This article examines a developing crisis in Australian public integrity: the systematic use of encrypted and unminuted communications between lobbyists and the highest levels of government to evade transparency laws. Drawing on recent investigative reporting and parliamentary analysis, it argues that this practice, occurring alongside legislative efforts to weaken the Freedom of Information (FOI) framework and a failure to implement robust anti-corruption measures, represents a calculated retreat from ethical transparency. This creates a “dark space” in policymaking, fundamentally at odds with the stated mission of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) and the basic democratic contract of public trust. The article concludes that this constitutes a form of institutionalised obscurity that protects political interests at the expense of democratic accountability.
Introduction: The Promise and the Practice
The election of the Albanese government was heralded with a promise to restore trust and integrity after a decade of scandals. The establishment of the NACC was its cornerstone. However, a parallel track of conduct suggests a different priority: the management of political risk through the control of information. This article synthesises evidence revealing a pattern where commitments to transparency are actively undermined by operational secrecy, creating a profound dissonance between public rhetoric and private practice.
The Architecture of Evasion: “Going Non-Traceable”
At the heart of this issue is a reported, routine practice within the Prime Minister’s office. Lobbyists and stakeholders are advised to use encrypted messaging applications (such as Signal) and direct phone calls for substantive policy discussions, explicitly to avoid creating a discoverable record under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Cth). This guidance creates a two-tiered communication system: a formal, sanitised record for public consumption, and a shadow, substantive dialogue where real influence and negotiation occur. The justification – protecting “fluid thoughts” – is a stark departure from the principle that the formation of public policy should be a matter of public interest, not private conjecture.
Weakening the Scaffolding: Legislative and Systemic Failures
This operational evasion is not occurring in a vacuum. It is reinforced by systemic and legislative actions that degrade the infrastructure of transparency:
The FOI Amendment Bill: The government is pursuing amendments that experts from the Australian Law Council and the Grattan Institute describe as “the most significant retrenchment” of transparency in decades. Key changes include a strict 40-hour processing cap – a logistical impossibility for complex requests – and the introduction of new, subjective grounds for refusal. This legally enshrines the difficulty of access.
Chronic Record-Keeping Failure: A 2023 National Archives of Australia report found systemic failure across the Commonwealth in managing digital records. In 90% of recent audits, agencies received negative comments. Only one agency had a clear policy on capturing ministerial and departmental messaging for the official record. This is not negligence; it is a pervasive institutional disregard for the archival compact.
Rejecting Anti-Cronyism Reforms: The government sat for two years on a review into “jobs for mates” in public appointments. When released, it rejected core recommendations to depoliticise the process, such as banning last-minute appointments before elections. This demonstrates a preference for preserving patronage networks over implementing substantive integrity reform.
The NACC in the Dark: An Integrity Watchdog Without a Trail
The establishment of the NACC was meant to be a circuit-breaker. However, its efficacy is premised on the existence of evidence – a paper trail, a digital record, a minute of a meeting. The practices detailed above are designed to eliminate that trail. The NACC’s own definition of “serious or systemic corrupt conduct” includes breaches of public trust and any conduct perverting the impartial exercise of official functions. Influencing policy through hidden channels, deliberately shielded from public and archival scrutiny, aligns precisely with this definition. The NACC’s first major survey, finding 15% of public officials were aware of corrupt conduct in their area, hints at the scale of the challenge it faces in a culture of obscurity.
Analysis: The “Trust Gap” and the Corruption of Process
The outcome is a critical “trust gap.” The public is asked to trust in institutions that are architecturally designed to avoid being held to account. This goes beyond traditional corruption (bribes for favours). It represents a corruption of process, where the very mechanisms for democratic oversight – FOI, archives, parliamentary scrutiny – are rendered inert. The government controls not only policy but the narrative of how that policy was formed, presenting a fait accompli to the public while hiding the machinery of influence. This creates a space where the lines between lobbying, policy development, and undisclosed conflicts of interest dangerously blur.
Conclusion: Gestures Versus Substance in the Democratic Contract
Australia is at an integrity crossroads. It has the gesture – the NACC – but is dismantling the substance required for that gesture to be meaningful. A democracy cannot function on a “need-to-know” basis where the government decides the public does not need to know how it is governed. The use of encrypted lobbying and the erosion of record-keeping are not administrative quirks; they are political strategies that sacrifice long-term public trust for short-term political convenience. Rebuilding trust requires not just new institutions, but a radical recommitment to transparency as the default, not the exception. Until the “dark space” of policymaking is illuminated, the promise of integrity will remain, like the lost records themselves, unfulfilled.
Jillian Segal, Australia’s controversial Antisemitism Czar and Israel lobbyist, procured an extra $12.9m funding from PM Anthony Albanese, heavily redacted FOI documents show. Stephanie Tran reports.
The Albanese government has blocked key details about the appointment of Jillian Segal as Australia’s special envoy for antisemitism, with freedom of information documents (FOI) revealing a process almost entirely obscured by redactions.
The documents, released by the Department of Home Affairs in response to an FOI request, show the government relied on wide-ranging secrecy exemptions to withhold internal briefings, candidate assessments, deliberative advice to ministers, and all correspondence between Segal and the Prime Minister’s Office.
Beyond a set of boilerplate terms of reference, the documents shed little light on why Segal was chosen. What’s deliberately missing, however, is the real story.
Selection process almost entirely redacted
One of the key questions the FOI sought to answer was how Segal came to be selected. In correspondence to staff in March 2024, Home Affairs officials described an intention to provide the Prime Minister with “up to 6 candidates” reflecting “the demography of Australia”, diverse identities and gender, and “trusted relationships” in their communities.
But every document detailing assessments or the rationale for selection was either heavily redacted or withheld in full, primarily under the FOI Act’s deliberative processes exemption under s47C.
The Information Officer’s decision letter notes that Home Affairs undertook “extremely thorough” searches, but still located no resume, no risk assessments and no evaluation criteria.
The Department’s claim that it could not locate a copy of Jillian Segal’s CV appears to be at odds with the government’s own records. In a June 2024 letter to the Prime Minister, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles explicitly stated that Segal’s “Curriculum Vitae, Private Interest Declaration and Appointments Details pro-forma are at Attachment D.”
(Original article copiously shows the government documents)
Urgency and budget blowouts
What survives the redactions paints a picture of a high-speed, politically sensitive process.
The documents reveal the existence of an “Israel Hamas Social Cohesion Taskforce” within Home Affairs, headed by Giles.
In February 2024, Giles wrote to Anthony Albanese seeking “urgent agreement” to appoint envoys to combat Antisemitism and Islamophobia, citing the “immediate and significant rise in Antisemitism and Islamophobia … exacerbated by the 7 October 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel [and] the ongoing conflict and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
On 21 June 2024, Giles personally recommended Segal as the preferred candidate for the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.
In a letter dated 25 June 2024, Albanese agreed to Segal’s appointment. Albanese also approved an additional $12.9 million of funding for the two envoy roles.
“The 2024-25 Budget provided $4.0 million over two years from 2023-24 for the appointment of the Special Envoys, as a decision taken but not yet announced. Noting the appointments will now be for three years instead of one and additional support staff may be required, I agree to provide up to an additional $12.9 million in total over three years from 2024-25 for up to 12 staff, with offsets to be agreed in the 2024-25 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) context, subject to agreement with the Department of Finance.”
Public interest outweighed by need for secrecy
In its decision, Home Affairs argued that releasing deliberative material would hinder officials’ ability to provide “full and frank advice” on future appointments, and that releasing names or details of candidates would be an unreasonable breach of personal privacy.
The Department explicitly acknowledged that disclosure would “promote the objects of the FOI Act” and “inform debate on a matter of public importance” but still maintained the public interest favoured secrecy, particularly to avoid “prejudicing” internal government processes.
The information officer stated the following:
“I consider that the public interest in protecting the process of the provision of free and honest confidential advice by a Department to its Minister has, on balance, more weight, than the public interest that might exist in disclosing the deliberative matter. Endangering the proper working relationship that a Department has with its Minster and its ability to provide its Minister with honest advice confidentially would be contrary to the public interest.”
The Federal Government is refusing to release any details of the land purchase for radioactive waste management. Rex Patrick follows the money trail.
n 2023, the current Minister for Resources confessed to the Senate that the Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) had spent $108.6 million not finding a place for a National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).
In July 2023, Federal Court Justice Natalie Charlesworth set aside a November 2021 declaration made by then Minister Keith Pitt that Napandee, a 211-acre property near Kimba in SA, was to be the future site of the NRWMF. Pitt’s declaration for this site was nine years in the making, but he and the Department had botched the site selection process.
Not the way to select a facility
If you wanted to select a site for a national facility to store radioactive waste, you’d look to the storage requirements, including technical, environmental, geological (such as earthquake tendency), social, and indigenous cultural and heritage considerations. And then you’d look for sites that met all those requirements.
That’s not what DISR did.
In September 2012, the Government released a notice of intention to conduct a nationwide request for land owners to nominate land for the NRWMF. The official call for nominations was conducted between 2 March and 5 May 2015.
A sweetener was added to entice landowners; the successful land seller would get four times the market value. It was quite an extraordinary proposition – it wasn’t as though the Government was intending to compulsorily acquire land from an unwilling seller.
