and Kwinana how they are going to escape or protect themselves from a nuclear disaster waiting to happen,” he said.
Liberal frontbencher gorges on nuclear freebies
Rear Window, Hannah Wootton, Jul 7, 2026
You’d think visiting Europe in its latest heatwave would convince anyone of the sun’s power. But when Charles
Kiefel is paying your airfare, nuclear still beats solar.
Hannah Wootton, Jul 7, 2026 –If there’s one thing opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan loves more than
nuclear power, it’s a free “study tour”. Especially if it involves the uranium sector’s
biggest cheerleader Charles Kiefel.
In mid-June, Tehan headed to London, Oslo and Munich for “high-level discussions around energy, industry and defence policy”. His economy flights, accommodation and meals were all covered by energy business groups the Svalbard Group and Just Transition Institute.
But Tehan also got a business-class airfare from Munich back to Melbourne paidfor by Kiefel, the “former director of the Clean Energy Regulator”, according to his
parliamentary register of interests. Funny how Kiefel’s title doesn’t mention the businessman is a proponent of exporting uranium to the US. Or that he funded a separate “study tour” for Tehan to the US last September to look at nuclear
reactors.
But flying economy all the way back from Europe is a Europe is a gruelling ask for a man such as Tehan, who is carrying the burden of an atomic future. And Kiefel is certainly a fan of gifting him the finer things in life.
The US trip included putting Tehan up in Washington DC’s luxury Hay-Adams Hotel. It overlooks Lafayette Square and charges $1800-a-night. The stay wasrevealed by this column [https://www.afr.com/rear-window/senior-liberal-s-luxury-hotel-tv-gaffe-20250909-p5mtp6], when Tehan beamed into a Sky News interview from his hotel room and forgot to turn off the TV screen with the hotel’s branding in the background.
The investment has been worth it for Kiefel. Tehan’s fervent commitment to nuclear [https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/why-i-believe-the-liberal-party-must- reset-its-climate-playbook-20251105-p5n7wa] only increased following the US trip. No wonder the anti-nuclear brigade went feral over it.
He’s secured a lasting loyalty, too. Just four days before Tehan jetted off for the June trip, he penned an opinion piece for his own website accusing “Labor’s energy luddites” of “dragging Australia into the Dark Ages”.
The evidence for all this? “What American officials told me
[https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/nuclear-energy-not-done-with-yet-say-liberals-20250908- p5mt72], repeatedly, when I visited” last year. Oh Danny Boy, at least pretend you came up with your opinions independent of multimillionaire backers.
He even referenced conversations with Singaporeans on that trip who told him how their government was looking into new nuclear technologies. “Singapore, a city-state with no natural resources, is preparing seriously. What exactly is our
excuse?” Could it be the abundant sources of non-nuclear energy?
The June trip presumably offered a new source for Tehan to cite. It included site visits to universities and meetings with executives from BP, Shell, and Vitol. As for the “defence policy” part of his discussions, Tehan visited an Oxfordshire facility which is “home of the UK’s civil and military nuclear science developments” and met with “companies involved in defence” in Norway. Plus the Norwegian energy and defence ministers. Reassuring stuff.
Tehan told us he took the trip as “any opportunity to get access to senior government ministers when you’re in opposition is too good an opportunity to pass, especially when it doesn’t cost the taxpayer a cent”.
The Coalition promises an independent, self-reliant energy future. A shame that the same can’t be said of Tehan’s policy positions or travel plans.
Pacific nuclear survivors urge Australia to sign and ratify UN treaty banning nuclear weapons ahead of key conference
Australia is the only state party to a nuclear-weapon-free zone treaty in any region of the world that has claimed to be protected by the nuclear weapons of another state.
Andrew Mathieson, July 3, 2026, https://nit.com.au/03-07-2026/25161/pacific-nuclear-survivors-urges-australia-to-sign-and-ratify-the-un-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-ahead-of-key-party-conference
A delegation of Pacific nuclear survivors joined Indigenous advocates in Canberra on Wednesday to call on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to sign and ratify an international disarmament agreement which aims to comprehensively ban and eliminate nuclear weapons in the region.
Members of the Parliamentary Friends of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons invited members of the Pacific civil society to Australia’s Federal parliament to lay bare the human and environmental toll of tests over several decades.
The Australian parliamentary friends forms a bipartisan, cross-party forum, which currently is comprised of 47 of the 226 MPs across both houses and from all sides of politics, who meet and interact with nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation proponents to discuss treaty matters and their ongoing issues.
