315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific
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315 nuclear bombs and ongoing suffering: the shameful history of nuclear testing in Australia and the Pacific, https://theconversation.com/315-nuclear-bombs-and-ongoing-suffering-the-shameful-history-of-nuclear-testing-in-australia-and-the-pacific-148909, Tilman Ruff, Associate Professor, Education and Learning Unit, Nossal Institute for Global Health, School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Dimity Hawkins, PhD Candidate, Swinburne University of Technology
November 3, 2020 The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received its 50th ratification on October 24, and will therefore come into force in January 2021. A historic development, this new international law will ban the possession, development, testing, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.Unfortunately the nuclear powers — the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — haven’t signed on to the treaty. As such, they are not immediately obliged to help victims and remediate contaminated environments, but others party to the treaty do have these obligations. The shifting norms around this will hopefully put ongoing pressure on nuclear testing countries to open records and to cooperate with accountability measures. For the people of the Pacific region, particularly those who bore the brunt of nuclear weapons testing during the 20th century, it will bring a new opportunity for their voices to be heard on the long-term costs of nuclear violence. The treaty is the first to enshrine enduring commitments to addressing their needs. From 1946, around 315 nuclear tests were carried out in the Pacific by the US, Britain and France. These nations’ largest ever nuclear tests took place on colonised lands and oceans, from Australia to the Marshall Islands, Kiribati to French Polynesia.
The impacts of these tests are still being felt today. All nuclear tests cause harm Studies of nuclear test workers and exposed nearby communities around the world consistently show adverse health effects, especially increased risks of cancer. The total number of global cancer deaths as a result of atmospheric nuclear test explosions has been estimated at between 2 million and 2.4 million, even though these studies used radiation risk estimates that are now dated and likely underestimated the risk. The number of additional non-fatal cancer cases caused by test explosions is similar. As confirmed in a large recent study of nuclear industry workers in France, the UK and US, the numbers of radiation-related deaths due to other diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, is also likely to be similar. Britain conducted 12 nuclear test explosions in Australia between 1952 and 1957, and hundreds of minor trials of radioactive and toxic materials for bomb development up to 1963. These caused untold health problems for local Aboriginal people who were at the highest risk of radiation. Many of them were not properly evacuated, and some were not informed at all. We may never know the full impact of these explosions because in many cases, as the Royal Commission report on British Nuclear Tests in Australia found in 1985: “the resources allocated for Aboriginal welfare and safety were ludicrous, amounting to nothing more than a token gesture”. But we can listen to the survivors.
His daughter, Karina Lester, is an ambassador for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, and continues to be driven by her family’s experience. She writes: For decades now my family have campaigned and spoken up against the harms of nuclear weapons because of their firsthand experience of the British nuclear tests […] Many Aboriginal people suffered from the British nuclear tests that took place in the 1950s and 1960s and many are still suffering from the impacts today. More than 16,000 Australian workers were also exposed. A key government-funded study belatedly followed these veterans over an 18-year period from 1982. Despite the difficulties of conducting a study decades later with incomplete data, it found they had 23% higher rates of cancer and 18% more deaths from cancers than the general population. An additional health impact in Pacific island countries is the toxic disease “ciguatera”, caused by certain microscopic plankton at the base of the marine food chain, which thrive on damaged coral. Their toxins concentrate up the food chain, especially in fish, and cause illness and occasional deaths in people who eat them. In the Marshall Islands, Kiritimati and French Polynesia, outbreaks of the disease among locals have been associated with coral damage caused by nuclear test explosions and the extensive military and shipping infrastructure supporting them. Pacific survivors of nuclear testing haven’t been focused solely on addressing their own considerable needs for justice and care; they’ve been powerful advocates that no one should suffer as they have ever again, and have worked tirelessly for the eradication of nuclear weapons. It’s no surprise independent Pacific island nations are strong supporters of the new treaty, accounting for ten of the first 50 ratifications. Negligence and little accountabilitySome nations that have undertaken nuclear tests have provided some care and compensation for their nuclear test workers; only the US has made some provisions for people exposed, though only for mainland US residents downwind of the Nevada Test Site. No testing nation has extended any such arrangement beyond its own shores to the colonised and minority peoples it put in harm’s way. Nor has any testing nation made fully publicly available its records of the history, conduct and effects of its nuclear tests on exposed populations and the environment. These nations have also been negligent by quickly abandoning former test sites. There has been inadequate clean-up and little or none of the long-term environmental monitoring needed to detect radioactive leakage from underground test sites into groundwater, soil and air. One example among many is the Runit concrete dome in the Marshall Islands, which holds nuclear waste from US testing in the 1940s and 50s. It’s increasingly inundated by rising sea levels, and is leaking radioactive material. The treaty provides a light in a dark time. It contains the only internationally agreed framework for all nations to verifiably eliminate nuclear weapons. It’s our fervent hope the treaty will mark the increasingly urgent beginning of the end of nuclear weapons. It is our determined expectation that our country will step up. Australia has not yet ratified the treaty, but the bitter legacy of nuclear testing across our country and region should spur us to join this new global effort. |
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Superannuation funds are leaving investments on nuclear weapons
 Disarmament treaty drops bomb on super funds investing in nuclear weapons, Michael West Media , by Margaret Beavis | Nov 2, 2020 Many superannuation funds exclude investment in “controversial weapons” but astoundingly this definition does not include nuclear weapons. However, this will change once the Nuclear Disarmament Treaty becomes international law, writes Dr Margaret Beavis. With two of the largest pension funds in the world already having divested, Australian funds are on notice.
