Australian government promoting Australia’s secret weapons deals to Saudi Arabia and UAE for murderous war in Yemen
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Documents reveal Australia’s secret arms deals with nations fighting Yemen’s bloody war, ABC News
Internal Defence Department documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) and from parliamentary hearings reveal since the beginning of 2016, Canberra has granted at least 37 export permits for military-related items to the United Arab Emirates, and 20 to Saudi Arabia. They are the two countries leading a coalition fighting a war against Houthi rebels in the Middle East’s poorest nation, Yemen. The four-year war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands and an air-and-sea embargo has led to more than 85,000 Yemeni children under five dying from hunger, according to one children’s agency. Australia’s burgeoning exports to the UAE and Saudi Arabia may be connected to a plan announced by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January to drastically increase defence sales over the next decade. Australia will spend $200 million between now and 2028 in order to make Australia the 10th-largest arms exporter in the world. It is currently the 20th largest. The strategy states the Middle East is a “priority market” for defence exports. The Government has tried to keep details of the exports secret, but New South Wales lawyer and human rights activist Kellie Tranter has spent a year trying to shed light on the sales. Continue reading |
Why did Sir Mark Oliphant not speak out about nuclear bombs radioactively contaminating Maralinga?
My own research has been into why Sir Mark Oliphant, Australia’s premier nuclear physicist and a prime mover in the Tube Alloys group that showed the Americans how to build atomic bombs in time to use in the second world war, never spoke out about the contamination (from H-bomb tests) of his beloved home state of South Australia and further eastward just weeks before the 1956 Olympic Games took place in Melbourne.
He told me in 1993: “The Brits thought they could ensure any fallout or contamination was not too big. They were very pigheaded about it. The people in control were very haphazard about the estimates.” Why didn’t he speak out about the residual radioactive contamination at Monte Bello, Maralinga and Emu Field, even when he was governor of South Australia? He replied: “You can really decontaminate Maralinga by leaving it alone. Plutonium alpha particles contamination, I think, is grossly overplayed. The Aborigines are using it to the full. At the same time it was very naughty of the British to leave it, and to think of spreading it that way in the first place was very nasty. The British people were very reticent about revealing contamination, especially regarding food contamination. They hugged that to their chests very closely.”
I suggest that Sir Mark Oliphant was Australia’s – and Britain’s – J Robert Oppenheimer. The evidence is set out on my website www.rabbittreview.com and was mostly found in the files I accessed in the UK National Archives.
Labor has-been Gareth Evans still pro nuclear, sabotaging the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty
That treaty is now considered a huge success with 164 state parties. Evans was wrong then and he is wrong again now on the nuclear weapon ban treaty.”Labor set for nuclear showdown as Gareth Evans warns of risk to US alliance, Guardian, Paul Karp
The former foreign affairs minister made the comments to Guardian Australia on the sidelines of Labor’s national conference, intervening in a dispute over how to translate in-principle support for disarmament into practical action.
The showdown set for Tuesday pits the Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese against the party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, two traditional Labor left allies divided by conditions to be put on joining the treaty.
Guardian Australia understands that Albanese has registered an amendment proposing to sign and ratify the nuclear weapons ban treaty immediately to send a strong signal in favour of disarmament and noting that Australia can seek changes after it joins. Continue reading
The choice of Maralinga as nuclear bomb site – and the effects on Aboriginal people
‘Aboriginal people were still living close to the test sites and were told nothing about radiation.
‘High rates of cancer were eventually documented in the 16,000 test workers, but no studies were done on Aboriginal people and others living in areas of fallout. It’s been called the cancer capital of Australia.’
Although many Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their land, more than a thousand were directly affected by the bombs.
Vomiting, skin rashes, diarrhoea, fevers and, later, blood diseases and cancer were among the common conditions caused by the testing.
