The crowd broke into laughter as the audience was invited to attend a planned “fun day” to learn more about nuclear.
“This event really highlighted the deep level of community concern and opposition to AUKUS … The officials did all they could to avoid answering the hard questions,” -WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill
The agency in charge of arming the nation with nuclear submarines has sought to earn the trust of residents in Perth’s south by holding a community information session.
The event drew protesters opposed to the AUKUS pact and a local defence hub being used to maintain nuclear submarines.
The Australian Submarine Agency assured event attendees about nuclear’s safety and Australia’s sovereignty, but many people seemed unconvinced.
Rigour, precision and safety, safety, safety — these are the values of the “nuclear mindset” the agency in charge of arming the nation with nuclear submarines has urged Australians to adopt.
The Australian Submarine Agency (ASA) has taken its self-described first steps towards earning the trust of the public.
A line-up of uniformed naval officers and delegates travelled to Western Australia to front the City of Fremantle’s community on Thursday night.
The meeting was touted as an “information session”, but a protest outside the town hall just before it started gave an early indication of how the night would go.
Nuclear fun day
The agency’s AUKUS advocate, Paul Myler, leaned on the US and UK’s seven decades of nuclear experience to assure the crowd of its safety credentials.
“We don’t get to automatically rely on that reputation. We have to earn that part, that legacy, and build our trust with our communities — and that’s what we’re starting here,” he said.
But the delegates made it clear they were not there to pitch AUKUS.
“That decision has been made by a succession of Australian governments,” the crowd was told in a preamble before the floor was opened to questions.
The crowd broke into laughter as the audience was invited to attend a planned “fun day” to learn more about nuclear.
WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill, who attended the session, said it was alarming how removed the government was from the communities on the doorsteps of AUKUS.
“This event really highlighted the deep level of community concern and opposition to AUKUS … The officials did all they could to avoid answering the hard questions,” she said.
“It felt like an episode of Utopia.”
S for safety and sovereignty
Safety and sovereignty were the hot topics being thrown at the ASA.
One local questioned the record of Australia’s AUKUS partners on nuclear, citing the UK’s weapons testing in the 1950s which has left nuclear contamination at the Monte Bello Islands off WA’s coast and at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia.
“Nuclear weapons and nuclear testing are a completely separate issue … Australia’s position on that is very, very clear,” the crowd was told in response.
“We are not, and will not be, a nuclear weapon state.”
The agency also returned with its own S-word, stewardship, which it said described the “responsible planning, operation, application and management of nuclear material”.
Part of that stewardship includes planning for how nuclear waste will be managed.
In short, low-level nuclear waste will be temporarily stored at the HMAS Stirling naval base on Garden Island.
“The technical solutions can keep that waste safe for many years, decades I believe as a contingency, [but] we do expect the waste to be able to be moved much sooner,” a spokesperson said.
There are no plans as of yet for where high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel will be stored long term or disposed of. However,ASA said it would not be required until at least 2050.
The public also queried who would have command of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines once they were built.
“I get asked a lot of hard questions. That one has a simple answer,” ASA director-general Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead said.
“Australian sovereignty, Australian officers, the Australian government — no other answer.”
Murmurs in the crowd indicated they were not convinced.
Protected or pawns
The room filled with claps and cheers when one local questioned the true intentions of AUKUS and labelled it an “appalling waste” of taxpayer dollars.
“We are being used as pawns to line up in a war against China, and it’s just not acceptable,” the resident said.
Mr Myler insisted it was about defence, and said developing Australia’s “strike capability” was key to protecting the nation.
“I can’t convince you, but I can only give you my own insight,” the AUKUS advocate said.
“Australian defence staff and Australian diplomatic staff and Australian government staff fight every day. Our sovereignty is absolutely at the core of everything we do.”
“They [Rio Tinto] paid no penalty, and then we found out that the maximum penalty for dropping [the capsule] in WA is only a thousand dollars,” they said.
Mr Myler offered a contrary view, describing the response to the missing capsule as impressive.
“It proved that West Australians had their act together, knew how to do this, knew how to respond, and the whole ecosystem coordinated and got that solved,” he said.
Mr Myler went on to say the “nuclear mindset” put the agency at a level “well above where private sector industry is”.
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) social licence adviser Cassandra Casey noted Australia’s nuclear experience with research and nuclear medicines at a facility in Engadine, in New South Wales.
“The community, which is also my community, has grown up around ANSTO, and today the nearest homes in Engadine are just 820 metres … from that facility,” she said.
The information session began with an introduction about ASA earning the nation’s trust. The reaction of attendees indicated few minds were changed, something Mr Myler acknowledged.
“We all understand the risks around some nuclear programs. We have to do a lot more to build confidence in our nuclear program,” he said.
EVENTS. 22 September – Spazio Europa, Rome – Global Launch of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2025 To attend in person, please register here, The event will be live-streamed on YouTube here. Note: The full 589-page report will be available for free download as of 22 September 2025 at 10:00 CET here
A business case to establish a nuclear submarine base at Port Kembla or Newcastle is being prepared for the NSW Cabinet, but the public is being kept totally in the dark. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick reports.
It’s a radioactive issue in more ways than one, with no one in either the Federal or NSW government prepared to talk about it with the people they govern.
Discussions between the two parties are clearly well advanced, with a final NSW Cabinet submission in preparation – a fact that has been kept secret until the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure inadvertently revealed it in NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) proceedings.
When confronted with this revelation, Senator David Shoebridge remarked, “Two levels of Labor government are secretly planning to dump a nuclear submarine base on NSW residents and neither of them has the guts to even discuss it. The Albanese government is shovelling hundreds of billions of public dollars into the AUKUS funnel, and
“what we will end up getting is zero submarines but a bunch of new US bases.”
