9th of September (7 – 8 pm AEST) – ZOOM- What Remains: Nuclear Legacies of the Montebello Islands.
Please join us by registering here.
In the 1950s, the Montebello Islands off the Pilbara coast in Western Australia were the site of three British nuclear tests. The first, in 1952, detonated inside a warship anchored off Trimouille Island, followed in 1956 by two larger blasts as part of Operation Mosaic.
In July 2025, a group of artists, writers, researchers, and nuclear survivors travelled to the Montebello Islands to explore the lasting impacts of British nuclear testing there. Next Tuesday the 9th of September (7 – 8 pm AEST) they will come together in a conversational panel to reflect on what they witnessed and experienced, and discuss what they will carry forward from their time on the islands.
Featuring:
- Jesse Boylan – Artist and ICAN Media and Comms Adviser (Convener).
- Maxine Goodwin – ICAN Ambassador and nuclear veteran descendant.
- Dr Liz Tynan – Writer and Academic. Tynan is author of The Secret of Emu Field: Britain’s Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia & Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story. Her new book on the history of the Montebello Islands nuclear tests is due out in 2026.
- Merilyn Fairskye – Visual artist living in Sydney. Her work explores the relationships between technology, atomic landscapes and community and have taken her on location to the Polygon in Kazakhstan, Sellafield, Chernobyl, and other key nuclear sites.
- Paul Grace, Writer and nuclear veteran descendant. Author of Operation Hurricane: The story of Britain’s first atomic test and the legacy that remains.
- Gary Blinco – Nuclear veteran descendant.
- Tobias Holden – Student.
This discussion is free and open to all.
15 September – Webinar -AUKUS – End it Now!
15 September – Webinar -End it Now – https://events.humanitix.com/aukus-end-it-now
7.30-8.30 pm AEST
Guest speaker: Jim Green (FOE)on AUKUS and nuclear waste. Reports on anti-AUKUS activities around Australia. Discussion on building the movement to Cancel AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement (FPA)
| Here’s two recent unwanted AUKUS actions by the Australian Government:* Liberal Coalition and Labor voted together to pass a Bill through the Senate to fund housing for 1,000 United States military personnel working on their AUKUS project- what about the thousands of Australians that are homeless? * The Labor Government signed a new AUKUS agreement with the UK government to last 50 years with Australia paying the UK upwards of $47 billion to their shipyards. |
Point of Order. Antisemitism Summit raises ethics eyebrows
Michael West Media, by Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon | Aug 23, 2025
An all expenses paid pro-Israel summit marketed to local government councillors raises concerns about ethics and politics in their local communities. Wendy Bacon and Yaakov Aharon report.
The Australian Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism (CAM Summit) will lobby for the widespread adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and support for Israel, including bans on promoting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.
However, hundreds of letters have been sent to local councillors around Australia calling on them not to attend the Summit.
Australian local councillors first heard of the Summit earlier this year when they received letters and texts from the Israel-US-based CAM movement inviting them to an all-expenses-paid National Mayors’ summit on the Gold Coast in early September.
For those who did not respond, there was a follow-up letter signed by CAM’s CEO, Sasha Roytman, who is based in Tel Aviv and previously headed a 25-strong IDF team responsible for the IDF’s digital media strategy.
Ethical concerns raised
Even seasoned Councillors were astonished by the sizeable offer of hospitality. Many experienced it as a ‘hard sell’, which raised an ethical red flag.
In response to three emails, one of which incorrectly addressed him as Mayor, Councillor Gideon Cordover at Kingborough in Tasmania told MWM his personal reaction was that, “We’re talking big money. In my six years on local council in Tasmania, I’ve never come across such a tactic by a lobby group with such a wide-reaching cash splash”.
Not developers, not the miners, not the big salmon farms….they seem to have more funding available for lobbying than those groups.
Local government Codes of Conduct around Australia differ, but all caution Councillors against accepting gifts or benefits that could lead others to think they could be influenced when making future decisions.
Anyone who glanced at the Summit program would know it is all about influencing decisions. Its key goal is to embed the IHRA definition across local government and introduce the Municipal Antisemitism Action Index, which ranks municipalities based on their “effectiveness in combating antisemitism, providing a clear framework to measure progress, identify gaps, and promote best practices in local government action.”
Some councils, including Merri-bek in Melbourne and Sutherland in Sydney, maintain a transparency register that records not only benefits received but also offers that are declined. Other councils only require councillors to register offers that are accepted.
Staff at one council in Sydney sent an email to councillors simply advising them to decline the CAM offer.
There is an exception in some codes for a councillor to accept a ‘benefit’ if approved by council to attend an event as part of official council business. But even then, councillors still need to consider conflict of interest situations that could arise in the future.
In this case, potential conflicts of interest are confused because the invitation letters referred to both ‘partners’ and ‘sponsors’.
Who is attending CAM?
There are more than 500 councils in Australia, while the Summit’s agenda includes speakers from 14 different councils. Statements by CAM claim that 70 councils are involved in the Summit, but CAM has not responded to MWM’s emails seeking to verify the claim.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://michaelwest.com.au/point-of-order-antisemitism-summit-raises-ethics-eyebrows/
Think Tanker Demands for AUKUS: What Australia Should do with US Submarines.
“AUKUS is only going to lead to more submarines collectively in 10, 15, 20 years, which is way beyond the window of maximum danger, which is really this decade.”
26 August 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/think-tanker-demands-for-aukus-what-australia-should-do-with-us-submarines/
The moment the security pact known as AUKUS came into being, it was clear what its true intention was. Announced in September 2021, ruinous to Franco-Australian relations, and Anglospheric in inclination, the agreement between Washington, London and Canberra would project US power in the Indo-Pacific with one purpose in mind: deterring China. The fool in this whole endeavour was Australia, with a security establishment so Freudian in its anxiety it seeks an Imperial Daddy at every turn.
To avoid the pains of mature sovereignty, the successive Australian governments of Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese have fallen for the bribe of the nuclear-powered Virginia Class SSN-774 and the promise of a bespoke AUKUS-designed nuclear–powered counterpart. These submarines may never make their way to the Royal Australian Navy. Australia is infamously bad when it comes to constructing submarines, and the US is under no obligation to furnish Canberra with the boats.