It would probably come as a surprise, and a disappointment, to most Australians to hear that some of their superannuation is invested in nuclear weapons. Especially given the strong community backing for nuclear disarmament, with two surveys in 2018 and 2020 (IPSOS) showing that between 71 and 79% of respondents supported Australia signing and ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Yet the vast majority of superannuation funds have holdings in companies involved in the manufacture and maintenance of nuclear weapons. While many funds exclude investments in “controversial weapons”, astoundingly this definition often still allows nuclear weapons investment. But this is about to change. With the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which was endorsed by 122 countries at the United Nations in 2017, having just reached the milestone of 50 countries ratifying it, the treaty becomes international law in less than three months. Nuclear weapons, the worst of the weapons of mass destruction, will finally be on the same illegal footing as chemical and biological weapons. This means assistance of any sort, including financial assistance, towards nuclear weapons becomes illegal under international law. Only 26 companies support these weapons. Boeing, for example, the second largest weapons producer in the world, has contracts worth more than US$1.7 billion: building new nuclear weapons for the US, key components for the long-range nuclear Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles system, sustaining the UK Trident II system and making tail-kit assemblies for the new B61 bombs. Divestment is accelerating. Globally, major investors are already ceasing their exposure to nuclear weapons activities. This includes two of the top five pension funds in the world, the Norwegian Government Pension Fund and ABP, which have divested from the 26 companies tied to nuclear weapons. Deutsche Bank and KBC are also divesting. In Japan, 16 banks (including three mega banks) have flagged ceasing investment in nuclear weapons companies. With accelerating divestment, the risks of holding nuclear weapons stocks increases. Superannuation funds in Australia are starting to consider the financial risks, reputational risks and ethical imperatives surrounding investments in nuclear weapons. Some, like Australian Ethical, Future Super and Bank Australia have already acted……… As with climate change, there is little point accumulating funds on behalf of the community if they contribute to the deaths of billions and a severely damaged future. Quit Nukes, an Australian-based campaign launched late last year, is working to get super fund portfolios out of the financing of nuclear weapons. The campaign members have met with senior executives at more than a dozen funds, the regulator APRA, several banks, index setters and a number of industry bodies. Blackrock, MSCI and other index setters have recognised the increasing demand from the public for ethical funds and have created products to suit. The full list of funds that have already acted is on the Quit Nukes website. Consumers are increasingly concerned about their funds being invested in destructive and unethical industries and super funds need to respond. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/disarmament-treaty-drops-bomb-on-super-funds-investing-in-nuclear-weapons/ |
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International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)- from a tiny group to an International Treaty
Nuclear weapons treaty backed by 50 nations to become international law https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/nuclear-weapons-treaty-backed-by-50-nations-to-become-international-law,14455
2020 HAS BEEN a very tough year with fires, pestilence and massive economic and human disruption but amid the difficulties, an Australian-born initiative is steadily growing global support and offers our shared planet its best way to get rid of its worst weapons.
In October 2017, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), an initiative born in Melbourne and adopted, adapted and applied around the world, was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
This was in recognition of its:
“…work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”
Fast forward to October 2020 and the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons has just cleared a big hurdle. Despite strong pressure from the nuclear weapons states, especially the U.S., 50 nations have now ratified the ban treaty. It will enter into force and become part of international humanitarian law on 22 January 2021.
At a time when the threat of nuclear war is more explicit than it has been in decades, the ICAN story is timely and shows the power of both the individual and the idea. When ICAN started in 2007, its founders could have fitted in a minibus. Ten years later, there are over 500 ICAN groups and formal partners in more than 100 nations. And a treaty. Continue reading
Australia should stop selling uranium to nuclear weapon states and not sell uranium into unstable regions.