AUKUS is big business
Announcements over the weekend show that AUKUS is big business, with $12 billion to be spent on shipyard and naval facilities in Western Australia.
It’s clear that the question of basing nuclear submarines in NSW is an important one. There will be opinions for and against, but one thing is for sure: without information, public debate won’t occur, or if it does, it will be ill-informed.
“The two shortlisted sites for wildly unpopular nuclear submarine bases, Port Kembla and Newcastle, are both Labor heartlands,” remarked Shoebridge, a former member of the NSW Legislative Council and now NSW senator.
“Port Kembla and the Illawarra would go into open revolt if the Labor government was honest about their plans, and this explains a lot about the secrecy”.
“This secrecy risks deep generational betrayal of Labor voters in both these regions and
No doubt NSW Premier Chris Minns is salivating.
It’s clear that the question of basing nuclear submarines in NSW is an important one. There will be opinions for and against, but one thing is for sure: without information, public debate won’t occur, or if it does, it will be ill-informed.
“The two shortlisted sites for wildly unpopular nuclear submarine bases, Port Kembla and Newcastle, are both Labor heartlands,” remarked Shoebridge, a former member of the NSW Legislative Council and now NSW senator.
“Port Kembla and the Illawarra would go into open revolt if the Labor government was honest about their plans, and this explains a lot about the secrecy”.
“This secrecy risks deep generational betrayal of Labor voters in both these regions and
“all to keep on the right side of Donald Trump’s America.”
Shoebridge seems rather unimpressed. So too does his counterpart in the NSW Legislative Council, Sue Higginson, who told MWM, “Premier Chris Minns is picking up where Peter Dutton left off with a plan to dump nuclear waste at sites in regional NSW. Minns is going further by hosting nuclear subs; he’s making us and our ports vulnerable military targets, and it’s all happening behind closed doors.”
Transparency flip-flop
In May this year, I used the NSW Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act to ask the NSW Government for access to correspondence they’d had with the Federal Government that related to the use of Port Kembla or Newcastle as a future submarine base, and any briefs prepared for NSW’s Ministers.
The response, received in June, indicated that there were 24 “internal emails” and an “Advice”, but stated that I couldn’t have them because they were “Cabinet information”.
I appealed the decision to NCAT, arguing, as per the NSW Cabinet Practice Manual, that Cabinet privilege is waived when documents are shared with officials from another polity.
That caused a backflip from the NSW Government, with them writing to the Tribunal asking that the decision be remitted back to them to allow them to reconsider their position.
The Tribunal heard their request and ordered them to reconsider the access refusal, and to do so, pronto.
And so it was on 08 September that they sent me a new decision. They’d reconsidered their position … and … the public are still not allowed to see any of the documents, for new and different reasons.
The matter will now proceed to a contested hearing on 18 December in Sydney.
NSW fait acompli participation
Everything the NSW Government does it does for the people of NSW. Everything the NSW Government does is paid for by the people of NSW. The GIPA Act recognises this and allows NSW citizens to part the curtains on the windows of Government buildings to see the information that belongs to them and affects them.
But the NSW Government is having none of that … their arguments for secrecy amount to a desire not to prejudice their relations with the Federal Government, not to prejudice the way ministers in NSW go about their business, and not to have the internal deliberations of public servants subject to public review.
It’s a case of ‘officials’ interest over public interest’.
Whether you think a nuclear submarine base at Port Kembla or Newcastle is a good or bad idea, the NSW public has a right to participate in such a decision. But the way this is lining up is that the NSW Government will look at the business case , make a decision, and then present the people of NSW with a fait accompli.
Democracy comes from the Greek word ‘demos’, meaning ‘the people’, and ‘kratia’, meaning ‘rule’: that is, ‘government by the people’. Maybe someone should remind Chris Minns of this.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Trump turned a simple conflict-of-interest question into a schoolyard spat — threatening to “tell on” a journo to Australia’s Prime Minister, writes Vince Hooper.
IT TAKES A CERTAIN theatre of the absurd to transform a routine White House press gaggle into a diplomatic sideshow. Yet that is precisely what happened when an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist, researching U.S. President Donald Trump’s family business interests, asked a straightforward question about whether it is appropriate for a sitting president to be engaged in so many business activities.
The question was sober and reasonable: a matter of conflicts of interest, wealth accumulation, and transparency in public office. Trump’s response, however, veered quickly into the surreal. He first insisted that his children were running the business empire, then abruptly shifted the ground.
Instead of grappling with the premise, he went after the journalist’s nationality, declaring:
“The Australians, you’re hurting Australia.”
And then came the kicker — Trump promised to personally inform Prime Minister Anthony Albanese about the journalist’s behaviour, as if geopolitics had suddenly collapsed into a schoolyard spat where the ultimate threat was tattling to the headmaster. The art of dobbing.
At one level, the episode is comic, a reminder of Trump’s instinct for spectacle and grievance. But beneath the absurdity lies something darker: a consistent refusal to treat journalistic inquiry as a legitimate part of democracy. Instead, accountability is reframed as disloyalty. The president of the United States, confronted with a basic question about conflicts of interest, responded not with explanation but with a kind of diplomatic intimidation.
This is part of a longer pattern. From his first term to his second, Trump has cast journalists as enemies rather than interlocutors. The “war on the media” is not rhetorical garnish but central to his political style. In this worldview, truth-seekers are painted as traitors, tough questions are reframed as acts of sabotage, and now even foreign allies are enlisted as props in his domestic culture wars. By claiming that the ABC reporter was “hurting Australia,” Trump implied that the act of pressing a leader for clarity was somehow an attack on his allies themselves.
What is most revealing is how quickly Trump personalised diplomacy. The U.S.–Australia relationship is built on strategic alignment, trade, military cooperation, and shared democratic values. It is not dictated by whether a reporter poses a question he finds confrontational. Yet in his rhetoric, the fate of nations collapsed into the thin skin of one man. This habit of reducing statecraft to personal loyalty tests is not merely undignified; it is dangerous. If bilateral alliances can be bent around one leader’s grievances, they risk becoming unstable, transactional, and unpredictable.