The latter point is made clear in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which directs the US President to certify to the relevant congressional committees and leadership no later than 270 days prior to the transfer of vessels that this “will not degrade the United States underseas capabilities”; is consistent with the country’s foreign policy and national security interests and furthers the AUKUS partnership. Furthering the partnership would involve“sufficient submarine production and maintenance investments” to meet undersea capabilities; the provision by Australia of “appropriate funds and support for the additional capacity required to meet the requirements”; and Canberra’s “capability to host and fully operate the vessels authorized to be transferred.”
In his March confirmation hearing as Undersecretary of Defense Policy, Eldridge Colby, President Donald Trump’s chief appointee for reviewing the AUKUS pact, candidly opined that a poor production rate of submarines would place “our servicemen and women […] in a weaker position.” He had also warned that, “AUKUS is only going to lead to more submarines collectively in 10, 15, 20 years, which is way beyond the window of maximum danger, which is really this decade.”
The SSN program, as such unrealised and a pure chimera, is working wonders in distorting Australia’s defence budget. The decade to 2033-4 features a total projected budget of A$330 billion. The SSN budget of A$53-63 billion puts nuclear powered submarines at 16.1% to 19.1% more than relevant land and air domains. A report by the Strategic Analysis Australia think tank did not shy away from these implications: “It’s hard to grasp how unusual this situation is. Moreover, it’s one that will endure for decades, since the key elements of the maritime domain (SSNs and the two frigate programs) will still be in acquisition well into the 2040s. It’s quite possible that Defence itself doesn’t grasp the situation that it’s gotten into.”
Despite this fantastic asymmetry of objectives, Australia is still being asked to do more. An ongoing suspicion on the part of defence wonks in the White House, Pentagon and Congress is what Australia would do with the precious naval hardware once its navy gets them. Could Australia be relied upon to deploy them in a US-led war against China? Should the boats be placed under US naval command, reducing Australia to suitable vassal status?
Now, yet another think tanking outfit, the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), is urging Australia to make its position clear on how it would deploy the Virginia boats. A report, authored by a former senior AUKUS advisor during the Biden administration Abraham Denmark and Charles Edel, senior advisor and CSIS Australia chair, airily proposes that Australia offers “a more concrete commitment” to the US while also being sensitive to its own sovereignty. This rather hopeless aim can be achieved through “a robust contingency planning process that incorporates Australian SSNs.” This would involve US and Australian military strategists planning to “undergo a comprehensive process of strategizing and organizing military operations to achieve specific objectives.” Such a process would provide “concrete reassurances that submarines sold to Australia would not disappear if and when needed.” It might also preserve Australian sovereignty in both developing the plan and determining its implementation during a crisis.
In addition to that gobbet of hopeless contradiction, the authors offer some further advice: that the second pillar of the AUKUS agreement, involving the development of advanced capabilities, the sharing of technology and increasing the interoperability between the armed forces of the three countries, be more sharply defined. “AUKUS nations should consider focusing on three capability areas: autonomy, long-range strike, and integrated air defense.” This great militarist splash would supposedly “increase deterrence in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific.”
In terms of examples, President Trump’s wonky Golden Dome anti-missile shield is touted as an “opportunity for Pillar II in integrated air defense.” (It would be better described as sheer science fiction, underwritten by space capitalism.) Australia was already at work with their US counterparts in developing missile defence systems that could complement the initiative. Developing improved and integrated anti-missile defences was even more urgent given the “greatly expanding rotational presence of US military forces in Australia.”
This waffling nonsense has all the finery of delusion. When it comes to sovereignty, there is nothing to speak of and Australia’s security cadres, along with most parliamentarians in the major parties, see no troubles with deferring responsibility to the US imperium. In most respects, this has already taken place. The use of such coddling terms as “joint planning” and “joint venture” only serves to conceal the dominant, rough role played by Washington, always playing the imperial paterfamilias even as it secures its own interests against other adversaries.
How France’s nuclear dream became a financial nightmare
Decades of neglect, spiralling costs and political denial have turned France’s once-vaunted nuclear program into a cautionary tale, writes Jean-Luc Porquet (translated by Dr Evan Jones).
By Jean-Luc Porquet | 22 August 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/how-frances-nuclear-dream-became-a-financial-nightmare,20076
Translator’s note: The French nuclear power sector is in deep trouble technically and financially. Formally a cheap source of power, embedded costs have not been counted. There has been a dramatic loss of skills over the decades, inhibiting effective maintenance of existing plants and turning the construction of France’s then most powerful reactor at Flamanville on the Normandy coast into a nightmare.
Technological and resource challenges have escalated, including water availability in the face of climate change. The plan to bury accumulated highly radioactive waste at Bure, 250 kilometres east of Paris, remains at an impasse. And the political class lives in denial.
Meanwhile, sections of the Coalition parties cling to nuclear power as Australia’s post-coal salvation. Australia has uranium. However, regarding nuclear power prospects, there is no history, no capacities, no acceptable locations, no acceptable burial sites and no water. In short, local nuclear power adherents have no brains.
EVERYTHING WAS SUPPOSED to work to plan.
The 58 French nuclear reactors built at an accelerated pace between 1977 and 1996 were due to tranquilly finish their life after 30 years of good and faithful service. And the new super-powerful EPRs [European Pressurised Reactors], designed and built by Éléctricité de France, were to effect a seamless transition.
It was estimated that, by 2012, the first French EPR would be put into operation at Flamanville.
Kapow! Not only has its cost, initially fixed at €3.3 billion [AU$5.9 billion], multiplied by six (!), but its construction site has proved a nightmare. The EPR was connected to the grid only in 2024. And it has hardly run since (it is currently in shutdown).
An emergency patch-up job has been necessary on the aged French nuclear park so that its tired reactors can hang on for another 20 years. Total cost of this major overhaul now in progress: €100 billion [AU$180 billion].
At the moment when the urgent necessity to find €40 billion [AU$72 billion] in economies for the 2026 budget obsesses the Bayrou Government [under pressure from Brussels], Reporterre publishes on YouTube a remarkable documentary by journalist Laure Noualhat, titled Nucléaire – Comment il va ruiner la France. (See also Noulhat’s book, Le nucléaire va ruiner la France, Seuil-Reporterre, 224p.) It is noted there that, in the fairytale world that is nuclear energy, billions waltz out by the dozens. The golden rule is: “Whatever it costs!”