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Michelle Fahy blows open the disgraceful collusion between Australian politicians and weapons industries
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Sweeping policy changes by the Coalition, including bringing the military industry into the centre of defence planning and a 2018 strategy to catapult Australia into the world’s top 10 of weapons exporting nations, created a business bonanza in the military industry. The Turnbull government allocated $195 billion towards upgrading Australia’s military capability (since increased to $270 billion). Extraordinary amounts of money. When combined with the fundamental undeclared, and undealt with, conflicts of interest that have now become routine in Australia’s defence sector, the potential for corruption has increased markedly. Conflicts of interest have become entrenched because of the close integration of military industry interests with government policy. Corporate influence on government policy has been cultivated for years by a phenomenon at which the arms trade excels: the revolving door. This is how the revolving door works. Defence-related politicians and public officials and military personnel are regularly offered high-level, high-paying positions with weapons companies upon retirement. This provides a strong incentive for those in public service, with an eye to their future, to seek the best interests of these companies. Military industry executives in turn are welcomed into government as experts, consultants and employees. Legalised corruption of democracy? Corruption is defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain, be it grand, petty, or political corruption” in the 2019 Australian research report, Governing for Integrity. The report says ‘undue influence’ is a marker for corruption, and that undue influence and the ‘revolving door’ are two key problems “eroding public confidence in parliamentarians and ministers, and weakening the fundamentals of democracy”. Take the case of former defence minister Christopher Pyne, who discussed his future with EY Defence while still in parliament, then nine days after leaving politics accepted a position with them. Pyne now also runs his own lobbying firm, lectures as an ‘industry professor’ at the University of South Australia, and is chair of the advisory board and investment committee of a new investment fund promoting high returns via investment in selected defence and cyber stocks. Pyne’s post-politics career made a mockery of the ministerial standards and lobbying rules and led to a senate inquiry, which included former foreign minister Julie Bishop, who only months after leaving parliament joined the board of multinational aid contractor Palladium. The revolving door yet again exposed the parliament’s unwillingness to manage risk factors for corruption, further eroding public confidence in the integrity of our political system. As noted by Transparency International Australia in its submission to the senate inquiry, it is quite the “culture of cosiness”. Although a particularly egregious case, Pyne isn’t the only former defence minister to have used the revolving door. The Liberals’ Peter Reith left his ministerial desk and popped up a few days later at Tenix, then Australia’s largest defence contractor. EY also secured the services of Labor’s Kim Beazley within a year of his political departure, along with former Labor defence minister Stephen Smith. Beazley joined the board of Lockheed Martin in between his public roles as US Ambassador and WA Governor. (The job description and the budget of the WA Governor has been expanded to enable Beazley to advocate for defence industry.) After a three-year association with EY, Smith has recently accepted directorships with cyber security companies ArchTIS and Sapien Cyber. Meanwhile, former Liberal David Johnston is being paid $3,000 a day for up to 180 days a year as the federal government’s chief weapons industry advocate, while sitting on the board of Saab Technologies (a significant contractor to the Defence Department). Brendan Nelson, a former Liberal party leader, defence minister and director of the Australian War Memorial, is now with Boeing (a multibillion-dollar contractor to Defence). Nelson’s move to Boeing was announced in January 2020, just a few weeks after his departure from the war memorial, a tenure that caused controversy given Nelson’s pursuit of sponsorship from arms manufacturers. (In Nelson’s final appearance at senate estimates in October 2019 he highlighted Boeing’s $1 million sponsorship of the memorial.) Nelson also raised eyebrows in March 2019 when his entry on the foreign influence transparency register revealed he had been on Thales Australia’s “advisory board” since March 2015. Thales is a global top 10 arms manufacturer, a multibillion-dollar contractor to Defence, and a sponsor of the war memorial. Then veterans affairs minister Michael Ronaldson approved Nelson’s extracurricular activity while noting the potential for conflict of interest. Nelson countered public concerns by saying he donated the fees he received to the war memorial. Current minister Linda Reynolds was briefly employed by missile-maker Raytheon in between military and political jobs in her pre-senate career. Politicians attract almost all the attention for using revolving door, but they aren’t the only ones using it. Privileged accessConsider the appointment to the Thales Australia board of former ASIO boss Duncan Lewis in February 2020, just five months after he left ASIO. The appointment attracted almost no attention. While the Sydney Morning Herald noted the appointment, no hard questions were asked and no analysis provided of Lewis’s swift move into an industry over which he had had oversight. Lewis had spent five years as ASIO’s Director-General, his final public role in a long career of public service that spanned the military (commander of special forces), the departments of the prime minister and cabinet and defence, as well as diplomatic roles (including as Australia’s ambassador to NATO)……… Weapons CEO moves into public serviceThe revolving door also ushers former weapons industry executives into public sector roles. Jim McDowell is a good example. After 17 years with BAE, the world’s sixth largest weapons-maker, including 10 years as chief executive of BAE Systems Australia, McDowell returned to Australia in December 2013 from his post in Saudia Arabia as the company’s chief executive and was immediately appointed to the board of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation. He became ANSTO’s chair in August 2014. For the next four years while with ANSTO he also undertook numerous influential consulting roles with the Defence Department. (More details here.)…….. McDowell was chancellor of the University of South Australia (which has close links with military industry) and was on the board of numerous companies in the military industrial sector …… Part 2: There’s been plenty of talk about enhancing military capability but nothing about enhancing defence’s anti-corruption practices . https://www.michaelwest.com.au/culture-of-cosiness-colossal-conflicts-of-interest-in-defence-spending-blitz/ |
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Australia needs a permanent war crimes investigation unit
At the conclusion of Justice Paul Brereton’s Afghanistan inquiry we know there will be more referrals to the Australian Federal Police for criminal investigation of war crimes allegations.