Compare this to other democratic leaders. Joe Biden, for all his gaffes, generally responds to press scrutiny with irritation at worst, never with the threat of raising the matter in a diplomatic call. Anthony Albanese himself fields barbed questions from Australian journalists on policy, integrity, and leadership without implying that the act of questioning undermines Australia’s alliances. Even populist figures like Britain’s ex-PM Boris Johnson or India’s Narendra Modi, while often prickly, have not suggested that reporters risk harming national security simply by doing their jobs. Trump stands almost alone in converting a press query into a matter of international loyalty.
In the end, Trump’s outburst says less about Australia than about America. It was not Australia’s reputation on trial, nor the alliance, nor the ABC reporter’s patriotism. It was the president’s tolerance for accountability — and that, once again, proved to be vanishingly thin and fake.
Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
One and a half million Australians living in coastal areas are at risk from rising sea levels by 2050, a landmark climate report has warned.
Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment predicted more frequent and severe climate hazards like floods, cyclones, heatwaves, droughts and bushfires. “Australians are already living with the consequences of climate change today,” Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said, “but it’s clear every degree of warming we prevent now will help future generations avoid the worst impacts in years to come.”
The report looked at three global warming scenarios – above 1.5C, above 2C and above 3C. Australia – one of the world’s biggest polluters per capita – has already reached warming of above 1.5C, the report said, noting that at 3C, heat-related deaths in Sydney may rise by more than 400% and almost triple in Melbourne. The 72-page report – released days before the government announces its emissions reduction targets for 2035 – found that no Australian community will be immune from climate risks that will be “cascading, compounding and concurrent”.
I am ANTIFA. Or so says President Donald Trump, branding me and millions like me as terrorists in the same breath he decries “fake news” and “radical left” bogeymen.
It’s a label that stings not because it’s novel – God knows we’ve heard worse – but because it erases the very soil from which it springs.
Let me tell you who I really am, before the algorithms and outrage machines bury the truth. My father fought in World War II. He was one of the Diggers who stormed the beaches, dodged the shells, and stared down the abyss in places whose names still echo like ghosts: Tobruk, El Alamein, New Guinea.
When the war spat him out, he landed in a Soldier Settlers camp on the dusty fringes of rural Australia – a patchwork of tin shacks and hopeful paddocks where broken men tried to stitch lives from the scraps of peace. Everybody’s father there had fought. The camp was a republic of the scarred: limps from shrapnel, coughs from gas, eyes that flickered away when thunder rolled like distant artillery.
Nobody talked about the war. Not really. The soldiers wore their deep wounds like second skins – visible to all, but spoken of in silences around the communal fire, or in the way a man’s hand trembled pouring tea. Their lives were irrevocably changed, folded and refolded like old maps no longer leading anywhere familiar. But they carried on. They planted crops in unforgiving soil, raised kids who knew the taste of damper bread and the sting of billy tea, and built a world where freedom wasn’t a slogan but a hard-won breath.
We’d eventually learn, piecing it together from half-heard stories and library books, that they weren’t just fighting other armies. They were battling ideals – the poison of fascism that choked Europe, Asia, and beyond. Ideals that promised order but delivered ovens and gulags, that crushed the human spirit under the boot of blind obedience.
My father and the thousands around the world – Allies from every corner of the globe – were the antidote. They were anti-fascists, plain and simple. Not with hashtags or headlines, but with bayonets and bullets, with the sweat of reconstruction and the vigilance of survivors.
And so were we, the children, schooled in the camp’s unspoken creed: Guard the light. Question the shadows. Forgive the man, but never the machine that marched him to madness.
As scarred as those soldiers were, something extraordinary happened in that camp. Former enemies – Germans, Italians, even Japanese migrants fleeing their own ruins – washed up on Australian shores, seeking the same fragile peace. Friendships formed over shared fences and shearing sheds. My father put it to me one evening, his voice gravel from years of unspoken grit: “Michael, I forgave the enemy the day the war ended. The ordinary bloke on the other side? He was just like me – sent to die for a lie. But not the government that shipped us off like cannon fodder. And never the belief that drove those governments to war. That’s the real enemy. That’s what we fought.”
That forgiveness wasn’t weakness; it was the ultimate defiance of fascism’s divide-and-conquer rot. It built bridges where bombs had fallen. It echoed the Nuremberg trials, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the quiet revolutions of decency that followed. Anti-fascism wasn’t a club or a costume – it was the air we breathed, the legacy etched into every settler’s callused hand.
Yet now, in 2025, President Trump tells me – and millions like me – that I belong to a terrorist organisation. ANTIFA, he calls it, a shadowy cabal of chaos when, in truth, it’s the ghost of that very fight: a refusal to let authoritarianism creep back in, disguised as populism or “America First.” As a result, I see good people – everyday folks with ‘settler blood in their veins’ – being abused on social media. Labeled “warmongering ANTIFA bastards” for daring to call out lies, for marching against wars and white nationalism, for remembering that fascism doesn’t die; it just rebrands. I seem to have missed something.
What changed? The weapons? No – the ideals are the same: the cult of the strongman, the demonisation of the “other,” the march toward unchecked power. The difference is the battlefield. It’s not Normandy or the Pacific; it’s Twitter feeds and town halls, where words are the new front lines. And the soldiers? We’re still here, the children of those camps, scarred by our own wars – of inequality, climate denial, eroded truths – but carrying on.