But, why not? The geniuses who concocted the plan in DISR knew only too well that the extra money was just taxpayers’ money.
Buy, and then sell back
On 26 November 2021, the Government declared land in Napandee, owned by the Baldock family*, would be the site for the facility.
Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.Minister’s Decision (Source: DISR)
Three days later, the Minister issued a press release stating the Government had acquired the land.
MWM is trying to get access to the land sale contract and the purchase price, using FOI. But access to it has been refused. You paid, but are not allowed to know.
The FOI decision is now the subject of challenge, where the Information Commissioner will be the adjudicator.
Last week, the Minister for Resources also refused to answer a formal “how much” question asked by Senator Lambie. Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct.
Local scuttlebutt is that the Department spent $10m of taxpayers’ money buying that land – almost 8 times the market value. The refusal by the Department and the Minister to give sale price answers under FOI or, respectively, to the Senate adds suspicion that this is correct. Or when the Department of Infrastructure acquired the Western Sydney Airport ‘Leppington Triangle’ land for $30m, when it was only valued at $3m.
Maladministration or something more sinister?
It’s unheard of that the Senate would be denied past expenditure information on land at Napandee.
The Government has surely overpaid for the site, even after meeting their own unexplained ‘4x price’ rule, by $4 million, but possibly by $9 million if the scuttlebutt is correct.
At best, the Government has engaged in a farce. The Department knew that the path they had taken to select Napandee was flawed.
On 1 February 2020, Senator Matt Canavan, who preceded Pitt as the Minister for Resources, announced Napandee as the site to host Australia’s NRWMF. But the Canavan decision was informal.
Realising the process would be found wanting by a Court, the Government changed tack and on 13 February 2020 introduced legislation into the House of Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
Representatives that would have the Parliament select Napandee as the site.
On 6 March 2020, a senior departmental official, Sam Chard, met with the Mayor of Kimba, during which he said words to the effect that (as recorded in Justice Charlesworth’s decision) ,
“parliamentary scrutiny would replace the mechanism for legal challenge under the NRWM Act.”
MWM can’t publish for legal reasons – but you can read about it here).
DISR and the Government thought they were onto a winning solution because the proposed legislation would shut down the option of challenging the decision in a court (Courts can’t overturn the decisions of Parliament unless they are unconstitutional). The problem was the Senate refused to pass it. So, they went back to the original plan, and Minister Pitt formally made the ministerial site decision on 26 November 2021.
What the FOI has revealed is an extraordinary fact – the land was actually purchased on 11 November 2021, 15 days before Pitt made the decision that it was the Minister’s chosen site.
* Editor’s note: MWM makes no allegation of wrongdoing by the Baldock family. They are merely a beneficiary of DISR maladministration or of their farce.
AUKUS was hailed as Australia’s biggest defense agreement, one that could redefine the security architecture in the crucial Indo-Pacific region and challenge China’s rising belligerence.
The pact involved providing Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines.
The Pillar-I involved Canberra buying 3–5 used Virginia-class SSNs from the U.S., and the Pillar-II involved developing and constructing a new SSN-AUKUS submarine class jointly by Australia and the United Kingdom, incorporating US technology, with deliveries to the Royal Australian Navy beginning in the early 2040s.
However, even four years after signing the over USD 368 billion pact, there is little progress on the crucial project.
After months of uncertainty, US President Donald Trump finally endorsed the deal last month, assuring Canberra that “they’re getting them (SSNs).”
However, now a new worry is troubling Australia. The fear of spying by “adversary countries” on sensitive nuclear-propulsion technology can further delay the already-delayed project.
China-India Spying On AUKUS?
Australian media outlet The Australian has reported that Australia’s Defense Force has rejected one in ten applicants for AUKUS submarine work due to dubious foreign ties or security risks.
The highly classified nuclear submarine project employs strict vetting processes, turning away individuals with dual citizenship and suspicious links to China and India.
This affects the recruitment drive for the US$368 billion project, which aims to build a highly-skilled workforce of over 20,000 personnel, including engineers and technicians for nuclear submarine construction and maintenance.
Individuals with family, professional, or financial ties to these nations, particularly those who’re in some way connected to the armed forces or state intelligence agencies, are routinely flagged.
The article further notes that U.S.-imposed ITAR regulations further restrict access for non-citizens or those with overseas parentage from high-risk countries, such as China, exacerbating hiring challenges.
These reports followed Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Director-General Mike Burgess’s warning that foreign spy agencies are intensifying efforts to infiltrate AUKUS through job applications and online networks.
The tactics involve posting fake recruitment ads on social platforms like LinkedIn, and then trying to lure the applicants with a defense background to provide insider information on project timelines and technology specifications.
These fake recruitment ads target people associated with the AUKUS project and sometimes prompt them to unwittingly share sensitive details about the project’s timelines during the interview process.
The tactics involve posting fake recruitment ads on social platforms like LinkedIn, and then trying to lure the applicants with a defense background to provide insider information on project timelines and technology specifications.
Getting access to documents concerning a nuclear submarine base in NSW has become an FOI riddle wrapped in a submarine mystery inside a nuclear enigma. Rex Patrick reports.
You can’t have the documents. Hang on, maybe you can? Nope, they’re too sensitive. OK, they’re not sensitive, you can have them all. Except you can’t.
If you’re struggling to follow this, I’ll try to explain. But keep this in the back of your mind – all Australian taxpayers are paying for the Department of Defence’s part in this, and those NSW taxpayers also get to pay the NSW Crown Solicitor’s part.
It started with a single backflip. When I first asked the NSW Government for access to documents relating to the consideration of a nuclear submarine base in NSW, they said I couldn’t have the documents because they were Cabinet-in-Confidence.
When I took the case to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), the NSW Government backflipped. They stated that their Cabinet exemption claim was wrong and asked NCAT if the Government could remake the decision.
Double backflip
The Tribunal said, “Yes, remake your decision”.
A month later, the NSW Government issued me a new decision. No! Again, “you can’t have them”! Across 12 pages of carefully worded legalese, they tried to explain why the public can’t see the documents.
That was September. Fast forward to late October and, out of the blue, the NSW Crown solicitor wrote to me and advised, “the [NSW Government] position in relation to the information in issue in the proceedings has changed … The [NSW Government] no longer holds the view that information is subject to an overriding public interest against disclosure.”
Woo-hoo! Transparency at last. But wait…
Defence secrecy
The email went on to say, “… Defence has an interest in the Defence Information and it has objected to the release of that information. Defence has a right to appear and be heard in the proceedings …”
What secrets?
I am yet to find out the basis of Defence’s objection to releasing the material, but in a very closely related request for information, Defence objected to the release of information because those documents identified or described Defence infrastructure or capability (e.g. base locations, site suitability studies, strategic assessments).
But seriously, how sensitive can a base’s location be? How sensitive can buildings be? In five minutes, anyone with internet access can use Google Earth to avail themselves of the location and layout of HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, where US and UK nuclear submarines are currently visiting.
Moreover, the buildings that will support the permanent basing of submarines at HMAS Stirling can be seen by visiting the website of the Federal Parliament’s Public Works Committee.
Yellow peril
But what about the Chinese? Won’t they find out?
Defence may be worried that if the location is known, then the Chinese might buy land next door to the planned base. The problem is, the Chinese have already purchased land in the Port Kembla and Newcastle port precinct.
In fact, Newcastle Port is operated by a consortium with 50% Chinese ownership (98-year lease) through China Merchant Port Holdings;
“they probably already know more about Newcastle Port and its environs than Defence does.”
The Chinese purchases in both cities provide considerable ability for them to monitor and evaluate key infrastructure servicing and capacity developments; high voltage power supply arrangements, natural gas supply details, potable water arrangements, fire water supply details, rail and road access arrangements and area telecommunications.
And the Chinese won’t only have access to future strategic plans for the port areas; their purchases are significant enough that they could help shape those plans, having a seat at the table as interested constituents and ratepayers. We know Chinese officials have already used their property interest to have meetings with the Mayor of Newcastle.
And as for the details of what Australia will need to safely support a nuclear sub force,
“the Chinese already know that from their 50 years of operating nuclear attack subs.“
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Getting access to documents concerning a nuclear submarine base in NSW has become an FOI riddle wrapped in a submarine mystery inside a nuclear enigma. Rex Patrick reports.
You can’t have the documents. Hang on, maybe you can? Nope, they’re too sensitive. OK, they’re not sensitive, you can have them all. Except you can’t.
If you’re struggling to follow this, I’ll try to explain. But keep this in the back of your mind – all Australian taxpayers are paying for the Department of Defence’s part in this, and those NSW taxpayers also get to pay the NSW Crown Solicitor’s part.
It started with a single backflip. When I first asked the NSW Government for access to documents relating to the consideration of a nuclear submarine base in NSW, they said I couldn’t have the documents because they were Cabinet-in-Confidence.
When I took the case to the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), the NSW Government backflipped. They stated that their Cabinet exemption claim was wrong and asked NCAT if the Government could remake the decision.
A month later, the NSW Government issued me a new decision. No! Again, “you can’t have them”! Across 12 pages of carefully worded legalese, they tried to explain why the public can’t see the documents.
That was September. Fast forward to late October and, out of the blue, the NSW Crown solicitor wrote to me and advised, “the [NSW Government] position in relation to the information in issue in the proceedings has changed … The [NSW Government] no longer holds the view that information is subject to an overriding public interest against disclosure.”
