Australian government funding Adelaide University to train students for a nuclear-powered defence-force
Undergraduate funding to support nuclear-powered industry
5 December 2023, https://www.australiandefence.com.au/news/news/undergraduate-funding-to-support-nuclear-powered-industry
The University of Adelaide announced on 29 November that it has received Federal Government commitment to fund the training of hundreds more domestic undergraduate students to join the future defence workforce.
Under the Federal Government’s Nuclear-Powered Submarines (NPS) program the University of Adelaide has received an allocation of $38,634,835 between 2024 and 2030 to deliver an additional 700 Commonwealth Supported Places (CSPs).
“The University of Adelaide is pleased to receive this commitment of funding from the Federal Government to help train the defence workforce of the future,” said Professor Peter Høj AC, Vice-Chancellor and President, the University of Adelaide.
“This is a massive endorsement of the University’s capability to support the Australian Government’s plans to become a nuclear-powered defence-force under the AUKUS program.
“The University will lead developments in defence-related education as well as invest in research and research infrastructure to support the training of the best and brightest minds.”
The University of Adelaide received the largest number of places allocated to any university under this announcement. The 700 additional places at the University of Adelaide will deliver more graduates from STEM disciplines.
The Commonwealth and South Australian Government will also be funding schemes that will support eligible students to take up these new opportunities. These schemes include degree apprenticeships and scholarships, announced recently as part of the South Australian Defence Industry Workforce and Skills Action Plan
The Militarised University: Where Secrecy Goes to Thrive
Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announced that 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene.
November 14, 2023, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/the-militarised-university-where-secrecy-goes-to-thrive/
For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out. Call it a higher education institution. Call it a university. Even better, capitalise it: the University. This is certainly the case in Australia, where education is less a pursuit of knowledge as the acquiring of a commodity, laid out spam for so much return. On that vast island continent, the university, dominated by a largely semi-literate and utterly unaccountable management, is a place where secrets are buried, concealed with a gleeful dedication verging on mania.
In its submission to what will hopefully become the Australian Universities Accord, the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP) notes the following: “Unfortunately, university managements are increasingly disconnected from and unaccountable to academic values and academic communities. Students, Government and granting bodies, pay universities to deliver services according to academic values, but academics are impeded from working in accordance with academic values by interfering management. Further, the managers themselves do not work in accordance with academic values.”
Those in the defence industry have taken note. By turning such institutions of instruction into supply lines for research and development in armaments, they can be assured of secrecy conditions the envy of most intelligence agencies. Consulting, viewing, gaining access to relevant agreements, documentation and projects for reasons of public discussion is virtually impossible. These are always seen as “commercial” and “in confidence”.
Only the overly fed and watered members of the University Politburo are granted such access. Entry into the arcana of its deliberations is ceremonially tolerated via Academic Board meetings or Senatorial deliberations. Furthermore, academics throughout the university sport a reliable, moral flabbiness that will prevent them from spilling the beans and airing a troubled conscience, even in cases where leaking the documentation might be possible. Middle class, mortgage-laden status anxiety is the usual formula here, one that neuters revolutionary spirits – not that there was much to begin with.
Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector. In September, the Defence Department announced that 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.
Institutes have sprung up running short courses to rake in the cash, such as the UWA Defence and Security Institute, which proudly claims to have created the “essential course for those seeking to gain a greater understanding of AUKUS Pillar 1 (nuclear powered submarines) and the impacts for Western Australia and beyond.” A course running for thirteen hours does not seem particularly hefty, but this is a field of glitz over substance.
Then come the true villains of the peace, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene. One of interest here is Israel’s Elbit Systems. For years, it has hammered out a reputation for manufacturing such lethal products as the Hermes 900 drone, which was first deployed in 2014 against targets in the Gaza Strip. It supplies the lion’s share of drones used by the Israeli Defence Forces for strikes and surveillance (the figure may be as high as 85%).
The company has managed to beef up many an activist’s resumé. Members of the Palestine Action group claim to have scored a victory in securing the permanent closure of two of Elbit’s sites in 2022, including the London head office. “The cracks in Elbit’s warehouse windows,” the organisation trumpeted in August this year, “do not simply represent cosmetic damage but also symbolise the crumbling foundations of Elbit’s relationship with the British State’s so-called defence interests.”
The corporation has also fallen out of favour with a number of investors. HSBC and the French multinational AXA Investment Managers divested from the company in 2018 and 2019 given its role in producing and commercialising cluster munitions and white phosphoros shells. In May 2022, the Australian sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, excluded Elbit Systems Limited from its investment portfolio for much the same reasons.
Despite this blotched and blotted record, Elbit could still stealthily establish a bridgehead in the university sector down under through its creation, in 2021, of a Centre of Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne. Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA) had two special clients: the state government of Victoria, which provided some funding via Invest Victoria, and RMIT University’s Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation. The two-year partnership with ELSA’s Centre of Excellence was intended to, according to ELSA’s then managing director and retired Major General Paul McLachlan, “research how to use drones to count the number of people in designated evacuation zones, then to co-ordinate and communicate the most efficient evacuation routes to everyone in the zone, as well as monitoring the area to ensure that everyone has been accounted for.”
Despite such seemingly noble goals, the opening ceremony in February 2021 had a distinctly heavy military accent, with senior representatives from the Royal Australian Airforce, DST (Defence Science and Technology) Group and the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG). No one present could deny that technology used in the context of civilian evacuations in the face of natural disaster could just as well be deployed in a military security context. As Antony Loewenstein has observed, “If you partner, as a state or a university, with a company like Elbit, you have blood on your hands because the record of Elbit in Israel-Palestine, on the US-Mexican border and elsewhere is so damned clear.”
Since the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil that took place on October 7, the ELSA-RMIT-Victorian relationship has seemingly altered. A war of horrendous carnage is being waged in the Gaza Strip. Activists claim to have scored a famous victory in securing the university’s hazy termination of any partnership with ELSA. “This is a significant victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Australia,” claims Hilmi Dabbagh of BDS Australia. “Australian universities have been put on notice that they will be targeted if they partner with any Israeli company or institution complicit in human rights abuses and attacks on Palestinians.”
Such confidence is admirably fresh, if a touch green. It is worth looking at the university statement, which is revealing in ways that have been entirely missed in the enthusiastic pronouncements of the BDS movement. The university claims to “not design, develop or manufacture weapons or munitions in the university or as part of any partnership. With regard to Elbit Systems, RMIT does not have a partnership with Elbit Systems or any of their subsidiaries, including Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA).” Such wording avoids the language of termination, leaving the question open as to whether it ever had an arrangement to begin with, with its requisite project links. This will, as with much else, be deemed commercial, in confidence, and buried in the bowels of secrecy we have come to expect from the antipodean university sector.
Australian government funds pro nuclear propaganda in schools – (even making it “fun”)
Education project focused on engaging next-generation nuclear science professionals in Australia and Japan.
ANSTO 11th October 2023 by ANSTO Staff
ANSTO has recently concluded up a successful cross-cultural nuclear science education project between Australia and Japan.