Trump’s slur isn’t just an insult; it’s an erasure. It paints the anti-fascist as the fascist, the defender as the destroyer. But history doesn’t bend that way. My father’s forgiveness teaches me to pity the man behind the microphone, twisted by his own government’s machine. Yet it also demands I fight the belief that fuels him – the one that whispers war is glory, division is strength, and truth is optional. So yes, Mr. President, call me ANTIFA. I’ll wear it like my father’s medals: not for the shine, but for the weight. Because in the end, the real terrorists aren’t the ones who remember the war. They’re the ones who want to start another.
US threat to world peace, why AUKUS spending risks Australia, and how dollar sovereignty offers a safer path.
Social Justice Australia, by Denis Hay, 17/09/2025
The US threat to world peace sits at the centre of a heated claim that the United States underpins peace in our region. Is that really true, or just easy politics? The facts tell a different story. Australia has pledged hundreds of billions for the AUKUS defence deal, with an additional $12 billion for the Henderson Defence Precinct, enabling the servicing of US and future Australian nuclear submarines in WA.
Australia now targets more than 2.3% of GDP for defence by 2033 to 2034, while NATO’s counting methods inflate figures by adding items like pensions and infrastructure.
Stat box, big picture:
AUKUS cost envelope, 268 to 368 billion dollars.
Defence to rise beyond two-point three per cent of GDP by 2033 to 2034.
Australians’ trust in the US has fallen to record lows in two decades of polling.
Why accept the line that Washington guarantees peace when ordinary Australians see mounting risks, higher costs, and shrinking control?
The Problem: Why Australians Feel Stuck
Root cause, alliance pressure and spending metrics
Pressure to lift spending, often framed in GDP targets, now runs alongside discussion of higher NATO style thresholds and even a five per cent security envelope in Atlantic debates.
The government dismisses a fixation on GDP, yet the headline numbers continue to climb, and new shipyard commitments lock in path dependency.
Reflective question: Are we buying safety or buying into someone else’s strategy?
Power question: Who benefits when accounting rules redefine defence to push the headline number up?
Consequences for citizens
Australians worry the alliance could drag us into conflict in Asia, even as trust in US leadership falls. The truth is that fear and doubt grow when commitments rise faster than accountability. Who carries the risk if a submarine schedule slips or a crisis erupts in the Taiwan Strait?
The Impact: What Australians Are Experiencing
Everyday effects
AUKUS locks in decades of spending, crowding out housing, health, and climate resilience. The WA maintenance push at Henderson aims to support docking and servicing, including for US boats, tying local industry to the US force structure.
Reflective question: Will your family be safer because a US submarine gets serviced in WA next year, or because your town is flood-ready?
Power question: Why should budget rules expand for weapons while social services are told to tighten their belts?
Who benefits
Prime contractors and allied militaries gain capacity and access. Communities near critical bases, such as Pine Gap, a joint US-Australia intelligence hub central to US operations, often become a focus of protests.
The Hidden Cost for Every Australian
The AUKUS defence deal is not just an abstract number. It means about $368 billion spread across a population of roughly 26.5 million Australians, which equals $13,900 for every man, woman, and child.
Imagine if every Australian family received the value of this public investment in tangible safety and wellbeing:
Housing security: Build more than one million new social and affordable homes to end the housing crisis.
Health and aged care: Expand Medicare to include dental and mental health, and properly staff aged care.
Education and skills: Abolish student debt, guarantee free TAFE and university, and fund lifelong learning.
Climate and disaster resilience: Construct nationwide flood defences, bushfire readiness systems, and renewable energy infrastructure.
Jobs guarantee: Use dollar sovereignty to ensure meaningful work for every Australian, focused on local and sustainable projects.
Reflective question: Which makes your community safer, a nuclear submarine or a flood levy that holds?
Power question: Why does Canberra accept scarcity for health and housing, but never for warships?
Rally line: We can do better. We must do better.
The Solution: What Must Be Done
Australia dollar sovereignty and reform
Australia issues its own currency. That means we can always purchase what is available in our currency, including public purpose jobs and resilience, without needing foreign approval.
Real constraints are inflation, resources, skills, and the exchange rate, not a household budget analogy. So, the choice to pour hundreds of billions into AUKUS defence deal is political.
Use that fiscal capacity for civil security first, such as climate adaptation, cyber defence, and regional diplomacy.
Reflective question: If we can fund subs, why not fund safety at home?
Power question: Who says the only credible path is more weapons?
Doug Cameron’s Warning on Militarism and Sovereignty
Cameron argues AUKUS erodes sovereignty, risks entrapment, and diverts billions from real security.
Entrapment risk, US access: AUKUS ties Australia to US operations, including US submarine use of Henderson, WA, raising escalation and targeting risks. Reuters
Mega-cost, weak timelines: The AUKUS envelope, up to $368b over decades, risks obsolescence as detection tech advances. Who benefits if subs are outdated by delivery? ABC+1
Bases and nuclear exposure: Pine Gap’s role and HMAS Stirling’s US maintenance periods deepen Australia’s role in US war-fighting networks. Is this the path to peace or a bullseye on home soil? Wikipedia+2Defence+2
Accountability gap: Parliamentary intelligence oversight remains constrained, though reforms are proposed. Why spend the most on a kit without thorough scrutiny? Parliament of Australia+1
Opportunity cost: The $12b Henderson spends and broader AUKUS outlays crowd out housing, health, climate resilience, and jobs. Real security starts with people. SBS
Rally line: Prepare for peace, not war. Ordinary Australians deserve safety, not pre-commitments to foreign conflicts.
Australia is on track to exceed its 2030 rooftop solar targets with a combined 1.1 GW of new capacity installed across 115,584 households and businesses in the first half of 2025.
A new report from the Clean Energy Council (CEC) shows that at the end of June there was a combined 26.8 GW of rooftop solar capacity deployed across 4.2 million homes and small businesses in Australia.