Woo-hoo! Transparency at last. But wait…
Defence secrecy
The email went on to say, “… Defence has an interest in the Defence Information and it has objected to the release of that information. Defence has a right to appear and be heard in the proceedings …”
Backflip, with Defence objection (Source: NSW Crown Solicitor)
What secrets?
I am yet to find out the basis of Defence’s objection to releasing the material, but in a very closely related request for information, Defence objected to the release of information because those documents identified or described Defence infrastructure or capability (e.g. base locations, site suitability studies, strategic assessments).
But seriously, how sensitive can a base’s location be? How sensitive can buildings be? In five minutes, anyone with internet access can use Google Earth to avail themselves of the location and layout of HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, where US and UK nuclear submarines are currently visiting.
Moreover, the buildings that will support the permanent basing of submarines at HMAS Stirling can be seen by visiting the website of the Federal Parliament’s Public Works Committee.
Nuclear Submarine Piers (Source: Defence)
Yellow peril
But what about the Chinese? Won’t they find out?
Defence may be worried that if the location is known, then the Chinese might buy land next door to the planned base. The problem is, the Chinese have already purchased land in the Port Kembla and Newcastle port precinct.
In fact, Newcastle Port is operated by a consortium with 50% Chinese ownership (98-year lease) through China Merchant Port Holdings;
they probably already know more about Newcastle Port and its environs than Defence does.
The Chinese purchases in both cities provide considerable ability for them to monitor and evaluate key infrastructure servicing and capacity developments; high voltage power supply arrangements, natural gas supply details, potable water arrangements, fire water supply details, rail and road access arrangements and area telecommunications.
And the Chinese won’t only have access to future strategic plans for the port areas; their purchases are significant enough that they could help shape those plans, having a seat at the table as interested constituents and ratepayers. We know Chinese officials have already used their property interest to have meetings with the Mayor of Newcastle.
And as for the details of what Australia will need to safely support a nuclear sub force,
the Chinese already know that from their 50 years of operating nuclear attack subs.
But that won’t stop Defence objecting to the release of information that would otherwise be reasonable for the grant of social licence. It’s a department addicted to secrecy (how else are they going to keep their multi-billion dollar procurement blunders from public scrutiny).
A political ruse
Greens Senator David Shoebridge offered his perspective on the Federal Government’s secrecy:
“The Albanese government isn’t worried that China will find out where they want to put another US nuclear submarine base, they are worried the Australian public will. “The community of the Illawarra have already made it crystal clear that a nuclear submarine base has zero social licence to operate at Port Kembla. “The other potential target for Defence is Newcastle, and with a growing revulsion there with the use of the Williamtown F35 hub to arm Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Labor knows that option is also deeply unpopular. “Hiding these documents isn’t about preventing a foreign adversary from organising against Labor’s war plans, it’s about preventing the public opposing them.”
So, despite the NSW Government’s double backflip (which, despite them being cavalier in the first place, I do appreciate), it looks like I’ll have to keep fighting for transparency.
At least the backflips mean I’ll stand at the bar of NCAT with the NSW Government on my side of the argument. Meanwhile, we’ll all keep having to pay for both sets of lawyers, all necessary to keep politically sensitive topics from the public.
Prime Minister Albanese’s plan to amend FOI laws and increase government secrecy may be unconstitutional, and the LNP, Greens, and Independents are all opposing it. Rex Patrick reports.
Sussan Ley’s opinion piece in the Canberra Times this week, coupled with strong statements of rejection from Greens justice spokesperson Senator David Shoebridge, looks to be the final nail in the coffin for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s hypocritical and evil attempt to clamp down on the ability of citizens to participate in democracy and review the performance of their government.
Every document the government produces is generated for public purposes and on the taxpayer’s coin. The Freedom of Information Act itself states that:
“information held by the Government is to be managed for public purposes, and is a national resource.“
Of course, there is information we should not see; defence secrets, law enforcement tactics, commercially sensitive information shared with government, and citizens’ personal information held by government.
“It is unacceptable in our democratic society that there should be a restraint on the publication of information relating to government when the only vice of that information is that it enables the public to discuss, review and criticise government action.
“Accordingly, the court will determine the government’s claim to confidentiality by reference to the public interest. Unless disclosure is likely to injure the public interest, it will not be protected.”
This judicial declaration was made in 1980, two years before the Freedom of Information Bill was enacted. The principles laid down by Justice Mason were subsequently incorporated into the Act, whereby the default position is that requested information is to be made available to applicants “unless access to the document at that time would, on balance, be contrary to the public interest” – although this default position is:
“effectively being defeated due to a flourishing culture of government secrecy.”
Horse trading risk
Could the Coalition opposition falter in their resolve – maybe in exchange for less stringent environmental regulations for industry? Could the Greens seek to do a deal – maybe in exchange for tighter emission controls?
The problem is that when you horse trade, you sometimes end up with a donkey.
But anything is possible in politics. The Bill is not scheduled to be debated this year. A week in politics is a long time; a few months an eternity.
Unconstitutional?
The fallback, if the Bill passes, would be to mount a constitutional challenge to the prospective crackdown on public access to government information. There is force in the proposition that the:
“Bill intrudes on the implied freedom of political communication in the Australian Constitution.“
In the 1992 High Court case of Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd & New South Wales v Commonwealth, the court ruled that the implied freedom is a necessary incident of the representative democracy which the Australian Constitution provides. Communication is protected because it is the means by which electors inform themselves about government and political matters, which allows them to exercise an informed choice at elections.
Anthony Mason, by then High Court Chief Justice, said in that case:
“… The point is that the representatives who are members of Parliament and Ministers of State are not only chosen by the people but exercise their legislative and executive powers as representatives of the people. And in the exercise of those powers the representatives of necessity are accountable to the people for what they do and have a responsibility to take account of the views of the people on whose behalf they act. Freedom of communication is an indispensable element in representative government.
“Indispensable to that accountability and that responsibility is freedom of communication, at least in relation to public affairs and political discussion. Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen communicate his or her views on the wide range of matters that may call for, or are relevant to, political action or decision. Only by exercising that freedom can the citizen criticise government decisions and actions, seek to bring about change, call for action where none has been taken and in this way influence the elected representatives. By these means the elected representatives are equipped to discharge their role so that they may take account of and respond to the will of the people.
“Communication in the exercise of the freedom is by no means a one-way traffic, for the elected representatives have a responsibility not only to ascertain the views of the electorate but also to explain and account for their decisions and actions in government and to inform the people so that they may make informed judgments on relevant matters. (Author’s emphasis.)
“Absent such a freedom of communication, representative government would fail to achieve its purpose, namely, government by the people through their elected representatives; government would cease to be responsive to the needs and wishes of the people and, in that sense, would cease to be truly representative.”
The FOI Act recognises this Constitutional foundation, with the Parliament declaring one of the objectives of the legislation is to… “promote Australia’s representative democracy.” In 1988, in the High Court case of Egan v Willis, Justices Gaudron, Gummow and Hayne stated:
In Australia, s 75(v) of the Constitution and judicial review of administrative action under federal and State law, together with freedom of information legislation (author’s emphasis), supplement the operation of responsible government in this respect.
Beyond reasonable secrecy
Although the High Court only declared freedom of political communication in the 1990s, it has existed in Australia since 1901.
Whilst the FOI Act only came into effect in 1982, it effectively codified a mechanism and a reasonable limit on what government information could be available to fulfil the Constitutional freedom of political observation.
The Cabinet provisions in Prime Minister Albanese’s FOI Amendment Bill depart from necessary confidentiality in Cabinet solidarity and collective responsibility, and, in a radical departure from established understanding and practice,
“wrap a secrecy blanket over all things being carried out at the top echelons of government.
Secrecy for the sake of secrecy is wrong. Exaggerated secrecy, that is, secrecy beyond the public interest, will warp the foundations of our democracy and will most likely be unconstitutional.
Sections 7 and 24 of the Constitution, which state respectively that the Senate and the House of Representatives shall be composed of senators and members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, imply that citizens have a right to be informed so that they can properly consider their vote.
As such, the passage of the Bill will likely give rise to a challenge as to the validity of
“laws that seek to hide what the public own and should reasonably be able to see.”
Complacency
So, although passage of the Bill through the Parliament looks set to fail, the Government will be working up a negotiating scenario – maybe offering something that the Coalition hates but the Greens really like or something the Greens hate but the Coalition really likes.
But no good could come from negotiation on this Bill. It’s a poison pill for democracy.
Information is to democratic participation as water is to life. We take the water for granted until it stops flowing. Complacency must not set in, and there should be no deals. Albanese’s toxic FOI suppression Bill should be voted down.
The Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Legislation is holding its first hearing into the Bill this Friday.
It is clear to many that AUKUS, in particular its early fulfilment stages, is becoming a debacle. In February, Defence Minister Richard Marles lauded as a ‘very unique’ arrangement Australia’s gift to the United States of $4.7 billion to bolster America’s struggling submarine output, highlighting that such an arrangement hasn’t been seen in other defence pacts globally.
Of course such an arrangement hasn’t been seen elsewhere! Most other countries wouldn’t agree to hand over this massive sum without ensuring there were provisions for a refund should the promised submarines fail to arrive.