They were also reportedly joined this week by Anangu-Yankunytjatjara woman and second-generation nuclear test survivor, Karina Lester, who recently spoke with National Indigenous Times about the impact on her family of the 1953 British nuclear tests at Emu Field in remote South Australia.
She urged mobs that were “tested on, mined on, threatened with nuclear waste dumps or feared the impacts on their people, country and culture” to find their voice and speak up at the public inquiry that had commenced last month in Melbourne.
Australia has not yet signed or ratified the treaty which the United Nations first established as a resolution in 2017.
The invitation to multiple Pacific islander representatives coincided with two significant anniversaries falling on the first two days of the month: the 80th year of the first US test detonation on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands followed by the 60th year of the first French test detonation at Mururoa Atoll, Mā’ohi Nui in colonial French Polynesia.
‘Powerful nations can have consequences that last for generations’
Pacific civil society members lined up to plea to Australian MPs from the Labor Party, the Liberal-National coalition, the Greens and Independents.
“The experiences of the Marshall Islands and other Pacific communities remind us the decisions made by powerful nations can have consequences that last for generations,” the spokesperson for a concerned Marshall Islands Student Association, Samuel Barton, told the gathering.
“We ask the world to remember our history, stand with survivors, pursue nuclear disarmament, and place human dignity, justice, and peace at the centre of global decision-making.”
The UN general assembly first decided nine years ago to convene a conference to negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit the use of nuclear weapons.
The Australian government announced in 2023 that it was “considering the treaty systematically and methodically, as part of (Australia’s) ambitious agenda to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament”.
According to the Labor government’s national defence strategy published two years ago, “Australia’s best protection against the increasing risk of nuclear escalation is (the) US extended nuclear deterrence and the pursuit of new avenues of arms control”.
But this implicit endorsement of nuclear weapons is incompatible with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the government has also admitted.
‘Australia must match its history with urgent new action’
Australia is the only state party to a nuclear-weapon-free zone treaty in any region of the world that has claimed to be protected by the nuclear weapons of another state.
Reverend James Bhagwan, General Secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, said that in a region of increasingly militarisation that signing the treaty “would be a clear commitment to a nuclear-free free Pacific and a genuine ocean of peace”.
Merewalesi Tuilau, speaking on behalf of the Fiji Veterans and Families Association, added the Pacific “demands and deserves complete freedom from nuclear weapons and their threat – not simply management, but total elimination.
“Australia has shown it can lead,” Mr Tuilau said, “Australia must match its history with urgent new action”.
‘We want nuclear weapons testing to be relegated to history’
The anniversaries of the dual detonations in the Pacific were acknowledged after Labor member for Macquarie Susan Templeton put forward a motion to push the government to signing the treaty ahead of its ALP national conference later this month.
“With the legacy of nuclear testing still felt deeply in Australia, our region, right across the world, we want nuclear weapons testing to be relegated to history,” she said.
“I will continue to advocate for the importance of sustained international commitment to nuclear non-proliferation, including the Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and also the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”
The Canberra event was a part of a wider lobby and advocacy tour that also took in Sydney and Melbourne, sharing heartfelt testimony from Indigenous communities affected by nuclear testing and calling for a Pacific region that is “decolonised, demilitarised, de-nuclearised and decarbonised”.
Articles 6 and 7 of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons call on “victim assistance, environmental remediation, and international cooperation and assistance” to address ongoing and unresolved humanitarian, human rights, and environmental impacts from nuclear weapons.
Royal Commission on cohesion hears only half the story
the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect
By Wayne Hawkins | 2 July 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/royal-commission-on-cohesion-hears-only-half-the-story,21247
Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion risks undermining its own purpose by excluding evidence of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism, writes Wayne Hawkins.
AUSTRALIA’S Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion is now in its third Sydney hearing block, running until 10 July.
It was established in January, in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack that killed 15 people on a night meant for celebration. Nobody disputes that the Commission has real work to do. The rise in antisemitic incidents recorded since October 2023 is documented, severe and deserving of the most rigorous scrutiny our institutions can offer.
But an inquiry into hatred reveals something about itself in who it decides not to hear from. And on that count, this Commission has already answered the question.
In May, the Loud Jewish Collective applied for leave to appear before the first hearing block, wanting to give evidence about their own members’ experiences of antisemitism. They were refused — the Commissioner was, in the words used to reject them, “not satisfied” that they had a direct and substantial interest in the matter.
