Cheaper, greener power is on the way. As long as anti-net zero populists don’t throttle it in the cradle. Not that long ago, Mark Purcell, a retired rear admiral in the Australian navy, was paying about A$250 a month for electricity in his roomy family home on the Queensland coast.
Today, he says he makes as much as A$300 a month, or nearly $200, from the electricity he makes, stores and sells with his solar panels and batteries. “This is the future,” he told me. “This is what the energy transition could look like for a lot of folks.” Purcell is one of the 58,000-plus customers of Amber Electric, an eight-year-old Melbourne business that gives householders access to real-time wholesale power prices so they can use power when it’s cheap and sell what is stored in their batteries when it’s expensive.
The company is adding 5,000 customers a month, putting it among a new generation of fast-growing energy tech start-ups aiming to make electricity cheaper and greener, and not just in Australia. Amber’s dynamic pricing technology is due to launch soon in the UK, where the company has done licensing deals with the energy suppliers Ecotricity and E.On.
Norway’s Tibber offers similar services to the 1mn customers it has gained since launching in 2016 and expanding to Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands. In Germany, the market share of companies including Tibber, Octopus Energy and Rabot Charge has grown from 0.1 per cent in 2023 to 2.4 per cent in 2025, says the Kreutzer Consulting group. Between them they have more than 1mn customers, 77 per cent of whom are particularly or very happy with their provider, far more than the industry-wide figure of 57 per cent.
Remember those figures the next time you hear a rightwing populist condemn allegedly unaffordable net zero policies. In fact, this new class of energy tech entrepreneurs is showing how electricity can become more affordable precisely because of the renewables, batteries and electric cars that net zero efforts drive.
It is no accident Amber Electric began in Australia, long a world leader in rooftop solar systems that sit atop more than 4mn of its homes and small businesses. Its population of 28mn is now undergoing a home battery boom, following the July launch of a A$2.3bn government subsidy scheme. Industry estimates show rooftop solar can save households up to A$1,500 a year on energy bills, a figure that nearly doubles if you add a battery, and rises further with dynamic pricing. Is there a catch?
Right now, the upfront costs of green tech can be considerable. Queensland’s Purcell is a superuser who has spent tens of thousands of dollars on solar panels, batteries and a home energy management system that makes everything from his pool heater to his air conditioners price-responsive. His family also has two Teslas with even bigger batteries.
This is clearly unaffordable for many, but maybe not for long. Big home hardware retailers have begun to launch financing plans that let people pay monthly fees of less than A$150 for solar and battery packages rather than a big initial outlay.
In this article, IF volunteer Sol Woodroffe, considers the intergenerational fairness of the government’s financing models for Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C.
Building a nuclear power station: an intergenerational decision
Building a nuclear reactor is very expensive. In fact, the financing costs are the most expensive part. According to the World Nuclear Association, capital costs for new nuclear power stations account for at least 60% of their Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE). The LCOE is the total cost to build and operate a power plant over its lifetime divided by the total electricity output dispatched from the plant over that period. This means that when we talk about the price of nuclear, we are really talking about the price of borrowing to cover the upfront costs.
Specifically, when determining whether a government should invest in nuclear power, the cost depends on how much the government values cheap electricity for future generations. The decision to build a nuclear power station is a truly intergenerational one. This graph from the World Nuclear Association highlights how different discount rates affect the value for money of nuclear energy compared with other energy sources:
This shows that the relative capital intensity of building a nuclear power station means that the more we discount future generations, the less worth it nuclear energy seems from today’s standpoint.
The discount rate the government chooses to use on public infrastructure projects is, to some extent, determined by interest rates. But it is also an ethical choice about how much the government cares about future generations. The lower the value placed on future generations, the higher the discount rate used, and so the more expensive nuclear energy seems.
On the face of it, the UK government’s decision to build two enormous nuclear reactors should be a source of optimism for young people. Nuclear energy is one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy. In many parts of the world, it is also one of the cheapest. Decarbonisation, energy security and industrial strategy are all part of the motivation for building these reactors. Many of the UK’s current reactors were built in the 70s and 80s and will retire by the early 2030s. Without new capacity, the UK will lose a major source of low carbon power. Arguably, it’s a sign of the UK government daring to invest for future generations. And yet, a closer look at the financing of the two reactors tells a different story…
Sizewell C is a close imitation of Hinkley planned for the Suffolk coast. The UK government approved the development in July 2022 and committed public equity financing in November 2022. Because the Hinkley supply chain and licensing work already existed, ministers argued that a second EPR project would reduce design and regulatory costs. Sizewell C will have enough capacity to power around six million homes when operating.
What went wrong and why?
Both projects are running well behind their initial projected timelines, and both have run worryingly over budget. These two things are interrelated. Long construction periods push up financing costs. Again, the cost of finance here is all-important. Over a long construction period, during which there are no revenue streams from the project, the interest on funds borrowed can compound into very significant amounts (World Nuclear Association, 2023).
HPC’s original cost estimate was about £18 billion but now is projected to a whopping £31–£35 billion. Moreover, our research on the “nuclear premium” estimated the additional cost of power from Hinkley Point C for its 35-year initial contract period, compared to onshore wind and solar power, would be £31.2 billion and £39.9 billion respectively. Sizewell C’s projected cost has ballooned from an initial estimate of around £20 billion to £38 billion (in 2025 pricing), nearly doubling the original figure.