In an inept performance in Senate Estimates in June 2024, Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, head of the Australian Submarine Agency, woodenly refused to answer a straightforward question from Greens’ Senator David Shoebridge about whether the agreement Australia has struck with the US contains a clawback provision should the promised submarines fail to be supplied.
Mead’s performance, as recorded in Hansard, is mordantly comical:
It is thus obvious that Australia has no contractual way of recovering its money should the current or a future US President block the transfer of the submarines, as the US President is entitled to do under US legislation.
Australia is certainly ‘very unique’ in its willingness to part with almost $10 billion (the UK is getting a similar amount) in public funds with no strings attached.
Australia made the first payment of $800 million to the US in February and quietly transferred the second payment, a further $800 million, in July. It has committed to paying a total of US$2 billion ($3 billion) by the end of 2025, with the remainder to be paid over the decade to 2035‒36.
Under the AUKUS deal, both major political parties have committed to spending vast public resources with no consultation and minimal transparency and accountability.
Even though the Australian National Audit Office has exposed, in report after report, serious probity breaches in defence procurement, including unethical conduct between global weapons companies and the Australian government, these transgressions are routinely ignored. The weapons deals continue regardless.
The big winners from AUKUS so far have been nuclear submarine manufacturers in the United States and the United Kingdom. Australia has committed to providing almost $10 billion to boost the output of these companies, helping secure jobs for workers in America and the United Kingdom.
As there are no clawback provisions in either of these agreements, should President Trump ditch AUKUS, or if the submarine manufacturing capacity in the US and UK doesn’t sufficiently increase, Australian taxpayers will be picking up another multibillion-dollar defence tab with nothing to show for it. We’ve already shelled out $3.4 billion for no submarines, following former PM Scott Morrison’s shredding of the pre-AUKUS French submarine contract.
This is far from the only example of waste, misdirection and incompetence in Australia’s dealings with the global arms industry. Take the Albanese government’s engagement with global arms giant Thales. In October last year, the government signed up Thales to a further munitions manufacturing contract and a ‘strategic partnership’ in the new domestic missile-making endeavour, the Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) enterprise.
The new deal with Thales was struck despite the fact that Thales is currently being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. …………………….https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/nothing-to-see-here-says-australia………………………………………… The Thales example illustrates how a key democratic accountability mechanism, the National Audit Office and its reports, is routinely ignored.
…………………………………………………How is it that such imbroglios occur again and again? Australian governments are highly susceptible to the ‘revolving door’ process in which politicians, the military and public servants move effortlessly between government, lobbying and the industry itself.
In what follows, no suggestion is being made of unlawful activity by any person named, nor that any of the appointments noted was unlawful.
The problem for Australia is not one of legality but of the perfectly legal influence of industry insiders within government, the lack of transparency, and the absence of management of the ‘revolving door’.
The revolving door
The ‘revolving door’ describes the movement of public officials into related private roles, and industry executives into related public roles. It is a widespread problem that undermines democracy, yet in Australia it remains unmonitored and unpoliced.
A large number of Australia’s senior government ministers and their staffers, military officers, and defence department officials move through the revolving door into paid roles with the weapons industry. Such moves are not illegal but they require a robust management framework—with rules that are enforced—to mitigate the inherent conflicts of interest. Australia’s feeble attempts at managing the revolving door have been completely ineffective
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..In the lobby
There are also plenty of former senior military officers pulling strings on behalf of weapons companies too. Examples are listed below.
The federal register of lobbyists provides some transparency, but does not cover the majority of people who lobby politicians. The register applies only to third-party lobbyists. These people operate as paid professionals, either individually or as an employee of a lobbying firm, on behalf of clients. Third party lobbyists make up just 20% of all lobbyists. The remaining 80% include, amongst others, company CEOs and people employed by corporations as ‘government relations’ advisers. This enables employees of major weapons companies to lobby politicians easily and legally, with zero transparency.
Reverse cycle: private to public
The government’s engagement with UK weapons giant BAE Systems’ local subsidiary best illustrates how this works.
The government gave former senior BAE Systems executives influential behind-the-scenes roles both before and during the tender process for Australia’s largest ever surface warship procurement, the $46 billion Hunter class frigates, a contract BAE went on to win. Few of these roles were publicly acknowledged. https://undueinfluence.substack.com/p/sinking-billions-revolving-doors
BAE Systems was awarded the frigates contract by the Turnbull government in mid-2018. The names of the people appointed to an expert advisory panel to oversee the tender evaluation process were not made public. Here’s why: serious conflicts of interest…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Lockheed Martin utilises the revolving door heavily in the US. Until recently, it had openly adopted the same strategy in Australia. From October 2013 until the end of 2021, the board of Lockheed Martin Australia boasted multiple former senior Australian public officials: at least two at any one time, more often three, and even four during one 20-month period.
They included a roll call of defence heavies from past decades,………………………………………………………………………………………
The UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, released a report in July addressing the ‘economy of genocide’ in which she makes special note of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program…………………………….
Australia’s refusal to cease the supply of parts and components into Lockheed Martin’s F-35 global supply chain places the nation at risk of being found complicit in Israel’s genocide.
Complicity in the world’s worst international crime is just one of the democracy-undermining consequences of Australia’s deep enmeshment in the US and broader Western military industrial complex.
While a treaty prohibits nuclear weapons stationed in Australia, the Government tries to circumvent it. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling on Labor’s duplicitous nuclear word games.
From 2032, nuclear-armed cruise missiles will be loaded into US Navy Virginia-class subs. The Treaty of Rarotonga prohibits nuclear weapons from being ‘stationed’ at HMAS Stirling, but maybe it’s OK for them to be ‘rotated’ through the base.
The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty, first signed at Rarotonga in August 1985, was one of the successes of Australia’s activist nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation diplomacy of the Hawke and Keating Governments. Born out of South Pacific opposition to French nuclear testing and broader concerns about superpower competition in the Pacific, the Treaty entered into force on 11 December 1986. Amongst other things,
it prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons within the South Pacific by member states. Australia is a member state.
Stationing is defined in the treaty as “emplantation, emplacement, transportation on land or inland waters, stockpiling, storage, installation and deployment.”
The treaty doesn’t prevent nuclear-armed ships from visiting a member state’s ports or transiting their waters. The Treaty was drafted to allow this, in part to accommodate Australia’s ANZUS defence relationship with the US. At the time US warships and submarines carried tactical nuclear weapons, but the US ‘neither confirmed or denied’ whether individual vessels were actually carrying them.
Additional protocols not ratified
At the urging of the Keating Government, in March 1996 President Bill Clinton’s Administration signed three Protocols to the Treaty of Rarotonga, giving an undertaking, amongst other things, not to station nuclear weapons on its territories within SPNFZ (American Samoa and Jarvis Island), and not to contribute to any act by a party to the Treaty that constitutes a violation of the Treaty.
After much delay, President Barack Obama’s Administration submitted the SPNFZ Protocols to the US Senate, but ratification has not occurred owing to Republican obstruction.
However, with USN submarines and surface vessels stripped of tactical nuclear weapons in 1991 (at the end of the Cold War), and US ballistic missile submarines not deployed from any South Pacific ports, the Protocols largely fell into contemporary irrelevance. However, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, that’s all about to change.
Sea launched missiles
Sea launched missiles
In his first term, Trump ordered the US Navy to develop a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, SLCM-N, to provide the US subs and warships with flexible and low-yield nuclear strike options. In 2022, President Biden proposed cancelling the program, but Congress continued to fund it.
Now, with Trump back in the White House, the SLCM-N program is accelerating.
Trump’s ‘big beautiful Bill’ included US$2B for work on the missile and $US400m to accelerate work on its W80-4 warhead, likely to have a variable yield between 5 and 150 kilotons (the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had a 15 kiloton yield).
Further funding is now proposed in the 2026 budget, with plans to move forward SLCM-N entry into service from 2034 to 2032.
Once the SLCM-N is deployed, the stationing of US attack subs in Australia could give rise to a breach of Australia’s obligations under the SPNFZ Treaty. The US could also be acting contrary to Protocol 2 to the Treaty, which it has signed, though not ratified.
A criminal offence
If US submarines ‘stationed’ in Australia are armed with SLCM-N missiles, Australian officials could be in some legal jeopardy.
The SPNRZ Treaty Act 1986 gives legal effect to Australia’s obligations under the SPNFZ Treaty.
Section 11 of the Act states, “A person who stations, or does any act or thing to facilitate the stationing of, a nuclear explosive device in Australia commits an offence against this section”. The penalty for doing so is imprisonment of up to 20 years, or a significant fine, or both.
So, MWM guesses it’s a really good thing that no US attack subs will be ‘stationed’ at HMAS Stirling, they’ll just be there as a “rotational force”. At least the Albanese Government wants everyone to think this is a big difference.
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While a treaty prohibits nuclear weapons stationed in Australia, the Government tries to circumvent it. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling on Labor’s duplicitous nuclear word games.
From 2032, nuclear-armed cruise missiles will be loaded into US Navy Virginia-class subs. The Treaty of Rarotonga prohibits nuclear weapons from being ‘stationed’ at HMAS Stirling, but maybe it’s OK for them to be ‘rotated’ through the base.