We know so far that Brereton’s inquiry has investigated more than 55 incidents of alleged unlawful killings and cruel treatment of Afghan civilians and captured combatants. We know that the AFP is investigating at least three incidents, and it has been put on notice to prepare for more.
Our legal centre was established to push Australia to undertake more investigations and prosecutions into international crimes and to contribute to the global effort to end the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators of these crimes. It has been saying for some time that the AFP needs specialist training, skills, and resources to undertake such investigations. Experience shows that authorities often find the challenges involved in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed extraterritorially daunting, and consequently choose not to prioritise these cases………….
Rawan Arraf is principal lawyer and director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, a legal centre that has been working with survivor and victims’ communities on criminal complaints to the Australian Federal Police. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/australia-needs-a-permanent-war-crimes-investigation-unit-20201005-p562a2.html
Pretty despicable -tax breaks for company exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia, UAE.
Tax break for weapons exports to Mid-East countries accused of war crimes, Michael West Media, by Michelle Fahy | Oct 6, 2020 Australian weapons manufacturer Electro Optic Systems, with financial support from the federal and ACT governments, is capitalising on the ‘growth market’ of the Middle East, one of the world’s most volatile regions. Michelle Fahy reports.
As has been reported repeatedly, remote weapons systems manufactured by EOS are being exported to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia despite both countries being accused of war crimes. Numerous UN reports have detailed shocking human rights violations over the six years of the Yemen war.
After a shutdown due to Covid-19, EOS announced last month that it is exporting again.
EOS and the federal government have been asked repeatedly for proof that its weapons are not being used in Yemen. “Trust us,” is the standard response.
Assurances from a company chasing millions in profit and a government intent on catapulting Australia into the global top 10 of weapons exporters seem to be the best the public can expect in terms of accountability.
There is zero transparency when it comes to Australian weapons exports………..
Government support for EOS
EOS has received extensive government support, including an exemption from paying state payroll tax. Under questioning last November by the ACT Greens, Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the ACT Government provided support to EOS (PDF p44), “principally for its space industry related activity”. While EOS separates its space industry work from its weapons side, both companies operate in the same group under the same board……..
EOS has so far supplied the UAE and Saudi with its remote weapons systems. The systems are mounted on armoured vehicles and can incorporate a light cannon, machine gun, grenade launcher or anti-tank missile, which EOS does not manufacture. The system enables the weapon to be operated from inside the vehicle, which makes the soldier safer. It can identify targets and automatically aim the weapon, making the firing of the weapon faster and more accurate. In military parlance, the system enhances lethality. See it in action here.
The claim that it was not a weapons manufacturer may have been technically correct when asserted by EOS and Barr, but that is no longer the case.
Last month EOS announced it had moved into production with a new range of directed energy (laser) weapons. The weapons are being marketed by EOS as ‘drone kill’ technology (counter unmanned aircraft system or CUAS). EOS says “CUAS are entirely defensive systems”. The potential market is large. EOS has named its new range of weapons Mopoke, after the small native Australian owl.
EOS has not disclosed its list of interested customers for Mopoke, but industry insiders – such as AuManufacturing – have noted that its first customers are likely to come from the Middle East, given drone attacks on infrastructure there……….
EOS is now unequivocally a weapons manufacturer, and likely to soon start exporting its weapons to the Middle East.
Supplying weapons to war crimes accused
Melissa Parke, a lawyer, former federal Labor MP, and human rights expert, is one of three UN-appointed Eminent Experts on Yemen. Parke told SBS Dateline last year:
“No country can claim not to be aware of the violations being perpetrated in Yemen. To continue to provide weapons in the knowledge of such violations is both morally and legally hazardous.”
