Timothy Clifford – Submission – Australia has the opportunity to become a clean energy superpower – nuclear is unviable and a distraction.
Submission No. 122 To: Committee Secretary, Senate Standing Committees on Environment and
Communications
Submission: The Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing
Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022
I am writing as I was extremely concerned to learn that several politicians are
pushing for the removal of the Nuclear Energy Prohibitions Bill. I am strongly
opposed to this as nuclear energy is not a viable solution both in a financial and
technological sense and presents a huge risk for current and future Australians.
Everyday Australians are currently feeling the pressure of energy price
increases due to our ageing infrastructure, a result of political inaction for over
a year. Renewables are here, they’re cheaper than all other forms of energy
and have virtually no environmental impact when compared to fossil fuels or
nuclear. Considering nuclear energy will only slow the transition to renewables
and lead to further increases in energy bills for Australian families.
It’s true that sunshine and wind can’t be dug up, which is likely why some
politicians and their millionaire mining donors are so against them.
The proponents of nuclear talk about futuristic, modular reactors. These are
nowhere near being commercially available and it’s unclear if they ever will be.
Even if we assume they will be at some point, the issues around nuclear waste
and security threats remain and these will only increase as climate change
grows more extreme
Our own climate science and policy experts, Climate Council, have already
ruled out nuclear energy as a viable solution – “Nuclear power stations are
highly controversial, can’t be built under existing law in any Australian state or territory, are a more expensive source of power than renewable energy, and present significant challenges in terms of the storage and
transport of nuclear waste, and use of water.”
Let’s listen to the experts, not a
group of self-interested politicians and lobbyists.
I strongly urge members of the senate to decouple Australia’s energy resources
from dangerous, polluting, finite resources and focus our efforts on natural, clean, infinite renewables. We have the potential to be a clean energy superpower, strengthening our economy, security and environment for
Australians now, and in centuries to come. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Helen Bradbury – Submission – nuclear power not only useless against climate change, but also becomes a serious risk in extreme weather events.
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission No. 103
Australians do not need or want Nuclear Power in this country.
Australia needs FAST transition to renewable energy & going down the nuclear energy path is expensive, slow & delays our country’s path to a better energy solution to assist in delaying climate change. The delays in regulating & building nuclear power will seriously delay actions that can mitigate climate change issues.
With floods & fires recently all over Australia (& extreme weather events World wise)we need alternative power solutions Immediately!
Nuclear Power is 5 times more expensive to establish than renewable energy infrastructure
It is a serious risk during 1 in 100/ climate change weather events( floods/fires etc).
We don’t need nuclear power. Australians need renewable energy infrastructure to be encouraged & built.
Saul Griffith “The Big Switch” author has worked in the US but now lives back in Australia & is the man to speak to. ( listen to his Radio National interview) we need renewables.
Nuclear power is risky, very slow to provide an energy solution and very expensive to build, operate and the … https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
ACTU digs in on nuclear-free policy in headache for Labor over Aukus subs
Coalition seizes on Michele O’Neil’s comments, claiming they send a ‘confusing signal’ on $368bn nuclear submarine acquisition
Paul Karp Guardian, 28 Mar 23
Australian unions have restated their position in favour of a “nuclear-free defence policy”, creating a headache for the Albanese government over the $368bn Aukus nuclear submarine acquisition.
The position, restated by Australian Council of Trade Unions president, Michele O’Neil, on Tuesday, was seized on by the Coalition, which claimed it sent a “confusing signal” for Labor and its industrial wing to be divided on nuclear submarines.
Since the deal was announced earlier in March, the Albanese government has faced criticism from former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull, and former Labor ministers Doug Cameron, Gareth Evans, Kim Carr and Bob Carr.
The Labor caucus has united behind the government’s position, with only MP Josh Wilson expressing public concerns, despite many unions opposing the nuclear submarine acquisition.
Asked if she would have preferred the purchase of conventional submarines, O’Neil told the National Press Club that the ACTU had “a longstanding policy of opposition to nuclear power, nuclear waste and proliferation”.
“We also have a longstanding policy position that supports a nuclear-free defence policy.
“These are not positions that have been developed in the last weeks and months. They are decades long and our position hasn’t changed.”………………………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/28/actu-digs-in-on-nuclear-free-policy-in-headache-for-labor-over-aukus-subs
Omigawd! Nuclear zealot Jonathon Mead is to get his own little government department nuclear supergroup
While the exact contours, structure and mandate of the group are yet to take shape, the role of this new organisational arrangement bears examination. Driven by the complexities of nuclear technology, the group’s remit reaches outside conventional defence policy domains into areas such as education and industrial policy that are usually led by domestic policy agencies at the federal and state level.