In collaboration with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and the University of Tokyo, the project brought together 200 university students, 180 secondary school students and 40 schoolteachers across the two countries.
Participants learned about the history, cultural perspectives, career opportunities and applications of nuclear science in Australia and Japan in interactive presentations, demonstrations and discussions.
Engaging next-generation nuclear science professionals in Australia and Japan was funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s 2022-23 Australia-Japan Foundation grant.
Dr Bridget Murphy, Education Manager (Secondary) at the Discovery Centre, was the ANSTO lead on the project.
“University students from both Australia and Japan were very interested in future career opportunities in nuclear science. They also had a broad range of questions about communicating science to the public effectively, radiation safety, the use of nuclear energy in combating climate change, and international collaboration in nuclear,” Dr Murphy said………….
Teachers from both Australia and Japan valued a cross-cultural perspective on the methods for teaching this subject in the classroom, using videos, hands-on and data-based approaches to instruction in nuclear science.
Professor Takeshi Iimoto of the University of Tokyo emphasised the role of project-based learning and suggested that even humour can make nuclear more understandable for school students.
ANSTO is pleased to continue professional development with teachers in Asia, building on past experience working with teachers internationally through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)………. https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/education-project-focused-on-engaging-next-generation-nuclear-science-professionals-australia
The normalisation of nuclear power and militarism in our schools
Solidarity Brakfast (transcript of podcast)
Saturday, 9 September 2023 – 7:30am to 9:00am https://www.3cr.org.au/solidaritybreakfast/episode/palestine-laboratory-ii-militarization-schools-ii-within-these-walls-ii
Annie interviews Sanne de Swart from ACE Nuclear-Free Collective (Friends of the Earth Melbourne) on the normalisation of nuclear power and militarism in our schools.
The issue of normalising nuclear weapons and nuclear power has become a hot topic. STEM competitions financed by weapons companies supported by the Ministry of Defence.
- Friends of the Earth Nuclear Free Collective has an email petition to Environment Ministers to show dissent on this and has other suggestions for actions https://www.melbournefoe.org.au/no_defence_curriculum
Sanne de Swart. Normalisation of nuclear promotion under the guise of STEM education. Nuclear propulsion submarine challenge is directed at primary school students. Very young kids groomed to take part in military preparation. Teachers approached FOE with their concernsVictorian teachers unions are resisting this, and the matter has been taken up by Australian teachers union. AEU federal executive has condemned the programme.Education department guidelines are not to accept sponsorships from tobacco companies. and weapons companies. The STEM hub is working together with Dept of Defence and with BAE weapons manufacturer to promote this nuclear submarine technology.. BAE has been taken to the UN over human rights issues. BAE has pecuniary interest in this promotion.
Vic Education Dept is in breach of their own policy by promoting this actively on their website. Use of financial support from large weapons companies in our schools is against Victorian education Dept policy, probably also the policy in NSW. and SA. STEM education – impression given that STEM has only relevance to fighting machines..
Sanne – But really the STEM hub – we will need the brightest minds for the transition to a greener, more liveable society, need engineering and science and technology. This programme is taking away from that need, and directing education towards militarism and war efforts.It also fails to acknowledge from a nuclear perspective the devastating history around nuclear, that Australia has, starting from the British nuclear bomb tests 70 years ago , through to uranium mining and trying to impose radioactive waste dumps on Aboriginal land, all of which disproportionately affects First Nations people.
The Victorian Education Department is very actively promoting the nuclear submarine project The whole government, with AUKUS deal, is preparing for war, and being quite straightforward about that. Probably the Ed Dept is working with the Defence Dept on the same pathTeachers are concerned that this happening in their classrooms. That it is so explicit. Even BAE Systems is saying they want to create an extraordinary workforce. ADF Careers are talking about the pipeline of recruits that they need. Real concerns from teachers that this will be taught in their classrooms, and that the military agenda will be perpetuated for children – which is irresponsible and unethical, because children under 18 – it is all about positive brand association, they cannot make those decisions, as adults can, they are being groomed from a very young age.
Primary school programmes.
There is a LEGO challenge that is ongoing – also run by weapons companies The weapons companies come in, and promote what they do as something exciting and innovative. There’s a programme called Beacon – it is targeted at years 4 to 6 students. It is funded by BAE Systems – it is less explicit – focussed towards AUKUS, but it’s focussed at lower socioeconomic areas and schools,. That makes it hard for schools to say “No” to them, because those come as well-resourced projects. It is quite insidious in the way that it is targeted at young children, to have that positive brand association with military and weapons companies.I think that this is happening in other countries as well. Teachers in Britainhave been working on this, tooFOE has a few calls for action, for teachers to become aware of this. Also parents are encouraged to take this up , FOE is contacting the government on the issue.There is a lack of alternative programmes for STEM education
Nuclear subs challenge trains 10 year old children for war
By Sue WarehamSep 11, 2023 https://johnmenadue.com/nuclear-subs-challenge-trains-10-year-old-children-for-war/
It’s time for education ministers across the country to show leadership and protect our children from vested interests and pro-war propaganda.
On 19 June, the Defence Department launched its Nuclear-Powered Submarine Propulsion Challenge, for years 7 – 12 students across the nation. The program seeks to engage the enthusiasm of young people for the complex and hugely controversial nuclear submarine program, in the hope that some of the students will want to contribute to this form of war-fighting when they leave school.
The nuclear submarine proposal has implications that go far beyond the understanding of the students targeted for this program (which include those as young as 11 years). They include the nuclear weapons proliferation potential, the consequences of a war – possibly nuclear war – with China, for which the submarines are planned, the problem of high-level, long-lived nuclear waste for which there is no solution anywhere, and the matter of what else will suffer financially as we attempt the gargantuan task of paying for this program. In the absence of any awareness or understanding of this context, the schools program is little more than propaganda.
The program fits with the growing prevalence of private weapons company-sponsored STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) programs in schools. Their purpose is to create positive brand name associations, such as happy memories, from which can flow varying degrees of attachment to the corporate brand. Company logos are displayed on all materials, and there is often direct contact between students, teachers and company representatives. An underfunded public education system is perfect for the companies’ purposes, because overstretched teachers will welcome material that might make their job a little easier.
There is ample evidence that children are very susceptible to the creation of positive associations with an advertised product. Even into adolescence, children don’t necessarily have the skills to critically assess the intentions behind persuasive marketing tactics, or understand what a brand or product really represents.
The militarisation of STEM education is not confined to our schools (and universities, which comprise a huge network in themselves of weapons company partnerships). The National Youth Science Forum has as its primary sponsor Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest weapons maker. The Questacon National Science and Technology Centre in Canberra receives major funding for its Engineering is Elementary program from the Defence Department, with ADF engineers being actively involved in delivering the program.
The industry’s need is for a workforce socialised to accept warfare as inevitable and the industry itself as always a force for good. The “Minors and Missiles” report of the Medical Association for Prevention of War outlines the problem, its extent in Australia and how it can be addressed. The new organisation Teachers for Peace works to this end also.