The CEC’s Rooftop Solar and Storage Report reveals that 115,584 rooftop solar units were installed nationwide in the first six months of the year, down 18% on the same period 12 months prior, while the total installed capacity of 1.1 GW was 15% lower than the 1.3 GW installed over the same period in 2024.
Despite the slowdown, the CEC said Australia is likely to exceed the Australian Energy Market Operator’s (AEMO) 2030 target for rooftop solar.
AEMO’s Integrated System Plan, which underpins the federal government’s 82% by 2030 renewable energy target, expects rooftop solar to contribute 36 GW to the National Electricity Market by the end of the decade.
The CEC said based on current trends, it expects the rollout of rooftop solar in Australia will reach 37.2 GW by June 2030, beating projections by 3.3%.
CEC Distributed Energy General Manager Con Hristodoulidis said the figures highlight the pivotal role of rooftop solar in keeping Australia’s energy transition on track.
“Australian consumers and small businesses are delivering the transition at breathtaking speed, turning suburban roofs into one of the biggest power stations in the country,” he said.
Rooftop solar contributed 12.8%, or 15,463 GWh, of Australia’s total energy generation in the first six months of the year, up from 11.5% in the same period 12 months prior.
The report also shows that Australians are embracing home batteries at record pace, with 85,000 battery units sold in the first half of 2025, representing a 191% increase from the same period last year.
The uptake has surged again since the introduction of the federal government’s Cheaper Home Batteries program with government data revealing more than 43,500 installations installed in July and August alone.
“Just as Australians have long understood the value of solar in lowering household energy bills, we are now seeing a surge in battery adoption, which allows households to store their own clean energy and maximise savings,” Hristodoulidis said.
Queensland added the most rooftop solar in the first half of 2025, with 326 MW of installed capacity, followed by New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria with 321 MW and 230 MW, respectively.
NSW has the highest level of total installed rooftop solar capacity in the nation at 7.5 GW, with Queensland second at 7.2 GW, ahead of Victoria with 5.4 GW. Queensland remains the state with the most installations, with 1.1 million.
Supporters of the Australian Defence Force being more closely integrated with the US military, and of AUKUS, seem convinced that we need the US to defend ourselves. Former senator and submariner, Rex Patrick, explains why they’re wrong.
While there are clear concerns in the US and Australia with China’s growing military power and how that power might be utilised, no-one reasonably thinks China has aspirations of attacking Australia. But, for defence purposes, we plan for worse-case, and so in assessing whether Australia could defend itself, a Chinese attack is a convenient scenario to explore.
Nuclear attack
It’s estimated China possesses more than 500 operational nuclear warheads, and by 2030, they’ll have over 1,000. Most of those will be aimed at US targets – US air and military bases in Guam and Hawaii, US bases in the territories of America’s allies in north-east Asia – Japan and South Korea; as well as a growing list of strategic facilities and cities in the continental United States itself.
And as China enters an era of nuclear weapon abundance, there’ll be long-range missiles and warheads to spare for US-related targets down under – the signals intelligence facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, the submarine communications station near Exmouth, the RAAF base at Darwin and naval facilities at Garden Island south of Perth.
It’s clear that an expanding US military presence in Australia has increased the likelihood of nuclear weapons being directed at us by China.
Our best protection against the risk of nuclear war is a government policy of support for the system of mutual deterrence and effective arms control. In this, the AUKUS program isn’t helpful, as Australia’s past diplomatic engagement on nuclear arms control and non-proliferation has been downgraded. We are trying to persuade other nations that Australia should be permitted to receive weapon-grade plutonium in the reactors of our anticipated US- and UK-sourced submarines.
Conventional conflict and the tyranny of distance
Launching a conventional attack on Australia is a very hard thing to do.
Geography is our great advantage. What historian Geoffrey Blainey called the “tyranny of distance” is a big problem for any country wanting to attack Australia. In World War II, the invasion of Australia was operationally and logistically a bridge too far for the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. During the Cold War, Australia enjoyed defence on the cheap because there was no direct conventional military threat from the Soviet Union.
We’re a long way from China, surrounded by a ‘moat’ and are further assisted in our defence by an inhospitable vastness between a hostile force landing on our northern shores and our major population centres.
We can also afford to defend ourselves if we sensibly reallocate the $365B cost of eight AUKUS submarines to focus on the defence of Australia first.
Here’s how.
Keeping a watch
An intelligence capacity, focused on areas of primary strategic interest to support an independent defence of Australia, is crucial. This would involve cooperation with other nations (including as part of 5Eyes), defence-focused spying by the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and eavesdropping by the Australian Signals Directorate, covert submarine intelligence missions and intelligence collection by deployed RAN surface ships and RAAF surveillance aircraft.
We also need a highly capable surveillance capability for detecting, identifying and tracking potentially hostile forces moving into our military area of interest.
Australia should invest in satellite surveillance system ($5B, leaving $363B in available funds from cancelling the $368B AUKUS program) to complement our three Over-The-Horizon Radars at Longreach in Queensland, Laverton in WA and at Alice Springs in the NT and double the size of our P-8 Maritime Patrol and Response fleet from 8 to 20 aircraft ($6B, $357B).
We should also invest in deployment of long-range acoustic systems ($1B, $356B), e.g. in places like Christmas Island to detect and identify foreign submarines transiting the Lombok Strait.
We need to ensure we have reliable ships and submarines with well-trained crews deployed in our northern approaches, particularly near the many southern exit points of the Indonesian archipelago.
Defending the moat
Defence of Australia, in the lead-up to conflict, would require sea and air denial.
To do this, we need all relevant defence assets to be capable of launching stand-off anti-shipping missiles, in particular the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile, which will be made in a Kongsberg facility being built in Newcastle.
These missiles would be an essential capability in our 20 air-independent propulsion submarines ($30B, $326B), our expanded surface fleet with a further 10 frigates ($10B, $316B), our F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft.