A former secretary of the Defence Department, Paul Barratt, has also stated his position on these weapon sales:
“Regardless of whether Australian-made weapons [are] crossing the border into Yemen, Australia now has a national policy which seeks and facilitates weapons sales with countries that stand accused of gross violations of human rights and likely war crimes. When did this particular trade in arms become official Australian policy? As a country that routinely asks other countries to abide by the rules-based international order, it would seem hypocritical, at best, that Australia is now willing to … make a profit from weapons sales to nations that are openly flouting this international order.”……….
In addition to ministerial lobbying, EOS Defence Systems has received federal financial support, including:
- $3.7 million from Defence between 2013 and 2016
- $41.5 million performance bond from Export Finance Australia (EFIC) (PDF p66)
The company has also gained from influential appointments to its board. Former Chief of Army, Peter Leahy, joined the EOS board in May 2009, just 10 months after retiring as army chief. In April 2016 Leahy was joined by former Chief of Air Force, Geoff Brown, less than 10 months after he had retired from the air force…… https://www.michaelwest.com.au/eos-weapons-export-transparen
Pine Gap could play role in accidental US-China nuclear fight
Pine Gap could play role in accidental US-China nuclear fight NT News, 30 Sept 20
Heightened US-China tensions have increased the risk of an accidental nuclear exchange between the two superpowers — and whether or not the Northern Territory’s Pine Gap surveillance base is playing a role in hyping this up needs to be looked at ……. (subscribers only)
Legacy of Maralinga bomb tests -a reminder of need for safety in matters nuclear
Sixty years on, the Maralinga bomb tests remind us not to put security over safety, The Conversation Liz Tynan, Senior Lecturer and Co-ordinator Research Student Academic Support, James Cook University September 26, 2016 It is September 27, 1956. At a dusty site called One Tree, in the northern reaches of the 3,200-square-kilometre Maralinga atomic weapons test range in outback South Australia, the winds have finally died down and the countdown begins……….The count reaches its finale – three… two… one… FLASH! – and all present turn their backs. When given the order to turn back again, they see an awesome, rising fireball. Then Maralinga’s first mushroom cloud begins to bloom over the plain – by October the following year, there will have been six more.
RAF and RAAF aircraft prepare to fly through the billowing cloud to gather samples. The cloud rises much higher than predicted and, despite the delay, the winds are still unsuitable for atmospheric nuclear testing. The radioactive cloud heads due east, towards populated areas on Australia’s east coast.
Power struggle
While Australia was preparing to sign the Maralinga agreement, the supply minister, Howard Beale, wrote in a top-secret 1954 cabinet document:
The British carried out two clean-up operations – Operation Hercules in 1964 and Operation Brumby in 1967 – both of which made the contamination problems worse.
Legacy of damage
The damage done to Indigenous people in the vicinity of all three test sites is immeasurable and included displacement, injury and death. Service personnel from several countries, but particularly Britain and Australia, also suffered – not least because of their continuing fight for the slightest recognition of the dangers they faced. Many of the injuries and deaths allegedly caused by the British tests have not been formally linked to the operation, a source of ongoing distress for those involved.
Decades later, we still don’t know the full extent of the effects suffered by service personnel and local communities. Despite years of legal wrangling, those communities’ suffering has never been properly recognised or compensated.
Why did Australia allow it to happen? The answer is that Britain asserted its nuclear colonialism just as an anglophile prime minister took power in Australia, and after the United States made nuclear weapons research collaboration with other nations illegal, barring further joint weapons development with the UK. …..Six decades later, those atomic weapons tests still cast their shadow across Australia’s landscape. They stand as testament to the dangers of government decisions made without close scrutiny, and as a reminder – at a time when leaders are once again preoccupied with international security – not to let it happen again. https://theconversation.com/sixty-years-on-the-maralinga-bomb-tests-remind-us-not-to-put-security-over-safety-62441?fbclid=IwAR3-AXJA_-RZTlr1AW6qxgcFRPuOX5IIi163L75vLWXFyIOcZGKxbet5DDE
Does Australia really need nuclear submarines, and the whole nuclear shebang
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The strange submarine saga: nuclear-powered poser, The Strategist
14 Sep 2020, |Graeme Dobell Submarines are so vital to Australia that two of our past prime ministers have publicly pointed to the nuclear-powered option.
Shifting from the conventional power of the existing Collins class and the planned Attack class to nuclear propulsion would take the subs saga to a whole new depth. Before reading the nuclear-powered musings of Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull (a rare meeting of minds), turn to the other part of the proposition: subs are vital. A couple of episodes into this five–part series, I got a note from one of the smartest men I know—an economist with a long history in the Canberra policy jungle and an equally deep understanding of East Asia. He is a master at posing the simple Delphic question that forces lots of devilish detail through its paces. And so my master posed this question:
A fine reminder of an enduring truth: the Canberra defence consensus isn’t always what the rest of Oz understands or believes. Whenever military types berate me for the ignorance of journalists about defence, I respond they should be grateful to us: we’re merely showing them how much the rest of the population lives in a different place with a sky of a different colour. On why subs are vital, turn to two politicians responsible for explaining defence to the voters…………..