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How the Australian government offered up an outback Aboriginal settlement for nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s – saving a small English town but creating our ‘cancer capital’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6466191/Australian-government-offered-outback-nuclear-testing-save-small-English-village.html
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British scientists secretly used Australian population to test for radiation contamination after nuclear tests at Maralinga
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the agency said it had detected varying levels of Strontium-90 in all Australian capital cities.
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“Project Sunshine” tested dead babies for radioactive fallout
Only baby bones used in nuke tests https://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Only-baby-bones-used-in-nuke-tests-20010607 2001-06-07 Sydney, Australia – Bone samples from dead babies were shipped to the United States and Britain to be tested for radioactive fallout as part of an Australian government programme, officials said on Thursday.
The government’s Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) said from 1957 to 1978 Australia operated a programme to measure levels of “strontium 90” radioactive fallout in humans by testing corpses. Nuclear weapons tests were conducted in Australia and there was concern about radioactive fallout building up in the atmosphere.
In the early years of the study, known as Project Sunshine, hundreds of human bone samples from corpses of babies, children and adults aged up to 40 years were reduced to ash and sent to the United States and Britain for tests on radioactivity levels. Facilities were later constructed for the tests to be carried out in Australia.
ARPANSA chief executive officer Dr. John Loy said on Thursday that it was unlikely scientists sought consent to do the tests from relatives of the deceased.
Loy said the studies were “part of an overall programme to measure the impact on Australians of atmospheric nuclear testing throughout the world.”
“In the 1950s and 60s there were hundreds of nuclear explosions throughout the world and this led to contamination,” Loy told The Associated Press. “There were measurements of activity in water, air, food and … bone tissue,” he said.
Loy said human bone absorbs strontium 90 from the atmosphere. “So it was important to get a handle on what sort of exposure was resulting from these tests,” he added.
Project Sunshine was not kept secret by the government and reports on the study were published in scientific journals, Loy said.
Interest in the project was renewed this month by media reports that the bodies of stillborn babies from Britain and Australia were also used in the research.
The reports quoted documents from a meeting of the project’s scientists in 1955, during which project leader Dr Willard Libby said the supply of stillborn babies had been “cut off”.
“If anyone knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country,” said Libby, a Nobel Prize laureate, according to The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.
State governments across Australia have announced that they will hold inquiries into the reported export of stillborn babies for nuclear testing.
Loy said on Thursday that ARPANSA has “no evidence whatsoever” that stillborn babies’ bodies were used in tests, but only of bones.
“Conceivably it happened in some other way, I have no idea, but certainly we have no indication that it did happen,” he said.
Loy welcomed the inquiries as a chance to set standards for future nuclear testing. Currently, nuclear tests in Australia focus on radioactivity in plants, food and air only, he said.
“It’s a legacy of a bad time of nuclear testing in the atmosphere and I guess we’ve got to learn from that and the need to make sure that if these programmes are needed they are done with people’s proper consent,” Loy said.
The horror legacy of Britain’s nuclear bomb tests
Britain’s nuclear bomb test legacy of early deaths and deformed children, Mirror,
The horrific story behind the UK’s nuclear experiments have been told in full for the first time. After the horrors of the Second World War, it was deemed necessary for Britain to have a weapon that could unleash hell.
When atom bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, LIFE magazine reported: “People’s bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured…….
Of the 22,000 scientists and servicemen who took part in radioactive experiments in Australia and the South Pacific, just a handful are alive.
Their families report cancers, rare medical problems, high rates of miscarriage – and deformities, disability and death for their children – and their grandchildren.
Now, the full story of Britain’s nuclear experiments has been told for the first time in a new Mirror website that details not only the scientific, military and political battles, but the human fallout.
DAMNED features top-secret documents, eyewitness accounts and searing testimonies.
The site takes its name from an editorial written in 2002 by Mirror editor Richard Stott, who thundered: “How many more generations of the damned will our politicians allow to suffer before they accept the calamities of their predecessors and the consequences of their own cowardice?”
In May, the Mirror called for an award for the veterans and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a medal review.