The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network met the same fate. Two organisations, both with members who have lived antisemitism or anti-Palestinian racism directly, both judged to be outside the scope of an inquiry into hatred and social cohesion in Australia.
I find it hard to read that as anything other than a decision about which Australians get to define what cohesion means.
I wrote a parliamentary submission earlier this year arguing that Islamophobia is racism — not by analogy, not as a lesser cousin of antisemitism, but structurally, mechanistically, the same thing happening to a different group. Collective blame. The demand that an entire community continuously prove its loyalty to the actions of people who share only its faith. The recasting of legitimate political grievance – in this case, mass civilian death in Gaza – as evidence of an inherent, civilisational danger.
These are not two separate phenomena needing two separate inquiries that never speak to each other. They are the same mechanism, pointed in two directions at once, often by the same actors in the same news cycle.
The Commission’s own proceedings have illustrated the problem it was never asked to examine. Commissioner Virginia Bell described the 7 October attack, in passing, as a “Hamas invasion”, a characterisation that quietly recasts a population under decades of occupation as the invading force on their own land.
Witnesses in an SBS News report on the second hearing block have testified to being “tired” of seeing Palestinian flags at cultural events, of overhearing artists call for a free Palestine, of having to scroll past footage of starvation in Gaza on their phones.
These are real discomforts and I don’t dismiss them. But an Inquiry that treats a 45-second elevator ride past distressing news as a harm worth recording, while refusing entry to the people living the underlying catastrophe, has told us where its sympathies sit before a single recommendation is written.
This is not a call to relitigate the Commission’s right to exist, or to diminish what Jewish Australians have endured since the Bondi attack and well before it. It is a call to notice the asymmetry, because the asymmetry is the story.
No one has asked Christian Australians to account for Christian nationalist violence as the price of being heard on social cohesion. No one demands that Buddhist or Hindu Australians distance themselves from documented nationalist violence against Muslim minorities in Myanmar and India before their testimony is taken seriously. Only one direction of scrutiny in this country currently requires an entire community to prove, in advance and as a condition of entry, that it is not secretly the threat.
I don’t say this to score a point against the Commission. I say it because the same evening news that reports rising antisemitism in Australia – correctly, and without my objection – routinely fails to report the parallel rise in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian abuse, the vandalised mosques, the women afraid to wear hijab in public, the children told by implication that their faith makes them suspect.
A Royal Commission with “social cohesion” in its title, that structurally cannot hear from the second-largest group experiencing religious and racial hostility in this country, is not examining social cohesion. It is examining one half of a single problem and calling the result whole.
The fix here isn’t complicated and it doesn’t require abandoning the Commission’s core purpose. It requires the Commissioner to recognise that anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia sit inside the same terms of reference as antisemitism, not outside them — because they are produced by the same mechanism of collective blame, and because a finding on “social cohesion” that only canvasses the cohesion of part of the country isn’t a finding at all.
Bell still has time, before her final report in December, to widen the door rather than defend its current width.
Naming a mechanism early is not alarmism — it’s the only thing that has ever interrupted one before it finishes running its course. Every Australian who has had a synagogue vandalised, a mosque firebombed, or a hijab grabbed in the street deserves the same seriousness from the institutions meant to protect them.
An Inquiry that only extends that seriousness in one direction isn’t building cohesion. It’s choosing sides while insisting it isn’t.
Wayne Hawkins is an independent commentator based in Tasmania and an independent candidate for the federal seat of Clark.
How the Iran War Fuel Crisis Is Reshaping the Pacific
June 25, 2026, Hugo Temby, Australian National University and Joel Nilon, Australian National University for The Conversation, https://scheerpost.com/2026/06/25/how-the-iran-war-fuel-crisis-is-reshaping-the-pacific/
The past five years have not been easy for the people of the Pacific. COVID restrictions disrupted tourism and upended supply chains, while global fuel shocks raised prices and hit island economies hard.
The region relies on expensive imports of fossil fuels, as domestic sources are largely lacking. Some nations spend up to 25% of their GDP on securing fuel, even before this year’s price spikes.
In recent months, authorities in the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu announced emergency measures to conserve fuel. Fiji’s main energy provider has warned electricity rationing is now a possibility, and the Samoan government is considering school closures to save fuel.
News of a peace deal between the United States and Iran has been welcomed. But even if the deal holds, it’s unlikely to lead to quick relief.
