Antinuclear

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.

April 19, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

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.

April 17, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The Capture of Australia: How a Dying Ideology is Taking Over Our Country

7 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-capture-of-australia-how-a-dying-ideology-is-taking-over-our-country/

Dedicated to every Australian who will not let their country become a client state. To the students and academics who see what is happening. To the future we must defend.

The Lie at the Heart of Zionism

The Zionist project was never about returning to an ancient homeland. It was about power. It was about creating a state where Jews could exercise the same colonial domination that European powers had exercised across the world.

The evidence is overwhelming. In 1896, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism, wrote in his diary: “We must expropriate gently the private property on the estates assigned to us. We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our country.” He was talking about the Palestinians.’

Herzl also considered other locations for the Jewish state – Argentina, Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, Uganda. Zionism was not tied to Palestine. It was tied to the idea of Jewish supremacy. Palestine was chosen not because of ancient ties, but because it was weak, because it was available, because the colonial powers were willing to facilitate the project.

The 1947 UN Partition Plan was imposed against the will of the majority of the population. The Nakba that followed – the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – was not an accident. It was planned. It was executed. It was the foundation of the state.’The lie of Zionism is that it is about Jewish survival. It is about Jewish dominance. And that lie has now been exposed to the world.

The Collapse of Israel: A Projected Timeline

Israel is not sustainable. The signs are everywhere.

2023-2024: The Gaza genocide. The International Court of Justice finds it “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide. The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. The global South turns away. The young turn away. The old alliances fray.

2025: The war expands. Iran enters directly. The United States is drawn in. The cost becomes unsustainable. Oil prices spike. Global inflation returns. The American public turns against the war. The alliance fractures.

2026: The war continues. Israeli casualties mount. The economy collapses. The reservist system breaks. Mass emigration begins. The Israeli elite – the tech entrepreneurs, the financiers, the professionals – begin leaving.

2027-2028: A political crisis. The coalition fractures. Early elections. A new government sues for peace. But the damage is done. The International Court of Justice issues its final ruling: genocide. Sanctions are imposed. Israel becomes a pariah state.

2029-2030: The collapse accelerates. The economy is in freefall. The military is exhausted. The settler project – the entire infrastructure of occupation – becomes unsustainable. The international community imposes a solution. The two-state solution is dead. A single state with equal rights is the only option. The Zionist project ends.

This is not speculation. This is the trajectory of every colonial project. Apartheid South Africa lasted 46 years. Rhodesia lasted 15 years after its Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Israel has been an apartheid state since 1967. Its time is running out.

The Zionist Network: How Australia Was Captured

As Israel collapses, the Zionist network is looking for a new home. They have chosen Australia.

The Capture Mechanism:

1. Donations. The Henroth Trust, linked to Special Envoy Jillian Segal, donated $280,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024-25. Similar donations flow to Labor. Money buys access. Access buys influence. Influence buys policy.
2. “Educational” Tours. For decades, Australian politicians, journalists, academics, and union leaders have been offered free trips to Israel. They visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. They meet with Israeli officials. They are shown what the Israeli government wants them to see. They return to Australia as advocates for the Zionist project. They do not see this as a conflict of interest. They see it as “education.”
3. The Fear Weapon. The most powerful tool in the Zionist arsenal is the accusation of antisemitism. Any Australian who criticises Israel, who questions the donations, who opposes the training, who speaks up for Palestinian rights- they are immediately labelled antisemitic. The fear of this label silences politicians, journalists, academics, and public servants. It is the perfect weapon because it does not require evidence. It only requires accusation.
4. Institutional Capture. The Zionist network has placed its people in key positions. Jillian Segal as Special Envoy. Greg Craven as overseer of university “training.” The appointments are not accidental. They are deliberate. They are the final stage of capture.

The Timeline of Repression: What Is Coming

The capture is accelerating. The timeline is clear.

2025: Hate speech laws passed. They criminalise speech the government finds objectionable. They give unprecedented discretion to the executive.

December 2025: Bondi terror attack. The government uses it to pass laws giving police the power to ban all protests in entire areas for up to 90 days. The “sledgehammer” approach.

February 2026: Herzog visit. The Major Events Act – designed for sporting events – is used to suppress protest. Police violence is unleashed on peaceful demonstrators.

March 2026: The Segal Plan is implemented. Universities are required to impose Zionist indoctrination on all staff, with funding tied to compliance. The public service is required to adopt the IHRA definition, silencing reporting of Israeli espionage.

2026-2027: The “thought police” expand. The IHRA definition is applied to workplaces, to social media, to private conversations. Australians are disciplined, fired, investigated for “antisemitism” – which means, in practice, for criticising Israel.

2027-2028: The final stage. With dissent suppressed, the Zionist network consolidates its control. Australian foreign policy is subordinated to Israeli interests. Our military is integrated with Israeli doctrine. Our intelligence services are compromised. Our universities become propaganda mills.

By 2030: Australia is a client state. We have traded our sovereignty for a dying ideology. Our neighbours have turned away. Our economy is isolated. Our democracy is a memory.

The Asian Century: Australia’s Choice

The 21st century is the Asian century. Australia’s future is with our neighbours—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, China, India, the Pacific nations. These are the countries that matter. These are the people we trade with, live alongside, depend upon.

Every one of these nations has watched the genocide in Gaza. Every one of them has seen what the Zionist project looks like when it is in power. Every one of them has drawn conclusions about the countries that support it.

If Australia becomes the new base for the Zionist project, what will our neighbours do?

They will not trade with us. They will not trust us. They will not ally with us. They will see us for what we will have become: a pariah state, a client of a genocidal regime, a threat to regional stability.

Indonesia – the world’s largest Muslim nation, our closest neighbour – will cut ties. Malaysia will follow. Singapore will distance itself. China will use our isolation as a propaganda victory. The Pacific nations will turn to other partners.

Australia will be alone. With a dying ideology. In a region that has moved on.

The Water Crisis and the Cost of Capture

Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth. Our water security is precarious. It depends on stable government, on rational planning, on the ability to manage our resources in the national interest.

The Zionist network does not care about Australian water security. They do not care about the Murray-Darling Basin. They do not care about the long-term sustainability of our agriculture. They care about their project.

If they capture our government, our water resources will be managed in the interests of their ideology – not in the interests of Australians. The allocation of water, the regulation of agriculture, the response to drought – all of it will be subordinated to the needs of the network.

This is not speculation. We have seen what happens when foreign interests capture a country’s resources. We have seen it in Africa. We have seen it in South America. We have seen it in the Middle East. The pattern is the same: extraction, exploitation, abandonment.

The Communication System: A Vulnerability

The Zionist network has captured the telecommunications sector in other countries. In Gaza, Israel controlled the telecom networks. It could cut them at will. It could monitor every call, every message, every connection.

Australia’s communication systems are vulnerable to the same capture. Our telecommunications infrastructure is increasingly controlled by foreign interests. Our data is stored on servers that can be accessed by foreign powers. Our security agencies are compromised by the same network that is capturing our political class.

If the Zionist network achieves its goal, what is to stop them from cutting off Australian communications when it serves their interests? What is to stop them from monitoring our calls, our messages, our political organising? What is to stop them from using the same tactics against Australians that Israel used against Palestinians?

This is not paranoia. This is the logic of the project. The Zionist project has always been about control. And control requires the ability to silence dissent.

Why Dissent Must Be Silenced

The Zionist network knows that their project in Australia is insane. It is against our national interest. It is against the will of the majority of Australians. It is against the trajectory of history.

If Australians were free to debate this – if our universities were free to teach, if our public service were free to advise, if our media were free to report – the project would be exposed for what it is. Students and academics would identify it. Public servants would warn against it. Journalists would investigate it.