With France, Australia is building Attack-class submarines that are cousin to the French Barracuda nuclear-powered boats. And that nuclear capability is one element in Australia’s decision to partner with France rather than Germany or Japan, as Turnbull states: ‘It wasn’t the reason for the choice, but accepting the French submarine bid, as opposed to the Japanese or German bids, at least gives us a potential option to move to a nuclear design in the years ahead.’ Reaching for that option would confront many dimensions of Australia’s nuclear taboo. The Labor and Liberal parties would have to agree. The people would have to be persuaded. There’s the small matter of building the nuclear industry. And we’d have to do a lot of talking and explaining to the neighbours—especially Indonesia. All that could only happen in a darkening strategic environment. It’d be ‘a post-Covid world that is poorer, that is more dangerous, and that is more disorderly’. The quotation marks around that poorer, dangerous, disorderly quote are because that’s what Prime Minister Scott Morrison described in launching the 2020 strategic update. Tough times will put more twists into Australia’s strange submarine saga. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-strange-submarine-saga-nuclear-powered-poser/ |
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Australia entangled in the military-industrial-intelligence-security complex
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The military-industrial-intelligence-security complex https://johnmenadue.com/alison-broinowski-the-three-slash-complex/ By ALISON BROINOWSKI | On 25 August 2020 In 1961 President Eisenhower warned that a vast and permanent ‘military-industrial complex’ could produce ‘the disastrous rise of misplaced power’. Earlier, US Senators Robert La Follette and J. William Fulbright also foresaw the dangers of militarisation. Now we have a military/industrial/security/intelligence complex, and it is dangerous. Let’s start with ‘security’, which sounds harmless and desirable. Who welcomes insecurity? Our ‘safety and security’, various authorities assure us (never explaining the difference) are their prime concern, particularly after some egregious security failure on their part. Security abroad used to mean the First World remaining in control of opportunities, in its own interests. Security now additionally means controlling people euphemistically called ‘those who would do us harm’. Since 2001, national security has become an exponential, unassailable, growth area. Proliferating Australian laws criminalise knowing, revealing, or even asking anything about it. Despite some academics arguing that it includes food, health, social, economic, and environmental security, ‘hard-headed’ national security is the dominant growth area in universities and government. From there to intelligence. We lavishly fund the ‘community’ of ten security agencies which demand ever more power and resources. Several heads of ASIO, ASIS, ASD, and DFAT have followed each other in revolving door fashion. Some emerge occasionally to warn us of the new, dire, and continuing dangers we face. They can’t give details, of course, before WikiLeaks or the American media do, or until a tip-off to a Five Eyes partner inspires an ‘open source’ report. But they assure us of their best efforts – with a lot more staff – to keep us safe and secure. Their colleague from the American community, Mike Green, former Asia Director of the National Security Agency (the equivalent of ASIO), used to joke that the NSA’s job was to keep people frightened ‘so they’ll go on funding us’. From the community came the intelligence that government misused, or didn’t use, before the Bali bombing and the Lindt Café siege in Sydney. They provided intelligence that government used, or misused, to justify Australian forces’ illegal invasions of Iraq and Syria, to benefit Woodside Petroleum and disadvantage East Timor. Government is currently making an example of David McBride, a military lawyer who said what he saw Australian troops doing in Afghanistan, of Witness K, a former ASIS officer who said what he did in Dili, and of his former solicitor Bernard Collaery, who’s not allowed to say much, but who was raided in 2013 under anti-terrorism laws. The Attorney-General wants charges and court proceedings against them in the ACT to be secret, as in the Kafkaesque case of another, Witness J. The same applies in Britain, a common-law country, where a judge is likely in September to allow the extradition of Julian Assange to the US, whose CIA paid to have him spied on. Rule of law? The Australian government and opposition say nothing. To industry then. Canberra airport has become a hall of mirrors for American, British, and French arms producers. So has the Kerry Stokes-chaired Australian War Memorial, whose expansion is to cost $500 million. Less than a decade after the ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ report, Asian languages and the arts languish, and the National Library closes its Asian collection. Defence expenditure is exempt from the efficiency dividend, and much cannot be accounted for. Yet a government that criticised its predecessors for running up ‘debt and deficit’ tries to please the Americans by exceeding 2 percent of GDP, even for aircraft that are not delivered and are denied the technologies the US allows Israel, and for submarines that will lack crew and be obsolete and over budget before they hit the water. Diversification of suppliers is commendable, and local manufacture too, but value for money? Japan would have undercut the French price and delivery date for the submarines, and might not have dangled the option of nuclear power. By 1967 the US was ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today’, said Martin Luther King. Now the war industry (let’s call it by its name) has proliferated in