We also need to boost our airborne capabilities with additional fighter aircraft ($25B, $291B) oriented towards maritime strike, land, and more air-to-air refuelling capacity ($1B, $290B) to support these fighter jets. We also need to enhance our land-based anti-air defences ($1B, $289B).
Closer to shore, we should expand our capability to utilise sea mines. Since World War II, mines have damaged and sunk more vessels than any other means; they are a highly effective asymmetric weapon that the ADF has only recently reintroduced into its inventory, and we should expand our capabilities and capacity in this area. ($1B, $288B).
At the same time, we need to beef up our anti-submarine warfare capabilities to protect our sea lanes, stop foreign submarines passing through choke points in our northern approaches and to protect our new strategic fleet ($20B, $268B), which Prime Minister Albanese promised but has not delivered on, critical for supporting continued economic activity and our defence effort in our northern coastal waters
Protecting defence, economic and population assets
In protecting Australia, we would need to have regard to keeping open our northern, naval and major ports, which would be vulnerable to enemy mines. Australia’s mine countermeasures have atrophied. This would have to be reversed ($5B, $263B).
Turning to ground forces, we need to be able to deal with lodgements on our territory or major raids. We need to be able, assisted by our geography, to oppose any march south, whilst also being able to supply our forces to the north. We need to double our heavy airlift capability with a further large transport aircraft ($4B, $259B).
Lessons from Ukraine are particularly relevant; the rise of drone systems and their effects on force architectures and land warfare, the effects of electronic warfare on the modern battlefield, the challenges of sustaining logistics in a contested environment (mindful of the huge distances involved in supporting Australian forces in the top end) and air defence.
In addition to existing Army programs, Australia must spend money to capitalise on the lessons learned. We need to be investing in drone and anti-drone capabilities ($2B, $257B), indigenous electronic warfare capabilities ($5B, $252B), 12 additional tactical transport aircraft ($2B, $250B), 48 additional utility helicopters ($2B, $248B), unmanned ground logistics vehicles ($2B, $246B) and shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles ($2B, $244B).
Other priorities
Distance is not a barrier to effective cyber warfare. Australia must ensure our highly electronic and network-connected utilities are not disrupted by conflict. We need to increase investment in our cyber warfare capabilities ($5B, $239B).
We also need to address a huge deficit in our fuel security. ensuring we have a minimum 90 days in-country fuel supplies ($8B, $231B) and that we have a resilient general industry capability and self-sufficiency of critical commodities ($60B, $171B) that can keep the country running during conflict (or a pandemic).
We need to further learn the lessons of our Ukrainian friends and boost the capability and capacity to produce missiles and other munitions here. That includes the full gamut of weapons we use, from small arms to missiles to bombs to torpedoes, and many of the other consumables of war that can quickly run out. An investment in the order $10B is required ($5B, $166B).
Finally, the Government must stop embarking on highly costly and risky defence programs that don’t work out. It should be buying off-the-shelf capabilities, some built here where it makes sense, and enhanced by Australian industry. Industry would need to be configured to properly sustain all of our critical military capabilities onshore.
Yes, we can
With the US becoming more and more unreliable, it’s time for Australia to tilt to independence in defence. No-one can believe we are the US’s most important friend (the PM is still trying to get a meeting with Trump), or that they will stand by us in conflict. Those days have passed.
While China attacking Australia is a remote possibility, we must plan for the worst, an invasion of Australia. The good news is that the tyranny of distance is working in our favour. With determination and reform in Defence procurement, Australia can independently defend itself. We can make ourselves such a hard and difficult target that no one will try it on, or try to coerce us.
The numbers throughout this article show that we can cancel AUKUS and do what’s required, and walk away with over $150B left in consolidated revenue to do more for education, increasing productivity, economic advancement and social support.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”
Nuclear power looks set to remain part of the Opposition’s energy policy, with the Liberal MP responsible for developing the Coalition’s policy warning Australia risks being “left stranded” as other countries embrace the technology.
The Coalition’s energy policy has been under review since its record defeat at the May election, with Opposition Leader Sussan Ley having set Victorian MP Dan Tehan the task of leading a comprehensive review with the aim of developing a policy that lowers energy costs and reduces emissions.
Mr Tehan provided a major signal the Coalition remained committed to nuclear on Monday, after he arrived in the United States for a nuclear-focused fact-finding mission…………………………..
“So we have to make sure that we are absolutely on top of everything that’s going on. And it’s not only in nuclear space, when it comes to SMRs and large scale reactors that are being built globally. But also the latest developments which are taking place in fusion, which could be absolutely groundbreaking in five or 10 years’ time.
“If we’re not on top of this, then as a country, and especially as a nation which needs energy abundance to keep up with the rest of the world, we’re just not going to be in the picture, sadly.”
In the first part, I identified the factors mitigating against the sale of 3-5 Virginia class submarines to cover the gap until the arrival of the British designed SSN AUKUS.
In the final analysis, the USN remains well short of its target of 66 attack submarines and it will be this shortfall in numbers that will be the deciding factor.
Could be SSN AUKUS be fast tracked to fill the gap? SSN AUKUS depends on the UK’s capacity to design and build two new classes of nuclear-powered submarines.
The first priority for the UK’s submarine design and building capability is four of the large, Dreadnought class ballistic missile submarines, to replace the ageing, worn out Vanguard class, which have reached their end of life.
The UK’s second priority, the Astute attack submarine program is late, over-budget and experiencing reliability issues. Of the five submarines delivered currently none are at sea:
Astute has just entered mid-life refit, joining her sister ship Audacious in Devonport dry docks.
Ambush is alongside in the submarine base in Faslane and has not been to sea for three years, along with her sister ship, Artful, which has not been to sea for two years.
The fifth and final operational SSN, Anson, has just returned to Faslane.
Two of the class are yet to be delivered.