In relation to the nuclear submarine challenge for schools, on 1 July the Adelaide Advertiser published an article “Kids, 10, training for to build a workforce for AUKUS, SA’s $368bn nuclear submarine project”, about the Beacon program in some schools, run in conjunction with weapons giant BAE Systems. Among other activities, it allows students to virtually load and fire weaponry, one student stating “It’s a lot more fun, it’s like playing a video game but it’s a lot more educational”. Such presentation of warfare and its associated hardware to children as a game – which extends also to our war commemoration – is an abuse of their right to aspire to live in a peaceful society.
An additional concern with the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Propulsion Challenge is that it anti-democratically circumvents strong community opposition to a technology – nuclear power – which has been consistently rejected by the Australian people. Barely a person in the country, including in our parliament, was even asked about the nuclear submarines, and yet the opposition to the proposal is strong, with much highly critical commentary. To ignore all that and go straight to the next generation with exciting prizes is reprehensible.
On 31 August, the Federal Executive of the Australian Education Union (AEU) passed a strong resolution reaffirming the AEU’s deep commitment to peace and its opposition to militarism. In relation to the nuclear submarine challenge, the resolution stated that the AEU “condemns this program, and the use of Australian schools by the Defence Department, in drawing secondary students into the government’s development of new industries focused on armament manufacture and industries associated with warfare.”
It continued “A politicised pro-AUKUS curriculum has no place in our schools, alongside other private industries who attempt to use schools as a vehicle for promotion of their own products and profits hidden behind spurious educational benefits for students.”
The AEU is to be applauded. It’s time for education ministers across the country to show the same leadership in protecting our children from vested interests and pro-war propaganda.
Teachers in boycott of nuclear submarine project
The Australian: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-to-ban-indoctrination-on-nuclear-submarines/news-story/d7d7c434d3f4ec2982fb52063eecf1a3?amp
The Australian Education Union will meet to discuss boycotting a science experiment that would see students design nuclear-powered submarines.
By natasha bita. August 29, 2023 The Australian: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/teachers-to-ban-indoctrination-on-nuclear-submarines/news-story/d7d7c434d3f4ec2982fb52063eecf1a3?amp
Pacifist teachers are boycotting a Defence Department “brainwashing’’ program that asks children to design nuclear-powered submarines.
The Australian Education Union federal executive will meet this week to consider a national boycott of the science project, which requires high school students to design a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a submarine.
The union is furious that the Albanese government is spending $368bn on AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines at a time when most public schools are receiving less money than they were supposed to under the Gonski needs-based funding deal.
At a grassroots level, some teachers are boycotting the Nuclear-Powered Propulsion Challenge, which was launched by Deputy Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Jonathon Earley in June as a science, technology, engineering and maths competition.
The controversial STEM challenge asks students to work in teams to submit engineering plans for submarine nuclear propulsion.
Defence devised the program “to inspire students to discover how nuclear propulsion works and how it makes submarines more capable’’.
Winning students from each state and territory will visit HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, tour a Collins-class submarine, dine with submariners and use a training simulator to “drive” a submarine through Sydney Harbour.
AEU branch meetings in Victoria have resolved to block the project in schools, and environmental group Friends of the Earth is now pushing for a national boycott.
Friends of the Earth nuclear-free co-ordinator Sanne de Swart said the Defence Department had made a “blatant attempt to normalise nuclear power and indoctrinate children into building instruments of death’’.
She said the STEM project was “indoctrinating” students and failed to address the health and environmental risks of nuclear power.
“It fails to acknowledge Australia’s significant and devastating history with nuclear, including the atomic bomb tests, uranium mining and the attempts to impose nuclear waste dumps,’’ she said.
Union members at Virtual School Victoria voted to condemn the program.
“We resolve to refuse to refer students to this program or others like it, and we will refuse to promote it within our schools,’’ the branch stated.
A union meeting of public school teachers in the regional Victorian town of Benalla also called on the state’s Education Department to “cease all involvement in this and similar programs’’.
“The government spending of $368bn on AUKUS nuclear submarines will require whole new industries in Australia, and beginning to draw our brightest teenage students into a war industry is outrageous,’’ their motion states. “A politicised pro-AUKUS curriculum has no place in our schools.’’
Melbourne primary school teacher Emma Kefford is planning to vote for a boycott at a meeting of the AUE’s inner-city branch on Thursday. She said she was “pretty disturbed’’ that the Defence Department was providing curriculum material to schools.
“I think it contradicts some of the other values in the Australian curriculum,’’ she said. “These inventions seem pretty exciting to young people, but they’re often removed from the realities of war and the horrors it entails.’’
The Victorian Education Department promotes the challenge on its website, saying: “We’re encouraging schools to register teams of 3 to 5 students to work together on the project.’’
The South Australian government also promotes the program on its website, as a way to “get young Australian minds thinking like engineers and scientists, by completing activities based on nuclear submarine engineering’’.
A spokesman for federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he did not share the concerns. The Defence Department was asked how many schools were participating but did not respond.
TEACHERS ACT AGAINST SCHOOLS NUCLEAR SUBMARINES PROGRAM
the normalisation of militarisation and downplaying of nuclear risks in schools is a grave concern.
“Nuclear and military aspects in the curriculum fail to address health and environmental risks associated with both, as well as the drive to war,”
Education. 28 Aug 2023 https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/teachers-act-against-schools-nuclear-subs-program/
Children being taught to make weapons
Teachers are moving to boycott a new pro-nuclear-fuel brainwashing program being introduced into schools.
There’s growing momentum within unions to ban the Nuclear-powered Submarine Propulsion Challenge, which is a Defence Department initiative backed by the Federal and Victorian governments.
In a blatant attempt to normalise nuclear power and indoctrinate children into building instruments of death, the challenge asks students from years 7 to 12 to design a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a submarine.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) understands that motions calling for a boycott have already been passed in some chapters of the Australian Education Union.
One motion, passed at a recent branch meeting said: “We resolve to refuse to refer students to this program or others like it, and we will refuse to promote it within our schools. We call on the Department of Education to cease all involvement in this and similar programs.”
Another said: “We don’t intend to refer students to this program or others like it, or to promote it within our schools. We call on the Department of Education to cease all involvement in this and similar programs.”
Friends of the Earth is supporting the ban and has written to the Australian Education Union asking them to impose a nationwide boycott.
FoE Nuclear Free Coordinator Sanne De Swart said the normalisation of militarisation and downplaying of nuclear risks in schools is a grave concern.
“Nuclear and military aspects in the curriculum fail to address health and environmental risks associated with both, as well as the drive to war,” Sanne De Swart said.
“It fails to acknowledge Australia’s significant and devastating history with nuclear, including the atomic bomb tests, uranium mining and the attempts to impose nuclear waste dumps, all which have and continue to affect First Nations communities disproportionately .”
Rex Patrick demolishes Richard Marles’ slick lies about AUKUS and the nuclear submarines.
Michael West Media, by Rex Patrick | Aug 19, 2023 (the original shows Rex Patrick’s Freedom of Information request for documents on 6 aspects of the nuclear submarine arrangement, and the 6 responses from the Defence Deapatment – in each case “Deny Access”.)