Other inescapable costs to come? To prolong the life of the plant at The Hague, where nuclear fuel is processed and which is at the end of its life — rough estimate: €34 billion [AU$61 billion]. To continue to dig deep at Bure, where the most dangerous nuclear waste will be buried 500 metres below ground — estimated cost: €35 billion [AU$63 billion]. To dismantle the 58 reactors, which, even patched up, will finish by being at the end of their life in ten or 20 years — cost: €50 billion. Total: €219 billion [AU$395.8 billion] to find. This is not all.
The EDF has sold an EPR to Finland for €3 billion [AU$5.4 billion] and two others to the United Kingdom for €22 billion [AU$39.7 billion]. And has promised to take care of any additional costs. Such comes in at €12 billion [AU$21.6 billion] for the former, €56 billion [AU$101 billion] for the latter. Do the maths.
Thomas Piquemal, the EDF’s chief financial officer at the time, went into meltdown. And resigned [in March 2016]. And this is not all.
In 2022, President Macron announced that, at his demand, the EDF will launch six “new generation” EPRs [initially, then eight more to 2050]. Hand on heart, it will happen (in fact, one knows nothing about them). Estimated total price: €100 billion [AU$180.7 billion] (more or less). A former EDF Director, Philippe Huet, interviewed by Laure Noualhat, called this a “crazy gamble”.
If ever this delusional program (transparently dismissed by the Cour des comptes [equivalent to the National Audit Office] as inadvisable) sees the day, who will pay for it? Not the EDF, already indebted to the tune of €55 billion [AU$99 billion]. Nor any private investor (not mad!). Guess… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjfHyhkpef8
Jean-Luc Porquet has been a journalist at Le Canard enchaîné since 1994, where this article appeared on 9 July. He writes a column on ecology and technocratic society, as well as theatre reviews. He has written a dozen books, the latest of which, Le grand procès des animaux, is a satirical fictional account of the sixth extinction in progress.
September 13/14 – Global Network 33rd Annual Space Zoom Conference- “NATO-US prepare for war on China
Keynote Speaker K. J. Noh
| Saturday/Sunday September 13/14(Depending on where you live) Registration required |
| Please note the time of the meeting in your part of the world just below. To register just click here Honolulu, HI @ 2:00 pm Sept 13 Los Angeles, CA @ 5:00 pm Sept 13 New York, NY @ 8:00 pm Sept 13 London, United Kingdom @ 1:00 am Sept 14 Stockholm, Sweden @ 2:00 am Sept 14 Delhi, India @ 5:30 am Sept 14 Manila, Philippines @ 8:00 am Sept 14 Seoul, South Korea @ 9:00 am Sept 14 Tokyo, Japan @ 9:00 am Sept 14 Hagåtña, Guam @ 10:00 am Sept 14 Sydney, Australia @ 10:00 am Sept 14 Auckland, New Zealand @ 12:00 noon Sept 14 |
US bases including Pine Gap saw Australia put on nuclear alert, but no-one told Gough Whitlam.
By Alex Barwick for the Expanse podcast Spies in the Outback
When Australia was placed on nuclear alert by the United States government in October 1973, there was one major problem.
No-one had told prime minister Gough Whitlam.
One of the locations placed on “red alert” was the secretive Pine Gap facility on the fringes of Alice Springs.
Officially called a “joint space research facility” until 1988, the intelligence facility was in the crosshairs with a handful of other US bases and installations around Australia.
In fact, almost all United States bases around the world were placed on alert as conflict escalated in the Middle East. Whitlam wasn’t the only leader left out of the loop.
A prime minister in the dark
“Whitlam got upset that he hadn’t been told in advance,” Brian Toohey, journalist and former Labor staffer to Whitlam’s defence minister Lance Barnard, said.
Toohey said Whitlam should have been told that facilities including North West Cape base in Western Australia, and Pine Gap were being put on “red alert”.
“There had been a new agreement knocked out by Australian officials with their American counterparts, that Australia would be given advance warning.”
They weren’t.
Suddenly, the world was on the brink of nuclear war.
Why were parts of Australia on ‘red alert’?
The Cold War superpowers backed opposing sides in the Yom Kippur War.
The Soviet Union supported Egypt and the United States was behind Israel.
As the proxy war escalated in October 1973, United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger believed the crisis could go nuclear and issued a DefCon 3 alert.
A DefCon 3 alert saw immediate preparations to ensure the United States could mobilise in 15 minutes to deliver a nuclear strike.
The aim was to deter a nuclear strike by the Soviets.
And, it simultaneously alerted all US bases including facilities in Australia that a nuclear threat was real.
This level of alert has only occurred a few times, including immediately after the September 11 attacks.
Politics, pressure and protest
The secretive intelligence facility in outback Australia caused Whitlam more trouble beyond the red alert.
During the 1972 election campaign, the progressive politician had promised to lift the lid on Pine Gap and share its secrets with all Australians.
“He gave a promise that he would tell the Australian public a lot more about what Pine Gap did,” Toohey said.
But according to Toohey, the initial briefing provided to Whitlam and Barnard by defence chief Arthur Tange left the prime minister with little to say.
“Tange came along and he said basically that there was nothing they could be allowed to say. And that was just ridiculous,” Toohey said.
“He said, the one thing he could tell them was the bases could not be used in any way to participate in a war. Well, of course they do.”
Whitlam would cause alarm in Washington when he refused to commit to extending Pine Gap’s future.
In 1974 on the floor of parliament he said:
“The Australian government takes the attitude that there should not be foreign military bases, stations, installations in Australia. We honour agreements covering existing stations. We do not favour the extension or prolongation of any of those existing ones.”
According to Toohey, “the Americans were incredibly alarmed about that”.
“As contingency planning, the whole of the US Defence Department said that they would shift it to Guam, a Pacific island that America owned,” he said.
And the following year, allegations would emerge that the CIA were involved in the prime minister’s dismissal on November 11, 1975.
Former Labor defence minister Kim Beazley labels the scuttlebutt as “bulldust”.