The UK’s third priority is SSN AUKUS.
The UK’s Submarine Arm appears to have fallen below critical mass, evidenced by the difficulties they have experienced in replacing the senior submarine leadership. Recovery will be challenging and prolonged. A recent decision to allow rescrubs on the UK’s submarine commanding officer’s course (it was called the “Perisher”, as failure meant exiting the submarine arm) illustrates the compromises in standards now required. An expansion to meet the government’s recently announced goal of 12 new attack submarines, delivered at 18-month intervals, would be a huge challenge. The call comes as the UK struggles to meet higher priority defence challenges in implementing its “ NATO first” policy.
The UK’s submarine design, supply chain and build capability are in no better shape to meet this political goal. Such a program would require:
Laying down an attack submarine every 18 months.
Having sufficient space for the resultant production line:
For example, a delivery interval of 18 months and a build time of say, 10 years, means there will be 6-7 submarines in various stages of construction at the peak of the program.
A shipyard with sufficient space and equipped to accommodate this is required.
The second critical input is the workforce to staff the production line and supply chains.
None of these capabilities exists today.
Is SSN AUKUS the solution for Australia?
Is SSN AUKUS the solution for Australia?
The new SSN AUKUS is to be over 10,000 tonnes, more than 27% larger than the Virginias proposed to be sold to Australia. Why Australia needs such a large, expensive submarine has not been explained.
The submarine is still being designed – there are no costings, no production schedules and no milestones publicly available to validate “schedule free” assurances that all is well. Earlier talk of a mature design is no longer heard.
The project to manufacture the reactor cores for the new ballistic missile submarines and SSN AUKUS is in serious difficulties. Three successive years of red cards from the UK’s independent auditor, which noted that “Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable” – another mess! Unlike its predecessors, no shore base prototype has been built to de-bug and validate the design. Any delay in manufacturing the reactor cores will impact delivery of the new ballistic missile submarines and hence, delay starting on the SSN AUKUS production line.
Based on past performance and the issues set out above, the British program to deliver SSN AUKUS cannot be fast tracked. Indeed, it is highly likely that it will be late, over budget and with the first of class issues which are a feature of any new design.
The final mess: the Australian Government has proved unwilling to increase the Defence vote to fund the program. Instead, funds are being diverted from other important defence capabilities – Australia’s SSN AUKUS program is eating everyone else’s lunch.
Decision-making and funding for essential infrastructure to support the capability is now years behind schedule. This is similar to the situation which has led to Britain’s inability to sustain its submarines.
The existing plan is, therefore, comprised of multiple, serial risks; I would describe it as a quagmire.
With Australia’s access to Virginia class submarines in grave doubt and SSN AUKUS, at this stage, a high-risk design project, Australia is in danger of losing its submarine capability. Far from increasing Allied submarine capability, AUKUS now threatens to reduce both the US and Australian operational submarine forces.
AUKUS Pillar 1, Australia’s transition to a sovereign, nuclear-powered, conventionally armed submarine capability is a good idea. However, the path we are on leads elsewhere, to a series of unmanageable risks, many beyond our control.
The government needs to change course, to avoid others’ unmanageable risks and better manage our own:
Plan B should settle on one class of submarine, not the impractical, highly unlikely to arrive, Virginia/SSN AUKUS mix now envisaged.
The submarine selected should be based on a mature design, in production, not, as SSN AUKUS is, a new design from questionable antecedents.
It will have to be built in Australia; there is no spare capacity in the US, Britain or France. The KISS rule applies.
Perhaps a competitive process should select the best fit, easiest to build in Australia option?
Australia must control its own destiny, not outsource it to become part of someone else’s unmanageable risk. However, the path we are on leads elsewhere, to a series of unmanageable risks and a drop in Allied submarine capability/deterrence when we can least afford it.
Changing at this late stage would not inject further delay; it will most likely be quicker. The current plan is not going to deliver a sovereign, operational capability any time soon and, given the uncertainties set out above, certainly not as planned and possibly, never. Since we have no accurate, contracted costings for the current plan, it is difficult to conclude that an accurately priced contract for a known design would be more expensive compared to the great unknown and serial delays which await SSN AUKUS. Yes, it would require political courage, but given the growing concerns over the current plan, a change that provides greater sovereignty, increased Allied submarine capability, plus improved certainty over costs and timings would be a welcome.
When ambition meets reality, reality always wins – eventually! Time for Plan B!
Nuclear power plants have become significant pawns in the Russia-Ukraine war
Molly Blackall, Global Affairs Correspondent, iNews 29th Aug 2025
Attacks on and around nuclear sites have become increasingly normalised during the war in Ukraine and the consequences could be disastrous, military watchers have warned.
Ukraine has not commented on the incident, but one Ukrainian military insider told The i Paper that troops had been ordered not to attack the plant during previous operations near by.
Another insider indicated it may have been accidental, saying that drone pilots work seven days a week and that unexpected outcomes sometimes cropped up.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported that radiation was at normal levels around the Kursk plant following the attack.
‘Previously shocking acts’ are now normal
Military experts said that fighting in and around nuclear plants was becoming increasingly normalised……………..
Dr Marina Miron, a war studies expert at King’s College London, said that attacks on nuclear plants “may becoming somewhat normalised, which is in itself disconcerting”.
“When it happens the first time everyone is shocked and you see all the headlines. Then the IAEA reports that there was no rise in radiation levels and then things calm down and after an nth time this becomes sort of normal.”
The plants have become significant pawns in the war.
“When Ukraine counter-invaded Russia last year, the idea was to take the Kursk power plant and probably exchange it for Zaporizhzhia power plant, so that they could then say, we’ll trade you; give us that one, and we’ll give you yours back,” Miron said.
Darya Dolzikova, a nuclear expert at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, previously warned that military activity around nuclear sites “should not be normalised” but that such attacks may become more common.