Planning for Australia’s nuclear submarine ‘supergroup’ , 30 Mar 2023, |Hugh Piper, The Strategist,
“………. With the nuclear-powered submarines to be acquired under the AUKUS partnership, Australia has set itself perhaps the most ambitious public-procurement undertaking in its history. To match the scale of this venture, according to a report in The Australian, the submarine taskforce led by Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead will evolve and grow into a new ‘a stand-alone group inside Defence that will draw personnel from across the government’.
In public-service speak, a ‘group’ is usually the largest organisational unit in a federal government department, headed by a deputy-secretary-level public servant or a three-star military officer. That the submarine acquisition is being elevated to this level reflects the magnitude of the enterprise and the fact that it will become a permanent and dominant feature of the Australian defence organisation for decades to come.
Equally interesting, though, is the scope of this new group in Defence. The Australian described it as a multiagency group ‘responsible for all elements of the program, including safety, non-proliferation and regulatory measures, international engagement, education and training, industry development and project management’. Its head will have ‘a direct reporting line to Defence Minister Richard Marles’.
While the exact contours, structure and mandate of the group are yet to take shape, the role of this new organisational arrangement bears examination. Driven by the complexities of nuclear technology, the group’s remit reaches outside conventional defence policy domains into areas such as education and industrial policy that are usually led by domestic policy agencies at the federal and state level.
Defence will have to acquire new policy capabilities to tackle these issues—but also develop networks and institutional relationships with a much wider range of domestic stakeholders. Moreover, the government will need to decide the exact limits of Defence’s policy leadership. Education and industrial policy are, for instance, intrinsically linked to labour and innovation policy.
The reported scope of the group also includes policy domains and functions that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would conventionally lead, namely international engagement and non-proliferation. For Defence instead to take leadership of these areas would mark a fundamental shift in the division of labour in Australian foreign policy.
………………………… There needs to be room for proper consideration of broader foreign policy equities within a structure that is unapologetically mission-focused on delivering defence capability. As the mixed reaction in the Indo-Pacific to AUKUS has demonstrated, Australia can’t assume an overall permissive environment for its strategic policy, so diplomacy is as vital to manifesting the submarines as building a nuclear industrial base. These risks are, however, manageable through effective governance.
…………..There’s also speculation that it could have its own budget line separate from the rest of Defence https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/planning-for-australias-nuclear-submarine-supergroup/
Diana Rickard Submission – Australia’s nuclear bans reflect public rejection of the nuclear industry, and support for clean renewables.
Submission No 74. against Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear
Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022
Nuclear Power is not needed in Australia. Germany is decommissioning its last two nuclear reactors.
There is enough science and technology to provide reliable and sustainable renewable energy for
industrial and residential needs in Germany and in Australia, we have more than enough sunlight,
wind and water to provide clean and sustainable energy for our needs.
- Our legislative prohibitions reflect public and community concern over and rejection of
nuclear power and nuclear waste storage in Australia. - Australia does not need reactor meltdowns, fires and explosions as happened at
Chernobyl and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power site. We have inherited colonial
nuclear bomb testing sites and uranium processing sites that still need rehabilitating
costing billions of dollars and these weapon testing sites have caused sickness and
permanent disability to people caught up in their poisonis a disgrace that should not be
repeated. - There is still no permanent nuclear waste disposal facility operating anywhere in the
world for high-level nuclear waste generated by nuclear power reactors. - Uranium mined in Australia is used for failed nuclear reactors and weapons proliferation
overseas and the international safeguards system has not been funded anywhere near
what it would take to avoid or even monitor this. We should avoid further
contamination from dirty and dangerous nuclear power plants in Australia adding to this
problem. - Talk of AUKUS nuclear powered submarines and B52s carrying nuclear weapons while on
Australian soil makes me very uneasy that we could become a military target. The risk of
reactors becoming military targets (as has been the case with research reactors in the
Middle East on multiple occasions) remains a serious concern. - Many countries do not have clear and unambiguous rules governing nuclear power and
nuclear waste. This is despite the fact that inadequate regulation is widely accepted as a
main cause of the Fukushima disaster. In a country like Australia where a national motto
in the 1980s was ‘ Near enough is good enough’ followed by ‘Where the bloody hell are
you?’ hardly shows our commitment to clear, accountable and sustainable rules-based
governance on vital issues, does it? - If we remove prohibitions to nuclear power, we would then need significant reforms in
existing legislation not designed to deal with nuclear power. We would then need a
massive increase in government resources as well as recruiting an appropriately skilled
and capable workforce. - With resources concentrating on getting nuclear power right, essential resources to help
us tackle human-induced climate change, secure a national renewable energy policy and
deliver modern environmental protection legislation would be lost.