The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (SPNFZ) Treaty, first signed at Rarotonga in August 1985, was one of the successes of Australia’s activist nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation diplomacy of the Hawke and Keating Governments. Born out of South Pacific opposition to French nuclear testing and broader concerns about superpower competition in the Pacific, the Treaty entered into force on 11 December 1986. Amongst other things,
it prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons within the South Pacific by member states. Australia is a member state.
Stationing is defined in the treaty as “emplantation, emplacement, transportation on land or inland waters, stockpiling, storage, installation and deployment.”
The treaty doesn’t prevent nuclear-armed ships from visiting a member state’s ports or transiting their waters. The Treaty was drafted to allow this, in part to accommodate Australia’s ANZUS defence relationship with the US. At the time US warships and submarines carried tactical nuclear weapons, but the US ‘neither confirmed or denied’ whether individual vessels were actually carrying them.
Additional protocols not ratified
At the urging of the Keating Government, in March 1996 President Bill Clinton’s Administration signed three Protocols to the Treaty of Rarotonga, giving an undertaking, amongst other things, not to station nuclear weapons on its territories within SPNFZ (American Samoa and Jarvis Island), and not to contribute to any act by a party to the Treaty that constitutes a violation of the Treaty.
After much delay, President Barack Obama’s Administration submitted the SPNFZ Protocols to the US Senate, but ratification has not occurred owing to Republican obstruction.
However, with USN submarines and surface vessels stripped of tactical nuclear weapons in 1991 (at the end of the Cold War), and US ballistic missile submarines not deployed from any South Pacific ports, the Protocols largely fell into contemporary irrelevance. However, with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, that’s all about to change.
Sea launched missiles
In his first term, Trump ordered the US Navy to develop a new nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missile, SLCM-N, to provide the US subs and warships with flexible and low-yield nuclear strike options. In 2022, President Biden proposed cancelling the program, but Congress continued to fund it.
Now, with Trump back in the White House, the SLCM-N program is accelerating.
Trump’s ‘big beautiful Bill’ included US$2B for work on the missile and $US400m to accelerate work on its W80-4 warhead, likely to have a variable yield between 5 and 150 kilotons (the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had a 15 kiloton yield).
Further funding is now proposed in the 2026 budget, with plans to move forward SLCM-N entry into service from 2034 to 2032.
Once the SLCM-N is deployed, the stationing of US attack subs in Australia could give rise to a breach of Australia’s obligations under the SPNFZ Treaty. The US could also be acting contrary to Protocol 2 to the Treaty, which it has signed, though not ratified.
If US submarines ‘stationed’ in Australia are armed with SLCM-N missiles, Australian officials could be in some legal jeopardy.
The SPNRZ Treaty Act 1986 gives legal effect to Australia’s obligations under the SPNFZ Treaty.
Section 11 of the Act states, “A person who stations, or does any act or thing to facilitate the stationing of, a nuclear explosive device in Australia commits an offence against this section”. The penalty for doing so is imprisonment of up to 20 years, or a significant fine, or both.
So, MWM guesses it’s a really good thing that no US attack subs will be ‘stationed’ at HMAS Stirling, they’ll just be there as a “rotational force”. At least the Albanese Government wants everyone to think this is a big difference.
Nuclear re-armament
At the outset of the AUKUS agreement, the Australian Government would have been well aware of the first Trump Administration’s commitment to the SLCM-N program and its continuation under the Biden Administration.
Although this has received no public attention in Australia, the prospect that US Virginia-class subs will be nuclear armed is not a secret.
It’s in this context that the Australian Government have very deliberately used the words “Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West)” to describe the presence of US submarines from 2027.
At a 14 March 2023 press conference, when a journalist asked the question,
“You made it very clear in the literature this morning that the stationed submarines in Western Australia will not constitute a US base. However, if there are up to four submarines out there, helping to train Australian sailors, they could be called on at any time to provide support in the Pacific or in Asia for the US. In what way is that not a base?”
Defence Minister Richard Marles responded with force:
Well, it’s a forward rotation. So, they’re not going to be based there.
When Defence Personnel Minister Matt Keogh introduced the Defence Housing Australia Amendment Bill 2025 in the Parliament in July this year, he explained the Bill was necessary, in part, to ensure housing for US personnel is available in close proximity to HMAS Stirling.
Defence is now committed to spending billions on upgrading and expanding facilities at HMAS Stirling to accommodate the continuous presence of USN attack subs, including housing for hundreds of American personnel and their families.
It’s really hard not to characterise what’s happening as ‘stationing’.
And eventually those stationed USN submarines are going to be nuclear-armed.
Situational double-speak
The stationing of nuclear weapons contrary to the SPNFZ Treaty is undoubtedly an issue the Government’s going to have to grapple with in relation to its leftie rank and file, but also diplomatically and legally.
There’s certainly potential for controversy and collateral damage to Australia’s relations in the South Pacific. Australia’s Pacific Islands partners are deeply attached to SPNFZ as the most significant legacy of the long campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific and a declaration of the region’s desire for independence from the dictates of nuclear powers.
That was once part of Australia Labor’s political heritage, too, but that’s now being swept aside by AUKUS.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has insisted that Australia is still committed to SPNFZ. In January 2023 she affirmed that, “… in partnership with the Pacific family, we remain steadfastly committed to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty.”
Three months later, she declared, “I want to make this crystal clear – we will ensure we comply with our obligations under the Treaty of Rarotonga.”
There’s no breach of treaty obligations yet, but Wong’s pledges will look pretty duplicitous when USN Virginia-class subs loaded with nuclear-armed cruise missiles are eventually based at HMAS Stirling.
Pacific Islands countries might wish to take the issue up through the Consultation Committee and complaints process established under Article 10 and Annexes 3 and 4 of the SPNFZ Treaty.
Moreover, while no one’s going to jail under Labor’s watch, the Government’s sophistry may also not stop an application for a permanent injunction being filed in the Federal Court, where the actual disposition of the US subs can be legally tested against the definition of the word ‘stationing’ in the Treaty.
In the meantime, MWM has fired off some new Freedom of Information requests (while we still can) to get to the bottom of it all. That includes one to the Australian Submarine Agency, which, according to a disclosure just made to the Senate, has recently opened a file on their system called “South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty Act 1986”.
Jillian Segal, the government-appointed Special Envoy for Antisemitism, has refused to answer questions from the NSW parliament about her plan. Emma Thomas reports.
The Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism has been heavily critiqued since it was released last month. The plan proposes a suite of interventions across government and civil society, including allowing the Special Envoy to weigh in on immigration issues and to ‘monitor’ public media.
Among the plan’s more controversial (and impractical) recommendations is a proposal to withhold government funding from universities and arts bodies that fail to meet the Special Envoy’s criteria.
The plan’s architect, Jillian Segal, has meanwhile retreated from public view. This follows her seemingly ill-prepared appearance on ABC on 10 July (coinciding with the release of the plan) and a 12 July report detailing her family trust’s $50,000 donation to the right-wing lobby group Advance, which is known for promoting racism and campaigning against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Last week, however, the Special Envoy responded to a series of questions about her plan posed by the parliamentary committee inquiring into antisemitism in NSW.
Evidence-free policy proposals
The plan’s lack of sources, statistics or citations – that is, any evidence that might support its claims and underpin its proposed policies – has been widely noted and critiqued.
Yet, in her response to the NSW parliamentary inquiry, Segal claimed that there is a “wide base of research” behind her plan, which includes “commissioned surveys, consultations with community organisations, and international comparisons.” The plan, she insists, “is a policy framework grounded in both evidence and expert practice.”
She has, however, refused to provide evidence or publicly release any research supposedly conducted by her taxpayer-funded office, citing “security and privacy reasons.”
When asked specifically about what data or evidence supports her claim of systemic antisemitism in Australia’s public sector, Segal simply reasserted the claim that “There is clear evidence of antisemitic discrimination in parts of the public sector.” Although she provides none, she suggests the committee “review publicly available data.” Again, no such data was provided.
When asked for evidence of “foreign funding” supporting “clusters of antisemitism” in Australian universities, Segal pointed only to “credible concerns” that this “could” be happening. Pressed for specific examples of universities failing to act against antisemitism or of media outlets presenting “false or distorted narratives”, she again provided none. Instead, she described that plan as “proactive” and “precautionary”.
Neither in her plan nor in her responses to the NSW inquiry does Segal cite a single study, piece of evidence or expert assessment, from either the national or international context, that might support the efficacy of her plan to combat antisemitism. It’s possible that there are none.
No evidence for IHRA’s effectiveness
Segal’s plan hinges on Australia’s widespread adoption and application of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism – “including its illustrative examples”.
The 11 illustrative examples are highly contested because seven of them relate to criticism of the State of Israel, whose prime minister is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The examples are so contentious that IHRA’s decision-making body, the Plenary, itself has not endorsed them as part of the definition. IHRA itself describes the examples only as “illustrations” that may guide the organisation’s own work. Segal’s suggestion that the definition, along with the examples, be “required” across all levels of government, public institutions and regulatory bodies
“goes well beyond IHRA’s own framework”.
First published in 2005 by the European Union agency, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, the definition was intended for use in data collection, not policymaking. In 2013, the definition was abandoned. It was repackaged as the “IHRA’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism” in 2016.