The cause of these cost overruns is clear. EDF has complained that the UK lacks the building infrastructure and productive capacity for such a massive project. This kind of capacity is built up over time and requires beginning with smaller projects and then gradually scaling up. To some extent, the government has acknowledged this mistake and so began to invest in the small modular reactor programme in the UK, but from the perspective of the taxpayer, it all seems too little too late.
Who is paying for these power station?
Ultimately, the UK taxpayer is paying for both power stations. But from an intergenerational fairness perspective, the key questions are which taxpayers and when. The government has an option to borrow and shield the current taxpaying generation from footing the bill, but rising UK borrowing costs and increasingly jittery bond markets mean this would come at a serious cost.
Hinkley Point: paid for by Gen Z and Gen Alpha
The financing model for each power station is very different. For Hinkley point, the government has agreed on a Contract for Difference. This means that private companies must cover the upfront costs, with the knowledge that they receive a guaranteed price for their energy when the costs are finished.
EDF, the French national energy company, and CGN, the Chinese national energy company, shouldered much of the initial capital cost. In return, the government guarantees a price of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 £) for 35 years of output.
There were serious advantages to this model from a public financing perspective. The main advantage was that the investors took on the construction-cost risk: the UK taxpayer has arguably not been punished because Hinkley Point’s financial costs have so enormously overrun.
Nonetheless, this model ultimately kicks the financial burden down the road. Ultimately, today’s Gen-Z and Gen Alpha will be made to pay for this deal.
This is because the guaranteed price will likely be a rip-off. The average price of energy today in terms of 2012 pounds is £50–55/MWh. The falling price of clean energy alternatives means that we should expect the real price of energy to fall over the next few decades. Therefore, it seems highly likely that the fixed price will be a seriously uncompetitive rate for future UK consumers.
Sizewell C: a fairer distribution of costs
The financing of Sizewell distributes the financing costs more fairly between generations. To pay for the reactor, the government switched to a Regulated Asset Base (RAB) model. This means that consumers begin contributing to the project’s financing through small charges on their energy bills while the plant is still under construction, rather than waiting until it generates electricity. The model provides investors with a regulated return during construction, reducing their exposure to financing risk.
The RAB model allows investors to share construction and operational risks with consumers, which in theory lowers the cost of capital. Since capital costs make up the majority of nuclear project expenses, this could make Sizewell C substantially cheaper overall, if delivered as planned.
From an intergenerational fairness perspective, the financing model is somewhat fairer as it smooths the cost of construction between generations. Nonetheless, the future taxpayers are the ones most exposed to the risk of cost overruns.
The cost of decommissioning
Historically, the cost of decommissioning nuclear power stations has been gravely underestimated in the UK. Decommissioning costs will be faced by generations well into the future, and so whether the state considers them massively depends on the chosen discount rate. Ultimately, the more the government values future consumers, the more seriously they must take these massive costs.
Sizewell and Hinkley both have operating lives of 60 years. However, with Sizewell, future taxpayers are exposed to the risk of ballooning decommissioning costs, whereas with Hinkley the operator must fully cover these costs.
Think of the children
When these large public infrastructure projects are discussed, the focus is often on whether government has negotiated value for money for UK taxpayers. But if the government wants to claim nuclear is a forward-looking investment, it must prove future generations won’t be the ones footing the bill.
The National Press Club of Australia lists 81 corporate sponsors on its website.
Twenty-one of them (listed below) are either part of the global arms industry or actively working on its behalf.
Ten are multinational weapons manufacturers or military services corporations. They include the world’s two biggest weapons makers, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon (RTX); British giant BAE Systems; France’s largest weapons-maker, Thales; and US weapons corporation Leidos – all five are in the global top 20. BAE Systems, which is the largest contractor to the Department of Defence, received $2 billion from Australian taxpayers last year.
In 2023, these five corporations alone were responsible for almost a quarter – 23.8 per cent (US$150.4 billion (A$231.5 billion)) – of total weapons sales (US$632 billion (A$973 billion)) made by the world’s top 100 weapons companies that year.
Last year, UN experts named Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems, RTX (Raytheon) and eight other multinationals in a statement, warning them that they risked being found in violation of international law for their continued supply of weapons, parts, components and ammunition to Israeli forces. The experts called on the corporations to immediately end weapons transfers to Israel. None has done so.
Another of the Club’s sponsors – Thales – is being investigated by four countries for widespread criminal activity in three separate corruption probes. In a fourth, long-running corruption case in South Africa, the country’s former president, Jacob Zuma, is now in court, alongside Thales, being tried on 16 charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and money laundering in connection with arms deals his government did with Thales.
Global expert Andrew Feinstein has documented his extensive research into the arms industry. He told Undue Influence that wherever the arms trade operates, it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”.
Undue Influence asked the Press Club’s CEO, Maurice Reilly, what written policies or guidelines were in place that addressed the suitability and selection of corporations proposing to become Press Club sponsors.
Mr Reilly responded: “The board are informed monthly about…proposals and have the right to refuse any application.”
Wherever the arms trade operates it “increases corruption and undermines democracy, good governance, transparency, and the rule of law, while, ironically, making us less safe”. – Andrew Feinstein, author of Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade
National Press Club board
The National Press Club, established by journalists in 1963, is an iconic Australian institution. It is best known for its weekly luncheon addresses, televised on the ABC, covering issues of national importance, after which the speaker is questioned by journalists.