“I’d heard that stuff about the Americans getting frightened and therefore getting involved. I put the matter to study, I got a couple of senior public servants to have a look at it, nothing there, nothing there.”
Despite no conclusive evidence, the rumours continue to swirl.
Episode Two of the ABC’s Expanse podcast: Spies in the Outback is now available. This episode explores the wild political tensions surrounding the spy base in Australia’s backyard. Listen here.
Nationals double down on nuclear power policy.
Energy, 25 Aug 25
The Nationals are doubling down on introducing nuclear power to Australia, with leader David Littleproud vowing to take the policy to the next election.
Littleproud told National party members the nuclear policy was at the centre of the party’s fallout with the Liberals following the May federal election………………………..
“We have to have, as part of our energy mix, nuclear in that mix. It was something that we believe in passionately because we see the consequences,” he said.
“There is a sensible way to fix it and that’s what we’re going to take to the next election.”
This move comes despite The House of Representatives Select Committee on Nuclear Energy releasing an interim report in which it has found establishing nuclear power generation would be too late and too costly to support the country’s energy targets.
Committee chair Dan Repacholi MP, Federal Member for Hunter, said, “This interim report focuses on two key issues that have dominated the evidence we’ve received to date: whether nuclear power generation could be rolled out in Australia in an acceptable timeframe, and how affordable it would be—particularly compared to alternative power generation technologies currently available in Australia.”
“From the evidence considered by the Committee to date, it is apparent that it could be well into the 2040s before we might see nuclear energy generated in Australia if that form of energy generation were to be pursued. This would be too late to meaningfully support the achievement of Australia’s climate and energy targets or to help our coal power plant workforce and communities as we transition away from coal power.” https://esdnews.com.au/nationals-double-down-on-nuclear-power-policy/
Nationals Leader David Littleproud says nuclear power policy ‘sensible’ next step.
ABC News, Sat 23 Aug, 25
In short:
Nationals Leader David Littleproud told the Liberal National Party annual convention nuclear had to be part of the country’s energy mix.
It would help with food security and the environment, he said.
What’s next?
Nuclear power and energy alternatives dominated discussions at the convention’s opening day on Friday, following the near-unanimous passing of a resolution to abandon net zero by 2050………………………
Coalition practice after an election meant policies taken to the campaign would remain and only be dumped by exception, he told the Liberal National Party annual convention in Brisbane……………………
“We have to have, as part of our energy mix, nuclear in that mix. It was something that we believe in passionately because we see the consequences,” he said……………………………. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-23/nationals-leader-david-littleproud-says-nuclear-power/105689740
In Alice Springs everyone has an opinion on the Pine Gap spy base, but no-one wants to talk about what happens inside.
I wanted to hear from the traditional owners of the Arrernte land it was built on, and from the spies tasked with finding targets in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terrorism. But how do you investigate something as secretive as Pine Gap when everyone who works there has made a promise never to talk about what they do?
serious claims being made that intelligence gathered at the facility was being used in the Israel-Gaza war.
By Alex Barwick for Backstory, Thu 16 May 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/backstory/2024-05-16/backstory-expanse-podcast-spies-in-the-outback-pine-gap-barwick/103844652
In journalism, it’s often politicians who won’t answer your questions.
But in my outback town, it’s just as likely to be the neighbours who won’t, or rather can’t, answer this basic conversation starter: “So, what do you do at work?”
That’s because about 800 of the town’s 25,000 residents are employed at the most secretive intelligence facility in Australia — the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap — on the edge of Alice Springs/Mparntwe.
When I rolled into this beautiful landscape 16 years ago and began working at the ABC’s Alice Springs bureau, it quickly became clear I wouldn’t hear from this significant section of the community.
Given local radio is all about connecting with the community and sharing people’s stories, this silence felt strange.
My curiosity grew and the book Peace Crimes, written by long-term local journalist Kieran Finnane, motivated me to start looking deeper.
I wanted to know what was going on in my backyard, but I knew trying to make a podcast about a secret military facility hidden in a secluded valley in Central Australia wouldn’t be easy.
Telling this story in a town the size of Alice Springs would undoubtedly feel personal and would likely offend parts of the community.
It’s a line regional journalists walk all the time — telling stories that are in the public interest, while living in the community that is affected by them.
Covering difficult stories in a small town
The words we write as journalists — or say, like in the Expanse: Spies in the Outback podcast — do have real world implications for real people.
That includes everyone from my neighbours, to the parents of my kids’ friends, to people I see regularly at community events.
For them, it’s not a story – it’s their life.
And that can get awkward.
But there are stories in the public interest that the Australian government won’t comment on and this often means they’re shrouded in mystery, or rife with rumour.
Pine Gap is one of those stories.
What goes on beneath the cluster of enormous, oversized-golf-ball-shaped domes covering the military base’s listening antenna on the desert floor, raises big questions for all of Australia, not just my town.
The Pine Gap intelligence-gathering facility is often described as the jewel in the crown of our military partnership with the United States.
But what have we got ourselves into, and do we benefit from it?
Protesters, politicians and spies
Over the past six months, I’ve had lots of off-the-record coffees, trawled the news and library archives, followed some bizarre leads and heard plenty of wild stories, as I have tried to understand the goings-on behind the razor wire.
I wanted to know why America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) decided to build a so-called “space base” in outback Australia in the mid 1960s.
What motivated former prime minister Gough Whitlam to rock the boat and promise to reveal its secrets to the public?
Why were thousands of people so convinced it was a nuclear target they flocked to the desert to demand its closure?
And how had it drawn Australia onto one battlefield after the next through its large-scale surveillance and intelligence gathering?
While plenty of people outside Alice Springs/Mparntwe have never heard of this desert spy base, most people in town have an opinion on it.
There are three main camps: those who say it’s vital for the town’s economy and global peace; those who still see it as a nuclear target and want it shut down; and those who feel generally apathetic to its existence.
And yet, nobody really talks about Pine Gap.
Still, I felt it was important to really understand the diversity of views on this outback spy base as I conducted my research.
I wanted to hear from the traditional owners of the Arrernte land it was built on, and from the spies tasked with finding targets in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Global War on Terrorism.
But how do you investigate something as secretive as Pine Gap when everyone who works there has made a promise never to talk about what they do?