Australia is suffering massive infrastructure, livelihood and life loss due to climate change floods that
should be once in a hundred years but are happening regularly. Our environment is suffering
through massive landclearing by other than small, family farmers or miners.
We cannot trust our future to greedy people and foreign corporations with no care except to make
short-term profit even when it destroys our national interest and iconic environment.
Nuclear power plants are unsustainable, corporately owned and dirty. Renewable energy can
operate independently of large, asset-greedy business interest and can be installed on homes and in
small paddocks. Renewable energy belongs to the people and does not harm the environment as
surely as nuclear energy does. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Jean M Christie -Submission – nuclear power is expensive, polluting, and too slow to be of any use to Australians.
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission 78
For several reasons, nuclear power is inappropriate for Australia. These are as follows.
Since 2010, nuclear power has actually become more expensive, rising in cost by 33%.
Nuclear power reactors produce waste, and Australia does not have a deep underground repository for
nuclear waste. At present, the residents of Kimba, South Australia, are engaged in a legal battle with the
Commonwealth of Australia, as they fight to protect their home from becoming a dumping ground for
nuclear waste generated in New South Wales.
The development of nuclear power is very time-consuming, and Australia lacks a workforce with the
necessary skills to do this.
Thus nuclear power is expensive, polluting, and too slow to be of any use to Australians.
Furthermore, nuclear power plants are rendered unsafe by the effects of climate change. These effects
include warming water sources, sea-level rise, storm damage, and drought. In military and terrorist events,
nuclear power plants are obvious targets, as malicious forces seek to cut off electricity supplies. In addition,
the electricity necessary to cool such reactors is also disrupted, and the risk of nuclear core meltdowns
increased. We are seeing this now in Ukraine, as Russia directs missile strikes at Ukrainian nuclear power
plants. Even in peacetime, risks are present, as demonstrated by the tragic nuclear meltdown and waste spill
in Fukushima, Japan, which has rendered surrounding areas uninhabitable.
Thus nuclear power is expensive, polluting, slow in availability, and very risky with regard to national
security. I urge politicians to support renewable energy, in order to protect the environment, and prevent
further climate disruption. . https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Inside the AUKUS machine: scrutinising the political links to defence contracts
there has not been nearly enough scepticism about the AUKUS deal from Australia’s major media players
Led by a prime minister with a penchant for fudging reality, the $368 billion AUKUS submarine deal leaves much unexamined.
DAVID HARDAKER, MAR 28, 2023 https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/28/inside-aukus-submarine-deal-political-links/
This is part one in a series. For the full series, go here.
There is much about the AUKUS deal that is surprising — if not shocking.
There is the astronomical cost of $368 billion, double the most extravagant guesstimates made by experts before Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s announcement in San Diego earlier this month.
There are the hurried circumstances in the run-up to the federal election — all done within 24 hours — in which the ALP opposition committed itself to the deal proposed by then prime minister Scott Morrison.
And there is the extreme secrecy that has surrounded AUKUS from its inception, with Morrison having orchestrated events on a need-to-know basis, only ever consulting those who had a direct interest in expanding Australia’s defence budget.
The AUKUS arrangement emerged from the final desperate days of one of Australia’s worst governments. It was led by a prime minister who had a habit of fudging reality and who secretly sought to accumulate the powers of five of his ministerial colleagues, without having a coherent rationale.
At the same time, there has not been nearly enough scepticism about the AUKUS deal from Australia’s major media players. Some have even been offended that former prime minister Paul Keating would raise serious questions, focusing more on the manner than the substance of what he said.
For these reasons, Crikey will be introducing a bit of sunlight — the best disinfectant — into the fetid corners of the AUKUS machine.
You don’t have to be a China stooge to question AUKUS, yet that is how much of the public debate has been conducted so far.
To begin our coverage, this week we report on the activities of two of the biggest political names from the Coalition’s decade in office. They are former treasurer Joe Hockey and former defence minister (and before that minister for defence industry) Christopher Pyne.
The two have one thing in common: they both leapt from public office directly into the lucrative world of defence industry and investment. In Hockey’s case, he ceased his role as Australia’s ambassador to the US on January 30 2020. ASIC records show that his consultancy, Bondi Partners (which relies on Washington contacts), was registered on January 29 2020.