The Club’s board has 10 directors led by Tom Connell, political host and reporter at Sky News, who was elected president in February following the resignation of the ABC’s Laura Tingle.
The other board members are: vice president Misha Schubert (CEO, Super Members Council of Australia; formerly with The Age and The Australian); treasurer Greg Jennett (ABC); Steve Lewis (senior adviser, SEC Newgate; formerly with NewsCorp and the Financial Review); Jane Norman (ABC); Anna Henderson (SBS); Julie Hare (Financial Review); Andrew Probyn (Nine Network); Gemma Daley (Media & Government Affairs, Ai Group); and Corrie McLeod, the sole representative from an independent media outlet – InnovationAus.
At least two board members have jobs that involve lobbying.
Long-term board member Steve Lewis works as a senior adviser for lobbying firm SEC Newgate, which itself is a Press Club sponsor and also has as clients the Press Club’s two largest sponsors: Westpac and Telstra. SEC Newgate has previously acted for several Press Club sponsors, including Serco (one of the arms industry multinationals listed below), BHP, Macquarie Bank, Tattarang, and Spirits & Cocktails Australia Inc.
Gemma Daley joined the board a year ago, having started with Ai Group as its head of media and government affairs four months earlier. Ms Daley had worked for Nationals’ leader David Littleproud, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and former treasurer Joe Hockey and, before that, for media outlets the Financial Review and Bloomberg. Ai Group has a significant defence focus and promotes itself as “the peak national representative body for the Australian defence industry”. The group has established a Defence Council and in 2017 appointed a former assistant secretary of the Defence Department, Kate Louis, to lead it. The co-chairs of its Defence Council are senior arms industry executives. One of them, Paul Chase, is CEO of Leidos Australia, a Press Club sponsor.
Undue Influence asked Ms Daley for comment on several aspects related to her position on the board, including whether she has had to declare any conflicts of interest to date. She responded: “Thanks for the inquiry. I have forwarded this through to Maurice Reilly. Have a good day.”
Given the potential for conflicts of interest to arise, as happens on any board, Undue Influence had already asked the Press Club CEO what written policies or guidelines existed to ensure the appropriate management of conflicts of interest by board members and staff.
Mr Reilly responded:
The Club has a directors’ conflict register which is updated when required. Each meeting, board members and management are asked if they have conflicts of interest with the meeting agenda. We have a standard corporate practice that where a director has a conflict on an agenda item they excuse themselves from the meeting and take no [part] in any discussion or any decision.
Undue Influence is neither alleging nor implying inappropriate or illegal behaviour by anyone named in this article. Our objective, as always, is to shine a light on, and scrutinise, the weapons industry’s opaque engagement in public life in Australia.
While Mr Reilly declined to disclose the Club’s sponsorship arrangements with Westpac and Telstra, citing “commercial in confidence” reasons, The Sydney Morning Herald reported earlier this year that Westpac paid $3 million in 2015 to replace NAB as the Press Club’s principal sponsor.
The SMH article, “Westpac centre stage at post-budget bash”, on Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ National Press Club address in the Great Hall of Parliament House in late March, added:
[Westpac] … gets more than its money’s worth in terms of access. New-ish chief executive Anthony Miller got the most coveted seat in the house, between Chalmers and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese… Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles were also on the front tables.
Westpac occupied prime real estate in the Great Hall, with guests on its tables including Treasury Secretary Steven Kennedy, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet boss Glyn Davis, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil and Labor national secretary and campaign mastermind Paul Erickson…
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was on the Telstra table.
Mr Reilly told Undue Influence that all the other corporate sponsors pay $25,000 per year, with a few paying extra as partners in the Club’s journalism awards.
The 21 arms industry and related sponsors therefore contribute an annual $525,000 to the Press Club’s coffers. This is 23% of the $2.26 million revenue it earns from “membership, sponsorship and broadcasting”, the Club’s largest revenue line, as shown in its 2024 financial statement.
“The National Press Club of Australia proudly partners with organisations that share our commitment to quality, independent journalism,” says the Club’s website.
“Aligning your brand with the National Press Club is an opportunity for unparalleled engagement in the Australian political debate and announces that your organisation is part of the business culture in Canberra.”
In response to Undue Influence’s questions about the Club’s cancellation of a planned address by the internationally acclaimed journalist Chris Hedges (covered below), Mr Reilly stated that: “For the avoidance of doubt [sponsors] do not receive any rights to speak at the club [nor are they] able to influence decisions on speakers.”
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Sponsors may not be granted a right to speak, but they are sometimes invited to speak, with their status as sponsors not always disclosed to audiences.
When the Club’s second largest sponsor, Telstra, spoke on 10 September, both Club president Tom Connell and Telstra CEO Vicki Brady noted the corporation’s longstanding sponsorship.
Compare this with two addresses given by $25,000 corporate sponsors – Kurt Campbell (former US deputy secretary of state, now co-founder and chair of The Asia Group) who gave an address on 7 September; and Mike Johnson, CEO of Australian Industry and Defence Network (AIDN), who gave an address on 15 October. Neither the Press Club nor the speakers disclosed the companies’ sponsorship of the Press Club.