DAMNED begins with Operation Hurricane in 1952, when Britain exploded its first atomic bomb, covers the Minor Trials in South Australia, which left the landscape littered with plutonium debris for decades, and reports on Operation Grapple in 1958 when the UK detonated its biggest weapon.
It also details the human cost and shows how every other nuclear nation on Earth came to accept and recognise their nuclear heroes – leaving Britain the only one to deny a duty of care………
In May, the Mirror called for an award for the veterans and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a medal review……….
DAMNED has a memorial section with the pictures and health problems of every veteran from our archives. Some of their stories can be read here: …… https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-nuclear-bomb-test-legacy-13590455
City of Sydney calls on Australian govt to sign up to the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
Last night, the City of Sydney unanimously adopted a motion calling on the Australian Government to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Congratulations!
We hope many cities and towns will join Sydney and Melbourne in endorsing the ICAN Cities Appeal.
Nuclear weapons for Australia? – at what cost?
The reactor would have been able to generate plutonium which, under the auspices of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
But the project did not survive an abrupt change of leadership and Australia ended up riding out the remainder of the Cold War as a non-nuclear player.
Five decades later the nuclear anxieties which coloured Mr Gorton’s foreign policy outlook are creeping their way back into international relations.
US President Donald Trump has announced that he will pull the US from the Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, as both countries expand their nuclear arsenals.
India is locked in a nuclear tit-for-tat with neighbouring Pakistan, while China has developed nuclear weapons capable of reaching anywhere in the US.
Historically Australia has sought shelter under the US ‘nuclear umbrella’, but is it time for that to change?
In a recent essay, Dr Stephan Fruhling, the Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU, contemplated the “unthinkable option”, and suggested that a nuclear-armed Australia is more likely than ever before.
Fortress Australia
According to Dr Fruhling, Australia’s continuous coastline makes it uniquely positioned to ‘spike the moat’ with tactical, short-range nuclear weapons that could be used against air and maritime forces.
“In air and naval battle on the high seas, nukes can now be employed without significant risk of collateral damage, much like conventional war heads,” he told Late Night Live.
“Australia could establish a maritime exclusion zone in wartime, to increase the military risk for any country planning a major attack against the continent.”
But what would be the cost?
The strategic benefits of any nuclear capability would have to be balanced against the possible implications of breaking out of the US nuclear umbrella.
Australia’s access to US intelligence, technology, and weapons systems may be compromised if it chose to take on a defence strategy that was less reliant on the US.
“Before investing in a nuclear program I think we would have to make a genuine attempt at trying to draw closer to the United States and its nuclear arsenal,” Dr Fruhling said.
If Australia chooses to remain under the US nuclear umbrella, Indonesia presents a unique case in which American and Australian interests may not intersect.
Indonesia is also a US ally, and if it decided to begin its own nuclear program, the implications for the US security guarantee for Australia are not clear.
“Should Indonesia acquire nuclear weapons, relying on US deterrence against a nuclear attack would require a leap of faith about the alignment of Australian and US interests,” Dr Fruhling said..
An Australian nuclear program could lead to Indonesia following suit.
“Indonesia has regional leadership ambitions, and a strong sense of independence and will, in coming years, tower over Australia economically as well as in population terms,” Dr Fruhling said.
“Australian acquisition of nuclear weapons would strengthen Indonesia’s reasons to reciprocate, for status as well as security.”