I certainly wasn’t looking to see anyone exiled to Russia like Edward Snowden after he leaked a raft of National Security Agency (NSA) documents, including information on Pine Gap.
In the end, gentle, determined persistence meant I was able to tell the Pine Gap story in a way that lifted the lid but didn’t put national security at risk, and that (I hope) was sensitive to the lives of those in Alice Springs affected by it.
Back in the national spotlight
And then, in late 2023 as I tracked down activists, former spies and politicians … protesters were suddenly blocking the road to Pine Gap again.
There were serious claims being made that intelligence gathered at the facility was being used in the Israel-Gaza war. With Pine Gap back in the spotlight, I knew I had to look deeper.
This spy base, which became operational in 1970 during the Cold War, had expanded through the decades in scale and capability and was more relevant than ever.
The Australian government says Pine Gap is one of the country’s “most longstanding security arrangements” with the United States but it does not comment on its operation.
As each episode of Expanse: Spies in the Outback has been released, I’ve received emails and text messages that confirm why it was an important story to tell.
Some people have been shocked and appalled, while others have been grateful to learn we have this secret intelligence facility in our backyard.
Even in my own town of Alice Springs, where everyone knows someone who works at Pine Gap, there is an appetite to know more – regardless of how uncomfortable that might be.
Follow Expanse: Spies In The Outback on the ABC listen app to hear every episode of season three.
David Littleproud vows to take nuclear energy to next election and claims ‘no malice’ behind brief Coalition split.
Guardian, 23 Aug 25
Nationals leader rails against regional Australia becoming littered with transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines at LNP conference.
The Nationals are vowing to introduce nuclear power to Australia’s energy mix, promising to take the policy to the next election after it contributed to a split in the Coalition.
Nationals leader David Littleproud explained to party faithful on Saturday what led to his party’s week-long decoupling from the Liberals following the May federal election rout.
Coalition practice after an election meant policies taken to the campaign would remain and only be dumped by exception, he told the Liberal National party annual convention in Brisbane.
[Liberal leader] Sussan [Ley] wanted to take that away and I respected that and tried to work with it,” he said.
“But there were four key policy areas that were hard-fought and so important to the people that National party members and senators represent.”………………….
Nuclear power and energy alternatives dominated discussions at the convention’s opening day on Friday, after the near-unanimous passing of a resolution to abandon net zero by 2050.
The resolution was not binding on the parliamentary party but Friday’s result should prompt healthy debate in Canberra, Queensland senator Matt Canavan said.
Australia has committed to net zero under the Paris Agreement that came into force in 2016…………………………….. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/23/david-littleproud-vows-to-take-nuclear-energy-to-next-election-and-claims-no-malice-behind-brief-coalition-split
Jillian Segal’s report turns criticism of Israel into a punishable offence.
By Evan Jones | 23 August 2025, Independent Australia
Segal’s report recasts anti-Zionism as hate — policing schools, agencies and visas while punishing dissent across public life, writes Dr Evan Jones.
THE SEGAL REPORT heralds that all educational institutions, public institutions and the public service be permanently policed for hints of “antisemitism”.
Add potential migrants and asylum seekers, who will be blocked from entry for having the wrong experience and opinions. Given that anti-Zionism is made synonymous with antisemitism, it demands a comprehensive mandate in obliterating any criticism of and action against the abomination that is the state of Israel.
Being South African-born, although brought to Australia as a child, Jillian Segal presumably has imbibed the rudiments of what constitutes an apartheid state and society. Segal has not taken the short, obvious step. Can I recommend apartheid Israel for beginners: Uri Davis’ 2003 Apartheid Israel?
Jillian Segal’s ultra-Zionism is well known – her Wikipedia entry notes her attachment prominently:
‘She is the immediate past president of the “ardently pro-Israel” Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ). Segal has long been an advocate for Israel in Australia. She has been chair of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce since 2015.’
She has thus been not merely a fellow traveller but front and centre.
Crikey’s Bernard Keane (as did others) immediately questioned Segal’s appointment as antisemitism envoy on 9 July 2024.
He noted:
‘Jillian Segal has criticised ceasefire calls in Gaza and defended bombing hospitals. That, and her record at NAB, makes her a poor choice for a government role.’
Segal was Commissioner then Deputy Chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), 1997-2002, Chair of the Banking and Financial Services Ombudsman Board, 2002-04, and Board Director at the National Australia Bank (NAB), 2004-16. Segal was awarded an AO in January 2019 for ‘distinguished service to the banking and financial regulation sectors …’.
I have long been involved in assisting and writing about victims of banking malpractice, especially small business and farmer borrowers. The financial “regulatory” apparatus, seemingly complicit, has proved comprehensively indifferent to bank malpractice against these borrowers. The NAB, following financial deregulation, has been a major player in malpractice.
During Segal’s tenure on the NAB Board, the NAB had to manage the aftermath of its hubristic imposition of a toxic facility on SME/farmer borrowers from the NAB’s Scottish subsidiary Clydesdale — fixed interest embedded swap facilities, labelled ‘Tailored Business Loans’ (here and here). The NAB was forced to pay compensation for an egregious component of the loans (‘payment protection insurance’) but remained steadfast in its denial of responsibility for the flawed facility itself, leaving many borrowers ruined.
Where was Segal in all this? She was a Member of the NAB’s Advisory Council on Corporate Responsibility. As you do. Segal might have deserved her gong for services to banking, but certainly not for services to banking regulation.
There appears to be a certain charlatanry about Segal’s involvement with the finance sector. A matter of ticking boxes? There is nothing of the charlatan regarding Segal’s full-bodied Zionism. Merely that this attribute disqualifies her from acting as a dispassionate antisemitism envoy.
Segal (with other Israel-firster Vic Alhadeff) led a delegation to the ABC in June 2021 to complain of “a pervasive culture of bias, if not antipathy, towards Israel” on the network’s Q+A program. There must be a second ABC network unknown to me.
In August 2023, the Albanese Government defended its reference to the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied” and Israeli settlements as “illegal” (in line with international law).
As published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 10 August 2023, Segal (then president of ECAJ), with the Zionist Federation’s Jeremy Leibler, claimed that:
‘…the Government’s change in language had pre-empted negotiations on a two-state solution, and criticised the move as “inaccurate, ahistorical and counterproductive.”’