While both speakers are considered experts in their field, the sponsorships should have been disclosed as a matter of public accountability.
“Priority seating and brand positioning”
On its website, the Club also promotes additional benefits of corporate sponsorship, including, “Brand association with inclusion on our prestigious ‘Corporate Partners’ board and recognition on the National Press Club of Australia website”.
The Club also promises corporate sponsors that they will receive “priority seating and brand positioning” at its weekly luncheon addresses, as the following examples show. (As principal sponsor, the logo of Westpac appears on every table and on the podium.)
The local subsidiary of British giant BAE Systems has benefited handsomely from its modest $25,000 annual sponsorship. It had the best table – behind the microphone from which journalists asked questions – at then defence minister Peter Dutton’s address in November 2021. The BAE logo appeared on the national public broadcaster – which has strict rules against advertising – eight times during the half-hour question period following Mr Dutton’s address, giving BAE Systems extended ‘brand positioning’ with its target market: senior politicians, defence public servants and military officers.
On 28 November 2023, Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy spoke about AUKUS. The logos of Press Club sponsors DXC Technology and Deloitte were also well-situated for the camera during question time. Both companies are significant contractors to the Defence Department. Deloitte also works for the weapons industry, including BAE Systems.
Cancelling Chris Hedges
The Press Club recently drew significant attention to itself after it cancelled a planned address by the Pulitzer-prize-winning American journalist, and former long-term war correspondent, Chris Hedges. Mr Hedges reported for The New York Times for 15 years, from 1990-2005, including long stints as its bureau chief in the Middle East and in the Balkans. He was to have appeared at the Press Club on 20 October.
However, in late September, Press Club CEO Maurice Reilly cancelled Mr Hedges’ appearance. This occurred two weeks after the Club was sent details of what Mr Hedges proposed to cover, including a link to an article he had entitled The Betrayal of Palestinian Journalists. In that article, Mr Hedges wrote:
Israel has murdered 245 journalists in Gaza by one count and more than 273 by another… No war I covered comes close to these numbers of dead. Since Oct 7 [2023], Israel has killed more journalists “than the US Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.
Mr Hedges also intended to cover what he has described as the “barrage of Israeli lies amplified and given credibility by the Western press”, examples of which he provides in the above article.
Following a scathing post from Mr Hedges about the Press Club’s cancellation of his address, and significant public disquiet, the Press Club issued a statement denying it had come under external pressure to cancel his address. Inexplicably, the Press Club also denied it had confirmed the Hedges address. This claim was easily checked and soon reported to be false. Undue Influence has seen the emails showing that the Press Club had confirmed the address.
National Press Club funded by companies profiting from genocide
In July, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, issued a report explaining how the corporate sector had become complicit with the State of Israel in conducting the genocide.
Her report also noted that arms-making multinationals depend on legal, auditing and consulting firms to facilitate export and import transactions to supply Israel with weapons.
Numerous members of the public posted their concerns on the Press Club’s Facebook page. Here are three examples: [on original]
Four of the world’s largest accounting, audit and consulting firms – all of which have arms industry corporations as clients – are sponsors of the Press Club: KPMG, Accenture, Deloitte and EY. Until recently, PwC counted among them.
EY (Ernst & Young) has been Lockheed Martin’s auditor since 1994. EY is also one of two auditors used by Thales, and has been for 22 years. Deloitte has been BAE Systems’ auditor since 2018. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – a Press Club sponsor until 2024 – has been Raytheon’s auditor since 1947.
Lockheed Martin’s supply to Israel of F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and C-130 Hercules transport planes, and their parts and components, along with Hellfire missiles and other munitions, has directly facilitated Israel’s genocide.
Raytheon’s (RTX) supply of guided missiles, bombs, and other advanced weaponry and defence systems, like the Iron Dome interceptors, also directly supports Israel military capability.
In England, BAE Systems builds the rear fuselage of every F-35, with the horizontal and vertical tails and other crucial components manufactured in its UK and Australian facilities. It also supplies the Israeli military with munitions, missile launching kits and armoured vehicles, while BAE technologies are integrated into Israel’s drones and warships.
Thales supplies Israel’s military with vital components, including drone transponders. Australian Zomi Frankcom and her World Central Kitchen colleagues were murdered by an Israeli Hermes drone, which contain Thales’ transponders. Yet, echoing Australia, France claims its military exports to Israel are non-lethal.
National Press Club sponsors from military-industrial complex
# Rankings compiled by SIPRI at December 2023 (published December 2024)
^ NOTE ON US COMPANIES: The Defence Department procures weapons/military goods directly from Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon) and other US corporations via the US Government’s Foreign Military Sales program. The value of FMS contracts is not included in the table.
Note on the use of the word ‘genocide’
Three independent experts appointed by the UN’s Human Rights Commission – the Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel – issued a report in September that concluded Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. One of the Commissioners – Chris Sidoti – speaking at the Press Club recently, said the Commission’s report will remain the most authoritative statement on this issue until the world’s highest authority, the International Court of Justice, makes its ruling.
WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. If the US resumes nuclear weapons testing, this would be extremely dangerous for humanity. ATOMIC BLACKMAIL? The Weaponisation of Nuclear Facilities During the Russia-Ukraine War.
Korea has been given permission by Donald Trump to build a nuclear powered submarine.