At this week’s Labor Conference Defence Minister Richard Marles distributed a 32 paragraph statement for insertion into the ALP National Platform to explain the Albanese’s Government’s rationale for an incredible $368B of public expenditure on submarines. At $11.5B per paragraph, one can be left very disappointed in his words. Rex Patrick provides readers with a hard hitting paragraph-by-paragraph analysis that reveals a massive swindle.
A peaceful and secure region
- Labor believes that Australia’s interests lie in shaping a region that is peaceful, stable and prosperous. A predictable region, operating by agreed rules, standards and laws. Where no country dominates, and no country is dominated. A region where sovereignty is respected, and all countries benefit from a strategic equilibrium.
Labor is no stranger to hypocrisy when it comes to international affairs. To take but one example, West Papua is neither “peaceful, stable or prosperous”. Slow motion genocide is taking place there. Indonesia has engaged in shocking abuses of indigenous Papuans, including child killings, disappearances, torture and mass displacement of people. Hundreds of thousands of West Papuans have died in a struggle to be free of Indonesian rule.
Since becoming Defence Minister, Marles has sat down and met with his Indonesia counterpart, Prabowo Subianto on three occasions.
In the early 1990s, as the commander of Kopassus Group 3, Prabowo commanded Indonesian special forces and militias that were responsible for murder, torture and other human rights abuses in East Timor. In 1996 he led Indonesian forces in bloody reprisal actions against West Papua separatists.
In 1998 troops under Prabowo’s command kidnapped and tortured democracy activists and the General was implicated orchestrating mob violence in Jakarta against Indonesians of Chinese descent. He was banned from entry into the United States on account of his human rights abuses.
It appears some breaches of “agreed rules, standards and laws” that Marles talks about are subject to ‘looking the other way’, as is convenient.
Labor is using all elements of our national power to shape the world in our interests and to shape it for the better. We will always use diplomacy as our primary effort to reduce tensions and create conditions for peace. Labor will continue to build on our strong diplomatic efforts in our region and will rebuild Australia’s international development program.
The truth is that Australia’s international development program is a drop in the budget bucket when compared to the $368B being spent on AUKUS submarines, and which goes to UK and US defence contractors.
Labor is committed to maintaining peace, regional development, positive relationships and stability across our region. Labor is committed to a peaceful and nuclear weapons free Pacific.
In 1984 New Zealand’s Labour Prime Minister David Lange banned nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed ships from using New Zealand ports or entering New Zealand waters. Lange’s decision was widely seen as marking a milestone in New Zealand’s development as a nation and an important act of sovereignty and self-determination.
Australian Labor wasn’t quite so inclined. Labor Leader Bill Hayden’s declaration that nuclear-powered and nuclear armed ships would not be welcome in Australian ports never came to fruition. Instead, the Hawke Labor Government ensured that the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone was watered down and that US nuclear-armed ships could continue to visit Australian ports. Labor’s leadership has now moved to ownership of nuclear-powered ships.
Securing Australia’s Sovereignty
- Labor’s defence policy is founded on the principles of Australian sovereignty and self-reliance.
All six Collins Class submarines were built in Australia. We own the intellectual property for the Collins submarines and we conduct 92% of the sustainment work here in Australia.
With AUKUS, we abandon that sovereign capability and self-reliance, buying out first three submarines from the US. We go from being builders and sustainers, to buyers and roadside assistance.
Building Australia’s military defence capability sits alongside our diplomatic efforts, as we play our part in collective deterrence of aggression. By having strong defence capabilities of our own, and by working with partners investing in their own capabilities, we change the calculus for any potential aggressor.
We are putting all of our Defence capability eggs in one basket, with a long term, bank breaking, monolithic program to get to the point where, at some stage in the late 2050’s, we’ll be able to keep just three submarines available for use at any time – in the context of China, Paul Keating describes this as “throwing toothpicks at the mountain”.
Defence cooperation partnerships, including with our ally the United States, are managed through robust policy frameworks and principles that maintain and protect our sovereignty. These frameworks govern the activities of foreign governments in, from or through Australia – and how we partner with other nations to acquire capabilities in line with our national interests. Australia’s Defence partnerships are anchored in Australian sovereignty.
We have gone from hosting the Pine Gap intelligence collecting facility near Alice Springs, the submarine communication station at North West Cape and participation in the Five Eye intelligence network to hosting US Marines and their helicopters in Darwin, B-52s from Katherine, US and UK submarines from Perth, U.S. Navy Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Aircraft from Australian air bases, pre-positioning of US Army stores and material in Victoria with a plan to establish a US Logistics Support Area in Queensland.
We’re seeing more US capability turning up on our shores. When the US engages in a conflict in the regions, we’ll have no choice but to be involved. Even if we were to refuse direct involvement, we’ll have capabilities and facilities here that will be involved in supporting US operations and they will be of (targeting) interest to the opposing side. The Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap will be intimately involved in providing intelligence to support US operations across the Pacific and Asia, including operations which will be staged from Australia.
But our forces will be directly involved, anyway. The integration and interchange marriage that’s being aggressively pursued will demand it.
Australia’s Defence partnerships isn’t anchored in Australian sovereignty, as Marles claims, it’s anchored to the US.
- Labor commits that our cooperation with these partners strengthens, rather than detracts from, our sovereignty by affording us access to capability, technology, and intelligence we could not acquire on our own and provides us with an opportunity to export our defence products.
Instead of focussing on ensuring Australia has the sovereign capabilities to defend ourselves and ensure we can make our own decisions about war and peace, our Government and the ADF leadership have chosen to go ‘all the way’ with the USA.
Instead of ensuring our equipment can communicate and work alongside the US’s and other’s equipment, we’ve embarked on a course of total integration into the US Armed Forces. We’ve surrendered interoperability choice to integration and interchangeability (identical equipment) in the context of US controlled operations.
Making our contribution to the collective security of our region and to the maintenance of the global rules-based order – so fundamental to Australia’s prosperity – is at the heart of Australia’s strategic intent behind acquiring a conventionally-armed, modern and fit for purpose nuclear-powered submarine capability.
The AUKUS submarine project is not about the long standing national security bedrock strategy of ‘Defence of Australia’. It’s about dovetailing the ADF into US strategy to fight a war against China in North Asia. It isn’t about defending Australian trade, it’s about acquiring the ability to strike at targets in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea and along China’s coast.
Labor will ensure that irrespective of whether our defence assets are developed indigenously, acquired from abroad, or developed in partnership – Australia will always make sovereign, independent decisions as to how they are employed.
Australia will make our sovereign decisions within an alliance framework in which we are the minor dependent partner. When it comes to decisions about war and peace in the Pacific, Washington will act according to its global interests and its increasingly erratic and confused domestic political situation. AUKUS has handcuffed Australia to US strategy at a time when the US is less reliable as a partner than it has been at any time over the past eight decades.
- Labor will ensure that all Australian warships, including submarines, are Australian sovereign assets, commanded by Australian officers and under the sovereign control of the Australian Government.