Shameless.
Segal has organised, via the Trojan Horse Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and participated many times in Australian group visits to Israel. Segal has vaunted Israel as a hotbed of determination and imagination, ideal for business innovation and “startups”. Compulsory military service, she claims, helps with building toughness and resilience. Unmentioned is that a good deal of this “innovation” is in military equipment, surveillance mechanisms and police control techniques, in the export of which Israel has become a major player.
The murder and repression of the Palestinian population (and in neighbouring countries) has become a testing ground for such specialities. Antony Loewenstein’s 2023 book ‘The Palestine Laboratory’ documents the phenomenon.
Consistently, Segal has claimed that ‘Israel’s culture of resilience and innovation, which had helped it prosper in business, would also guide its war effort’ (Australian Financial Review, 11 October 2023). It’s a package deal.
At a Sydney demonstration in solidarity ‘with Israel and the Jewish community’ as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 October 2023, Segal said:
.the actions of Hamas showed once again that its intention is to obliterate Israel and its population [erroneous], and lacked any concept of the sanctity of human life. ‘Our world has changed. The barbarians have breached the gates. The butchery and savagery that has unfolded in Israel beggars description … There can be no compromise, no accommodation of these psychopaths. They must be [crushed] and we must brace ourselves for further tragedy.’
At a Sydney vigil on 12 November 2023, Segal is reported in The Australian on 13 November as saying to a cheering crowd:
“We all yearn for peace in the Middle East, but as we all know … one cannot make peace with those who deny one’s right to exist. … There can be no ceasefire until every hostage has been released.”
Bloodlust for the imperatives of an unacknowledged apartheid state.
When Foreign Minister Penny Wong called on Israel to stop attacking hospitals, the Zionist Federation’s Jeremy Leibler and ECAJ’s Segal responded:
“The libel that any Israeli attack on Gazan hospitals from which Hamas operates would amount to war crimes only serves to demonise the state of Israel and its supporters. The government of Australia should not be lending any credibility to this false and harmful narrative.” (Australian Financial Review, 13 November 2023)……………………………………………………………………………………https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/jillian-segals-report-turns-criticism-of-israel-into-a-punishable-offence,20078
Ditch AUKUS Pillar One. It involves Australia too much in US strategy.
22 Aug 2025|Mike Keating and Jon Stanford, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/ditch-aukus-pillar-one-it-involves-australia-too-much-in-us-strategy/
Defence Minister Richard Marles said in June that if war broke out between the US and China, Australia would inevitably be involved.
This is an unacceptable situation for any sovereign nation to be in. It exposes a dangerous inconsistency within Australia’s strategic policy, identified by former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Peter Varghese:
On the one hand, our foreign policy embraces a multipolar future where no country dominates. Our defence policy, on the other hand … is increasingly fixed around doing what we can to ensure the retention of US strategic primacy.
This focus on US primacy is the basis of the AUKUS agreement, Pillar One of which provides for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs). John Lee, of the US Studies Centre, says ‘AUKUS was forged as a joint agreement to confront and deter China’. This is consistent with the detailed agreement negotiated between the Morrison government and the Biden administration in April 2021. It reflected the administration’s strategic objective of maintaining US primacy by containing China to the first island chain, which would require sustaining the autonomy of Taiwan. Former prime minister Scott Morrison indicated in an interview in 2024 that Australia and the US were agreed on this objective.
There are four major problems with AUKUS Pillar One from Australia’s perspective.
The first is that Australia’s strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific are different from the United States’. Despite Morrison’s assertion, Australia has no essential national interest in containing China in defence of US primacy. In economic terms, China is Australia’s major partner, buying a third of our exports. As for strategic containment, while Morrison’s defence minister, Peter Dutton, said it was ‘inconceivable’ that Australia would not support the US if it ‘took action’ over Taiwan, the present government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made no such commitment.
Nevertheless, with the US’s bases in Guam, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines now threatened by China’s medium- and intermediate-range missiles, Australia has seen a major influx of US forces rotating through Australian bases. With no apparent assertion of any Australian control over how these forces may be used, this signifies a substantial change in Australia’s strategic posture.
As Michael Pezzullo said, ‘never before in peacetime has Australia been prepared to allow foreign combat forces to be able to launch military operations from Australian soil. … [The US] would have a brutally realist strategic view of Australia: it would be a key operating base for US forces in any conflict with China.’
Some experts consider that America’s large military footprint in Australia will enhance our security. This surely reflects a flawed understanding of military strategy. The strategic objective for US forces in Australia will remain the same as when they were based elsewhere: to deter an attack on Taiwan. US forces are not here to defend Australia. Indeed, their presence gives China more reason to launch strikes on this country, beyond its likely desire to eliminate some long-established joint US-Australian facilities.
As well as acting as a platform for offensive operations, an operations base across the Pacific gives the US a deep protective buffer. In a conflict, Australian bases would absorb the initial attacks but could be readily abandoned by the US should enemy forces prevail. Elbridge Colby, who is conducting the Trump administration’s review of AUKUS, may have had this in mind when he told the US Senate he was examining how ‘to conduct a local defence of Taiwan at a cost and level of risk that the American people are prepared to tolerate’.
The second problem with AUKUS is that its associated strategy of integrated deterrence requires a significant surrender of Australia’s sovereignty. In 2023, the Albanese government agreed as part of the AUKUS agreement that the RAN submarine base at HMAS Stirling, near Perth, would be expanded to provide facilities to accommodate a new allied submarine force. Australia’s SSNs will be committed to this US-led force. US National Security council member Kurt Campbell said in June 2023, ‘when submarines are provided from the United States to Australia, it’s not like they’re lost. They will just be deployed by the closest possible allied force.’
Colby, in 2024, before he became under secretary of defense for policy this year, said the delivery of US Virginia class submarines to Australia from US resources would be highly imprudent without ‘an iron-clad guarantee they can be employed at the will of the United States.’
This statement, while understandable from a US standpoint, suggests that Australia’s SSN force will not provide a sovereign capability. It will be deployed not at the discretion of the Australian government but to undertake operations under US control against China. With Royal Australian Navy SSNs integrated into ongoing operations with the US, Australia would be under great pressure not to withdraw them if the US went to war.