In Pyne’s case, he ceased as defence minister and retired from federal Parliament in April 2019. Within a month, the Pyne & Partners business name was registered. The record shows that predecessor entities had been set up by a former Pyne staffer before Pyne retired. These moves are separate from Pyne’s work with consulting firm EY, which he began within weeks of leaving Parliament. Pyne’s work with EY, where the former defence minister advised on defence matters, led to a Senate inquiry into whether or not he had breached ministerial standards.
Pyne and Hockey aren’t the first from the political class to turn to the defence industries after leaving office. The political revolving door is well known.
Continue readingJan Wu – submission – renewables are very suitable for Australia, not dirty nuclear power.
With solar and wind energy now well developed, we do not need to have
nuclear power, having one less problem of considering how to dispose the
nuclear waste one day.
the government should invest on solar power, since we have vast unused land in
the middle of the country, covered with sun, by using solar energy, we might be
also able to address our desertification problem as well. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Michele Kwok Submission – nuclear power is not clean -it’s polluting at every stage
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission 80
It’s concerning that nuclear energy is viewed as clean energy and as a solution to climate crisis.
Every stage of the production pollutes.
Uranium poses high risk in ground water contamination, currently a subject of concern all over the world due
to related severe health problems to humans, as groundwater is the main drinking water source in remote
communities.
Nuclear energy is very expensive compared to wind and sun energy Every power reactor construction project in Western Europe and the US over the past decade has been a disaster: True costs have exceeded company and government estimates by $10 billion or more for all these projects, and delays range from 7 to 13 years. Unsurprisingly, few new reactors are being built.
There is no viable means to manage nuclear waste.
Overall, not economical, too risky and the negative impacts on health should be a concern for us all. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Alan Hewett submission to Senate Nuclear Inquiry- Nuclear power could only delay Australia’s transition to clean renewable energy
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022 Submission 92
The federal Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources expects 69% renewable
supply to the Australian National Electricity Market by 2030. The Albanese Labor government’s
target is 82% renewable supply by 2030.
South Australia has already reached 67% renewable supply and will comfortably meet the target of 100% net renewable supply by 2030.
Nuclear power could not in any way facilitate Australia’s energy transition ‒ it could only delay the
transition and make it more expensive and contentious
Nuclear power would unnecessarily introduce risks of catastrophic nuclear accidents and military or terrorist attacks. It would inevitably bequeath future generations with streams of high-, intermediate- and low-level
nuclear waste. We urge all politicians and political parties to focus on the transition to a lowcarbon economy and to reject nuclear power because it is too slow, too expensive, too dangerous, and those promoting it are mostly the same people trying to slow and derail the transition to a low-carbon economy. https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Nuclearprohibitions/Submission
Senator Barbara Pocock demolishes the arguments put up for small nuclear reactors, and for nuclear submarines
There is a long list of reasons why the $368 billion spend proposed for AUKUS is a terrible idea, but it’s not least that the government has no viable solution to care for the weapons-grade nuclear waste and keep us safe.
Senator BARBARA POCOCK (South Australia) : THE SENATE CHAMBER SPEECH, Wednesday, 22 March 2023
“The proposal for nuclear power for Australia is wrong on many counts. Small modular nuclear power generation is too expensive, it’s not operating commercially and it’s a distraction from what we have to really get on with, which is a very fast move to renewables. We senators in this place have a responsibility to consider realistic proposals to advance citizens’ interests, not run impractical, risky, uncommercial proposals up the flagpole on behalf of, in this case, nuclear industry spruikers.
Last time I looked, only two small modular reactors were in operation on the planet, one in China and one Russia. In both cases the cost blowouts have been huge. Many other such next-generation nuclear reactors have been cancelled as people have worked out that renewables are the cheaper, more-reliable way forward.
But I want to especially focus on what Senator Canavan has raised, and that’s the question of nuclear waste disposal. The truth is that finding a permanent solution for the safe storage of nuclear waste arising from power generation remains a big, dangerous problem everywhere—a very expensive problem. The UK has 70 years of waste, 260,000 tonnes of it, from its nuclear power plants, in unsafe temporary storage. It’s a major problem for that country and its citizens.
The US nuclear industry has similarly been plagued by dangerous leaks and failures. No long-term solution exists in the US for waste from power generation or from nuclear powered submarines.
South Australians have had some experience with these issues. In 2016 our citizens had a very close look at a proposal that we take the world’s nuclear power waste and store it. We were promised an income stream of $51 billion. That’s a lot of money, but South Australians said no. The world’s largest citizens jury of 350 South
Australian citizens read the fine print. They saw that the proposal was for temporary storage for above-ground for more than a century. They said no to the false promise of huge incomes but especially to the safety risks and the fact that those who spruik nuclear power never offer a long-term waste solution that is safe and that will last the 100,000 years that is needed.