The permission is a dramatic move that would admit South Korea to a small group of nations that possess this type of vessel.
The US president met with leader on his ongoing tour of Asia.
US President Donald Trump says he has given South Korea approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, a dramatic move that would admit Seoul to a small club of nations possessing such vessels.
Mr Trump, who has been meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and other regional leaders during his visit, also said Seoul had agreed to buy vast quantities of US oil and gas.
The submarine will be built in a Philadelphia shipyard, where South Korean firms have increased investment, Mr Trump wrote on social media.
Mr Trump and Mr Lee finalised details of a fraught trade deal at a summit in South Korea on Wednesday.
Mr Lee had also been seeking US permission for South Korea to reprocess nuclear fuel.
Nuclear restrictions easing?
Seoul is barred from reprocessing without US consent, under a pact between the countries.
“I have given them approval to build a nuclear-powered submarine, rather than the old-fashioned and far less nimble, diesel-powered submarines that they have now,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
South Korea’s Industry Ministry said its officials had not been involved in any detailed discussions about building the submarines in Philadelphia.
While South Korea has a sophisticated shipbuilding industry, Mr Trump did not spell out where the propulsion technology would come from for a nuclear-powered submarine, which only a handful of countries possess.
The US has been working with Australia and Britain on a project for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines, involving technology transfers from the United States.
The US has so far only shared that technology with Britain, back in the 1950s.
Mr Lee said when he met Mr Trump on Wednesday that allowing South Korea to build several nuclear-powered submarines equipped with conventional weapons would significantly reduce the burden on the US military.
He also asked for Mr Trump’s support to make substantial progress on South Korea being allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, or on uranium enrichment.
This is not allowed under the nuclear agreement between the two countries, even though South Korea possesses nuclear reactors to generate power.
Approval raises questions
Mr Lee’s predecessors had wanted to build nuclear-powered submarines, but the US had opposed this idea for decades.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said the issue of South Korea acquiring such submarines “raises all sorts of questions.”
“As with the AUKUS deal, (South Korea) is probably looking for nuclear propulsion services suitable for subs, including the fuel, from the US,” he said.
Mr Kimball said such submarines usually involved the use of highly-enriched uranium and would “require a very complex new regime of safeguards” by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a key role in implementing the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
“It remains technically and militarily unnecessary for South Korea to acquire the technology to extract weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel or to acquire uranium enrichment capabilities, which can also be used to produce nuclear weapons,” he said.
“If the United States seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons worldwide, the Trump administration should resist such overtures from allies as strongly as it works to deny adversary access to these dual-use technologies.”
Jenny Town, who heads 38 North, a Korea-focused research group in Washington, said it was inevitable that South Korean demands for US cooperation on nuclear issues would grow, given recent allegations about Russian technical cooperation to help nuclear-armed North Korea make progress towards acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.
Kim Dong-yup, a North Korea studies professor at Kyungnam University, said the Lee-Trump summit had formalised a “transaction scheme of security guarantees and economic contributions” for maintaining the extended deterrence and alliance in exchange for South Korea’s increased defence spending and nuclear-powered subs and US investments.
“In the end, this South Korea-US summit can be summarised in one word: the commercialisation of the alliance and the commodification of peace,” he said.
“The problem is that the balance of that deal was to maximise American interests rather than the autonomy of the Korean Peninsula.”
In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality.
the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US
The October 20 performance saw few transgressions and many feats of compliance. As a guest in the White House, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in no mood to be combative, and US President Donald Trump was accommodating. There was, however, an odd nervous glanceshot at the host at various points.
The latest turn of events from the perspective of those believing in Australian sovereignty, pitifully withered as it is, remains dark. In an attempt to seize a share of a market currently dominated by China, Albanese has willingly placed Australia’s rare earths and critical minerals at the disposal of US strategic interests. The framework document focusing on mining and processing of such minerals is drafted with the hollow language of counterfeit equality. The objective “is to assist both countries in achieving resilience and security of minerals and rare earths supply chains, including mining, separation and processing.” The necessity of securing such supply is explicitly noted for reasons of war or, as the document notes, “necessary to support manufacturing of defense and advanced technologies” for both countries.
The US and Australia will draw on the money bags of the private sector to supplement government initiatives (guarantees, loans, equity and so forth), an incentive that will cause much salivating joy in the mining industry. Within 6 months “measures to provide at least $1 billion in financing to projects located in each of the United States and Australia expected to generate end product for delivery to buyers in the United States and Australia.”
The inequality of the agreement does not bother such analysts as Bryce Wakefield, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He mysteriously thinks that Albanese did not “succumb to the routine sycophancy we’ve come to expect from other leaders”, something of a “win”. With the skill of a cabalist, he identified the benefits in the critical minerals framework which he thinks will be “the backbone for joint investment in at least six Australian projects.” The agreement would “counter China’s dominance over rare earths and supply chains.”
Much of what was agreed between Trump and Albanese was barely covered by the sleepwalking press corps, despite the details of a White House factsheet. There were more extorting deals extracted from Canberra, with agreements to purchase US$1.2 billion in Anduril unmanned underwater vehicles and US$2.6 billion worth of Apache helicopters. Of particular significance was the agreement to push Australia’s superannuation funds to increase investments in the US to US$1.44 trillion by 2035, which would increase the pool by US$1 trillion. “This unprecedented investment will create tens of thousands of new, high paying jobs for America.