Each and every pawn on a chess board sits alone and acts singularly, but always under the direction of the chess player. Australia’s pawns will ultimately be directed by US decision-makers.
Labor believes that Australia’s acquisition of submarines does not involve any ante facto commitment to participate in, or be directed in accordance with, the military operations of any other country.
The idea that an Australian Government would be neutral in a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan won’t be given any serious consideration. Kim Beazley made that clear in confidential talks with the US years ago. In 2006 the then Labor leader privately told the US Embassy that “In the event of a war between the United States and China, Australia would have absolutely no alternative but to line up militarily beside the U.S. … Otherwise, the alliance would be effectively dead and buried, something Australia could never afford to see happen.”
The private thinking of Labor’s leadership is no different today, and through their embrace of AUKUS they have tightened the ties that bind immeasurably. If war comes, the only question will be how much of our still very small Defence Force will we directly commit to a high intensity conflict
“Opportunities for Australian workers“……………………….There’s been a big pitch on this to get Labor’s union base onside with AUKUS. However, while Marles talks big, the Government has given very few details. The Department of Defence is refusing to release its workplace study under FOI……….Past experience shows that Defence Department projections of Australian industry/jobs benefits are always over promised and under delivered. …. The US and the UK will be experiencing the benefits of Australian AUKUS funding well before any job creation at Osborne in South Australia. …………..
“Nuclear Safety and Stewardship”………………
Labor will redouble its efforts to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, including the NPT. Labor will ensure Australian remains fully committed to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, known as the Treaty of Rarotonga. Labor will uphold its proud history of championing practical disarmament efforts, its commitment to high non-proliferation standards and its enduring dedication to a world without nuclear weapons.
This is at best disingenuous. Labor has no forward disarmament or non-proliferation agenda. Labor’s national conference commitment to sign the Nuclear Weapons Prohibition Treaty was written with so many caveats as to always be a dead letter and it’s well and truly moribund now in the context of AUKUS. And there’s nothing else – there are no multilateral disarmament or non-proliferation negotiations underway, and Australia isn’t doing anything to advance the cause. ………………………………….
Labor will maintain the prohibition on the establishment of nuclear power plants. This prohibition does not apply to a naval nuclear propulsion plant related to use in a conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarine.
There is a bit of Animal Farm playing out here; nuclear plants on land – bad, nuclear plants on water – good.
- Labor will ensure Australia is a responsible nuclear steward and maintains the highest level of nuclear safety in respect of nuclear-powered submarines. This includes the establishment of an independent statutory regulator, the Australian Nuclear-Powered Submarine Safety Regulator, that will be responsible for providing independent oversight and regulation of the nuclear-powered submarine program. Labor will continue to support the important work of Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) in nuclear research and medicines as a priority.
The “independent” safety regulator sits within the Defence Department and will operate with a high degree of secrecy. It will never be truly independent. This was against the advice of Australian nuclear safety experts who emphasised the need for true independence and transparency, but it appears to be a compromise to accommodate US/UK security requirements.
Labor is committed to ensuring the management of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel responsibly, including through an appropriately independent regulatory system. A rigorous process will determine the site of the nuclear waste facility, on the current or future Defence estate, with appropriate public consultation and agreement with First Nations communities to respect and protect cultural heritage. Australia will not be responsible for disposing spent nuclear fuel or accept other high-level radioactive waste from any other country.
Despite four decades of effort, Australia still hasn’t selected a site for a national low level radioactive waste repository. A high level waste repository is an even more difficult project – technically and politically. Albanese, Marles and other current decision makers will likely be long retired before this aspect of AUKUS is sorted out.
Even if the issue is solved, AUKUS radioactive legacy will linger for thousands of years.
Labor will ensure that regular updates are provided to Parliament, including relevant Parliamentary committees, and the relevant stakeholders, including defence industry, unions, and the ALP National Conference on the progress of Australia’s acquisition of conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines.
The words in this paragraph are completely divorced from the reality of questions that have not been answered in the Senate and FOI’s which have been refused in full……………………………………………………more https://michaelwest.com.au/marles-mauled-rex-patrick-demolishes-defence-sophistry-on-aukus-submarines-nuclear/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-24&utm_campaign=Michael+West+Media+Weekly+Update
Australian media ramps up war-mongering against China, while the government ramps up censorship of social media
Australia Keeps Escalating Its Censorship And Propaganda Campaign
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, JUN 26, 2023
There’s a frenzied rush by the Australian political/media class to both propagandise Australians as quickly as possible into supporting preparations for war with China, and to ram through legislation that facilitates the censorship of online speech.
Australia’s Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is set to release draft legislation imposing hefty fines on social media companies who fail to adequately block “misinformation” and “disinformation” from circulation in Australia, a frightening prospect which will likely have far-reaching consequences for political speech in the nation………………………………..
The problem with laws against inaccurate information is of course that somebody needs to be making the determination what information is true and what is false, and those determinations will necessarily be informed by the biases and agendas of the person making them. I can substantiate my claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was provoked by NATO powers using an abundance of facts and evidence, for example, but there’s still a sizeable portion of the population which would consider such claims malignant disinformation with or without the supporting data.
When the government involves itself in the regulation of speech, it is necessarily incentivized to regulate speech in a way that benefits itself and its allies. Nobody who supports government regulation of online mis- and disinformation can articulate how such measures can be safeguarded in a surefire way against the abuses and agendas of the powerful.
Under a Totalitarian Regime, your government censors your speech if you say unauthorized things. Under a Free Democracy, your government orders corporations to censor your speech if you say unauthorized things.
At the same time, Australian media have been hammering one remarkably uniform message into public consciousness with increasing aggression lately: there is a war with China coming, Australia will be involved, and Australia must do much more to prepare for this war as quickly as possible.
Australians are remarkably vulnerable to propaganda due to the fact that ownership of our nation’s media is the most concentrated in the western world, with a powerful duopoly of Nine Entertainment and Murdoch’s News Corp controlling most of the Australian press.
Both of these media conglomerates have been involved in the latest excuse to talk about how more military spending and militarisation is needed, this time taking the form of a war machine-funded think tanker publishing a book about how we all need to prepare for war with China.
Nine Entertainment’s Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have an article out titled “Military expert warns of ‘very serious risk’ of China war within five years” by the odious Matthew Knott, who is best known for being told to drum himself out of Australian journalism by former prime minister Paul Keating for his appalling war-with-China propaganda series published earlier this year by the same papers. Readers who follow Australian media would do well to remember Knott’s name, because he has become one of the most prolific war propagandists in the western press.
The “military expert” who warns of the need to prepare for an imminent war with China is a man named Ross Babbage, who as Knott notes is “a non-resident senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.” What Knott fails to disclose to his readers is that the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments is funded by every war profiteer and war machine entity under the sun, the majority coming straight from the US Department of Defense itself.
As we’ve discussed many times previously, it is never, ever okay for the press to cite war machine-funded think tankers for expertise or analysis on matters of war and foreign policy, and it is doubly egregious for them to do so without at least disclosing their massive conflict of interest to their readers. This act of extreme journalistic malpractice has become the norm throughout the mainstream press, because it helps mass media reporters do their actual job: administering propaganda to an unsuspecting public.