That is why dissent must be silenced. That is why the IHRA definition is being imposed. That is why protests are being banned. That is why the thought police are being created. The Zionist network cannot afford for Australians to know what is happening to their country.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about power. It is about the capture of a nation. It is about the silencing of a people.

The Betrayal of the Political Class

This is not the first time Australia’s political class has been compromised at the expense of the people.

In World War I, they sent young men to die on uncut wire while industrialists profited and politicians gave speeches about sacrifice. In the 1980s, they abandoned community policing for a militarised model that treats citizens as enemies. In 2003, they took us to war in Iraq on lies. Now, they are selling our sovereignty to a dying ideology.

Anthony Albanese grew up in social housing. He was the first in his family to go to university. He spoke about opportunity, about fairness, about a fair go. Now he is turning universities into indoctrination camps. Now he is supporting police violence against peaceful protesters. Now he is imposing costs on ordinary Australians for the benefit of a foreign power.

What happened to him? When did he change? Was it the donations? The “educational” tours? The fear of being labelled antisemitic? The promise of something in return?

We need to know. Australia needs to know. And those who have sold out their country must be held to account.

The AI Future: A Post-Israel World

The Zionist project has been a driver of military technology. Israel’s defence industry has been a leader in drones, surveillance, and artificial intelligence for warfare. When the state collapses, that expertise – and that technology – will be displaced.

The Zionist network wants to transplant that infrastructure to Australia. They want our universities to train the next generation of AI weapons developers. They want our defence industry to become the new base for the military technology that Israel developed.

This is a trap. The AI weapons industry is already a moral catastrophe. It is creating systems that can kill without human oversight. It is automating genocide. If Australia becomes the new base for this industry, we will be complicit in the next wave of atrocities.

And when the world turns against Israel, it will turn against the countries that shelter its weapons industry. We will be tarred with the same brush. We will be isolated. We will be a pariah.

The Clear and Present Threat

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is not speculation. This is happening in plain sight.

The laws are being passed. The training is being imported. The dissent is being silenced. The institutions are being captured. The political class is being bought. The future is being sold.

The Zionist project is a clear and present threat to Australia’s sovereignty, to our democracy, to our relationship with our neighbours, to our future in the Asian century. It is a dying ideology that is willing to sink our country to save itself.

We must stop it.

What Must Be Done

1. Reject the Segal Plan. The IHRA definition has no place in Australian law. It is a tool for suppressing dissent, not for combating racism. It must be withdrawn from universities, from the public service, from all Australian institutions.
2. Investigate Zionist influence. A royal commission must examine the extent of foreign influence on Australian politics. Who is funding our political parties? Who is paying for “educational” tours? Who is threatening public servants who report Israeli espionage? The truth must be exposed.
3. Restore democratic rights. The laws that ban protests, that criminalise political speech, that give police unprecedented powers – all of them must be repealed. Democracy is not compatible with the suppression of dissent.
4. Defend our institutions. Universities must be free to teach. The public service must be free to advise. The media must be free to report. The capture of our institutions by foreign ideology must be reversed.
5. Choose our neighbours. Australia’s future is with Asia. We must rebuild the relationships that have been damaged by our complicity in genocide. We must align ourselves with the rising nations of the global South. We must choose justice over a dying ideology.
6. Hold the enablers accountable. The politicians who sold out our country must be named. The donors who bought our democracy must be exposed. The ideologues who silenced dissent must be removed. Accountability is not revenge. It is the only way to prevent this from happening again.

A Warning

The Zionist project is failing. Israel is collapsing. The network that built it is looking for a new home. They have chosen Australia.

We have a choice. We can let them take our country. We can let them silence our dissent, capture our institutions, sell our sovereignty. We can become a pariah state, isolated from our neighbours, abandoned by history.

Or we can fight. We can tell the truth. We can expose the network. We can defend our democracy. We can choose justice over genocide, sovereignty over subservience, our children’s future over a dying ideology.

This is not about antisemitism. It is about Australia. It is about whether we will be a free country or a client state. It is about whether we will stand with the rising nations of the global South or with a dying colonial project. It is about whether we will cut the wire or let them send us over it.

The choice is ours. And the time to make it is now.

Dedicated to every Australian who will not let their country become a client state. To the students and academics who see what is happening. To the future we must defend.

We will not be silent. We will not be captured. We will not let them take our country.

References

• Herzl, Theodor. The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. (1896)
• Pappé, Ilan. The 1948 Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. (2006)
• Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. (1987)
• International Court of Justice, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel), 2024
• International Criminal Court, Arrest Warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, 2024
• Michael West Media, “Antisemitism training. Labor’s march to authoritarianism,” February 16, 2026
• Deepcut News, “‘Antisemitism’ directive exposes Australia to Israeli interference, public servants warn,” March 30, 2026
• City Hub, “NSW Police Criticised For Heavy-Handed Arrest Of Anti-Herzog Protester,” March 28, 2026
• The Australian Independent Media Network, “Herzog’s Visit to Australia: Just Who Is Being Comforted, and at What Cost?” February 12, 2026
• Green Left, “Minns spruiks defence exports, while protesters take aim at Indo-Pacific arms expo,” November 4, 2025

April 10, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The war they sold us, the price we pay

2 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD AIM Extra

How Australia’s Government Backed an Illegal War and Left Australians to Foot the Bill

The Speed of Capitulation

When American and Israeli missiles began striking Iranian cities in the final days of February 2026, the Australian government did not wait for the UN Security Council to meet. It did not wait for legal opinion. It did not wait for evidence.

Within hours, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared that “We support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent Iran continuing to threaten international peace and security.” Foreign Minister Penny Wong added that she would “leave it for the US and Israel to speak of the basis, the legal basis for the attacks.”

Not since the invasion of Iraq has an Australian government been so swift to endorse military action without international legal sanction. And not since Iraq has an Australian government been so unprepared for the consequences.

The Miscalculation

The operation was billed as a surgical strike. The theory – as arrogant as it was flawed – held that the removal of Iran’s leadership would trigger a swift regime collapse, that the Iranian people would rise up at America’s invitation, that the war would be over before it began.

What happened instead defies every neocon fantasy.

The Islamic Republic did not fracture; it consolidated. A new spiritual leader emerged. Iranian society rallied behind the flag. And Tehran demonstrated what analysts had long warned: that it possesses both the capability and the will to strike back effectively.

The Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil passes, is now effectively blockaded. Iran has asserted control, allowing only Chinese oil tankers through under negotiated exemptions. Western and allied shipping has effectively stopped.

The war we were told would be quick and decisive is now entering its second month, with no end in sight.

The Economic Wreckage: Fuel

Australia is an island nation. It imports approximately 90 per cent of its liquid fuel. We have two remaining refineries, producing less than a quarter of domestic demand. The rest comes through the Strait of Hormuz.

That supply line is now severed.

The price of Brent crude has surged from $72 per barrel in January to over $110, and in some trading sessions, beyond $180.

The impact on Australian motorists has been immediate and brutal. Petrol prices have risen by more than 30 per cent in a month. Some rural service stations have run out of fuel entirely. Hundreds of outlets have imposed purchase limits of 50 litres per customer. Social media is flooded with images of panic buying – jerry cans stacked in driveways, queues stretching down highways.

Australia’s fuel reserves are dangerously low. According to Energy Minister Chris Bowen, we have 39 days of petrol, 30 days of diesel, and 30 days of jet fuel. This is far below the 90-day reserve recommended by the International Energy Agency. The government has already reduced reserve requirements for importers by approximately 20 per cent – equivalent to six days of national supply.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers now calls this conflict “the defining influence” on the May budget. He warns that Treasury has modelled two scenarios – one with oil at $100 per barrel, one with oil at $120 – and admits that “both scenarios could underestimate the cost.”