Back in Australia, attention was focused on other things. The mock affair known as the opposition party tried to make something of the personal ribbing given by Trump to Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd. Small minds are distracted by small matters, and instead of taking issue with the appalling cost of AUKUS with its chimerical submarines, or the voluntary relinquishment of various sectors of the Australian economy to US control, Sussan Ley of the Liberal Party was adamant that Rudd be sacked. This was occasioned by an encounter where Trump had turned to the Australian PM to ask if “an ambassador” had said anything “bad about me”. Trump’s follow up remarks: “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” The finger was duly pointed at Rudd by Albanese. “You said bad?” inquired Trump. Rudd, never one to manage the brief response, spoke of being critical of the president in his pre-ambassadorial phase but that was all in the past. “I don’t like you either,” shot Trump in reply. “And I probably never will.”
This was enough to exercise Ley, who claimed to be “surprised that the president didn’t know who the Australian ambassador was.” This showed her thin sheet grasp of White House realities. Freedom Land’s previous presidents have struggled with names, geography and memory, the list starting with such luminaries as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Not knowing the name of an ambassador from an imperial outpost is hardly a shock.
The Australian papers and broadcasters, however, drooled and saw seismic history in the presence of casual utterance. Sky News host Sharri Markson was reliably idiotic: “The big news of course is President Trump’s meeting with Albanese today and the major news story to come out of it is Trump putting Rudd firmly in his place.” Often sensible in her assessments, the political columnist Annabel Crabb showed she had lost her mind, imbibing the Trump jungle juice and relaying it to her unfortunate readers. “From his humble early days as a child reading Hansard in the regional Sunshine State pocket of Eumundi, Kevin Rudd has been preparing for this martyrdom.”
Having been politically martyred by the Labor Party at the hands of his own deputy Julia Gillard in June 2010, who challenged him for being a mentally unstable, micromanaging misfit driving down poll ratings, this was amateurish. But a wretchedly bad story should not be meddled with. At the very least, Crabb blandly offered a smidgen of humour, suggesting that Albanese, having gone into the meeting “with the perennially open chequebook for American submarines, plus an option over our continent’s considerable rare-earths reserves” was bound to come with some human sacrifice hovering “in the ether.”
In this grand abdication of responsibility by the press and bought think tankers, little in terms of detail was discussed about the next annexation of Australian control over its own affairs by the US. It was all babble about the views of Trump and whether, in the words of Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Rudd “did an extremely good job, not only in getting the meeting, but doing the work on the critical minerals deal and AUKUS.” For the experts moored in antipodean isolation, Rudd had either been bad by being disliked for past remarks on the US chief magistrate, or good in being a representative of servile facilitation. To give him his due, Wakefield was correct to note how commentators in Australia “continue to personalise the alliance” equating it to “an episode of The Apprentice.”
In May 2025 US President Donald Trump ordered the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to review US radiation protection standards for workers and the public. The order claims that these and other NRC regulatory processes hinder development of US nuclear power generation and need to be revised – in line with another set of his ‘alternative facts’ that overturn almost all the established principles that provide the basis of national and international protection standards.
This latest diktat will result in a significant weakening of current protection at a time when we have mounting scientific evidence that the existing standards need to be significantly improved/tightened. Permissible radiation exposures to workers will likely increase five-fold. Exposures to the public could be 100 times greater than currently permitted. Changes in the USA will lead to pressure for similar changes to standards in other countries, including Australia. Whether we end up with better or worse protection will require a sustained awareness and advocacy campaign. This will need to involve exposed workers, trade unions, environment and public health interests arguing: first that our government and radiation protection agencies should reject the US approach, and second that new and improved national standards in line with the latest evidence should be adopted.
Health effects of radiation exposure
It has long been recognised that all radiation exposures present a risk to human health. Put simply there is no safe level of radiation – whether naturally occurring or artificially generated. Some we cannot avoid. Some like diagnostic medical x-rays we accept as having other countervailing benefits. High doses, like those received by Japanese residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from nuclear bombs in 1945, or some of the first responders to the Ukrainian Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in 1986, cause ‘radiation sickness’ where whole organs are damaged often with fatal effects.
The results from high-dose exposures are what are known as ‘determinate’ effects. Above a threshold dose these effects occur with severity determined by the dose. Radiation standards are set to keep exposures below the threshold, so these do not occur.
Lower doses cause a different kind of damage. Particularly concerning are increased rates of a wide range of cancers and genetic damage being passed on to future generations. These are referred to as ‘stochastic’ effects. The damage is not ‘determinate’ with a threshold below which they do not occur. Stochastic damage is a ‘hit and miss’ affair. You either get this type of health damage or you don’t. And if you do the scale of the damage isn’t related to the radiation dose you received.
The initial damage occurs at the cellular level where a radiation strike can have one of three outcomes. (i) It may simply pass through causing no damage. Alternatively, (ii) the radiation may kill the cell which isn’t a problem, unless too many cells are killed at once affecting functioning of whole organs. Our bodies are eliminating and replacing dead and dying cells all the time. Problems arise however when (iii) the cell is merely damaged and goes on to replicate in this damaged form.