Australia, as in the US and UK. Its promises of local employment ̶ often more jobs than are delivered ̶ attract votes, particularly in South Australia. The merchants of death are to be joined by Australia as the tenth largest arms exporter. And we won’t ban nuclear weapons. So why bother searching for a vaccine to stop millions dying in the pandemic? Fourth, military. In most democracies, elected civilians debate where the armed forces should go, what they should do, what they need to do it, and when they should return. Some constitutions even require reports on progress, and independent inquiries afterwards. That worked before the undeclared, endless war. Now potential conflicts are planned years in advance, the security state identifies the priorities, the war industry gears up, and inter-operable allied forces that are not already embedded get their American orders on a given date. So the Australian military tail in effect wags the government dog. Moreover, inviting US military bases to proliferate in northern Australia, and expanding our war-games, not only makes Australia a bigger target but inevitably America’s endless wars become Australia’s. The putative enemies China, Russia, and Iran need not be Australia’s enemies. The risk grows of Australia being used as an example by China of what it could do to the US, to its real enemy. If Australia is not to be dragged into war against China or Iran by the US, our Ministers while in quarantine might reflect on the invertebrate performance they gave at the AUSMin talks in July. Bipartisan Sinophobia was recently demonstrated against NSW parliamentarian Shaoquett Moselmane. Australian security would benefit if the opposition didn’t try to outdo the government’s ‘Communist China’ McCarthyism. Trump aimed to drain the Washington swamp by filling top White House positions with ex-military people. Most have departed, but this proto-fascist tendency continues in Australia where the governor-general, governors, politicians, and even academics with military backgrounds are conspicuous. Of these former fighters, only a few have the courage, as retired General Peter Leahy did in 2016, to deplore Australia’s lack of independent military strategy and the way we go to war. If the ADF is called out to enforce the law in Australia, fascism will be next. Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former diplomat, academic, and author, and is Vice-President of Australians for War Powers Reform. |
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Military to Weapons Sales – Professor Peter Leahy and the revolving door
Professor Peter Leahy AC Australian Defence Force | Military | Revolving Doors, Michael West Media, 19 Aug, 20
Lieutenant-General Peter Leahy retired from the Australian army in July 2008 having concluded his 37 year military career with six years as Chief of Army. Within a year he was on the boards of Codan and Electro Optic Systems (EOS). More recently, EOS has been exporting its weapon systems to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates while the Yemen war has raged despite multiple reports of war crimes by these countries and a situation in Yemen which the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
Current Positions
Public
Professor and foundation director, National Security Institute, University of Canberra (7.10.08–present^)
^ Website accessed 10.08.20
Corporate
Member, Advisory Board, WarpForge Limited ([??]–present^)
Director, Citadel Group (28.6.14*–present^; including as Chair from 12.11.19)
Director, Electro Optic Systems (4.5.09*–present^)
Director, Codan Limited (19.9.08*–present^)………. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/peter-leahy/
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and celebrating the Global Nuclear Ban Treaty
August 6th and August 9th are the days that remind us of the horror of nuclear weapons. The failing and desperate nuclear industry would like us to forget about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They’d like us to swallow their spin about new small nuclear reactors. (But new small nuclear reactors are just the latest gimmick to support the nuclear weapons industry, and put a friendly mask on it. They really have no other purpose.)
In this time of pandemic and global heating, Biden’s USA, Putin’s Russia, and other nations, are putting obscene amounts of money into nuclear weapons. The U.N.’s Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (passed by a vote of 122-1-1 at the United Nations in 2017) is looking ever more rational and necessary. It entered into force on 22 January 2021.
“The pandemic has taught us that all the world’s great needs and threats are linked. By reallocating bloated military spending and reorienting nations to resolve conflict through peaceful negotiation, people and governments throughout the world can more easily tackle the enormous economic and civil injustices that give rise to conflict and fuel the fire of climate change. Each victory in each arena must be used to feed progress elsewhere if humanity is to survive this century.
As we remember the victims of the atomic bombings and hear the stories of the survivors, we realize more than ever: we are all in this together. ” – Michael Christ, Executive Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Although Australians started a move to abolish nuclear weapons, The Australian government tried to sabotage the U.N. nuclear ban treaty
75 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the arms race isn’t over, Independent Australia By Binoy Kampmark | 12 August 2020,“………………The 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings might have encouraged some reflection on current attitudes to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Passed on July 7, 2017, it has become a focal point for advocates of a nuclear weapons-free world and a source of irritation for nuclear weapons states.