“The expected growth of the importance of nuclear power in the global energy mix in the coming decades may increase the likelihood that future armed conflict will see greater targeting of nuclear energy infrastructure,” she said.
As well as causing infrastructural damage to an adversary or sending strong military signals, the “psychological salience” of nuclear sites mean they may be used for “escalatory, deterrent or coercive purposes”.
It may also be a deliberate tactic to release radioactive material to make an area into a no-go zone, but could inadvertently expand to “friendly” areas or escalate the conflict it it seeps into a third country.
Attacks on nuclear sites ‘increasing danger’ of radiological accident
Lukasz Kulesa, director of nuclear policy at RUSI, said that while most nuclear reactors were relatively “well protected against attacks and accidents through their reinforced structures, this is not always the case”.
“Some reactors in Russia, including at the Kursk nuclear power plant, lack such a protective concrete dome, which makes them more vulnerable and dangerous in case of an attack,” he said.
“Artillery or drone attacks and other military activities can also threaten staff and personnel working at the site, and damage or destroy support infrastructure crucial for the functioning of the power plant, such as water supply and power grid connections and generators, or spent nuclear fuel storage sites.
“All such attacks disturb the operations of nuclear power plants and increase the danger, and the most serious ones can cause a direct threat of a radiological incident.”
Kulesa warned that “the fact that previous incidents related to the nuclear security of Zaporizhzhia power plant had not resulted in a nuclear accident should not be a reason for complacency”.
“There remains a danger that international norms with regards to the prohibition of military attacks against nuclear power plants, and the efforts by the IAEA to clarify and strengthen nuclear safety and security norms during armed conflicts would be ignored in other conflicts.”
However, Bollfrass said that these attacks were “unlikely to bring about the next Chernobyl”.
“The most serious damage has been to facilities themselves and their ability to deliver electricity, and the integrity of Ukraine’s energy grid as a whole,” he said.
Jillian Segal, the government-appointed Special Envoy for Antisemitism, has refused to answer questions from the NSW parliament about her plan. Emma Thomas reports.
The Special Envoy’s Plan to Combat Antisemitism has been heavily critiqued since it was released last month. The plan proposes a suite of interventions across government and civil society, including allowing the Special Envoy to weigh in on immigration issues and to ‘monitor’ public media.
Among the plan’s more controversial (and impractical) recommendations is a proposal to withhold government funding from universities and arts bodies that fail to meet the Special Envoy’s criteria.
The plan’s architect, Jillian Segal, has meanwhile retreated from public view. This follows her seemingly ill-prepared appearance on ABC on 10 July (coinciding with the release of the plan) and a 12 July report detailing her family trust’s $50,000 donation to the right-wing lobby group Advance, which is known for promoting racism and campaigning against an Indigenous Voice to Parliament.
Last week, however, the Special Envoy responded to a series of questions about her plan posed by the parliamentary committee inquiring into antisemitism in NSW.
Evidence-free policy proposals
The plan’s lack of sources, statistics or citations – that is, any evidence that might support its claims and underpin its proposed policies – has been widely noted and critiqued.
Yet, in her response to the NSW parliamentary inquiry, Segal claimed that there is a “wide base of research” behind her plan, which includes “commissioned surveys, consultations with community organisations, and international comparisons.” The plan, she insists, “is a policy framework grounded in both evidence and expert practice.”
She has, however, refused to provide evidence or publicly release any research supposedly conducted by her taxpayer-funded office, citing “security and privacy reasons.”
When asked specifically about what data or evidence supports her claim of systemic antisemitism in Australia’s public sector, Segal simply reasserted the claim that “There is clear evidence of antisemitic discrimination in parts of the public sector.” Although she provides none, she suggests the committee “review publicly available data.” Again, no such data was provided.
When asked for evidence of “foreign funding” supporting “clusters of antisemitism” in Australian universities, Segal pointed only to “credible concerns” that this “could” be happening. Pressed for specific examples of universities failing to act against antisemitism or of media outlets presenting “false or distorted narratives”, she again provided none. Instead, she described that plan as “proactive” and “precautionary”.
Neither in her plan nor in her responses to the NSW inquiry does Segal cite a single study, piece of evidence or expert assessment, from either the national or international context, that might support the efficacy of her plan to combat antisemitism. It’s possible that there are none.
No evidence for IHRA’s effectiveness
Segal’s plan hinges on Australia’s widespread adoption and application of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism – “including its illustrative examples”.
The 11 illustrative examples are highly contested because seven of them relate to criticism of the State of Israel, whose prime minister is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The examples are so contentious that IHRA’s decision-making body, the Plenary, itself has not endorsed them as part of the definition. IHRA itself describes the examples only as “illustrations” that may guide the organisation’s own work. Segal’s suggestion that the definition, along with the examples, be “required” across all levels of government, public institutions and regulatory bodies
“goes well beyond IHRA’s own framework”.
First published in 2005 by the European Union agency, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, the definition was intended for use in data collection, not policymaking. In 2013, the definition was abandoned. It was repackaged as the “IHRA’s non-legally binding working definition of antisemitism” in 2016.
In the nine years since the definition’s adoption by IHRA, no evidence has been provided that it is effective in combating antisemitism – not in Segal’s plan, nor in external studies,
There is, however, a wealth of academic and legal critique showing that the definition fosters self-censorship and penalises speech on Israel’s violations of international law and advocacy for Palestinian rights. The definition’s efficacy – like that of Segal’s proposed plan – lies in the “proactive” and “precautionary” implementation. And as historian Avi Shlaim states, it
Dr Emma Thomas is a researcher and writer based in the Greater Sydney area. As a historian, she has spent the last fifteen years studying and teaching at universities in Australia and the United States. One of the first things she teaches all her students is that opinions and evidence-based arguments are not the same thing.
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