First Nations people across South Australia in particular said no. They remember Maralinga. This is a national challenge of long standing.
Since Australia first started producing nuclear waste, 70 years ago, five successive governments have tried and failed to find a suitable place for the permanent storage of our relatively small quantities of low-level and intermediate-level waste. Low-level waste, arising from medical use, must be stored safely for 300 years, and it’s nowhere near as dangerous as intermediate waste, but no community in this country has agreed to take and store that waste. Intermediate-level waste, arising from research at Lucas Heights, must be safely stored for 10,000 years. The previous government began a process towards that storage at Kimba, and it’s been bitterly disputed at every step of the way since, opposed by farmers, by community members and by First Nations people.
The Barngarla people are currently in the Federal Court fighting the current government, which is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to oppose the voice of the Barngarla people.
In the case of AUKUS, the fuel from decommissioned submarines is nuclear weapons grade, and it requires military-scale security. It must be stored safely not for 300 years, not for 10,000 years, but for 100,000 years, and neither the UK nor the US have been able to find permanent storage solutions for their own submarine waste. So, given that successive governments have continuously failed to manage much-less-dangerous radioactive waste in Australia, our government would find it very difficult in this country to find a solution to dispose of nuclear waste or AUKUS submarine waste. Traditional owners of the future in particular should have a say and a veto about any such proposal.
There is a long list of reasons why the $368 billion spend proposed for AUKUS is a terrible idea, but it’s not least that the government has no viable solution to care for the weapons-grade nuclear waste and keep us safe.
The Australian public is right to be sceptical and concerned about waste disposal in relation to AUKUS. There is no plan, and the same argument applies to any ill considered, expensive adventurism around nuclear power.
Our children need practical, affordable action on renewable energy that cuts carbon pollution, not pies in the sky that generate toxic waste for which there are no safe solutions.”
Big Tech, weapons, tax havens, even Rupert Murdoch – secrets from the Future Fund investment vault
AUKUS wins
Paul Keating’s words still resonate in Aussie minds,
“At the Kabuki show in San Diego … there’s three leaders standing there, only one is paying, our bloke, Albo.“
Michael West Media, Philip Dorling and Rex Patrick | Mar 26, 2023
The secretive Future Fund’s chairman Peter Costello might not like it, but Freedom of Information requests are peeling back the lid on the Fund’s weighty overseas investments. Philip Dorling and Rex Patrick report the more controversial ones.
Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Oil are the top of the pops in a newly released list of Future Fund Investments across the United States, United Kingdom and a range of tax havens, notably among the Cayman Islands.
These revelations come on top of revelations earlier this year about ethically and environmentally questionable Future Fund investments in China.
The latest FOI drilling into the side of the vault also shed light on the Fund’s investments in arms manufacturers, Chinese companies operating out of the Caymans as well as politically controversial investments in Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire.
It’s so infuriated Senator Barbara Pocock, who has been pursuing the Fund’s investment practices the Senate. “It should not take FOI requests for Australian citizens to find out where their own money is being invested. The Future Fund is suffering from a corrosive secrecy disease.
The public should know about these Future Fund investments in carbon polluting fossil fuels, in arms manufacture and in companies based in tax havens – not to mention the Murdoch and Fox media empires. It’s time to come clean.
Big Tech
In what may be its largest investment in a single publicly listed foreign company, the Future Fund holds a $793 million stake in tech giant Microsoft. Other very large Future Fund tech investments include Google owner Alphabet ($559.9m), NVIDIA ($346.8m), Cisco Systems ($288.2m), Meta Platforms ($256.4m) and Intel Corp ($240.0m). Amazon comes in with a rather more modest investment of $187 million.
Given the vital importance of IT and telecommunications policy for Australian governments, business, our economy and society, disclosure of the nature and scale of these publicly funded investments is clearly in the public interest.
However, it only comes after the Future Fund was forced to abandon its deep preference for secrecy and resistance to scrutiny through FOI.
Pharma, energy and mining………………………………..
AUKUS wins
Paul Keating’s words still resonate in Aussie minds,
At the Kabuki show in San Diego … there’s three leaders standing there, only one is paying, our bloke, Albo.
But it appears the Future Fund is well ahead of Albo, with investments in leading American and British aerospace and defence manufacturers including Raytheon Technologies ($91.9m), Lockheed Martin Co ($75.1m), General Dynamics ($65.3m), Northrop Grumman ($41.5m), Honeywell International ($76.0m), BAE Systems ($20m), and Rolls-Royce ($0.7m).