Most perversely of all are those powers not in possession of nuclear weapons yet derive some form of security from states who have them, a strategic figment of the military imagination known as the ‘umbrella of extended nuclear deterrence“. For that reason Japan, despite being a global town crier for the banning of nuclear weapons, has refused to add its name to the nuclear weapons ban treaty.
Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui took the commemorative occasion to encourage the Japanese government to abandon that position:……
Australia, another U.S. annex in the Asia Pacific, similarly refuses to join the club of prohibitionists. When it participated in the UN working group on nuclear disarmament in 2016, Australian diplomats made it clear that they had no interest in seeing any document banning nuclear weapons emerge.
The disruptive involvement of Australian officials in the group was keenly exposed in documents obtained under Freedom of Information by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). ‘So long as the threat of nuclear attack and coercion exists,’ states one document from foreign ministry officials, ‘U.S. extended deterrence will serve Australia’s fundamental national security interests’.
Such a position would have to be renounced were Canberra to sign up to any treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. To avoid that outcome, they were to serve as spoilers, providing ‘a strong alternative viewpoint, notably against those states who wish to push a near-term ban treaty’.
During the course of negotiations, Australian officials also served as the ears and eyes of Washington, a role they have been accustomed to for decades. As the United States had boycotted the meetings, Canberra felt it necessary to remain in “close contact” with Washington ‘about our shared concerns’ on the working group’s disturbing move towards recommending ‘negotiations on a ‘ban treaty”’. Happily, Australia’s spoiling role merely served to strengthen the resolve of the other parties.
Canberra’s current position is that of a jaded cynic in realist’s clothes. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade states:
‘Australia does not support the “ban treaty” which we believe would not eliminate a single nuclear weapon.’
It scoffs at efforts that have ignored powers possessing nuclear weapons in negotiations, avoiding ‘the realities of the global security environment’. The document, furthermore, lacks the teeth of the NPT and ‘would be inconsistent with our U.S. alliance obligations’.
As long as the nuclear weapons option remains genuine, credible and desirable, there will always be a prospect for use. Once acquired, their abandonment has only ever proven exceptional (South Africa provides a unique case of this).
As things stand, a good number of countries could go nuclear overnight. It has taken much persuasion, and long discussion, to reassure South Korea and Japan not to do so before the nuclear ambitions of North Korea. The atom, in other words, still retains a deadly magic, tempting to upstarts, arrivistes and possessors. https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/75-years-after-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-arms-race-isnt-over,14192
Four more states ratify Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and Australians commemorate anniversary of atomic bombing
The Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, said: “I am proud that Ireland today ratifies the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons … It honours the memory of the victims of nuclear weapons and the key role played by survivors in providing living testimony and calling on us as successor generations to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Mark Brantley, said on Sunday “The bombing of Nagasaki was the apogee of human cruelty and inhumanity. As a small nation committed to global peace, Saint Kitts and Nevis can see no useful purpose for nuclear armaments in today’s world. May all nations work towards peace and mutual respect for all mankind.”
In Australia, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries were honoured by activities and events on and off line, with the demand for Australia to join the nuclear weapon ban treaty loud, clear and persistent.
The Irish Foreign Minister, Simon Coveney, said: “I am proud that Ireland today ratifies the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons … It honours the memory of the victims of nuclear weapons and the key role played by survivors in providing living testimony and calling on us as successor generations to eliminate nuclear weapons.”
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Mark Brantley, said on Sunday “The bombing of Nagasaki was the apogee of human cruelty and inhumanity. As a small nation committed to global peace, Saint Kitts and Nevis can see no useful purpose for nuclear armaments in today’s world. May all nations work towards peace and mutual respect for all mankind.”
In Australia, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries were honoured by activities and events on and off line, with the demand for Australia to join the nuclear weapon ban treaty loud, clear and persistent.
special webinar on Tuesday night titled “Remembering the Atomic Bombs: History, Memory and Politics in Australia, Japan and the Pacific” featuring one of our wonderful board members Dimity Hawkins. Click here for info and registration.
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
15 April – Zoom –Nuclear Power is Not the Solution
Apr 15, 2026 01:00 AM in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney
Join the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on Tuesday, April 14th for a timely webinar exploring the risks associated with nuclear power and challenging the myth that it offers a simple, safe, carbon-free solution to the climate crisis
21 April Webinar: No Nuclear Weapons in Australia
Start: 2026-04-21 18:00:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
End: 2026-04-21 19:30:00 UTC Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney (GMT+10:00)
Event Type: Virtual
A virtual link will be communicated before the event.
Host Contact Info: australia@icanw.org
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 