Even under conservative assumptions, the war could cut GDP growth by up to 0.2 percentage points across major trading partners, add up to 1.25 percentage points to inflation, and leave GDP 0.6 per cent lower in 2027.

The Treasurer’s own words should chill every Australian: “We’ve already seen four major shocks – the GFC, a major pandemic, a global inflation shock, escalating trade tensions – and this oil shock could become the fifth.”

The Food Chain: Fertiliser and Farming

The war is not just hitting the bowser. It is hitting the dinner table.

Australia’s farmers are now facing a crisis of their own. The Strait of Hormuz disruption has cut off supply of urea fertiliser, upon which Australian agriculture is heavily dependent. Prices have soared. Supply has tightened. And the winter planting season is about to begin.

Queensland farmer Arthur Gillen normally splits his winter crop between wheat and chickpeas. This year, with fertiliser costs prohibitive, he is reducing wheat to 20 per cent of his planting area and abandoning urea use entirely.

He is not alone. Farmers across the country are pivoting to low-fertiliser crops – lentils, chickpeas, canola – and reducing wheat acreage. This shift, driven by war, will reshape Australian agriculture for years to come.

The timing could not be worse. Rabobank warns that the Strait of Hormuz must be open by the end of April to get fertiliser to farmers in time for winter planting. If it is not, the impact on Australian food production will be severe and sustained.

Federal Agriculture Minister Julie Collins has announced a national food security review. Farmers are telling the ABC they fear fuel shortages will impact the winter harvest. The government is scrambling, but the damage is already being done.

The Medicines Pipeline

In March 2026, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) issued an unusual public statement: they urged Australians not to panic buy medication.

The reason is the Strait of Hormuz. Pharmaceutical companies have been forced to reroute critical medicines away from the Persian Gulf, switching from sea freight to air freight at enormous cost………………………………………………………………

The AUKUS Mirage

Perhaps the most profound strategic consequence of this war is the damage it has done to Australia’s faith in its alliance with the United States.

The US military resources that were meant to underpin the AUKUS nuclear submarine program are now stretched to breaking point in the Persian Gulf.

If Washington cannot keep its promises to South Korea or Japan, one Queensland University of Technology professor asked, what confidence can Australia retain in the submarine deal?

Public opinion is already shifting. Polls show more Australians oppose the war than support it. The government’s swift endorsement of an illegal conflict has left it morally stripped naked and strategically embarrassed.

The Government’s Response: Too Little, Too Late

To its credit, the government has belatedly recognised the scale of the crisis.

On March 27, Prime Minister Albanese announced new fuel security powers, including the use of Export Finance Australia to underwrite private sector fuel purchases. He called out panic buyers, declaring that filling jerry cans was “not the Australian way.”

Energy Minister Bowen has appointed a former energy regulator to lead a national fuel supply taskforce. The government is considering support for the nation’s two remaining refineries……………………………………………………..

The Path Forward

The war is not ending soon. Iran’s leadership has consolidated. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to Western shipping. Global energy markets are in turmoil.

What Australia needs is not more loyalty to a declining hegemon. What Australia needs is a government willing to act in the national interest – not just in the interests of alliance management…………………………………………………….. https://theaimn.net/the-war-they-sold-us-the-price-we-pay/

April 3, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The Perfect Storm: How the Far-Right Surge and Labor’s Silence are Reshaping Australia

8 March 2026 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/the-perfect-storm-how-the-far-right-surge-and-labors-silence-are-reshaping-australia/

The Australian political landscape is currently being squeezed by a powerful vice. On one side, we are witnessing the alarming and undeniable rise of the far-right, supercharged by a mastery of social media that has the major parties looking like digital dinosaurs. On the other, a growing tide of progressive disappointment with the Albanese government is curdling into outright anger, fueled by perceptions of secrecy, a moral failure on Gaza, and a lack of spine in standing up to the belligerence of the Trump administration. These two forces, seemingly opposed, are feeding off each other, and the result is a political discourse that is becoming increasingly toxic and fragmented.

The most immediate shock to the system is the surging popularity of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Recent polling is nothing short of a political earthquake, with One Nation tying with the Liberal-National Coalition on 23 per cent of the primary vote. This isn’t just a protest vote; it’s a realignment. Analysts point to a “perfect storm” of factors: a Coalition riddled with infighting, the “cost-of-living crisis biting hard,” and a sophisticated, decades-long mastery of direct communication.

Senator Hanson and her team have effectively bypassed traditional media gatekeepers. They dominate Facebook and use YouTube for “comedic and sometimes quite bizarre content” that feeds directly into the algorithms that capture younger viewers. This isn’t just politics; it’s a highly effective content engine that peddles consistency and certainty in an uncertain world. The recent call by Labor frontbencher Julian Hill for the Liberal Party to stop “playing footie” with these “populist forces” feels less like a strategy and more like a desperate plea. The horse has already bolted, and it’s wearing a “Please Explain” t-shirt.

The danger here is profound. As an ABC investigation has shown, the lines between populist protest movements and organised neo-Nazi groups are becoming dangerously blurred. While One Nation distances itself from the most extreme fringes, its rhetoric creates the fertile ground in which they grow. When Minister Hill warns that our society is being “ripped apart” and that Muslim women in his community are “scared to go to the shops,” he is describing the real-world consequences of a political debate that has lost its moorings.

If the rise of the hard right represents one side of the vice, the government’s perceived timidity represents the other. For many who voted for change in the 2025 election, the Albanese government has become a cipher. The disappointment is multifaceted, but three failures stand out.

First, there is the perception of secrecy and a lack of courage in foreign policy. The government’s response to Donald Trump’s invitation to join his so-called “Board of Peace” was emblematic. While the world braced for the return of Trump’s brand of disruptive diplomacy, reports emerged that the government’s internal strategy was simply to hope the “hot potato” would “just fizzle out.” This is not leadership. It is a fearful hope that a problem will disappear, a posture that does nothing to assure allies or inform the public.

This timidity pales, however, in comparison to the government’s stance on Gaza. The moral weight of the conflict has landed heavily on Australian shores. There is a deep and growing sense of betrayal among pro-Palestinian advocates, and indeed many human rights-focused Australians, who see a government that has bent over backwards to avoid upsetting Israel. This sentiment is amplified by the international treatment of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

While the news is careful to distinguish between the UN official Francesca Albanese and our Prime Minister, the public discourse often conflates the two, creating a cloud of confusion and frustration. For many, the spectacle of the Trump administration sanctioning Albanese – and her family suing over it – while European nations call for her resignation, is a clear litmus test. Regardless of one’s view of her rhetoric, she is seen as a voice holding Israel to account. Against this backdrop, the Australian government’s quiet diplomacy and failure to issue more forceful condemnations is perceived not as prudence, but as pandering. It looks like a lack of courage to stand up for Palestinian civilians and a capitulation to the same US-led pressure campaign that targets her.

So, here we are. We have a government that appears paralysed, hoping difficult issues will “go away” while simultaneously losing the narrative to a far-right machine that offers simplistic, and often hateful, answers to complex problems. The government’s silence on the issues that matter to its progressive base – whether it’s housing policy or a principled foreign policy – creates a vacuum. And into that vacuum rushes the certainty of the hard right.

The great danger for Australia is that this dynamic becomes self-perpetuating. The more the government fails to articulate a bold, humane, and courageous vision, the more disillusioned voters will look elsewhere. Some will go to the Greens, but a significant and growing number are being seduced by the siren song of the far-right. We are left with a discourse dominated by either the inflammatory culture war talking points of the fringe or the cautious, fearful whispers of a government that has forgotten how to lead. Until the Labor party finds its voice and its courage, this perfect storm will only continue to gather strength.

March 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The Mushroom Treatment: A Government That Treats You With Contempt Cannot Be Trusted

Greens Senator David Shoebridge nails it: “The Albanese Government needs to be clear about what support it is offering the US in its war on Iran. Labor’s claim that we are not offering support is plainly not true.”