A number of these companies will be deeply involved with the AUKUS nuclear submarine project, so maybe this a return path for a tiny share of the eye-watering $368 billion AUKUS price tag.
Tax haven heaven………………………………………………………
Backing Murdoch
In the end however, two quite modest investments in the United States may prove to be among the Future Fund’s more controversial holdings – a $6.3 million stake in News Corp and $13.5 million in Fox Corp which have been notable political allies of Coalition governments.
That’s $19.8 million in the two companies controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his primary channels of national and global political influence………………………………………….
The Future Fund is an independent, statutory body but it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if a “Defund Murdoch” campaign emerges.
Last month Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrote about the need to bring ethics and values into national economic and financial policy. Perhaps he should call in Costello for a chat about ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance). https://michaelwest.com.au/big-tech-weapons-tax-havens-even-rupert-murdoch-secrets-from-the-future-fund-investment-vault/
“Collaborative” bases, and the ideology of AUKUS
What we need now under either the optimist or the more realistic pessimistic view is a massive campaign, a campaign that starts today against the background of this terrible shock, this awful sense of betrayal.
Pearls and Irritations, By Richard Tanter, Mar 24, 2023“……………………………………………. The Minister for Defence in the Albanese government made a ministerial statement last month, in which he talked about the joint facilities. But he also introduced a new category of bases under the US-Australia Force Posture Initiative that the previous Rudd-Gillard-Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison alliance supporting government had not thought of – collaborative bases.
Collaborative – an interesting word in its double meaning, isn’t it.
At the moment we don’t know how many Agreed Locations and Facilities there are on this list of collaborative bases identified in a secret part of the Force Posture Agreement – the bases given over by Australia to the US to be under varying degrees of US operational control. The most recent example is RAAF Tindal thanks to Scott Morrison, and we are going to see a lot more of that.
And the last part of nuclear permissiveness is the atmosphere that fills the room in Canberra when you listen to certain senior officials, compliant academics, and insider journalists talk about nuclear weapons for Australia.
In the past few years we have already had three former deputy secretaries of defence – the people who do the planning – saying in public it’s time for us to reconsider the decisions taken by the Fraser and Whitlam governments half a century ago to stop our development of nuclear weapons.
It’s time, they say, to think again about Australian nuclear weapons.
No, they say, we’re not advocating nuclear weapons for Australia, we just need to think about it.
But in the context of half a century of nuclear restraint, of full knowledge of what the possession of nuclear weapons will mean in our region, or what the actual effects of nuclear weapons use will mean in human and environmental terms, ‘just considering’ nuclear weapons acquisition means clearly much more than that.
The ideology of AUKUS
Ideology’s a funny word. Usually it’s used about other people. Like bad breath, ideology is something that afflicts the other guy, not us. Well, that’s nonsense. We all suffer from ideological thinking at certain times.
Ideology is that category of thinking that actually stops thought, which by its emotional logic takes means you don’t have to think about what’s actually being said.
In the ideological nonsense in The Age’s ‘Red Alert’ we saw a kind of triple equation, born of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and American plans to take the opportunity to reshape its alliances.
Russia = China – we don’t need to think about that, do we – they’re autocracies, and we’re not.
Putin = Xi. I’m happy to see that President Putin is to be indicted by the International Criminal Court for the war crime of his invasion of Ukraine. President Xi is not a particularly nice man, but a long way from Putin’s desperate criminality.
Ukraine = Taiwan. Putin invaded Ukraine, so Xi must be about to invade Taiwan – without any serious evidence, and in contrast to the behaviour of China since 1949.
This is the kind of talk that disables critical thinking. None of that makes any sense of the biggest historical defence spend we’ve ever seen, and nothing to say what will happen over the next forty years.
I think that China has some problems. If I lived in Tibet or Xinjiang I would be extremely concerned about what is happening to most of the people in those provinces of China in a deeply repressive kind of way.
If I lived in Vietnam I would know from a thousand years of history there’s a lot of pushing and shoving between China and its neighbours.
But the Vietnamese are still there – they have survived on their own resources.
I would be very concerned about some of the ways China treats its own citizens.
I would not like the concrete islands that China has made – and militarised – in the South China Sea.
True, China now has its first overseas base, in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa – a little one across the bay from giant American and French bases of longstanding.
There may be, may be, some kind of PLA naval access to a port in the Solomon Islands, largely, if it eventuates, because of the arrogance with which Australia has treated the Pacific Islands for decades – ‘family’ when we wanted; shoved into the outhouse of history when we don’t care.