In the nine years since the definition’s adoption by IHRA, no evidence has been provided that it is effective in combating antisemitism – not in Segal’s plan, nor in external studies,
There is, however, a wealth of academic and legal critique showing that the definition fosters self-censorship and penalises speech on Israel’s violations of international law and advocacy for Palestinian rights. The definition’s efficacy – like that of Segal’s proposed plan – lies in the “proactive” and “precautionary” implementation. And as historian Avi Shlaim states, it
Dr Emma Thomas is a researcher and writer based in the Greater Sydney area. As a historian, she has spent the last fifteen years studying and teaching at universities in Australia and the United States. One of the first things she teaches all her students is that opinions and evidence-based arguments are not the same thing.
Officially called a “joint space research facility” until 1988, the intelligence facility was in the crosshairs with a handful of other US bases and installations around Australia.
In fact, almost all United States bases around the world were placed on alert as conflict escalated in the Middle East. Whitlam wasn’t the only leader left out of the loop.
A prime minister in the dark
“Whitlam got upset that he hadn’t been told in advance,” Brian Toohey, journalist and former Labor staffer to Whitlam’s defence minister Lance Barnard, said.
Toohey said Whitlam should have been told that facilities including North West Cape base in Western Australia, and Pine Gap were being put on “red alert”.
“There had been a new agreement knocked out by Australian officials with their American counterparts, that Australia would be given advance warning.”
They weren’t.
Suddenly, the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
Why were parts of Australia on ‘red alert’?
The Cold War superpowers backed opposing sides in the Yom Kippur War.
The Soviet Union supported Egypt and the United States was behind Israel.
As the proxy war escalated in October 1973, United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger believed the crisis could go nuclear and issued a DefCon 3 alert.
A DefCon 3 alert saw immediate preparations to ensure the United States could mobilise in 15 minutes to deliver a nuclear strike.
The aim was to deter a nuclear strike by the Soviets.
And, it simultaneously alerted all US bases including facilities in Australia that a nuclear threat was real.
This level of alert has only occurred a few times, including immediately after the September 11 attacks.
During the 1972 election campaign, the progressive politician had promised to lift the lid on Pine Gap and share its secrets with all Australians.
“He gave a promise that he would tell the Australian public a lot more about what Pine Gap did,” Toohey said.
But according to Toohey, the initial briefing provided to Whitlam and Barnard by defence chief Arthur Tange left the prime minister with little to say.
“Tange came along and he said basically that there was nothing they could be allowed to say. And that was just ridiculous,” Toohey said.
“He said, the one thing he could tell them was the bases could not be used in any way to participate in a war. Well, of course they do.”
Whitlam would cause alarm in Washington when he refused to commit to extending Pine Gap’s future.
In 1974 on the floor of parliament he said:
“The Australian government takes the attitude that there should not be foreign military bases, stations, installations in Australia. We honour agreements covering existing stations. We do not favour the extension or prolongation of any of those existing ones.”
According to Toohey, “the Americans were incredibly alarmed about that”.
“As contingency planning, the whole of the US Defence Department said that they would shift it to Guam, a Pacific island that America owned,” he said.
And the following year, allegations would emerge that the CIA were involved in the prime minister’s dismissal on November 11, 1975.
Former Labor defence minister Kim Beazley labels the scuttlebutt as “bulldust”.
“I’d heard that stuff about the Americans getting frightened and therefore getting involved. I put the matter to study, I got a couple of senior public servants to have a look at it, nothing there, nothing there.”
Despite no conclusive evidence, the rumours continue to swirl.
Episode Two of the ABC’s Expanse podcast: Spies in the Outback is now available. This episode explores the wild political tensions surrounding the spy base in Australia’s backyard. Listen here.
I wanted to hear from the traditional owners of the Arrernte land it was built on, and from the spies tasked with finding targets in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terrorism. But how do you investigate something as secretive as Pine Gap when everyone who works there has made a promise never to talk about what they do?
serious claims being made that intelligence gathered at the facility was being used in the Israel-Gaza war.
In journalism, it’s often politicians who won’t answer your questions.
But in my outback town, it’s just as likely to be the neighbours who won’t, or rather can’t, answer this basic conversation starter: “So, what do you do at work?”
That’s because about 800 of the town’s 25,000 residents are employed at the most secretive intelligence facility in Australia — the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap — on the edge of Alice Springs/Mparntwe.
When I rolled into this beautiful landscape 16 years ago and began working at the ABC’s Alice Springs bureau, it quickly became clear I wouldn’t hear from this significant section of the community.
Given local radio is all about connecting with the community and sharing people’s stories, this silence felt strange.
My curiosity grew and the book Peace Crimes, written by long-term local journalist Kieran Finnane, motivated me to start looking deeper.
I wanted to know what was going on in my backyard, but I knew trying to make a podcast about a secret military facility hidden in a secluded valley in Central Australia wouldn’t be easy.
Telling this story in a town the size of Alice Springs would undoubtedly feel personal and would likely offend parts of the community.
It’s a line regional journalists walk all the time — telling stories that are in the public interest, while living in the community that is affected by them.
That includes everyone from my neighbours, to the parents of my kids’ friends, to people I see regularly at community events.
For them, it’s not a story – it’s their life.
And that can get awkward.
But there are stories in the public interest that the Australian government won’t comment on and this often means they’re shrouded in mystery, or rife with rumour.
Pine Gap is one of those stories.
What goes on beneath the cluster of enormous, oversized-golf-ball-shaped domes covering the military base’s listening antenna on the desert floor, raises big questions for all of Australia, not just my town.
The Pine Gap intelligence-gathering facility is often described as the jewel in the crown of our military partnership with the United States.
But what have we got ourselves into, and do we benefit from it?
Protesters, politicians and spies
Over the past six months, I’ve had lots of off-the-record coffees, trawled the news and library archives, followed some bizarre leads and heard plenty of wild stories, as I have tried to understand the goings-on behind the razor wire.
I wanted to know why America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) decided to build a so-called “space base” in outback Australia in the mid 1960s.
And how had it drawn Australia onto one battlefield after the next through its large-scale surveillance and intelligence gathering?
While plenty of people outside Alice Springs/Mparntwe have never heard of this desert spy base, most people in town have an opinion on it.
There are three main camps: those who say it’s vital for the town’s economy and global peace; those who still see it as a nuclear target and want it shut down; and those who feel generally apathetic to its existence.
And yet, nobody really talks about Pine Gap.
Still, I felt it was important to really understand the diversity of views on this outback spy base as I conducted my research.
I wanted to hear from the traditional owners of the Arrernte land it was built on, and from the spies tasked with finding targets in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terrorism.
But how do you investigate something as secretive as Pine Gap when everyone who works there has made a promise never to talk about what they do?
I certainly wasn’t looking to see anyone exiled to Russia like Edward Snowden after he leaked a raft of National Security Agency (NSA) documents, including information on Pine Gap.
In the end, gentle, determined persistence meant I was able to tell the Pine Gap story in a way that lifted the lid but didn’t put national security at risk, and that (I hope) was sensitive to the lives of those in Alice Springs affected by it.
Back in the national spotlight
And then, in late 2023 as I tracked down activists, former spies and politicians … protesters were suddenly blocking the road to Pine Gap again.
There were serious claims being made that intelligence gathered at the facility was being used in the Israel-Gaza war. With Pine Gap back in the spotlight, I knew I had to look deeper.
This spy base, which became operational in 1970 during the Cold War, had expanded through the decades in scale and capability and was more relevant than ever.
The Australian government says Pine Gap is one of the country’s “most longstanding security arrangements” with the United States but it does not comment on its operation.
As each episode of Expanse: Spies in the Outback has been released, I’ve received emails and text messages that confirm why it was an important story to tell.
Some people have been shocked and appalled, while others have been grateful to learn we have this secret intelligence facility in our backyard.
Even in my own town of Alice Springs, where everyone knows someone who works at Pine Gap, there is an appetite to know more – regardless of how uncomfortable that might be.
Australians have a right to know who is funding anti-climate campaigns and, if a new Senate inquiry can uncover those money trails, the findings could be shocking, says the Smart Energy Council’s Tim Lamacraft.
The new Senate committee was installed last night and tasked with investigating climate and energy mis- and disinformation campaigns and uncovering which foreign and local organisations are funding “astroturfing”, fake grassroots movements that are actually coordinated marketing campaigns.
“Australians have a right to know who’s really behind the clogging up of their social media feeds with anti renewables, anti climate, anti science propaganda. Rest assured, they’ll be shocked when they find out,” Lamacraft told Renew Economy.
“We saw from the last federal election campaign, where [conservative lobby group] Advance Australia had a $15 million warchest, $14 million of that was in dark money where we don’t know where it came from.
“The most important thing to do with shadowy networks like this is to shine a light. It’s extremely damaging to our democracy to allow millions of dollars from shadowy multinationals, and hidden domestic interests, to influence public policy for their personal gain, not the public.”
The inquiry, formally known as the select committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, will also question whether Australia’s laws preventing foreign interference in national politics are strong enough to fight off internationally-funded domestic political campaigns.
That work will encompass the role of social media in building astroturf campaigns through the coordinated use of bots and trolls, messaging apps and AI to spread fake ideas and news.
It will be the first step towards finding out who is financing sophisticated anti-renewable energy campaigns and misinformation, and whose interests they truly serve, says committee chair Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
“For decades, vested interests have been waging a global war of disinformation against the clean energy transition, including environmental and climate legislation, and these vested interests have recently achieved significant political success in nations such as the US,” he said in a statement.