The Murdoch press has also been using Babbage’s book release as an excuse to bang the drums of war, with multiple Sky News segments and articles with titles like “Military analyst Ross Babbage warns Australia of potential war with China in coming years,” “National security expert Ross Babbage warns ‘strong possibility’ of war with China in latest book,” and “‘Running out of time’: Xi may move on Taiwan in next few years.” Again, not one mention of Babbage’s conflict of interests.
All for a news story that (and I cannot stress this enough) is not a news story. A war machine-funded think tanker saying he wants more war is not a news story — it’s just a thing that happens when the war machine is allowed to pay people to be warmongers.
“War Machine-Funded Warmonger Wants More War.” That’s your headline. That’s the one and only headline this non-story could ever deserve, if any.
Propaganda and censorship are the two most important tools of imperial narrative control, and it’s very telling that Australia is ramping them both up as the nation is being transformed into a weapon for the US empire to use against China. Steps are being taken to ensure that the Australian populace will be on board with whatever agendas the empire has planned for us in the coming years, and judging from what we’re seeing right now, it isn’t going to be pretty.
Nuclear indoctrination for Australian school-children – normalising nuclear submarines.
I wonder if they will design a deep geological repository for high level waste too.
Defence takes nuclear propulsion challenge to schools, By APDR Staff, 21/06/2023
Defence has launched a Nuclear-Powered Submarine Propulsion Challenge in Australian high schools, providing a new generation of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students the chance to win a trip to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia to see first-hand how submarines work. The introductory-level, nationwide program will provide teachers with learning resources to help students design their own engineering plans for submarine nuclear propulsion……..
Rear Admiral Jonathon Earley, Deputy Chief of Navy said: “The Nuclear-Powered Submarine Propulsion Challenge presents an opportunity for students across Australia to gain a greater appreciation of the STEM principles behind one of the most significant national projects ever undertaken in Australia, as we prepare to deliver nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy……
These students and others like them will be our future submariners, engineers and technicians. The winners will experience a visit to HMAS Stirling in Western Australia, tour a Collins-class submarine, dine with submariners and virtually drive a submarine through Sydney Harbour in the submarine bridge training simulator.” https://asiapacificdefencereporter.com/defence-takes-nuclear-propulsion-challenge-to-schools/
Boring new pro nuclear push in Australia – same old excessively optimistic arguments
Bro Sheffield-Brotherton
etnoprSods0ch79hfluh37559ml06c1272a93947f96u8t1220ctltff1gfh ·
On the current unoriginal nuke push from “lovers of science” and “believers in informed public debate”:
If they knew a lot more I would be unsurprised if they even recommended that we should go back in time and watch a vid of Phil Baxter, Ernie Titterton or even “young” Leslie Kemeny to edumacate ourselves?
It is coming up to 47 years since the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry Commissioners wrote in their first detailed report:
What has surprised us more is a lack of objectivity in not a few of those in favour of [nuclear energy], including distinguished scientists. It seems that the subject is one very apt to arouse strong emotions, both in opponents and proponents.
There is abundant evidence before us to show that scientists, engineers and administrators involved in the business of producing nuclear energy have at times painted excessively optimistic pictures of the safety and performance, projected or past, of various aspects of nuclear production.
There are not a few scientists, including distinguished nuclear scientists, who are flatly opposed to the further development of nuclear energy, and who present facts and views opposed to those of others of equal eminence. We note that a few of the government officials who appeared before us showed reluctance in communicating matters of importance to the Commission.”
Not that any of that surprised me. The claim was made repeatedly in the 1970s [and, of course, is popular in the boring new pro-nuclear push in this country] that any negative views that people may have about brittle power were entirely due to their “ignorance” of the subject matter. It was but one reason why some people felt the importance of participating in a public debate on the subject in Australia – most concentratedly 45-50 years ago.
And the experience and evidence is beyond clear; the more that debate continued the greater was the opposition to the mining and export of Australian uranium AND to the use of inefficient, expensive, dangerous electricity generating nuclear reactors in Australia despite the reverse exhortations of the nuclear club of powerful vested interests.
Australia pays Washington swamp monsters for war advice – as they groom us for World War 3
Caitlin Johnstone 27 Apr 23 https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/04/27/australia-pays-washington-swamp-monsters-for-war-advice/#
Australia has been paying insiders of the US war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China.
In an article titled “Retired US admirals charging Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars per day as defence consultants,” the ABC reports that according to documents which were provided by the Pentagon to congress last month, “dozens of retired US military figures have been granted approval to work for Australia since 2012.”
For those who don’t speak imperialist, “retired US military figure” generally means “Someone who used to be paid by the US government to advance the interests of the US empire, and is now paid by corporations and/or foreign governments to advance the interests of the US empire.” These corrupt warmongers rotate in and out of the revolving door of the DC swamp, from government to war industry jobs to punditry gigs to influential think tanks and then back again into government, advancing the interests of the US empire the entire time and growing wealthy in the process.
This dynamic allows a permanent constellation of reliable empire managers to continually exert influence around the world in support of the US empire, regardless of who gets voted into or out of office in the performative display of electoral politics. It’s a big part of why US foreign policy remains the same regardless of who’s officially running the elected government in Washington, and it’s a big part of why the media and arms industry which support the US war machine keep playing the same tune as well.
Andrew Greene – “Former US director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who resigned after Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, was then paid to work for Australia’s new Office of National Intelligence”
Among the American swamp monsters Australia paid for consulting work is the Obama administration’s spy chief James Clapper, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the US empire:
- In 2013 Clapper committed perjury by telling the Senate under oath that the NSA does not knowingly collect data on millions of Americans, only to have that lie exposed by the Edward Snowden leaks a few months later.
- In 2016 Clapper played a foundational role in fomenting public hysteria about Russia with the flimsy ODNI report on alleged Russian election interference, which remains riddled with massive plot holes. He would later go on to repeatedly voice the opinion that Russians are “almost genetically driven” toward nefarious and subversive behavior.
- In 2020 Clapper signed the infamous and now fully discredited letter from former intelligence insiders saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely a Russian disinfo op, falsely telling CNN that the story was “textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work” and that the emails on the laptop had “no metadata” on them.
Also among the American military consultants paid by Australia is a man we just discussed the other day, William Hilarides, who will be telling Australia how to reconfigure its navy because apparently no Australians are available for that job. We now know that according to the released Pentagon documents Canberra has already paid Hilarides almost $2.5 million since 2016 for his consulting work.
This information was originally reported by The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, who last year also broke the remarkable story that a former US navy admiral named Stephen Johnson had actually served as Australia’s deputy navy secretary, a position which needless to say is not normally open to foreigners.