COMMENT – Christina Macpherson – As a former Labor party member, I am totally disenchanted with the current Labor leadership. Anthony Albanese has faded away from a strong principled Labor leader to a pale grey accessory to the USA. And Penny Wong ! If she had any integrity she’s resign – it must be uncomfortable for her, forever sitting on the fence about everything

5 Mar 2026, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/03/05/8400/

The Albanese government gives us the mushroom treatment. Keeps us all in the dark and feeds us BS.

This week, our small target federal government gave a bravura homage to John Cage. While a US-Israeli war of no legality engulfs the Middle East, while Australia’s top-secret spy facility hums away in the desert night providing targeting data for strikes that have already killed hundreds of civilians, while US surveillance aircraft slip into RAAF Base Pearce from Diego Garcia without so much as a public flight plan, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong polish their performance art, the blank face, the rehearsed non-answer, a version of Cage’s 4′ 33″ -and the inane repetition of lines that insult the intelligence of every Australian watching.

Asked about Pine Gap’s role? We got “we don’t comment on that facility.”

The litany of lies becomes a bad parody of accountability. Asked, “is the US-Israel attack on Iran legal under international law? We got: “that is a matter for Israel and the United States.” So the rules-based order they are in love with turns out to be Rafferty’s Rules, after all. And Wong is becoming a human bot before our eyes.

Asked whether we were briefed in advance. We got “this was a unilateral action by the United States.”

It is a performance not of statesmanship but of studied evasion. And it has been noticed. It’s top shelf-fobbing off. Wong and Albanese could fob-off and rebuff for Australia, when it becomes an Olympic event.

On international law being broken, the government’s hypocrisy is gob-smacking

Albanese and Wong have invoked “international law” and the “rules-based order” more than a hundred times since returning to government. They have called out Russia over Ukraine. They have criticised China. As recently as last year, Wong’s department was demanding China comply with international law, and the year before that, complaining that Chinese domestic legislation allowed Beijing to ignore it.

But when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a guest on Australian soil, stated plainly that the US-Israeli strikes on Iran appear “prima facie inconsistent with international law,” Wong’s response was to handball the question back to Washington and Tel Aviv.

“The legal basis of these strikes is ultimately a matter for the United States and Israel,” she repeated, for perhaps the twentieth time, to a press circus that grew visibly more frustrated with each non-answer.

This is not a position. It is a void in a vacuum in a vortex of entropy dressed up as a position.

The “rules-based order” mantra that Australia endlessly chants, a type of incantation to ward off witches, warlocks and bad faith actors, turns out to be a franchise. The rules apply to adversaries. Allies get a different menu. When Russia bombs civilian infrastructure it is an outrage; when the US does it, the legal basis is “a matter for those two countries.” When China ignores international law, Canberra clucks as volubly as any hen-house. When Israel and the Trump administration launch pre-emptive strikes without UN authorisation, without consulting allies, without even informing Albanese in advance, the government goes mute.

It’s not just hypocritical. It’s a double standard with added craven sycophancy, toadying and fawning over the US latest brain-fart that does lasting damage to Australia’s credibility as an honest broker in the region.

Surreal? Pine Gap, which is where the mushroom treatment gets especially dangerous.

Pine Gap is not some quiet public library in the red centre. It is the eyes and ears of the American eagle. Or as Peter Cronau documents, the listening post for a swarm of US satellites that provide the intelligence feed for major US and Israeli military operations in the Middle East and now the Indian Ocean. It geolocates targets. It intercepts military communications. It detects missile launches and supports targeting. It cannot, as Cronau noted before the first strikes last year, not have been already involved.

When a US submarine sinks an Iranian ship in the Indian Ocean, an area directly within Pine Gap’s signals collection coverage, Australians have a right to know whether their facility, on their soil, provided the intelligence that killed those sailors. Wong’s answer: “We don’t comment on that facility.”

Wong assures us there is “a high degree of transparency in relation to the United States presence in Australia.”

You just can’t see it.

Or credit it. Or forgive her duplicity, The lie here is mind-boggling.

Yet now we learn that two US P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft flew directly from Diego Garcia, the staging base for US operations across the Indian Ocean, to RAAF Base Pearce in Western Australia without prior public announcement, with flight plans lodged only once they were airborne. These are not joy rides. P-8A aircraft have been integral to Washington’s operations at the Strait of Hormuz. Their visit to Australian soil in the days following the bombing of Iran is not a coincidence. It is a data point.

Defence Minister Doughboy Richard Marles a US War Department dogsbody, doggedly declines to comment.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge nails it: “The Albanese Government needs to be clear about what support it is offering the US in its war on Iran. Labor’s claim that we are not offering support is plainly not true.”

The government does not want us to think about their epic credibility fail. That is the whole point.

The contempt is not limited to matters of war and peace. It runs through the entire fabric of how this government deals with Australians who have the temerity to ask questions. And to expect answers.

Albanese entered office in 2022 declaring that “the Australian people deserve accountability and transparency, not secrecy.” He criticised the Morrison government’s “cult of secrecy” and its “culture of cover-up.” Like a specialist performing a colonoscopy, he was going to shine a bright light into dark entrails. Instead he handed the patient a blindfold.

Not even under “Morrison Un-hosed” has freedom of information been so much of a running gag in a government which not only runs on the most expensive misinformation money can buy from its stable of top-end corporate consultancies but one which is very reluctant to share anything with anyone. Especially anything that might reveal its inner workings or help voters to hold it to account.

The Centre for Public Integrity finds that under Albanese, Freedom of Information requests granted in full have collapsed from 59 percent in 2011-12 to just 25 percent today. Outright refusals have nearly doubled to 23 percent. Almost half of initial decisions are found to be flawed on internal review. The Albanese government complies with Senate orders to produce documents only one-third of the time, a record worse than the Morrison government. The Centre’s Research Director, Catherine Williams, calls it a “deliberate effort to avoid scrutiny.” The government’s own record gives her no grounds to be contradicted.

This is not administrative slippage. This is policy.

What emerges from all of this is a government that has made a fundamental calculation: that Australian citizens do not need to know what is done in their name, with their money, on their soil, or at their risk.

They do not need to know whether their intelligence facilities are helping to kill sailors in the Indian Ocean.

They do not need to know whether US surveillance craft are operating out of Australian bases as part of a widening Middle Eastern war.

They do not need to know whether the strikes their government endorses are legal under the international law their government claims to champion.

They do not need to know what is in government documents that the Senate orders to be produced.

They do not need to ask. They just need to trust.

But trust, like international law, turns out to be something the Albanese government only demands of others.

There is a word for a government that maintains one set of rules for its allies and another for its adversaries, that invokes transparency as a slogan while systematically dismantling it in practice, that keeps citizens uninformed about activities on their own soil that may be drawing them into someone else’s war.

The word is untrustworthy.

Not dishonest in the flamboyant, self-destructive way of some politicians. This government is too careful for that. It is dishonest by omission, by evasion, by the rehearsed non-answer, by the careful deployment of “we don’t comment on that facility” as a substitute for democratic accountability.

Mark Carney, standing on Australian soil, said what Albanese and Wong won’t: the strikes appear inconsistent with international law, hegemons are acting without constraint, and the old world order is fraying. It took a visiting foreign leader to say plainly what our own government refuses to acknowledge.

That tells you something about how far we’ve travelled since Albanese promised us sunlight.

We got the mushrooms.

000000000

March 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Liberals’ hidden review regarding nuclear energy

Hidden review slams senior Liberals’ lack of reflection after devastating election loss, ABC 3 Mar 26

“…On nuclear energy, Mr Dutton said making the power plants government owned neutralised community concerns around safety, but provided Labor an attack line on cost.