I don’t know. That might happen. That would mean, oh dear, they will have two overseas bases – just 798 or so to go before they equal the Americans.
We need a country-agnostic policy of opposing all foreign bases in our neighbourhood – all.
I think Australia needs to be a little more careful and self-reflective about the way in which it talks about some of these undoubted sins of China.
We know something about islands that have been taken over for military purposes.
The forced removal of the people of the Chagos Islands so the US could build Diego Garcia – a British crime even recognised in the World Court.
Guam, an unvarnished American military colony since the end of the Second World War.
We know that China has bullied countries whose policies it doesn’t like with economic coercion – including Australia. We might, though, remember the seven decades of crushing US sanctions against Cuba – for the crime of defeating American plans. And now, again, the people of Afghanistan facing punishing sanctions for the crime of winning a war against the US.
We just need to be a little more honest and self-critical about this.
What China is doing in Xinjiang and Tibet is pretty recognisable as settler-colonialism with an overlay of ghastly pre-emptive counter-terrorism.
We know a bit about that sort of thing here.
And it doesn’t matter how we weigh the balances of these sins, whether we think any of these are equal or not.
But the important thing is that this must not stand.
I heard Lenore Taylor, the excellent editor of The Guardian Australia talking in a podcast the other day in an interesting way about a small sense of optimism buried in the Albanese proposal.
Taylor pointed out, and other people have noted the same thing, that in terms of the finances, the only thing that has been agreed to by the Albanese government concerns the forward estimates, the four year commitment from the budget in May.
The forward estimates, Taylor reminded us, amount to about $9 bn over those four years – probably mostly as an industrial subsidy to expand the US submarine-building yards.
Now, to you and me, $9 bn is a lot of money, but to the Defence Department, I suspect they waste something like that every month with costs overruns, white elephants, and renegotiating contracts when they change their minds.
This optimistic view suggests that the Albanese government, wedged by Morrison’s brilliant stroke of madness, has done the only thing it could do – gone along verbally, and got itself as much wiggle room as possible by pushing the serious spending out for years.
Events, they may be hoping, will save them from going through with the whole plan.
And on that they may not be wrong. The AUKUS scheme is so poorly conceived, so grandiosely conceived, so incalculably expensive, and so contingent on so many highly risky contingencies that it is very likely to go badly wrong.
So, they have, on this view, left themselves a back door out of the trap.
May be. Maybe not.
But the US has a long history of keeping recalcitrant junior partners in line, and Australian political, academic and media life does not lack for alliance supporters and enforcers who will keep a foot on that back door to keep it shut.
But it doesn’t matter, whichever view is right.
What we need now under either the optimist or the more realistic pessimistic view is a massive campaign, a campaign that starts today against the background of this terrible shock, this awful sense of betrayal.
A campaign which is made up diverse community-based groups, which has branches in suburbs and branches in country towns, broadly based with all sorts of elements and streams of opinion about peace.
Making the argument very clearly, based on experience, that the only times we have known Labor governments to stand up to the will of the United States have been on the back of huge long-running popular campaigns.
The first, now a long way back, was in the days of the Vietnam War, when Gough Whitlam became prime minister in 1972, and immediately responded to that high public pressure by ending our war in Vietnam, and of course, conscription of 19 year-olds for that purpose.
That only happened because of the pressure.
And the second was in the early 1980s when the Reagan administration, the most extreme rightwing administration since the early 1950s was pressuring Australia to take a greater role in the war against the then current demon, the Soviet Union.
It was again public pressure that forced the Hawke government to back down – in this city the role of the coalition of groups around People for Nuclear Disarmament and similar groups across the country – and then the electoral success of Nuclear Disarmament Party in the 1984 federal election.
We need that pressure – whether there is in fact a back door way out of this or not, there has to be huge public pressure on the Albanese Labor government.
Every time a Labor member of parliament or senator puts foot outside their office to appear in public, turns up at a public meeting, we need to ask them why have you betrayed us. Why have you allowed this to happen? What are you going to do?
We have to make it personal and objectionable and we have to make a whole lot of noise.
This must not stand.
Thank you. https://johnmenadue.com/these-are-the-horrors-of-aukus/
Greens attack Albanese government’s ‘deeply unsettling’ secrecy on submarine nuclear waste plans.
Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council also warned against cloak of national security to ‘mask inadequate radiation safety protection’.
Guardian. Daniel Hurst, 24 Mar 23
Labor and the Coalition have been accused of taking a “deeply unsettling approach” to transparency around Aukus after the major parties blocked the publication of documents about nuclear safety and waste issues.