This is just one of the many, many ways that Australia is being interwoven into the US war machine, from our 2023 Defence Strategic Review which further enshrines our position as a US military asset, to our Secretary of Defence Richard Marles saying that the Australian Defence Force is moving “beyond interoperability to interchangeability” with the US military and being suspiciously secretive about who his golfing buddies were in his last trip to the US, to Australian officials angrily dismissing attempts to find out if the US has been bringing nuclear weapons into Australia, to the Australian media pounding Australian consciousness with anti-China hysteria to such an extent that we’re now seeing hate crimes perpetrated against Asian Australians.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to witness the information environment of Washington’s next military proxy from the inside — what it would be like to be a Ukrainian with an ear to the ground during the lead-up to the 2014 coup or whatever. Well, now I know. Now all Australians with an ear to the ground know.
I’ve been generally dismissive of Australian affairs throughout most of my commentary career despite living here, since my focus is on resisting the disasters that humanity as a whole is headed toward, and Australia has always seemed like a fairly irrelevant player on the world stage because of its impotent subservience to Washington. But it’s becoming clearer and clearer that it is exactly because of Australia’s blind subservience to Washington that Australia is worth paying attention to, since that relationship may well end up giving our nation a front-row seat to World War Three.
Australians are going to have to wake up to what’s being done to us and the abominable agendas our nation is being exploited to advance. We’re being groomed for a military confrontation of unimaginable horror, one which absolutely does not need to take place, all in the name of something as trivial as securing US planetary hegemony. We’ve got to start saying no to this, and we’ve got to start right now.
Defence Minister Richard Marles and former Defence Minister (now weapons lobbyist) to spruik fot militarism at expensive weapons festivity
Marles and Pyne: the game of mates plays on as questions on probity count for little
The former and current defence ministers are sparring mates from way back, and that’s worked out well for Christopher Pyne post-Parliament.
DAVID HARDAKER, APR 27, 2023 Crikey,
Is there no end to the Richard Marles-Christopher Pyne double act?
The Albanese government’s defence minister has agreed to speak at a ticket-only networking event hosted by former MP Pyne, Marles’ old sparring partner, who has become one of Australia’s leading defence industry lobbyists. The so-called DSR Summit will be held In Sydney next week, according to an invitation received by Crikey.
For between $500 and $800 defence industry types will be able to rub shoulders with “ministers, thought leaders, and department decision-makers” while hearing from key speakers from government “and other defence sector stalwarts” on the impact of the government’s Defence Strategic Review, released this week……(Subscribers only) https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/04/27/marles-pyne-mates-probity-questions/?su=TlVkbFRSU3Zya0trMlF3M0JHckdPZz09
AUKUS submarines “nation building” says Admiral. No they’re not, says Rex Patrick
People are right to question him, no matter the gold aiguillettes he wears on his right shoulder.
Michael West Media, by Rex Patrick | Apr 23, 2023 |
The Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, has proclaimed the AUKUS submarine program is a national building endeavour when, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Rex Patrick pulls apart the Admiral’s claim.
Left kicking myself
About a month before Prime Minister Albanese went to San Diego for his threesome with President Biden and Prime Minister Sunak, I decided to warn Michael West Media readers that, in due course, Defence would roll out the “nation building” slogan in support of AUKUS. But I got distracted and last week the Chief of Navy invoked the phrase. So, I’m left kicking myself.
How did I know the claim was coming? Well, the admiral was singing from a very well thumbed hymn book.
My first recollection of the words “nation building” and “submarines” being used together was in 2010 when former head of the Submarine Institute of Australia, retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs, was throwing it around in the backchannels. At the time he was pushing for Australia to build a locally designed “Son of Collins” to meet the needs of our future submarine force.
National building quickly became a cliché in Defence circles for those who wanted to sell a grandiose submarine project to government.
By 2013, a decade ago, “nation building” had made its way into the Defence White Paper.
“… the Future Submarine Program represents the largest and most complex project ever undertaken in Australia’s history. This project represents a true nation building endeavour which presents both challenges and significant opportunities for Defence and Australian industry.”
The rhetorical combination has been rolled whenever anyone raises a concern about project cost, like a decoy designed to stop a torpedo hitting its target; “National building” has been deployed a lot in the past decade; South Australia’s Defence Industry Minister before the Senate in July 2014, Defence Minister Linda Reynolds in a November 2020 keynote speech to the Submarine Institute of Australia and now Admiral Hammond.
Admiral Mark Hammond pulled at patriotic heart strings last week when he “implored Australians to see [the AUKUS submarine program] as a nation-building endeavour on par with the original creation of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric scheme”.
Unfortunately, his comparison just doesn’t stack up.
Snowy Hydro
The Snowy Mountains scheme was a very large and complex engineering project that diverted the waters of the Snowy River through tunnels in the mountains and stored it in dams, which were then used to create electricity. It involved the construction of nine power stations, 16 major dams, 80 kilometres of aqueducts and 145 kilometres of interconnected tunnels.
Snowy stimulated the Australian economy and created an industrial base for national security after World War Two. The Labor government of that era implemented plans for full employment, created public housing and announced it would take in 70,000 immigrants each year. It harnessed the impetus of wartime manufacturing to encourage post-war industrial production.
It has delivered Australians with an enduring economic workhorse. It’s 33 turbines can generate a maximum of 4,100 megawatts and produce on average, 4,500 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity each year.
To this day the Snowy Mountains Scheme is still considered to be one of the greatest engineering achievements in the world, however the project is also a story of social, cultural and political changes in Australia.
AUKUS however
By contrast, what we know about AUKUS is that it will provide investment in US shipyard expansion, to be followed at a later date by an investment in UK shipyard expansion.
As Australian politicians point to a 2040 workforce (20,000; far short of that employed in building Snowy) that will purportedly see submarines being built in Australia, General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, and Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, are actively recruiting 5,700 and 1,000 people, respectively, to work on AUKUS right now.
The flow of Aussie dollars to the UK will likely start occurring around the early 2030s about the same time as Collins class submarine workers at Osborne in Adelaide are finding out their jobs are gone, bearing in mind that from 2033 there’ll be no further need to conduct Collins Full Cycle Docking or Life of Type Extension work.
And while that’s all happening, Australian taxpayers will be investing billions in upskilling our engineers and technicians in nuclear technology that will have no use beyond AUKUS. Unlike the US and UK that can amortise and leverage their Defence investment in their civil nuclear industries, we don’t have one of those.
The flow of Aussie dollars to the UK will likely start occurring around the early 2030s about the same time as Collins class submarine workers at Osborne in Adelaide are finding out their jobs are gone, bearing in mind that from 2033 there’ll be no further need to conduct Collins Full Cycle Docking or Life of Type Extension work.
And while that’s all happening, Australian taxpayers will be investing billions in upskilling our engineers and technicians in nuclear technology that will have no use beyond AUKUS. Unlike the US and UK that can amortise and leverage their Defence investment in their civil nuclear industries, we don’t have one of those.
Furthermore, we must expect that US restrictions attached to the use of their submarine nuclear technology will not allow the knowledge gained in the AUKUS program to be used anywhere else in the Australian economy.
AUKUS might be a partnership, but it’s an unequal partnership and it well remain so with Australia as the dependent partner. And all for the price of just $368 billion.