In May, the region’s leaders took a rare collective step by invoking the Biketawa Declaration by consensus. It means governments are united in their response to the ongoing fuel crisis.
Why is this significant?
Pacific leaders formalised this declaration in 2000 at the Biketawa Islet in Kiribati as a way to collectively respond to major regional challenges such as conflict.
The declaration paved the way for the long-running Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (2003–17) during a period of conflict, and the Pacific Regional Assistance Mission to Nauru (2006–09) during an economic crisis.
Over time, it has been drawn on to manage the region’s security more broadly, including environmental and social threats.
Most recently, the declaration enabled a regional response to the COVID pandemic, allowing transport of vaccines and other medical equipment to Pacific countries during lockdown periods.
This year’s fuel crisis has affected the entire region. As Pacific Islands Forum Secretary General Baron Waqa recently warned, the region is “highly exposed to external shocks”. He said the fuel crisis is:
beginning to intersect across Pacific economies, with direct implications on essential services, connectivity, economic resilience and the livelihoods of our people
The first step has been to establish a regional response mechanism to the fuel crisis, encouraging better coordination between nations.
An unequal crisis
The fuel crisis poses a bigger challenge to Pacific Island countries than many other nations. Almost all the region’s fuel is imported from a handful of East Asian countries, where it is refined. These countries were in turn highly reliant on oil from the Middle East – 80% of the crude oil processed in refineries was transported via the Strait of Hormuz.
The full impact of the Iran war has not yet washed through. Tankers in transit before the Hormuz closure have continued to make deliveries, while support from donors such as Australia has helped some countries manage what has, so far, mostly been a price shock.
Nations such as Fiji had healthy fuel reserves before this year’s fuel crisis.
But others had very little buffer, from about a month’s supply (Tonga, Cook Islands and Tuvalu) to even less (Kiribati).
Maintaining fuel storage facilities in difficult environmental conditions is an ongoing challenge for many nations.
What now?
It’s an uncertain time for the Pacific. The Iran peace deal — if it holds — may mean more oil products can flow. But damage to energy infrastructure will take time to repair. Insurance premiums and food prices may stay high for some time.
Pacific foreign ministers have left open the possibility of more direct measures if fuel security isn’t assured. These haven’t been determined, but joint purchases of fuel could be on the table if political and practical challenges can be overcome.
Australia has indicated its priority is to monitor the situation in the Pacific and engage with Pacific partners. In a recent round of “fuel diplomacy” in Asian markets, Australia called for continued attention to the Pacific’s unique energy security needs.
But difficult choices lie ahead.
Access to affordable, reliable energy is one of the world’s sustainable development goals, and Pacific communities deserve no less.
The region and its partners will need to find a way to respond to the immediate crisis without worsening the longer-term and much larger threat posed by climate change.
Before this year’s crisis, many leaders were focused on reducing fossil fuel imports and boosting energy self-reliance through renewables. The goal was to be the first region to run on 100% renewables.
Fuel security is the most pressing problem today. But the broader goal is still clear. Pacific energy ministers recently reaffirmed the goal of a 100% renewable energy future and agreed to accelerate the rollout.
The world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels created the conditions for both crises. Only reducing the world’s reliance on fossil fuels will solve them.
Hugo Temby, Research fellow, Australian National University and Joel Nilon, Senior Pacific Fellow, Australian National University
Macdonald Witch Hunt. Melbourne Uni cancels cardiologist – Israel lobby pressure
by Wendy Bacon | Jun 27, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/witch-hunt-melbourne-uni-cancels-surgeon-israel-lobby-pressure/
The University of Melbourne has cancelled a prestigious lecture by eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald after Zionist pressure. Wendy Bacon reports.
Eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald, who was scheduled to give a prestigious lecture at University of Melbourne in July, has been ‘cancelled’ due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Zionists.
In April, Macdonald, who is a pioneer and innovator in heart transplant medicine, was invited by University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital to deliver the annual Memorial lecture in honour of surgeon John Clarebrough.
The lecture is delivered at the Surgical Forum, which is the premier event for the partnership between University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Second time cancelled
This is the second occasion on which Macdonald, who supports Palestinian rights and has attended rallies, has been cancelled due to pressure from Zionists.
Last year, he was on forced leave from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for seven weeks before the complaint against him by doctors associated with the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance ( AZHA) was dismissed following an independent investigation.
Macdonald was contacted but declined to comment for this story.