It is also not cost-effective to acquire a highly sophisticated defence capability at a very great price only to commit it to forward operations in defence of US primacy. The expenditure can surely only be justified for a capability dedicated to the defence of Australia.
The third problem with AUKUS is that RAN submarines would be required to undertake combined operations with the US in a great power strategy of deterrence by punishment. This would bring a grave risk to Australia’s security.
Ministers may believe that Australia’s SSN missions will be comparable to the combined intelligence gathering operations currently undertaken by our diesel submarines. But because RAN SSNs will displace US submarines, Washington will also want them to replicate US undersea missions. These are far more potent.
A primary strategic objective of US SSNs is to eliminate a great power adversary’s nuclear second-strike capability early in any war. Their operations are therefore directed towards detecting and trailing an adversary’s ballistic-missile submarines and then marking them for destruction in the event of war.
Also, wargame results suggest the US may prevail in a maritime conflict with China only by recourse to tactical nuclear weapons. By the time Australian SSNs enter service, they will be operating alongside US submarines carrying nuclear-armed missiles aimed at military targets in China.
It would be very unwise for any non-nuclear weapons power to participate in these operations. How might China respond to attacks on its ballistic-missile submarines by SSNs based in Australia or even by Australian SSNs that our government felt compelled to put at US disposal?
If the US did resort to using nuclear weapons tactically to avoid losing a war over Taiwan, China could retaliate with nuclear attacks on US facilities in Australia. This would bring a much lower risk of escalation than striking the US mainland. This is one example of how America’s security is better served by locating its first line of defence in Australia rather than at home.
The final problem with AUKUS is that Australia is procuring the wrong designs of SSN. The selection of designs for Australia’s SSNs was clearly based on US and British interests rather than our own. Britain’s SSN-AUKUS class will be much too big for the RAN. Virginias need crews as large as 145, well over twice the size of the crew of an Australian Collins-class diesel submarine. Using Virginias, with their especially high and sensitive technical dependence on the US, would not provide a sovereign capability. Both the US and British programs are also bedevilled with unacceptable risks around delivery.
So, what should the government do?
No doubt Australia’s fear of abandonment will cause some to argue that AUKUS must be preserved unchanged to avoid undermining the alliance. But our interests in the Indo-Pacific are not the same as the US’s, and, anyway, we cannot rely on any other nation, including America, for defence. In any renegotiation of AUKUS, Australia possesses substantial agency because of America’s need for secure bases.
We need urgently to reorganise our affairs to reduce the possibility of being attacked in a conflict not of our choosing. We should remove the inconsistency in Australia’s strategic posture by harmonising our defence policy with our existing foreign policy and focus on building partnerships in a multipolar Indo-Pacific. Australia should abandon integrated deterrence in the defence of US primacy. Instead, we should extend further into our strategic policy what James Curran calls the ‘Australian straddle’ between the US and China.
Our security policy should be based on the self-reliant defence of Australia by means of a strategy of denial. This would require much more powerful maritime forces and consequently a higher defence budget. With a whole continent and the third largest exclusive economic zone in the world to defend, there is a strong strategic case for Australia to acquire an SSN capability.
We should cancel our plans for Virginia and SSN-AUKUS class submarines and instead seek to acquire a sovereign, independent force of 12 French Suffren-class submarines. The Suffren design is smaller, well suited to the RAN’s operational requirements, with a crew of 65. It meets NATO standards of interoperability, allowing ongoing operations with the US. Compared to the 95-percent-enriched, weapons-grade uranium used in US and British submarines, Suffren’s fuel is enriched only to the civil standard of 5 percent. This has several advantages, not least in terms of the security challenges around transporting reactors halfway round the world to a shipyard in Adelaide.
Benefits to the US would include retention of its Virginia-class submarines within an expanded allied SSN fleet. America should also see benefit in greater Australian self-reliance with a larger defence budget. The training of Australian submariners on US SSNs should continue, to the benefit of both nations. RAN submarines should continue undertaking combined intelligence and surveillance operations at Australia’s discretion and under Australian rules of engagement.
The US could maintain its basing facilities in Australia but on similar terms to those offered by other sovereign states. Japan, South Korea and the Philippines all have legislation that requires the US to obtain host government approval before launching offensive operations from their territory. Further, their treaties with the US also include a security guarantee with extended nuclear deterrence. Finally, as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, we should not allow the storage of nuclear weapons on Australian territory.
Author
Mike Keating and Jon Stanford formerly worked together in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Mike Keating served for 11 years on the Secretaries Committee on National Security, which coordinated advice to the Cabinet Committee on National Security.
Hundreds of thousands to mobilise for Nationwide March for Palestine on Sunday 24th August
23 August 2025 AIMN Editorial, Palestine Action Group Sydney
On Sunday 24 August, hundreds of thousands of people will mobilise, in over 40 towns and cities around the country, as part of the massive Nationwide March for Palestine. As the United Nations officially declares a “man-made” famine in Gaza, and Israel launches yet another full-scale invasion, this march comes at a critical juncture.
The Nationwide March for Palestine is demanding sanctions on Israel and the end of the two-way arms trade. Australia is still exporting military components to Israel, as it carries out a genocide. This is a war crime.
Sydney details:
What: Nationwide March for Palestine
Where: Hyde Park north, marching to Belmore Park
When: Sunday 24 August. Speeches commence at 1pm, march will commence at 2pm
Who: Palestine Action Group Sydney
Speakers:
- Uncle Chris Edwards, Indigenous Elder
- Grace Tame, author and survivor advocate
- Antoinette Lattouf, independent journalist and author
- Raneem Emad, Palestinian activist
- Henry Rajendra, NSW Teachers Federation President
- Sue Higginson MLC, NSW Greens
- MCs: Amal Naser and Josh Lees from Palestine Action Group Sydney
Quotes attributable to Amal Naser, Palestine Action Group:
“The United Nations has declared a famine in Gaza. A famine deliberately caused by Israel. They are starving children, women and men to death. They are starving my family. This is genocide, and yet our Australian Government continues to send weapons to the regime carrying out this atrocity. We need everyone in the world to stand up now and stop this genocide.”