There will of course be some submarines, of an unknown type, an unknown capability, at an unknown date. Does that qualify as nation building?
…………….The truth is that Defence spending is largely a sunk cost. It’s an insurance cost. Admirals, Air Marshalls and Generals would do well to appreciate that, whilst some benefit to the general economy can flow from Defence acquisition and sustainment, Defence projects, the way they are conducted in Australia, do not offer nation building opportunities.
On the other hand …
Nation building would be taking our billion dollar lithium export business and turning it into a trillion dollar battery export business, which we have not done.
National building is investing early into Industry 4.0 to become a manufacturing powerhouse, something Germany has done, but we haven’t.
Nation building is taking royalties from your finite resources and investing in industries that will outlast the resource demand, something the United Arab Emirates has done, and we haven’t.
Nation building would be establishing modern semiconductor manufacturing capability onshore, our two AUKUS allies are actively encouraging development of their onshore industries, sadly again we’re standing idly by.
There’s no plan
In November of 2021 Senator Penny Wong asked the Navy how much money had been allocated to the Nuclear Submarine Task Force; $300m over two years was the answer. For that significant investment we’re seen a ‘Kabuki Show’ in San Diego where no detail on the program were provided and a pathetic nine FAQ sheets uploaded to the government’s AUKUS website.
First and foremost, if a project is going to be truly nation building, the nation needs to know about it, understand it and embrace it. This means there has to be a plan and that plan needs to be publicly available, it cannot be entirely shrouded in secrecy, known only to the select few. As we can see there is no published industrial plan, there are no published workforce plans. Any details on AUKUS beyond top level have had to be extracted from Government under Freedom of Information laws.
Against that backdrop, and in circumstances where most people rightly see the AUKUS program as a completely unjustifiable nation crippling spend of their money, and a spend that, on the best view, only brings us new defence capability in two decades time, Vice Admiral Hammond must be expecting to draw fire for his repeating the inaccurate and misleading characterisation.
People are right to question him, no matter the gold aiguillettes he wears on his right shoulder.
I guess he just really wants his ‘Ferrari’. https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-submarines-nation-building-says-admiral-no-theyre-not-says-rex-patrick/
Universities and the AUKUS Military-Industrial Complex
Last year, the submission of Universities Australia to the Defence Strategic Review was almost begging to link universities with the defence needs of the country. All the Defence Department and Australian Defence Forces needed to do was ask.
How fortunate, then, that AUKUS came bumbling along.
April 12, 2023, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/universities-and-the-aukus-military-industrial-complex/
Here they go. Vice-chancellors, university managers, and creatures with titles unmentionable and meaningless (deputies, semi-deputies, sub-deputies), a whole cavalcade of parasitic creatures in need of neutering, keen to pursue another daft idea. Australian universities do not want to miss out on the military-industrial-education complex, whatever its imperilling dangers. With the war inspired AUKUS security pact, which promises the stripping of the Australian budget to the tune of $AUD 368 billion over the course of three decades, a corrupt establishment promises to get worse.
The AUKUS distraction could not have come at a better time. The tertiary sector in Australia is becoming increasingly cadaverous, marked by cost-cutting, rampant casualisation and heavy teaching and workloads for those battling away in the pedagogical trenches.
In a recent piece by Guardian Australia’s higher education reporter, an academic, who preferred to remain anonymous fearing institutional retribution, likened the modern Australian university to a supermarket. Students were the customers filing through the self-checkout counters; the staff, increasingly rendered irrelevant, were readily disposable.
The stories have been familiar for years, even as the offending by university management continues unabated: tutors being paid insufficiently to read and grade work adequately; virtually non-existent job security; the suppression of academic freedom and criticism of ghastly management practices. Given the pathological secrecy under which universities work under, essential data shedding light on class sizes, staff-student ratios, and contracts with private business interests, is virtually impossible to attain.
But despite the Australian university sector proving unsustainable, unprincipled, and ungainly, individuals such as Catriona Jackson, the CEO of Universities Australia, are on the hunt for new frontiers.
Last year, the submission of Universities Australia to the Defence Strategic Review was almost begging to link universities with the defence needs of the country. All the Defence Department and Australian Defence Forces needed to do was ask.
As the Australian Financial Review reported at the time, “The universities need to be prepared to respond in an adaptable and efficient manner to a clear demand signal from defence in terms of workforce needs – both skills and numbers – as well as technology and hardware needs.”
How fortunate, then, that AUKUS came bumbling along. For Jackson, principles in education are less important than inflated commercial opportunities or, to use her lingo, commercialisation. Distant from the process of learning itself, unaware of the delivery of courses and the classroom, she sees this war making security pact as packed with promise. “It’s workforce, workforce, workforce,” she sloganeered to her Sky News host Kieran Gilbert. “It’s not just nuclear physicists we need, although we do need some of those and it’s a very specialist profession. Almost every area of human endeavour we need a capacity uplift, so engineers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, pretty much everyone.”
Evidently hearing the war jingles around the corner, Jackson is journeying to Washington for meetings with national security officials from the US State Department and National Science Foundation. It is her hope that the number of Australian university partnerships will be expanded, “with more than 10,000 formal partnerships already in place with fellow institutions around the world.” The message she takes to the US capital will, however, be focused on “developing the capability [of Australian universities] to deliver the project, including through the provision of skilled workers and world-class research and development.”
Certain publications have also exuded jingoistic cheer on the new role of Australia’s tertiary sector. The Australian, one of Rupert Murdoch’s premier rags of froth and bile, is ever reliable in this respect. The paper’s higher education editor, Tim Dodd, in a March contribution [paywalled], posed two questions to those in the university sector: Had Australian universities ever played such a vital role in national defence as they would be likely to do over the next two decades in building nuclear-powered submarines? Would they even want to be involved?
Throughout his piece, Dodd seems to think that a university system untethered to the defence establishment is a morally questionable thing. In doing so, he betrays his ignorance of those wise words from US Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright, who warned that “in lending itself too much to the purposes of government, a university fails its higher purposes.”
Dodd can merely observe that, “In the post-war period universities were still not critical to defence programs.” AUKUS and the nuclear submarine program had changed matters. “Australia is now embarking on an enormous program to build, operate and maintain nuclear-powered submarines and a clear goal is sovereign capability.” All in all, it was “a critical national priority that universities are right to give their full support to. Their backing is critical.”
Leaving aside such platitudinous nonsense as “sovereign capability” – the technology, expertise, control and guidance over this new promised machinery will always be directed from Washington – the sentiments are clear. The military-industrial-university complex is a matter to be celebrated. There are, for instance, “other parts of AUKUS” that will involve “our top universities” in such areas as “advanced research cyber security, artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.”
Bizarrely, Dodd gets the question about academic freedom the wrong way around: that expressing a choice in favour of the blatant war drumming of AUKUS is something that should be one for academics. If he had any idea about despotic university environments, he would be aware that academics, whatever they agree with, will have little say in the matter. Distant, estranged managements, unaccountably enthroned in administrative towers, will be making such decisions for them; the only real free expression will be exercised by those opposing the measure.
1 This month
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