In early May, a Melbourne University staff member posted a promotion for the Surgical Forum on Facebook, where Macdonald’s name remained on the program until yesterday, when it was removed and replaced with St Vincent’s surgeon Dr Elizabeth Paretz.
A promotional brochure was produced and remains in circulation.
“Unnamed accusers” – invite withdrawn”
On June 12, more than a month after the lecture was first promoted, University of Melbourne Acting Head of Surgery Professor Justin Yeung and St Vincent’s surgeon and Adjunct Professor Matthew Read, who chairs the Surgical Forum, sent a letter withdrawing the invitation.
“concerns” were raised regarding remarks“
They informed Macdonald that “concerns” were raised regarding remarks attributed to you that have been “widely interpreted as antisemitic”.
After “careful” consideration, the organisers had come to the conclusion that the remarks could distract from the forum event. This suggests that those who made the decision understood that if they did not withdraw their invitation, Macdonald’s unnamed accusers would conduct a public campaign against him.
The accusers were referring to a 30-second question that Macdonald asked at a Palestinian Justice community forum last year, during which he said that, before he had been informed by the Australian government that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, he considered that Mossad could be behind some antisemitic incidents.
(Mossad itself acknowledges that it conducts extensive covert operations, including embedding agents in other countries, including Iran.)
No right of reply
Unusually, given the vague and anonymous nature of the allegations and the fact that St Vincent’s knew the 2025 allegations had been dismissed, the organisers gave MacDonald no opportunity to respond to his critics before making their decision.
Following the withdrawal of the invitation and before it became public, MWM became aware that the Forum organisers were informed that the allegations had been dismissed in 2025, and St Vincent’s removed negative and defamatory statements about him from its website.
They were also aware that during reconciliation week, Macdonald presented a ‘Grand Round’ at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney about his monthly visits to run a heart health clinic for the Aboriginal community in Condobolin in NSW for two decades.
This lecture was attended by the CEO of St Vincents Health, Chris Blake and was positively received without anyone publicly raising last year’s incident.
Despite the facts
Despite knowing all these facts, University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s refused to reverse their decision.
Their decision denies those who would have attended the lecture the benefit of Macdonald’s first-hand and up-to-date report of his research findings and his practice, which has saved thousands of lives.
The event would have proceeded smoothly if it had not been for the determination of unnamed Zionists or those influenced by them to silence and punish Macdonald.
Uni’s tepid response
MWM put questions to the St Vincent’s Foundation, which is responsible for the bequest that supports the lecture. We were told that no questions would be answered.
MWM also put detailed questions to Professor Jason Yeung, but received no answers.
We also put questions to the Interim Vice Chancellor, Glyn Davis, asking whether he or other members of senior management were made aware of these events, and, having been made aware, whether he would investigate.
We got the following response from a Uni spokesperson:
“After careful consideration, the lecture organisers decided to withdraw the invitation to the guest speaker. This will enable the lecture to run smoothly so students, researchers and the wider medical community can focus on the important topics which will be discussed.
“Each year, faculties, schools and our partner institutes hold hundreds of events such as this. The University supports and encourages the organisers to make the appropriate judgements to ensure they are delivered without any disruptions.”
As a result of the decision, those attending the lecture will not hear about the “important topics” which would have been “discussed.”
“Antisemitic” or anti-Israel?
So the situation goes like this: A person is invited to participate in a public university event. Some unnamed individuals claim that the invitee has previously made a remark that some pro-Israeli people considered ‘antisemitic’.
These complainants convey a message that they will create a public fuss if the event goes ahead. The invitee is given no right of reply and is ‘cancelled’.
It’s a laissez-faire attitude to political censorship and potential bullying if ever there was one.
MWM also asked the Interim VC Davis: Do you agree that to cancel such a prestigious and publicised lecture on the basis of anonymous allegations without even giving Professor Macdonald a chance to respond does not meet the values of integrity, justice and transparency on which University of Melbourne claims to conduct its affairs?
We got no reply, but the answer is obvious. It doesn’t.
Macdonald attack an AHPRA concern
This second attack sends a disturbing message to Australian health workers who are already alarmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (AHPRA) joint statement with the Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, that the regulator will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its handling of complaints.
Over 1,400 health workers and 60 medical organisations have signed an open letter to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its decision. They warn that AHPRA’s new position will have a “chilling effect” on practitioners advocating for Palestine and have called on the regulator to reverse its decision.