Our bodies do have well developed repair mechanisms that often result in adequate repair of the damage. There is even some evidence suggesting that some such radiation damage and repair may assist the body’s capacity for repair in the future. But where radiation leaves the damaged cell to survive and replicate uncontrollably in this damaged form the result is what we call a cancer – sometimes detectable only decades after the initial radiation damage. The process can be complicated further as growth of some cancers involves a two-stage process – initiation, where damage (from radiation or other environmental pollutants) leaves the cell susceptible, followed by promotion (again from radiation or other sources) which drives the cell-cancer process forward.
Stochastic radiation damage is real. it doesn’t involve a threshold dose. Any exposure can be the one that causes the initial and/or subsequent damage leading to the health effects. We are in the world of ‘probability’ – far from certainty at the individual level but with fairly predictable outcomes at the population level which allow us to assess the risk (i.e., probability of an adverse outcome) individuals face from receiving small, sometimes repeated, doses of radiation.
Radiation protection principles. In light of these established mechanisms for harm from radiation, standard setting bodies have long adopted three principles – that any exposure needs to be: (i) justified as necessary against some social benefits; (ii) kept as low as reasonably achievable (the ALARA principle); and (iii) kept below specified limits set in regulations.
The last of these has been the subject of much controversy over the years. Standards have been set for workers’ occupational exposures and for public exposures. These, first, ensure exposures are below the threshold levels where deterministic effects might occur. Below these high levels, they have been set such that the risk of stochastic effects – particularly cancers and genetic damage are at levels deemed ‘acceptable’. There have been arguments over both what is ‘acceptable’ and how the probable level of risk from any given low dose is estimated.
Estimates of risk A number of early studies of patients exposed as part of medical procedures indicated a problem with radiation exposure and some early estimates of the stochastic risk. Since then, the bulk of the data for the estimates of risk has come from studies of survivors of the Japanese nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. These Life Span Studies (LSS) have consistently shown increases in cancer rates among survivors higher than those in the non-exposed population. There are a number of problems with this data – not least that survivors were not wearing film badges when the bombs went off, so all doses have had to be estimated later. They were also the ‘hardy’ survivors of wide-ranging traumatic events, perhaps less vulnerable to damage from radiation Most of these survivors received relatively high doses as a single exposure or within a relatively short time period. More accurate measures of small exposures repeated over longer time periods to a general population, might be expected to yield different results.
However, these were the best data to be had. The risks at lower doses are estimated using the assumption that, if there is no safe level of exposure, no threshold below which stochastic effects do not occur, we can estimate lower dose risks on a straight line from these higher LSS doses. This Linear No Threshold (LNT) assumption, though adopted by all stands setting bodies, has at times been contested. Some have suggested a sub-linear relationship with a threshold for any effects. Others have made the case for a super-linear or marginally higher effect at lower doses where these are spread over longer time periods or result from radiative material that gets inside the body.
For now all the significant agencies agree that radiation protection for workers and the public should be based on LNT and the three radiation protection principles: justification, ALARA, and Specific Exposure Limits. These agencies include: the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionising Radiation (known as the BEIR Committee) and national agencies like the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA). The cancer risk from low dose radiation is estimated to be in the range of 4-6% per Sievert (1000 mSv) of exposure. The risk of genetic damage (first two generations only) is estimated to be around 1.5% per Sievert.
These estimates have resulted in national protection bodies setting standards that limit annual exposures. For workers the annual limit is 20 mSv as a target – but with 50 mSv allowed in any year provided the average over five years does not exceed 20 mSv. The annual limit for public exposures is 1 mSv. All of these are for exposures in addition to what might be received from natural background radiation or exposures due to medical procedures such as diagnostic x-rays and nuclear medicine.
Change is coming – one way or another. It is these protection principles and the exposure standards for workers and the public that the Presidential directive to the US NRC seeks to overturn. It calls on the NRC to reconsider reliance on LNT (and ALARA) as the basis for standard setting at low doses, where there is a need to protect against probable stochastic effects and directs that instead the NRC set standards based on deterministic effects.
This will likely result in a significant weakening of the current standards at a time when the evidence strongly suggests that they are in need of further tightening. The current standards have been in place since 1991. Revisions at that time were the result of a sustained campaign throughout the 1980s led by trade unions in the UK, Europe, USA and Canada for reduction of the then 50 mSv occupational and 5 mSv public limits -justified in large part by emerging evidence from the Japanese lifespan studies. As previously noted, estimates of risk from these was based on one-off short-term exposure to relatively high doses (at and above 100 mSv). Since then, studies in Europe and North America of workers exposed over years of work in nuclear industries to doses below the current occupational limits, indicate the risks are around 2 to 3 times greater than those used for setting the current standards. They also show a doubling of expected rates of cardio-vascular diseases: strokes, arthro-sclerosis, and heart damage. In addition, studies of populations living close to nuclear facilities in Europe and the USA show childhood cancer rates significantly higher than expected. This evidence is cause for concern, suggesting that the current standards provide inadequate protection and need to be tightened.
A new campaign for improved protection? Past experience suggests that persuading national and international bodies to improve radiation protection standards is far from easy but not impossible. In the short term, a campaign would be seeking clear and unequivocal statements from national protection agencies that reject the US president’s directive that the NRC abandon the fundamental principles which have formed the basis for regulating worker and public exposures. If implemented Trump’s proposals would likely result in occupational exposure limits five times higher than presently allowed, and public exposure limits could be 100 times greater.