“Labor didn’t lay a glove on the policy as such, but they were effective in their campaigning saying ‘he’s going to cut health, education and NDIS to pay for this’,” he said.

…The review deemed the almost six-month delay between the Coalition unveiling its plan to fund nuclear power stations and releasing the costings for it as “fatal”.

It was found that the gap allowed Labor to fill the vacuum with a “scare campaign”.

The federal secretariat had presented “considerable research” to Mr Dutton’s office outlining the significant effort required to win over voters sceptical of nuclear.

Research showed Mr Dutton’s “bold vision” was appreciated, but the nuclear policy was not sufficiently linked to the issue top of mind for voters — cost of living relief.”…………………………
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-03/inside-liberal-2025-election-review/106410316

March 6, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Greens say no war with Iran as Albanese’s Labor issues support of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal attacks.

2026-03-01, https://greens.org.au/news/media-release/greens-say-no-war-iran-albaneses-labor-issues-support-trump-and-netanyahus

Last night, US President Trump launched a new illegal bombing campaign against Iran. The Australian Government’s support for Trump’s latest illegal war is a clear breach of international law and the prohibition on wars of aggression.

The Iranian people deserve to be free from persecution and domination, both from the current regime and from foreign powers. History shows, and the world knows, that US military attacks and Donald Trump’s kidnappings and assassinations do not produce peace and do not produce justice.

While US bombs and missiles rain down on Iran, there is every likelihood that they are being targeted with the direct or indirect assistance of “joint” US-Australian military facilities at Pine Gap and North West Cape.

The Greens have consistently and clearly condemned the Iranian Regime’s violent response to recent protests and long history of oppression, and we have backed the Woman Life Freedom movement. We know that the people of Iran who have been the victims of the regime will be the same people who are right now being killed, injured and driven into further poverty and fear by US bombing.

Senator Waters, Leader of the Australian Greens, said:

Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal attacks last night have unleashed chaos across the Middle East.

“This war will not bring safety to the brave Iranian people who are fighting for liberation from the brutal regime. Innocent people have already been massacred, including at least 60 children in Southern Iran killed by US and Israeli strikes on an elementary school last night. Our hearts ache for their families. This war will see homes and cities razed to the ground and countless innocent lives lost.

“The Greens condemn these illegal, abhorrent and unilateral attacks. Australians do not want to be dragged into another US-Israeli war.

“Australia’s support of Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal attack last night was disgraceful.
“We cannot bomb our way to peace.

“The Labor government must immediately rule out Australian support for Trump and Netanyahu’s illegal war. No resources. No intelligence. No more cover.

“The Labor government must also confirm to the Australian people that no intelligence from Pine Gap or other US bases in Australia was used last night, and rule out allowing these bases to be used in this illegal war going forward.

“End AUKUS. Australia must be a force for peace and diplomacy across the world.”

Senator Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, said:

“No one seriously believes that Donald Trump cares about the rights or lives of people in Iran. Just like other US wars that Australia has supported in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the talk is about freedom and democracy but the reality is killing and destruction. Already, we are seeing reports of schools being destroyed and children killed in airstrikes.

“With barely a moment’s pause the Albanese Government has backed Trump and another US-led war in the Middle East. This proves without a shadow of a doubt that Labor has outsourced Australian foreign policy to Washington.

“Labor has made Australia a part of this war by allowing Pine Gap and other US military bases here to be used to gather intelligence and target US bombs and missiles. People see through Labor when it says it believes in international law and then repeatedly backs the US and its illegal wars.

“Time and time again the US has betrayed the people it was claiming to protect, leaving bloodshed in its wake while serving its own corporate and military interests. Trump is no different, even if he is more blatant.

“The Greens are the only anti-war party in the Federal Parliament and we will not shift from that stance, having seen the horrifying scale of killing and displacement that war has visited on the world.

“The world has been watching the bravery of the Iranian people pushing back against a brutal regime and calling for liberation and freedom. The Greens know that a Trump-led military assault on Iran is not a pathway to freedom or a pathway to a democratic regime that is supported by the Iranian people. This attack, like the last, is a pathway to chaos and more killing in Iran.

“There is more Australia can do for the people of Iran, starting with offering safety to those who have fled the regime, especially those already in Australia who are trapped in an unfair refugee process.”

March 4, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Jewish groups call on Tony Burke to cancel Israeli journalist visa

by Stephanie Tran | Feb 24, 2026, https://michaelwest.com.au/jewish-groups-call-on-tony-burke-to-cancel-israeli-journalist-visa/

Jewish orgs request Tony Burke reject Australian visa for Israeli journalist as his funders’ links to IDF emerge. Stephanie Tran reports. 

A coalition of Australian Jewish organisations has written to the Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, urging him to cancel the visa of Israeli journalist Zvi Yehezkeli on character grounds, citing comments in which he called for mass killings in Gaza and advocated violence against journalists.

The letter was initiated by Anti-Zionism Australia and signed by several Jewish groups including, Jewish Voices of Inner Sydney, Jews Against the Occupation ‘48, Jews for Palestine Western Australia, Jewish Advocates for Understanding Antisemitism, Jews for a Free Palestine, Jews for Human Rights and the Coalition of Women for Justice and Peace. 

The groups have requested that Yehezkeli’s visa application be rejected under the Migration Act 1958, specifically invoking section 116(1)(e)(i), which allows for cancellation where a person’s presence may pose a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community, and section 501, the character test.

“The undersigned request that you reject Zvi Yehezkeli’s visa application … on the basis that his presence in Australia shall pose a risk to the health, safety or good order of the Australian community and that his past and present general conduct indicates a foreseeable risk of vilifying a segment of the community and inciting discord,” the letter states.

Burke mulls visa

Tony Burke has indicated the government is considering whether to deny Yehezkeli’s visa application. 

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, he said: “It always surprises me when someone, who has made the sorts of comments that this individual has, advertises a speaking tour before they’ve even received a visa.”

Yehezkeli, an Israeli journalist and resident of a settlement in the occupied West Bank, is due to visit Australia in March and is slated to appear as a keynote speaker at fundraising events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Tax-deductible fundraiser under scrutiny

The Sydney and Melbourne events are raising funds for Israeli organisation The Institute for Social Momentum. Donations are being collected in Australia through the Chai Charitable Foundation, which is promoting the fundraiser as tax deductible.

A link to donate via the Chai Charitable Foundation appears on the registration pages for both events.

According to its 2024 financial report, the Chai Charitable Foundation reported more than $19m in revenue. Of that, $15.39m was distributed in grants and donations for use outside Australia, compared with $1.62m directed domestically.

The foundation facilitates tax-deductible donations from Australians to organisations in Israel and has previously come under scrutiny over its fundraising activities.

T
An investigation by MWM, found that the charity hosted multiple online fundraisers linked to Israeli military units and West Bank settlements.

The Chai Charitable Foundation initially denied that it was raising funds for such causes. However, those pages were removed after MWM put questions to Chai.

Incitement to commit genocide

n a submission to the International Criminal Court (ICC), French-Israeli human rights lawyer Dr. Omer Shatz concluded that “there is reasonable grounds to believe that Yehezkeli’s statements amount to direct and public incitement to commit genocide.”

In December 2023, Yehezkeli stated that the Israel Defense Forces should have killed more than 100,000 Palestinians in Gaza. 

In a 2024 interview, he said that in order to destroy Hamas, Israel needed to take measures that would “bring Gaza to the point of a humanitarian disaster”.

Last year, Yehezkeli advocated for the killing of journalists in Gaza, stating that “if Israel already decides to eliminate journalists then better late than never” and lamented the “damage” caused to Israel by journalists reporting on the atrocities in Gaza.