“In the last parliament, evidence was provided to the Senate Inquiry into offshore wind industry that strategies such as establishing fake community groups – otherwise known as astroturfing – were being used in Australia to spread lies about renewable energy.
“It’s critical that parliament continues this work and now examines these interests for what they are and who they serve.”
Devastating impact of astroturfing
The inquiry comes on the back of years of sophisticated anti-climate campaigns masquerading as grassroots movements.
These seek to demonise a climate or renewable energy issue and rally support for nuclear power, a position known to be a cover for retaining a fossil fuel status quo.
Campaigns against everything from offshore wind to individual projects have polarised public opinion and are having a tangible impact.
Coordinated anti-offshore wind campaigns in 2023 peddled fears such as that offshore turbines kill whales and any in the waters around Wollongong would block out the sunrise.
Ark Energy, which was behind the Wooroora Station project, also scrapped the Doughboy wind project in NSW after the New England landowners involved in the project changed their minds.
Organised anti-renewables groups are weaponising NSW’s planning process by forcing projects into the Independent Planning Commission, the final arbiter of development applications if more than 50 opposing submissions are lodged during the regular planning process.
David and Goliath battles
For genuine activist groups, going up against well-funded, apparently grassroots campaigns that are peddling half truths and outright lies is “incredibly frustrating”, says Surfers for Climate CEO Joshua Kirkman.
“We simply do not have the financial resources as an advocacy group… against big forces like that which the Senate inquiry will actually find out about,” he told Renew Economy.
“I really hope this inquiry can put the spotlight on the realities of where the support for these voices in Australia comes from. I think the public have a right to know, and I think the public wants to understand how their democracy is being influenced by nefarious parties with ill-intent for the environment.”
Kirkman says climate change is a big enough problem without tactical misdirection and influence undermining the work being done.
Organisations such as Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter) are what Kirkman is up against.
The anti-wind, pro-nuclear organisation was registered in April 2024 and claims to be funded by donations. Founder Alex O’Brien declined to comment on a series of basic questions about the organisation sent by Renew Economy last year.
Follow the money
The risks of foreign funding influencing Australian climate debates is not a conspiracy theory: the issue was raised in the Senate last year after an inquiry into offshore wind recommended the government act to stop foreign lobby groups from crowding out local community voices in public debates.
Last year, Walker published a submission which highlighted the similarities between US anti-wind campaigns and those targeting offshore wind in Australia.
He found similarities between the claims made by groups like Stop Offshore Wind, such as the same imagery and messaging in social media campaigns saying turbines kill whales, as used in campaigns overseas funded by conservative US lobby the Atlas Network.
But he was only able to guess at actual funding trails into Australia.
It’s known that deep-pocketed conservatives such as mining billionaire Gina Rinehart and the multimillion-dollar Liberal Party investment arm Cormack Foundation have been sponsors of the likes of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), Menzies Research Centre and the ‘campaign group’ Advance Australia, all of which have strongly campaigned against renewable energy.
Walker has linked their campaigns with those of a global network of conservative think tanks.
Join criminal lawyer Nick Hanna as he investigates Jillian Segal, her history of pro-Israel lobbying, and why her so-called plan to combat antisemitism threatens to undermine free speech in Australia.
After more than four years, the Information Commissioner has compelled the Defence Dept. to hand over information sought about expert advice on Australia’s Naval shipbuilding program. Rex Patrick reports.
In the FOI review decision, the Information Commissioner issued a scathing rebuke of Defence secrecy, saying,
“… the assertion made by the Department that disclosure of the relevant material would undermine the willingness of individuals to serve on the panel and provide full and frank advice.
“does not appear to be supported by cogent reasoning or evidence.”
Ouch!
The information we had sought was about advice provided to the Government by the Naval Shipbuilding Expert Advisory Panel, formerly the Naval Shipbuilding Advisory Board. The panel exists to “provide independent, expert advice on all matters relating to the performance of the naval shipbuilding enterprise, and assist in identifying emerging challenges that may require further consideration by Government.”
Recent costs for the board, which is laden with retired US admirals, are not available, but from 2016/17 to 2018/19 the taxpayer forked out $6.4m– an average of $2.1m a year – for their advice.
When I asked to see some of that expensive advice in 2021 (not an unreasonable proposition given the disaster area Defence shipbuilding management had already become, and it’s not got better since), I was denied access to all of the documents, bar some trivial logistical information.
I appealed the decision with the Information Commissioner, who, four years later, has ordered Defence to hand over more information.
Fearful advice
Defence told the Information Commissioner
“There is a close connection between the documents at issue to a governmental process, and disclosure of the relevant material would impair the Government’s ability to receive frank and candid advice.”
That was Defence’s ‘argument’ for secrecy. The sky was going to fall in if advice on an almost $200B naval shipbuilding program (as it was before AUKUS came along and made that look cheap) was made available to the public who were paying for it.
I pushed back hard, pointing out to the Information Commissioner that the Department had not provided any evidence to establish that disclosure of the relevant material would discourage members of the panel from providing quality advice and recommendations.
I further pointed out that the advisory board members would be under a contractual obligation to provide comprehensive advice and recommendations having regard to their expertise, and failure to do so would amount to a breach of their contractual obligations.
The Information Commissioner accepted this and berated Defence for its fantasy claims:
“The Department was provided several opportunities to make submissions in support of their claim that disclosure of the material at issue would be contrary to the public interest. However, other than an assertion that panel members would be less likely to provide full and frank advice and recommendations, the Department has not provided any evidence of substance to establish that disclosure would have this effect.”
And when it came to the idea that no one would serve on the $2m per annum advisory board if their advice were at risk of being disclosed, the Information Commissioner was again scathing, stating:
“Similarly, although the Department contends that disclosure of the relevant material would undermine the willingness of individuals to serve on the panel, the Department has not provided any evidence to support its claim.”
In other words, no evidence from a department that’s committed to spending $56.1B in the coming financial year.
Secrecy does not help
Defence procurement is a mess. MWM has been reporting this for some time. The mainstream media is just waking up to the incompetence of our Defence procurement organisation.
Defence procurement is in need of significant reform. Excessive secrecy, a default setting for Defence bureaucrats, conceals incompetence, maladministration and waste. It enables corruption in a portfolio where tens, even hundreds of millions, are regarded as small change.
The capabilities of our Defence Force and its current operations deserve a level of secrecy,
“but the same is not true for projects that deliver that capability.”
Oversight requires access to information. That includes access to the very expensive advice Government receives in relation to Defence projects. If the providers of that advice are not willing to have it peer reviewed by experienced project management experts in the general community, the Government should not rely on it.
We now await the release of the documents, and to find out what the Defence Minister knew, or didn’t know.
Unfortunately, Defence procurement change will not occur until the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, demands it. Defence Minister Richard Marles won’t counsel the Prime Minister because, time and time again, he’s been caught out drunk on Defence-Kool-Aid.
Letters were circulated in the electorate of Goldstein shortly before the election last weekend falsely accusing climate independent (“teal”) Zoe Daniel of being antisemitic in conspiracist terms. It is not known which individual or group circulated the anonymous letters.
Daniel’s Liberal Party rival Tim Wilson, was affiliated with the Atlas Network partner the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA)
Australian front groups have been working to promote the idea that the Greens make many cultural identities less safe. Zionists are incorporating Hindu and Iranian figures, depicting a fake “threat.”
Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon are tracking the Zionist disinformation strategies that have been at work in the Australian local, state and federal political information space recently.
In this information project, any speech act or protest supporting peace and rights for Palestinians is depicted as an “antisemitic” threat that frightens Jewish people. The Greens are being tarred with the accusation that they pose a threat to many multicultural identities, not just Jewish. This of course distorts the fact that the Greens are the strongest party voice against prejudice in Australian politics – which includes opposing Zionist prejudice against Palestinians as well as antisemitism.
Protest is a speech act and must be protected – particularly when it is directed against matters as urgent as the climate catastrophe and genocide.
The project being carried out by the front groups investigated by Bacon and Aharon functions to foster anti Muslim sentiment. That work is inherent to the current shape of the transnational Right. Demonising Muslims is not new: in 2010, then Liberal Party MP Scott Morrison proposed targeting Muslims for political gain. His colleagues attempted to shame him for the divisive suggestion, but in the years since, that tactic has become mainstream for the political and media Right in Australia as well as abroad.
Morrison’s role flags the importance of Christian Zionists to this mission.(1) It is difficult to tease out the primary motivation. One role is to help Australia’s “conservative” politicians win elections. It is also potentially to keep out the Greens (and independents known as “teals”) to prevent genuine climate action, since the Labor Party appears to be constrained by state capture. The focus on Israel might be for Jewish Zionist interests or as part of the Christian Nationalist project aiming to control Australian politics. The Never Again is Now body speaks to that last motivation.
Advance – which was so active against the First Peoples’ Voice to Parliament and then committed over the last few months to destroying the Greens and “teal” independents – has been shown to have personnel links with Atlas Network partners in Australia. Advance has also received funding from the Liberal Party through the party’s Cormack Foundation.