The government cited national security concerns when it rejected a Senate order to produce documents, including those about options to manage operational waste from the nuclear-powered submarine program.
The move comes just months after the Radiation Health and Safety Advisory Council warned against allowing a cloak of national security to “mask inadequate radiation safety protection of the Australian public, weaken regulatory authority, or inhibit transparency on matters of Australian public safety”.
David Shoebridge, a Greens senator and defence spokesperson, said the council was “the very agency entrusted to protect Australians from radiation and ensure nuclear safety and security, yet the government is already ignoring its advice”.
“The hiding of information at this early stage signals a deeply unsettling approach to future regulation, transparency and oversight of these nuclear submarines,” Shoebridge said.
His motion had sought a range of documents reviewed by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto) working group, including the safeguards required for a nuclear-powered submarine program.
It also sought information about the “characterisation, classification and acceptance of risks in a nuclear environment” and any minutes of meetings held with the nuclear-powered submarine taskforce on these topics………….
The Coalition joined with Labor to defeat the motion in the Senate this week.
The former independent senator and submariner Rex Patrick said the blocking of the motion “shows the shallowness of thinking behind both major parties as to the need for complete transparency around this important issue”.
“This Aukus program has been orchestrated in total secrecy such that the government and Defence could get to a point of announcing a fait accompli without any debate or resistance,” Patrick said.
“There are some things that should properly be kept secret around a submarine – but these things should not include nuclear stewardship, nuclear regulation, nuclear safety or how to deal with operational waste and spent fuel.”
Patrick has, however, used freedom of information laws to obtain some other documents from Ansto and the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (Arpansa).
These include minutes of an Ansto board meeting on 9 February showing the agency will seek government funding of $34.5m over the next four years because it faces increased workload “as a direct result of a nuclear-powered submarine program”…………………………………………………..
In the latest sign of misgivings within Labor, a party branch in the electorate of the prime minster, Anthony Albanese, passed a motion calling on his government to “withdraw from the Aukus alliance and cease any program in pursuit of the acquisition of nuclear submarines”.
Party members at the Enmore branch meeting this week agreed that Labor should prioritise spending that contributes to the “social good of our society rather than wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on a dangerous and unnecessary weapons program”.
According to a copy that has been widely circulated within NSW Labor, including to a large number of branch secretaries, the motion argued Aukus was “not in the interests of the Australian people” and “could take us into an unnecessary and devastating war”.
The motion reflects concerns within elements of the party’s rank-and-file membership, but does not yet indicate a groundswell that could stop the deal.
……………. The Petersham branch – also within Albanese’s electorate – passed an anti-Aukus motion in late February, before the San Diego announcement.
Labor members are also mobilising against the possibility of Port Kembla being selected as a future base for nuclear-powered submarines.
Some members are understood to have been emboldened to register their concerns, after several prominent Labor figures including the former prime minister Paul Keating spoke out against Aukus. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/24/greens-attack-albanese-governments-deeply-unsettling-secrecy-on-submarine-nuclear-waste-plans
Ivan Quail’s Submission – a devastating fact-filled critique of the costly, dangerous unhealthy nuclear industry.
One year of operation of a single, large nuclear power plant, generates as much of longpersisting radioactive poisons as one thousand Hiroshima-types atomic bombs. There is no way the electric power can be generated in nuclear plants without generating the radioactive poisons.
France’s troubled nuclear fleet a bigger problem for Europe than Russia gas. France caps its consumer power bills – to maintain the myth of “cheap” nuclear and to protect French pride .
In 100,000 years’ time the planet would still not have recovered from Mayak, Chernobyl, Doenreagh, Hanford, Rocky flats, Marshall Islands, Montebello, Maralinga and Fukushima; to name a few.
Average life expectancy in Ukraine and Belarus has REDUCED 4 yrs to age 68. Each year 6000 babies are born with “Chernobyl Heart” Half of them die! Children born since 1986 are affected by a 200 percent increase in birth defects and a 250 percent increase in congenital birth deformities.• 85 percent of Belarusian children are deemed to be Chernobyl victims. UNICEF found increases in children’s disease rates, including 38 percent increase in malignant tumours, 43 percent in blood circulatory illnesses and 63 percent in disorders of the bone, muscle and connective tissue system.
Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Removing Nuclear Energy Prohibitions) Bill 2022
Submission No 61 [This submission contains numerous links which are all visible on the original, but not all here]
A few words about myself on this issue. I have been studying the Uranium fuel cycle,
nuclear energy and the biological and genetic effects of radiation for over 40 years. I
have read a dozen or more books and hundreds of scientific and medical papers on
the topics.
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 