“This is an understanding in Israel of how much damage those who transmitted the pictures of hunger and all of Hamas’s one side did […] how much psychological damage those journalists in quotation marks, terrorist journalists, or you can call them Nukhba journalists, how much damage they did to Israel,” Yehezkeli said.

February 28, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Herzog protests. Medics attacked too, lawyers question police violence

by Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos | Feb 11, 2026 https://michaelwest.com.au/herzog-protests-medics-attacked-too-lawyers-question-police-violence/

Monday’s police actions against anti-genocide protestors in Sydney represent a significant escalation of unwarranted violence. Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos report.

Editor’s note: An earlier version included unconfirmed claims that the police used tear gas (in addition to pepper spray, which was used).

NSW Police are on the defensive. Following the spate of attacks on pro-Palestine protestors on Monday night, and amid rising criticism of their brutality, the Police are refusing to answer questions as to the number of people arrested, the number charged, and the nature of the charges.

According to the ABC yesterday, 27 people were arrested and 9 have since been charged. That was yesterday. Today, they were not responding, apart from a motherhood statement unrelating to those arrested.

From the outset of the protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, police had set up clear lines around every exit from the Town Hall area to contain the protest within Town Hall Square.

“Police were seen giving contradictory instructions to protestors – both instructing them to disperse from the square and demanding that they stop attempting to leave the square.“

“Aerial video clearly shows NSW police kettling protesters and causing a crowd crush.

“Incontrovertible evidence of the police hemming in protesters, preventing them from leaving(kettling) and attacking them.”

“They started this from before the speeches had even ended. The police commissioner is proud of this. He needs to resign with Minns. pic.twitter.com/ERU7K3Tn9f“

— The Longford Slasher (@Longfordslasher) February 10, 2026

Aggressive police behaviour

Activist Larissa Payne was near a group of Muslim demonstrators who had begun evening prayers in a corner of Town Hall Square. Payne, her family members and other members of the public linked arms to form a barrier between the praying group and riot police.

“It was a deliberate expression of non-violence, it was an expression of love and solidarity,” Payne said.

Footage of the scene shows officers moving in and violently grabbing members of the prayer group.

Payne was restrained using a wrist hold and dragged down steps, leaving her with sprained wrists.

Payne’s 78-year-old father, Ian Payne was with her. When he put his arm out to protect her, police forced his arm behind his back, causing a deep wound to his elbow. 

“When he instinctively put his arm out to protect me, they grabbed his arm and put it right up behind his back. They tore open his elbow so he had skin and blood hanging everywhere. It was just awful.”

Payne’s partner, former Senator Scott Ludlam, was knocked to the ground, leaving him with a possible fractured rib. He was handcuffed and arrested before being released.

Payne said a lack of accountability for the police brutality on Monday would lead to police impunity becoming “normalised”, telling MWM:

“If we don’t do something collectively to hold them to account, if the police get impunity, this violence is going to become normalised.“

“The police violence is a symptom of something larger. If you look at the global context, we’re moving towards more extreme right wing politics. The fact that this was done under the leadership of a Labor Premier speaks to how Labor is being dragged to the right,” Payne said.

Another protester, Ali Al-lami says he was pushed to the ground and called a “brown c*nt”. Police proceeded to punch Al-lami and handcuff him while pressing his head to the ground.

“It was like how an IDF soldier would put a Palestinian to the ground and brutalise them. That’s exactly what they did to me,” Al-lami said. He was arrested but subsequently released without charge.

“They released me without any charges because they know what they did was wrong. They didn’t have any legal basis to arrest me. I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t resisting, I didn’t attack anyone,” he said.

Jordan, who asked that his surname be withheld,  was also injured during the police operation.

“I saw police knock someone next to me to the ground and punch them,” he said. “When I tried to help the victim on the ground, I was knocked down.”

He said officers removed his safety goggles, threw them aside and restrained him. “I was cuffed tightly and left with injuries on my face, hand and wrist,” he said.

He was charged with inciting violence, breaching the peace and resisting arrest.

“There’s photographic evidence that shows I didn’t resist arrest in any way,” Jordan said.

“I knew it was state-sanctioned violence but I was surprised at how openly and proudly they were all doing it. Many of the officers were literally grinning as they were hitting us – they were loving life.”

Medics under attack

Volunteer street medics, who operate independently of PAG, were in attendance on Monday evening and treated dozens of protestors who had been indiscriminately attacked with pepper spray.

Omaim Al-Baghdadi was one of the medics at the scene. She told MWM that police officers attacked and pepper-sprayed medics who were assisting injured protesters.

“We were in the middle of treating people. We told them we were medics, but it didn’t matter to them. They grabbed us and shoved us and told us to move on.”

1×1515

5:10 / 11:23

Listen to this story

11 min

Monday’s police actions against anti-genocide protestors in Sydney represent a significant escalation of unwarranted violence. Stephanie Tran and V Y Franco-Klothos report.

Editor’s note: An earlier version included unconfirmed claims that the police used tear gas (in addition to pepper spray, which was used).

NSW Police are on the defensive. Following the spate of attacks on pro-Palestine protestors on Monday night, and amid rising criticism of their brutality, the Police are refusing to answer questions as to the number of people arrested, the number charged, and the nature of the charges.

According to the ABC yesterday, 27 people were arrested and 9 have since been charged. That was yesterday. Today, they were not responding, apart from a motherhood statement unrelating to those arrested.

From the outset of the protest against the visit of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, police had set up clear lines around every exit from the Town Hall area to contain the protest within Town Hall Square.

Police were seen giving contradictory instructions to protestors – both instructing them to disperse from the square and demanding that they stop attempting to leave the square.

Aerial video clearly shows NSW police kettling protesters and causing a crowd crush.

Incontrovertible evidence of the police hemming in protesters, preventing them from leaving(kettling) and attacking them.

They started this from before the speeches had even ended. The police commissioner is proud of this. He needs to resign with Minns. pic.twitter.com/ERU7K3Tn9f

— The Longford Slasher (@Longfordslasher) February 10, 2026

Aggressive police behaviour

Activist Larissa Payne was near a group of Muslim demonstrators who had begun evening prayers in a corner of Town Hall Square. Payne, her family members and other members of the public linked arms to form a barrier between the praying group and riot police.

“It was a deliberate expression of non-violence, it was an expression of love and solidarity,” Payne said.

Footage of the scene shows officers moving in and violently grabbing members of the prayer group.

Payne was restrained using a wrist hold and dragged down steps, leaving her with sprained wrists. 

Ian Payne

Payne’s 78-year-old father, Ian Payne was with her. When he put his arm out to protect her, police forced his arm behind his back, causing a deep wound to his elbow. 

“When he instinctively put his arm out to protect me, they grabbed his arm and put it right up behind his back. They tore open his elbow so he had skin and blood hanging everywhere. It was just awful.”

Larissa Payne

Payne’s partner, former Senator Scott Ludlam, was knocked to the ground, leaving him with a possible fractured rib. He was handcuffed and arrested before being released.

Payne said a lack of accountability for the police brutality on Monday would lead to police impunity becoming “normalised”, telling MWM:

If we don’t do something collectively to hold them to account, if the police get impunity, this violence is going to become normalised.

“The police violence is a symptom of something larger. If you look at the global context, we’re moving towards more extreme right wing politics. The fact that this was done under the leadership of a Labor Premier speaks to how Labor is being dragged to the right,” Payne said.

Another protester, Ali Al-lami says he was pushed to the ground and called a “brown c*nt”. Police proceeded to punch Al-lami and handcuff him while pressing his head to the ground.

“It was like how an IDF soldier would put a Palestinian to the ground and brutalise them. That’s exactly what they did to me,” Al-lami said. He was arrested but subsequently released without charge.