In the meantime, however, Australia’s non-nuclear status is important in discouraging Indonesia and other regional players from going down the nuclear path……..https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/should-australia-have-a-nuclear-weapons-program/10407610
Tim Flannery now sees nuclear power as useless, except for nuclear weapons
Steve Dale Nuclear Fuel Cycle Watch South Australia, 20 Oct 18, I note Tim Flannery’s words in the transcript. Listen to the pod cast below from the 21 minute mark to see how his position regarding nuclear has evolved – he talks about how solar and wind has become so cheap, so quickly, he talks about the Tesla battery, gearless wind turbines, how fantastic that South Australia is now coal free and that the only reason he can see why a country would fund nuclear these days is if they want to develop nuclear weapons...https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021186047913052/?multi_permalinks=2157916570906655&comment_id=2160264634005182¬if_id=1539904501184162¬if_t=feedback_reaction_genericTim Flannery on climate catastrophe and his new book Tim Flannery, head of the Climate Council, weighs in on this week’s IPPC report, the government’s greenhouse emissions report card, and discusses his new book Europe: a natural history https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/tim-flannery/10361616?fbclid=IwAR0fUXgQJAHQ0HcHc30j057P60bpOMikYWKzKZYT3aT7gE5D1qX0BWtaY7M
Genetic effects of nuclear testing in Australia in the 1950s and 60s
UK to probe poisonous genetic legacy of nuclear test ‘guinea pigs’ SMH, By Nick Miller, 19 October 2018 London: The UK government is considering a new study into the health of the children of British veterans used as guinea pigs in its Australian and Pacific nuclear weapons tests, to test fears of a poisonous genetic legacy.
If a link can be found it may form the basis of a claim for compensation from the UK government, despite courts previously turning down such claims from the veterans themselves.
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has told officials in the Ministry of Defence to look at the feasibility of a study into the health and well-being of the children of nuclear test veterans, an MOD spokesman said.
Decades ago, around 22,000 British military personnel witnessed nuclear weapons tests in South Australia, on the Montebello Islands off Western Australia, and on Kiribati’s Christmas Island in the Pacific.
Some felt the heat of the explosion on their backs and were ordered to turn around and observe the mushroom cloud. One veteran told the BBC in February the tests “bowled people over” and left them on the ground screaming. He had watched “another sun hanging in the sky”, dressed only in a t-shirt, shorts and thongs.
“We were guinea pigs,” Bob Fleming, 83, said. He said 16 of his 21 children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had birth defects or health problems: his youngest daughter has thyroid problems and severe breathing difficulties.
The family believe it is a result of the radiation Mr Fleming was exposed to during the test.
Another veteran, RAF sergeant Roy Kirkland, slept a half a mile from Ground Zero and was ordered to collect dead seabirds from the Christmas Island test site.
The new feasibility study follows a campaign by the Mirrorand Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, who have been pushing for recognition and compensation for the veterans who were exposed to radiation during the tests in the region between 1952 and 1967 – and their families.
In 2007 a study of New Zealand nuclear test veteransfound they had more than double the expected amount of genetic damage for men of the same age – even higher than that detected in workers close to the Chernobyl nuclear accident or involved in the clean-up.
The study by researchers from Massey University found the genetic damage was most likely attributable to the veterans having been on board NZ navy frigates observing nuclear tests at Christmas Island.
In 2014 a study by European researchers found a “significant excess” of infant mortality and congenital illnesses in nuclear test veterans’ children. The veterans’ wives had five times as many stillbirths, and 57 children of veterans had congenital conditions – ten times the rate in the control group and eight times the national average. There were also significantly higher congenital illnesses – and cancer – among the veterans’ grandchildren. The researchers said their results were “highly statistically significant”. …….. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/uk-to-probe-poisonous-genetic-legacy-of-nuclear-test-guinea-pigs-20181019-p50alz.html
City of Melbourne supports Australia joining UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty
The City of Melbourne, birthplace of ICAN, just voted unanimously in support of a motion calling on the Australian government to join the UN #nuclearban treaty! @cityofmelbourne @dfat
Ex-Admiral says nuclear subs are vital for South China Sea
Australia needs a fleet of stealthy nuclear submarines to deal with potential threats in our region, most notably in the South China Sea, a strategic policy report says…. (subscribers only)
Weapons-making corporation, Raytheon hoping for nuclear industry in SouthAustralia?
‘Welcome’ to Steve Ciobo, the new Australian Minister for the Arms Trade
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 