Their concerns are similar to those of the British Medical Association, which this week voted to drop the IHRA definition amid growing concerns that “healthcare workers are being punished for having views on international conflicts
Pursuit of Macdonald
This second ‘canceling’ of Macdonald provides evidence that some of those who wanted his suspension from St Vincent’s last year did not accept the resolution of the incident in his favour. Macdonald’s seven-week absence from his patients at St Vincents for doing nothing wrong was not enough.
An organisation called the Australian Zionist Health Alliance (AZHA) has been a key player in both last year’s attack on Macdonald and the campaign to get APHRA to adopt the IHRA definition.
The Alliance was formed in August 2025, and since early last year, it has been attacking APHRA for failing to take action against antisemitism.
Dr Jeremy Goldin is one of AZHA’s members. He is a sleep specialist at St Vincents Private Hospital and a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne.
Goldin was one of three named members of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC) who signed a letter calling for Macdonald to be immediately suspended and investigated following his comment at the Palestinian Justice Forum.
Goldin has welcomed APHRA’s decision on his LinkedIn account, on which he regularly reposts items supporting Israel, including a description of findings that Israel is committing genocide as a ‘fantasy.’
MWM asked both AZHA’s Public Affairs Officer, Sharon Stoliar, and Goldin if they had played any role in raising concerns about Macdonald’s planned lecture at the University of Melbourne. We received no reply from Stoliar, whose involvement in well-funded far-right political organisations, including the astro-turfing group Minority Impact Coalition, was revealed during last year’s Federal election.
Goldin responded, “You’d have to check with the University of Melbourne on this.”
Children and War event junked
Last September, another member of AZHA, Dr Doran Samuell, was involved in stopping a Grand Round on Children and War being held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In light of this week’s shocking UN Commission of Inquiry report, which found that Israel deliberately kills children, that cancellation is a glaring example of a poor decision to cancel.
According to Australian Jewish News, AZHA has been in overdrive collecting material for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
It has developed an AI tool that uses prompts to help health professionals to prepare submissions and evaluate them against the IHRA definition. The AZHA considers promoting boycotts of Israel, chanting ‘From the River to sea, Palestine will be free’ or “lack of Zionist voices in senior or diversity leadership roles” as examples of antisemitism or anti-zionism.
This week, the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its adoption of the IHRA definition, which it described as “inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive”. The IHRA definition … introduces an element of risk for health workers who speak out in relation to Israel’s actions, despite the widespread condemnation globally, including by governments, of those same actions,” wrote MAPW.
“This covert attack on Macdonald highlights those risks.“
If a senior and highly respected professor can be silenced in this way, what chance does a junior Palestinian or Lebanese health worker or student have?
Friends of the Earth Adelaide has made a submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry
Philip White, June 29 2026
FoE Adelaide’s submission added perspectives related to national security, safety, employment and radioactive waste. Click here to read the full submission.
Based on decades of experience regarding nuclear waste management issues and debates in Australia, our submission focused on those problems insofar as they relate to AUKUS.
By rights, the parliament should conduct a genuine public review of the AUKUS program, given that it commits Australian taxpayers to spending hundreds of billions of dollars for decades to come with dubious benefit to our security in return.
In the absence of an official inquiry, we are hopeful that this independent inquiry will shine a light on the many issues that should have been considered before the government committed Australia to AUKUS.
The first hearing, held in Melbourne on 11 June, received many high-quality presentations. Most of the points that we would make were covered in that hearing. In particular, we endorse the comments made by the expert witnesses: Gareth Evans,
Tilman Ruff, Richard Tanter, John Lander, Joseph Camilleri, Rod Campbell and Dave Sweeney. Their critiques of the flaws in AUKUS align with ours, including in regard to the following:
• sacrifice of Australian sovereignty,
• negative impact on national security,
• opportunity cost,
• questionable industrial and employment benefits,
• safety risks and environmental cost,
• challenge of managing and disposing of radioactive waste, including foreign-sourced waste,
• negative impact on First Nations people,
• nuclear proliferation and safeguards implications of military reactors powered by highly enriched uranium fuel,
• implications for our obligations under the Treaty of Rarotonga of ‘rotation’ through Australian bases of nuclear weapon-capable vessels and aircraft, and
• the uncertainty that nuclear-powered submarines will even be delivered.
FoE Adelaide’s submission added perspectives related to national security, safety, employment and radioactive waste. Click here to read the full submission.
1 This month.
20 September –National Day of Action in Melbourne on the International Day of Peace
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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Australians deserve the truth
about
AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
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 