“The Australian Government continues to export military hardware directly to Israel, including for the F-35 Fighter Jets which are being used to commit daily war crimes in Gaza. We don’t need more empty words from Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong, we need sanctions on Israel and an end to the two-way arms trade now.”
Sky’s ‘War Cabinet’ manufactures panic and prophecy over proof
By Binoy Kampmark | 21 August 2025, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/skys-war-cabinet-manufactures-panic-and-prophecy-over-proof,20069
Sky News assembling a cabinet of experts to talk about Australia’s readiness for war is a problem we should be worried about, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.
TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR NEWS networks have demonstrated that surfeit kills discretion. The search for fillers, distractions and items that will titillate, enrage or simply sedate, is an ongoing process.
Gone are the days when discerning choices were made about what constituted worthy news, an admittedly difficult problem that would always lead to priorities, rankings and judgments that might well be challenged. At the very least, news could be kept to specific time slots during the day, meaning that audiences could, at the very least, be given some form of rationing.
Such an approach culminated in that most famous of occasions on April 18, 1933 when the BBC’s news announcer declared with a minimum of fuss that, “There is no news.” This was followed by piano music playing out the rest of the segment.
On the pretext of coming across as informed and enlightened, such networks have also bought into astrology masquerading as sound comment. The commentators are intended to lend an air of respectability to something that either has not happened or something they have little idea about. Their credentials, however, are advertised like glitzy baubles, intended to arrest the intelligence of the viewing audience long enough to realise they have been had.
Sky News Australia is one such cringing example. The premise of The War Cabinet, which aired on August 11, was clear: those attending it were simply dying for greater militarism and war preparedness on the part of the Australian Government, while those preferring diplomacy would be treated like verminous denialists yearning for some sand to bury their heads in.
The point was less a matter of news than prediction and speculation, an exercise of mass bloviation. To lend a wartime flavour to proceedings, the event was staged in the Cabinet Room of Old Parliament House, which host Chris Uhlmann celebrated as the place Australia’s Prime Minister “John Curtin and his ministers steered the nation through World War II.” Former ministers, defence leaders, and national security experts were gathered “around the Cabinet table to answer a single question: is Australia ready for war?”
The stale view from Alexander Downer, Australia’s longest and, in many ways, most inconspicuous foreign minister, did little to rustle or stir. Liberal democracy, to be preserved in sacred glory, needed Australia to be linked to a “strong global alliance led by the United States”. That such an alliance might itself be the catalyst for war, notably given expectations from Washington about what Australia would do in a conflict with China, was ignored with an almost studious ignorance.
Instead, Downer saw quite the opposite:
“If this alliance holds, if it’s properly cemented, if it is well-led by the Americans… and if we, as members of the alliance, are serious about making a practical contribution to defence through our spending and our equipment, then we will maintain a balance of power in the world.”
His assessment of the current Albanese Government was one of some dottiness.
“I think the government here in Australia has made a major mistake by playing, if you like, politics with this issue of the dangers of the region and losing the balance of power because they don’t want to be seen as too close to President Trump.”
Any press briefing from Defence Minister Richard Marles regarding the anti-China AUKUS pact would ease any anxiety on Downer’s part. Under the Albanese Government, sovereignty has been surrendered to Washington in a way so remarkable it could be regarded as treasonous. While the Royal Australian Navy may never see a single U.S. nuclear-powered submarine, let alone a jointly constructed one, U.S. naval shipyards are rolling in the cash of the Australian taxpayer.
Former Labor Defence Minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, lamented that Australia’s strategic outlook in the Indo-Pacific was “deteriorating rather markedly,” a formulation utterly vague and a mere parroting of just about every other hawkish analyst that sees deterioration everywhere.
Thankfully, we had Strategic Forum CEO Ross Babbage to give some shape to it, which turned out to be that ragged motif of the Yellow Horde to the North readying to strike southwards. The Oriental Barbarians with a tinge of Communist Red were primary reasons for a worsening strategic environment, aided by their generous military expenditure. With almost a note of admiration, Babbage felt that China was readying for war by adjusting its economy and readying its people “for tough times that may come”.
The venal, ever noisy former Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo, who has an unhealthy appetite for warring matters, drew upon figures he could not possibly know, along with everybody else who have tried to read the inscrutable entrails of international relations.
Chances of conflict in the Indo-Pacific by 2027, for instance, was a “10 to 20 per cent” likelihood. Sky News, living down to its subterranean standards, failed to mention that Pezzullo had misused his position as one of Canberra’s most powerful bureaucrats to opine on ministerial appointments via hundreds of private text messages to Liberal Party powerbroker Scott Briggs.
The Australian Public Service Commission found that Pezzullo had, among other things, used his “duty, power, status or authority to seek to gain a benefit or advantage for himself” and “failed to maintain confidentiality of sensitive government information” and “failed to act apolitically in his employment”. His employment was subsequently terminated, and his Order of Australia stripped in September last year. Fine credentials for balanced commentary on the strategic outlook of a state.
Other talking heads were keen to push spine-tingling prospects of wicked regimes forming alliances and making mischief. Oleksandra Molloy, billed as an aviation expert, thought the “emerging axis” between Russia, North Korea and Iran “quite concerning”. Former naval officer and defence pundit Jennifer Parker urged the fattening of the defence budget to “develop a degree of autonomy”.
Retired Australian Army major general Mick Ryan was most unimpressed by the “zero risk” mentality that seemed to pervade “pretty much every bit of Australian society”.
The Department of Defence needed to take greater risks in terms of procurement, innovation and reducing “the amount of time it takes to develop capability”. His fantasy was positively Spartan in its military totalitarianism: an Australian state nurturing “a spirit of innovation that connects military, industry and society”. The cry for conscription must be just around the corner.
Chief war monger and think tanker Peter Jennings aired his all too familiar views on China, which have become pathological.
“It is utterly false for our government to say that somehow they have stabilised the relationship with China. Things may have improved on the trade front, but that is at the expense of ignoring the strategic developments which all of our colleagues around the table have spoken about, which is China is positioning for war.”
And there you had it: an hour of furious fretting and wailing anxiety with all figures in furious agreement, with a resounding boo to diplomacy and a hurrah for astrology.
Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 