Maurice Newman, who has a long track record of action around Atlas Network partners in Australia, was a Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) member from 1976. (The MPS is described as the functional steering committee of the Atlas Network and one of its major roles in recent years has been promoting climate denial.) Newman was also listed in 2014 as one of Australia’s 12 “most influential” climate deniers who used his time as ABC chairman to skew the coverage of the science. Newman was an “early driver” of Advance. In March this year, Newman described pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses as one sign that “ideology” (rather than a moral compass) is taking over and stated, “We might as well be in communist China.”
Some Atlas Network partners have a history of promoting intervention in the Middle East, with the American Enterprise Institute’s neocons probably being the most influential in promoting “regime change” from within the White House. The Heritage Foundation claims to be no longer affiliated with the Atlas Network after decades of acting as one of its major partners. It too is engaging strongly in culture wars over purported antisemitism with Project Esther. As Axios observed, the project was as much about crushing Americans’ ability to protest. Jewish commentators also fear that the mechanism will cause blowback against Jewish Americans. As a part of the Christian Nationalist project, Esther’s strategy has been summarised as “a sweeping program of surveillance, propaganda, deportation, and criminalization.”
David Adler was a “founding board member and advisor” of Advance. He is best known as having founded the extreme Australian Jewish Association, a “private advocacy group” mimicking a peak body. Adler has spoken on rightwing media against doctors being vocal on the substantial threat that the climate crisis poses to health as leftist posturing. He disdainsclimate science as comparable to “gender issues.” Adler has recently stepped down as AJA “president.”
The degree to which Adler is a fringe figure in Jewish Australian opinion is conveyed by rejections such as:
“Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council national chairman Mark Leibler, a prominent Indigenous rights activist who co-chaired the Referendum Council, said that due to the AJA’s “misleading name”, it is very important for people within the Jewish community, but also people outside the Jewish community, to “understand that this organisation and this person, they do not speak for us”.
“They do not communicate what, in any sense of the term, can be regarded as Jewish values,” Leibler said.
“Some of the things that Adler has said are frankly nothing short of horrific.”
Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim said Adler’s comments “are wrong, offensive and bigoted, and indicate that he lacks the same sensitivity to other forms of racism that he has for antisemitism”.
“These comments do not in any way represent or reflect the views of the mainstream Jewish community in Australia. They are contrary to Jewish values, and the teaching ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to others’,” Wertheim said.
“Despite its misleadingly generic name, the Australian Jewish Association is a private group led by a small number of unelected people promoting marginal, ideologically-blinkered views. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has been the peak, representative body of the Australian Jewish community since 1944.”
Given that none of the older peak bodies have been what might be described as particularly supportive of justice for Palestinians (leading to the formation of the progressive Jewish Council of Australia to fight for both Jewish and Palestinian safety), this condemnation speaks to the fringe nature of the AJA’s politics.
Bacon and Aharon have been tracking down several Zionist front groups. Better Australia began as Better Councils where the “Israel lobby,” as Bacon termed it, appeared to be attempting to disrupt and influence Sydney council elections. The pair have found connections with Liberal Party affiliates such as Alex Polson who owns Better’s ABN. He is a Liberal Party member and previously worked for Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham. Bacon and Aharon have also investigated the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJC) which appeared to be a reasonably significant player in the 2024 Queensland state election.
The Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) is a creation of the QJC. Alex McKinnon has reported some of the extremity of that body’s social media posts. The Australiandepicted the group as a grassroots immigrant movement against Labor and the Greens.
Bacon and Aharon have tracked down loose connections of various kinds between Advance with the Zionist-affiliated groups. QJC accepted help from Advance. QJC’s MIC has claimed very limited connection with Advance. Better may have had early plans to work in cooperation with Advance. Bacon and Aharon have noted that Advance or AJA boost the social media posts of these micro bodies, creating the only occasions when their posts achieve traction. This suggests some degree of cooperation.
In her reporting on the Queensland election campaign, Bacon illustrates a graphic from the AJA that was used to advertise a webinar to introduce its members to Advance. That same image was later used on QJC billboards as well as on the MIC’s website.
The image features three individuals targeting the Greens as a “divisive hate group” for the represented ethnicities or cultural identities. One of the three is posed as representing a “Jewish Queenslander” who doesn’t feel safe in her own cities because of Greens repeating “slogans of the terrorists that wish [her] dead.”
The other two represent an identity coalition that the QJC (alone?) was forging in a “multicultural impact network meeting.”
The second individual is a “Hindu Queenslander” who is quoted on the graphic as asserting “The Greens glorify those that terrorise us. They make me scared for the future.”
This is not an outlier. The shared work of linking Muslims with terrorism is central to the Hindutva nationalist project, just as it is to Israel. Prime Minister Modi, for example, declared that both Israel and India face a shared threat from “radical Islam.”
The recent attack in Kashmir has led to calls to use the “Israel model” in Kashmir with suggestions that both Kashmir and Pakistan should be “flattened” like Gaza.
There is no inference made that the woman pictured supports Hindutva ideology.
It appears the Hindu Council of Australia (HCA) had a speaker at the QJC event in June 2024. The HCA may have no interest in the religio-ethnonationalist Hindutva ideology. It is noteworthy, however, that the HCA site hosts a post suggesting that an attempt to tackle Hindutva extremism is actually about “dismantling Hinduism” and an attempt to spread fear mongering against Hindus.
The MIC site claims to have the group Hindus of Australia as an endorsing body. That link is backed up by an Indian-Australian news site, which depicts MIC as protecting Australia from “imported hate.” In the aftermath of the election, the Hindus of Australia X account reposted a QJC post, with additional comment that the Greens had brought “degeneracy” to “Australian political and social lives.” It also made the strange claim that the Greens had “put targets on the backs of Australian Jewish and Hindu communities so that the terror and criminal elements now consider our communities soft targets.”
Modi and his party have a long history of targeting Muslims, including Modi campaigning on the fear of being outbred by Muslims at the last election.
The third individual on the AJA graphic represents Iranians. A speaker at the event is reported to have represented the Iranian Novin Party (INP). Hesam Orujee, a member of the INP, is featured on the AJA Facebook page as a member of the QJC.
The Iran Novin Party is “Pahlavist.” That is, they support the Pahlavi family to replace the Iranian Islamist regime. The QJC site claims that the Greens “support the Iranian regime’s terror proxies.” This is, of course, nonsense. (The MIC site also targets Labor for not attacking these groups’ issues aggressively enough.)
The Iranian monarchist community is connected to the NatCon religio-ethnonationalist project. The last conference in Washington (where JD Vance was soft launched at the final dinner just before being announced as Trump’s running partner) featured Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
Iranian monarchists are reportedly working with Israel in their efforts to overthrow the regime and reinstall their Shah.
It is also reported that the Iranian MEK has funnelled Saudi money into the creation of the Spanish Far Right Vox party that is militantly Islamophobic as well as socially ultra-conservative.
The J-United group from Melbourne is on record as being backed by Advance in its targeting of Greens candidates. Australian Jewish News described J-United’s political campaign as having “received support from diverse community groups including Iranian, Hindu and Christian organisations.”
Letters were circulated in the electorate of Goldstein shortly before the election last weekend falsely accusing climate independent (“teal”) Zoe Daniel of being antisemitic in conspiracist terms. It is not known which individual or group circulated the anonymous letters.
Daniel’s Liberal Party rival was affiliated with the Atlas Network partner the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and was a member of the Mont Pelerin Society the last time the list was leaked. Tim Wilson’s most significant moment with the international Atlas Network-connected activity was breaking Australia’s carbon price mechanism. In recognition of this, his IPA team was shortlisted for the Atlas Network’s most prestigious global prize.
Advance and the AJA have several reasons for welcoming losses of Greens seats in parliament. For the former, this signals fewer politicians to defend climate action and social justice. The AJA rejects politicians supporting a peaceful resolution for Palestine. The work of the front groups suggests both groups to be loosely part of the NatCon project that aims to unite Christian Nationalists, Israeli Jewish Nationalists and Hindu Nationalists against Muslims, against modernity and against climate action. The Iranian monarchists’ role in that coalition is noteworthy.
The Australian Right is more strongly represented in the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’s (ARC) version of NatCon messaging.
Tony Abbott was an advisor to Advance. Abbott is a Distinguished Fellow at the IPA and is also on the ARC Advisory Board alongside several other past and serving Australian politicians.(2) ARC co-founder John Anderson AO has posted this disturbing interview about Israel and Islam with Douglas Murray, another board member, on his YouTube channel.(3) ARC is a strongly climate denial project, loosely promoting NatCon ideology. NatCon ideology is backed by the Edmund Burke Foundation which has important Zionist connections.
The fact that Advance is so closely connected with a Zionist group such as the AJA, which real Jewish peak bodies depict as “marginal” and “ideologically blinkered,” not to mention expressing “horrific” views, is an important feature.
It is natural that immigrant and other minority groups will hold opinions on ways nations they are affiliated with could be better. It is also to be expected that some fringe elements will hold views that incorporate prejudice.
Australia’s multicultural project is, however, a precious and vulnerable experiment. It is reckless to allow strategists to undermine it for political goals. The Australian majority was revealed in this election to reject divisive culture war games: we cannot ignore the inherent Islamophobia that is core to the religio-ethnonationalist NatCon ideology. It is even more dangerous when bodies founded to foster dis- and misinformation bring together those fringe elements of our multicultural communities, promoting the demonisation of one category of Australian citizen.
Antinuclear 