“They released me without any charges because they know what they did was wrong. They didn’t have any legal basis to arrest me. I did nothing wrong, I wasn’t resisting, I didn’t attack anyone,” he said.

Jordan, who asked that his surname be withheld,  was also injured during the police operation.

“I saw police knock someone next to me to the ground and punch them,” he said. “When I tried to help the victim on the ground, I was knocked down.”

He said officers removed his safety goggles, threw them aside and restrained him. “I was cuffed tightly and left with injuries on my face, hand and wrist,” he said.

He was charged with inciting violence, breaching the peace and resisting arrest.

“There’s photographic evidence that shows I didn’t resist arrest in any way,” Jordan said.

“I knew it was state-sanctioned violence but I was surprised at how openly and proudly they were all doing it. Many of the officers were literally grinning as they were hitting us – they were loving life.”

Medics under attack

Volunteer street medics, who operate independently of PAG, were in attendance on Monday evening and treated dozens of protestors who had been indiscriminately attacked with pepper spray.

Omaim Al-Baghdadi was one of the medics at the scene. She told MWM that police officers attacked and pepper-sprayed medics who were assisting injured protesters.

“We were in the middle of treating people. We told them we were medics, but it didn’t matter to them. They grabbed us and shoved us and told us to move on.”

“Many families and elderly people were caught in the crowd as tear gas* was deployed by police.“

Another volunteer medic, who asked not to be named, was caught in the middle of the crowd as police simultaneously crushed, pepper-sprayed and tear-gassed* families.

“I saw a lot of horrible things at the protest, but what really stuck with me was the fear and panic I saw in the eyes of children and their parents as this was all unfolding. It was really distressing to me, even as someone who has personally witnessed and experienced a lot of police violence,” they said.

“We were being crushed in as the police kettled us, and then everyone around me began to cough violently. I think it took longer to hit me than others because I had an N95 mask and goggles on, but when it did eventually hit, it was awful. I felt like I was being choked and began to wretch and shake. It has been nearly 24 hours since the protest, and I still have ongoing nausea and wretching.”

Excessive police powers

In the wake of the Bondi attack in December 2025, NSW parliament rushed through the Terrorism and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, which gave police powers to effectively ban protests and other public assemblies for up to three months following a ‘declared terrorist incident’.

In addition to the rushed “anti-terror” legislation, the Minns Labor government made a “Major Event Declaration” to facilitate the Herzog visit. This legislation gives police additional powers, including the ability to significantly increase officer numbers, enact warrantless searches and block the public from a “declared area”.

On Monday afternoon, the NSW Supreme Court dismissed PAG’s challenge to the major event declaration, leaving the public vulnerable to these broad powers.

The major event declaration not only extended police powers further, but also gave them relative immunity for their brutality. Perhaps most concerningly, the Major event declaration diminishes the right for protestors to receive compensation for violence inflicted by the State.

Specifically, section 62 of the Major Events Act 2009 details the exemption from paying compensation. According to the legislation, the State, local Councils and officers, employees or agents of the State or local council cannot be compelled to provide compensation regarding “an act or omission that is a major event-related matter, or that arises (directly or indirectly) from a major event related-matter.”

Criminal lawyer and investigative journalist Nick Hanna noted that this could

“significantly limit the claims for protestors injured by police.“

“This is one of the egregious examples of wanton police violence we’ve seen in a long time. There are countless people who would ordinarily have a strong basis to sue the police for assault, unlawful arrest and/or false imprisonment, but may now effectively be precluded from doing so as a result of the major event declaration,” Hanna said.

Hanna represented Palestine Action Group in their Supreme Court challenge against the major event declaration.

“Had the Supreme Court granted our application on behalf of PAG to declare the major event declaration invalid, these restrictions on the ability to recover damages from the police for their tortious conduct wouldn’t apply,” he said.

If PAG successfully appeals the Supreme Court’s decision, protesters may have more legal avenues.

“If PAG appeals the decision and is successful, this may have the effect of lifting the restrictions on people suing the state for the violence inflicted by the police,” Hanna said.

NSW Police response

MWM put the following questions to NSW Police:

1. How many people were arrested at the protest? Of those, how many have been released and how many have been charged, and with what offences?
2. There are numerous reports that NSW Police used excessive violence in response to the protest, including video footage of police officers assaulting individuals who were on the ground in prayer. How does NSW Police respond to these allegations?
3. Aerial footage appears to show police forming multiple lines and barriers along George Street and surrounding exits, which protesters say prevented them from leaving the area (a tactic often described as “kettling”). What was the operational rationale underpinning this policing decision?

A NSW Police spokesperson provided the response below:

“NSW Police will review all officially reported complaints from the Town Hall event. If a complaint is made through official channels police will investigate appropriately. During the event at Town Hall on Monday (9 February 2026), police gave multiple opportunities for attendees to leave the area safely. Police deployed multiple crowd management techniques during the event to maintain public security. Attendees were at no point forced to remain in the area and were always afforded the opportunity to leave the event.”

February 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

Our Leaders Couldn’t Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don’t Want To)

Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 11, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/our-leaders-couldnt-fix-our-problems?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187582757&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.

These people are not capable of curing our civilization of its dysfunction. They don’t have the necessary skills or attributes. Even if they weren’t a bunch of evil sociopaths who are only in the positions they’re in because of their willingness to collaborate with the agendas of oligarchy, war, militarism, imperialism, ecocide, exploitation, oppression and planetary domination, they don’t even have the personal characteristics necessary to do things like end poverty, rescue our biosphere, bring about world peace or give rise to human thriving. They’d have no idea where to star

I say this because as I watch Americans and Australians falling all over themselves to justify the recent police brutality in our respective nations, I am struck by how many people still believe our society is run by leaders who more or less know what they are doing and will guide us to more or less where we need to be. They view their government as a wise and beneficent father who knows what’s best for all of us, and they believe anyone who disagrees with Daddy is being naughty.

That’s really all it is. They’ll make up all sorts of justifications and excuses, but ultimately their police apologia arises from an infantile worldview which believes the authorities are right for no other reason than because they are in authority. They begin with their tongue on the boot of power, and then they make up reasons for why their tongue needs to be there.

That’s the worldview that gets a lot of people through their day. Believing our society is basically just and decent, and that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the world’s problems because we’ve got highly qualified leaders working hard at fixing them.

Believing our society is just and decent allows one to relax under the assumption that they deserve all the comforts they have in life and that the system will never turn against them. If someone is killed by police, or is impoverished or imprisoned or homeless, then it’s because they did something wrong and immoral, and all you need to do to avoid the same fate is follow the rules and make ethical choices. Under a just and decent system, good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, so all you need to do is be good and you’ll be fine, and if things are going badly for you it’s because you deserve it.

Believing we’ve got highly qualified leaders working on our world’s problems allows one to relax under the assumption that everything’s taken care of. There’s no need to concern ourselves with all the information which tells us we’re plunging deeper and deeper into tyrannical dystopia on a collision course with environmental catastrophe under a globe-spanning empire that is fueled by human blood, because Daddy’s got it all taken care of.

Really these are just juvenile fairy tales designed to help us psychologically compartmentalize away from uncomfortable realities; no grown adult has any business believing them. But a lot of people would do anything to avoid internal discomfort. Entire psychological universes are constructed around the unconscious agenda of not feeling unpleasant feelings.

Daddy’s not gonna save us, kiddos. Daddy’s a serial killer with dead bodies in the attic, and many important parts of his brain are missing. Our problems aren’t going to get fixed until we get rid of Daddy. Getting rid of Daddy means forcibly getting rid of the entire system under which we live and replacing it with something that serves the interests of ordinary human beings.

Bootlickers hate revolutionary politics, because it is diametrically opposed to their infantile worldview of paternalistic government deities. But things aren’t going to get better until we find a way to get the steering wheel of our world out of the hands of the people who are currently in charge. Until then, everything’s just going to keep getting worse.

February 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

The Siege Within: How Clarity Died in the Aftermath of Bondi

13 Feb 26, https://urbanwronski.com/2026/02/11/the-siege-within-how-clarity-died-in-the-aftermath-of-bondi/

The summer evening of December 14, 2025, began in the soft, amber glow of Hanukkah candles at Archer Park. It ended in the staccato rattle of rifle fire and the scent of sea spray mixed with shotgun powder. Fifteen lives were extinguished by Sajid and Naveed Akram; a night that exposed not only the fragility of security, but the deeper frailty of Australia’s political imagination.

In the wake of that horror, the Albanese and Minns governments promised resolve. What they delivered instead was the familiar choreography of risk-aversion: the committees, the taskforces, the talking-points, and finally, a version of the old dingo fence. What began as an act of collective grief has metastasised into a tinpot tyranny, a prison guard or police patrol’s vision of order.

From Public Grief to Private Fear

By February, that perimeter has hardened into a siege. Sydney’s once open streets have become the staging ground of a security politics that no one voted for. The images from Town Hall; men dragged from prayer mats, Greens MP Abigail Boyd coughing through pepper spray—belong to a country that has quietly rewritten its own story of tolerance. A pluralist democracy does not kneel beneath its police lines for long without losing something essential.

The truth is simpler and harder: we have allowed fear, dressed in the high-vis vest of “public order,” to set the terms of our morality, proscribe our speech, define the living sinews of our commonwealth.

The Invisible, Myopic Pragmatists

Who, then, is running this show? Increasingly it seems to be the invisible, myopic pragmatists; those faceless avatars of modern Labor who mistake managerial caution for moral intelligence. This is the small-target governance of realpolitik, the gutless risk-avoidance that flatters itself as prudence. Yet it turns out to be a type of costly false economy; in the refusal to confront or even name the deeper moral crises beneath Australian politics; it proves a costly wrong, right turn.

Labor still governs as if haunted by ghosts: of Murdoch’s tabloids, of Trump’s shadow, of talkback nationalism. So fearful of offending the pro-Israel lobby or a resurgent Washington, they have allowed Australia’s political stage to be colonised by a foreign narrative. It is one thing to host Isaac Herzog on a “healing tour.” It is another to pretend that such theatre constitutes diplomacy while Gaza still smoulders and UN inquiries speak of mass dispossession.

Under the banner of “social cohesion,” the government has transformed mourning into a managed event and dissent into security risk.

The Ritual of Control

January’s Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Act is the latest iteration of this logic; a law that inflates “incitement” until speech itself becomes suspect. Under the euphemism of protection, dissent becomes pathology. This is governance as theatre: motion without moral movement, legislative vigour masking ethical paralysis.

Paul Keating warned of the “instant band-aid”—politics mistaking activity for achievement. The current government has perfected the art. It calls Parliament to ban protest chants overnight, but remains paralysed before the “recreational hunting” loopholes that armed the Akrams. You can now go to prison for carrying a certain flag, but not for stockpiling a .308 rifle under the name of sport.

The Day of Kettling

And so came February 9, the day that Albanese and Minns kettled not only citizens, but independence of mind itself. In those 24 hours, freedom of expression was pinned beneath riot shields, freedom of association shoved into police vans, and the rights of conscience, democracy, and common decency were trampled into the wet asphalt of George Street.

Australia has always prided itself on a kind of decent moderation; the belief that even in our disputes, there existed a shared moral floor. What unfolded yesterday suggests that floor has given way. The government’s instinctive use of force against non-violence didn’t merely reveal insecurity—it revealed contempt. For protest, for plurality, and for the ordinary intelligence of the public.

History will not remember this as a day of security. It will remember it as a day of surrender; the moment when a Labor government, raised on the language of solidarity, chose the comfort of coercion over the courage of care.

The Moral Reckoning

We are witnessing the normalisation of the riot shield as a symbol of civic order, a transformation as swift as it is insidious. When a government greets a vigil with chemicals and batons, it is not protecting its people. It is protecting itself.

True cohesion is never policed; it is nurtured. It grows when governments address inequality rather than manage optics, when they embrace dissent as a sign of health, not heresy. It exists in the old Australian compact between decency and fairness; an agreement far older than Parliament and infinitely more fragile.

Labor, if it still remembers, must left heel; breaking from the intellectual, moral and spiritual shipwreck of the Shoppies bloc and return to its real heritage: the workers and communities who built a nation out of solidarity, common care, and the stubborn conviction that a free people stand tallest when they stand together.

Until then, we remain a country barricaded from itself.

February 13, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment

In Australia The Police Beat You Up For Opposing Genocide.

Caitlin Johnstone, Feb 10, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/in-australia-the-police-beat-you?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=187467234&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Australian authorities were fully aware that inviting Israel’s president for a visit was going to ignite unrest and furious opposition. They invited him anyway, and sent in the police to assault the protesters.

I saw a video of two cops pinning a kid in a keffiyeh face down on the ground and proceeding to punch him over and over again long after he’d been subdued.

I saw another video of police repeatedly punching a middle-aged man who was holding his hands in the air until he fell to the ground.

I saw another video of police repeatedly pepper spraying a demonstrator directly in the face as he was visibly complying with their demands to move and providing no resistance whatsoever.

I saw another video of police manhandling Muslim men who were literally on their knees praying, presenting no possible threat of any kind.

That’s right kids, welcome to Australia, where the government invites the head of a genocidal apartheid state for a happy cuddle party and then beats the shit out of anyone who opposes this.

It’s a testament to the courage and vitality of the pro-Palestine movement in Australia that people keep showing up to anti-genocide protests even as authorities do everything they can to create a chilling effect on them.

After all, this happens as the state of Queensland moves to make it illegal to utter the pro-Palestine phrases “from the river to the sea” or “globalise the intifada”, with violations punishable by two years in prison. This is easily the single most bat shit insane speech suppression legislation in Australian history, and that’s an extremely high bar.

To be clear, not one person sincerely believes that “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a genocidal or antisemitic statement. This is one of those many, many instances in which Israel supporters are pretending to believe something they do not actually believe in order to further outlaw criticism of Israel.

They’re trying to make it so that nobody feels comfortable opposing Israel’s abuses without first consulting with a lawyer about what exactly they are legally permitted to say in that moment, thereby throwing a chilling effect on pro-Palestine activism throughout the nation.

This comes weeks after the Australian government passed frightening new “hate speech” laws in the name of “combatting antisemitism” which will make it much easier to designate activist groups as “hate groups”. Australian officials have conspicuously refused to say that the new laws will not be used to ban groups for speech that is critical of Israel, which tells you all you need to know about the real intentions at work here.

This also comes as the state of New South Wales cracks down on protests with extreme aggression, banning protests in certain areas and seeking to outlaw the use of the phrase “globalise the intifada” to appease Australia’s obscenely powerful Israel lobby. Premier Chris Minns is presently defending the actions of the police he sent in to crack skulls at the Herzog protests on Monday.

Just two months ago a prominent member of the Australian Israel lobby publicly announced that he wants a total ban on pro-Palestine protests throughout the nation, and said it is criticism of Israel that is the problem, not just hatred toward Jews. Joel Burnie, Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), explicitly said that what he wants is “No more protests! No more protests!” in Australia.

“I for one as a Jewish leader will no long talk about antisemitism in isolation from Israel, because it’s the rhetoric and language on Israel that motivates the people to come and kill us,” Burnie said during a video conference, later adding that “ language on Israel invading all of our social spaces in Australia have made this country a very unsafe space and place for Jews.”

Increment by increment, Joel Burnie and his ilk have been getting their wish ever since. Australian civil rights are indeed being disintegrated to protect the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.

February 12, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics | Leave a comment