The campaign should seek assurances that there will be no change to the established principles underpinning radiation protection: that there is no safe level of radiation, that all exposures should be kept as low as can be reasonably achievable; and that occupational and public limits need to be based on the best scientific evidence of risk to human populations.
Raising the concern about, and seeking rejection of, the likely US NRC changes will require building an informed coalition of trade union, environment and public health interests. Occupational and public radiation exposures are more widespread that commonly appreciated. Workers are routinely exposed in mining, industry and medicine as well as those associated with the nuclear power industry. The. campaign could involve local initiatives that focus concerns of workers in , and people living close to sites of: proposed nuclear power plants; existing uranium, mineral sands, and hard rock mines; proposed ‘rare earth’ mines; medical and other radioactive waste storage sites; and other activities that routinely release radiative materials.
Opposing Trump’s latest proposals to weaken standards is fairly straightforward. If implemented by the NRC they would dismantle the whole edifice on which radiation protection has been built over the past 80 years – a framework that many concerned about radiation protection within the affected industries have invested time and energy to establish and maintain.
Pressing the claim for improvements is harder but not impossible given the evidence for greater harm that is emerging. The case can already be made for at least halving the permissible occupational and public exposure limits. If we are successful in pressing for improved protection standards, the nuclear industry is unlikely to thank President Trump for opening this can of worms with his NRC directive. Once opened it will be hard to close without increasing worker and public awareness of how any, and all radiation exposures increase health risks to workers the public and to future generations.
Tony Webb has worked as a researcher, consultant and advisor on radiation and health issues to politicians, trade unions, environment and public health groups in the UK, Europe, USA , Canada and Australasia since the late1970s. He can be contacted for information on how to assist the latest evolving international campaign viatonyrwebb@gmail.com.
the greatest threat to Australia’s security is subservience to U.S. militarism.
Politics for the people, 30 Oct 25
Introduction: A Nation Out of Balance
The latest Ipsos Issues Monitor shows that cost of living, housing, crime, and healthcare matter most to Australians. Yet fewer than 8 per cent name defence as a concern. Despite this, defence spending in Australia now stands at about A$59 billion for 2025-26, a record amount.
While households struggle with rent hikes, soaring groceries, and lengthy hospital waits, government priorities tell a different story. If our leaders can mobilise billions for submarines and foreign military bases, why not for homes, hospitals, and community safety?
The government’s growing defence spending shows how far priorities have shifted from citizens’ needs.
The Problem: Spending That Ignores Public Needs
1. Australians Struggle While Defence Budgets Soar
According to SBS’s “If the Budget Were $100”, defence receives $6.60, health $15.90, and welfare $37.00. The government insists on “fiscal responsibility” when it comes to families, but not when signing billion-dollar arms contracts.
This surge in defence spending contrasts sharply with the lack of targeted cost-of-living support.
The mismatch is stark: Australians cite the cost of living in Australia as their top issue, yet policies focus on militarisation. A nation cannot claim security when its citizens cannot afford food, rent, or electricity.
The 2025-26 Budget allocates A$9.3 billion to social housing and homelessness, barely a sixth of defence spending. Hospitals receive about A$33.9 billion in Commonwealth funding, far short of what’s needed to end long emergency queues and staff shortages.
Using public money productively, Australia could expand housing supply and modernise hospitals without “finding” tax revenue. As a sovereign currency issuer, the Commonwealth can fund whatever domestic resources are available.
Workers juggle multiple jobs. Families spend over 30 per cent of their income on rent. Hospitals cancel surgeries due to staff burnout. Meanwhile, record military budgets create jobs, but not the kind that house or heal people.
This deepens inequality and fuels public frustration. Cost of living in Australia headlines dominate the news, yet solutions are still tokenistic while weapons programs thrive.
4. Who Benefits from the Defence Boom – and Who Are We Really Defending Against?
Arms corporations and political donors benefit most. AUKUS contracts flow to foreign firms. U.S. forces rotate through Darwin, and Pine Gap stays a key U.S. intelligence hub.
So, who is Australia defending against? Officially, the government cites a “deteriorating Indo-Pacific environment.” Australia faces no imminent invasion. The real risk lies in our alliance obligations. Much of this defence spending directly supports U.S. strategic goals, not Australian security.
When Washington pursues containment of China, Australia follows, even if it damages trade and peace. This dependence undermines sovereignty and raises the uncomfortable truth: the greatest threat to Australia’s security is subservience to U.S. militarism.
Economic insecurity, environmental decline, and eroded independence are the dangers we should fear. As a nation with dollar sovereignty, Australia can defend its people through prosperity, not through weapons for U.S. wars.
The Solution: What Must Be Done
5. Use Dollar Sovereignty for People, Not War
Australia issues its own currency. It cannot “run out” of money but can run out of political will. By embracing Modern Monetary Theory principles, the government could fund full employment, universal healthcare, and green infrastructure before military expansion.
6. Re-prioritise the Budget for National Wellbeing
Australia can realign its priorities by:
Expanding public housing nationwide.
Investing heavily in healthcare staffing and preventive care.
Addressing crime through community programs, not incarceration.
Keeping defence strictly for territorial protection, not for U.S. wars.
Redirecting even 10 per cent of Australia’s defence spending toward housing and health would transform lives and strengthen genuine security.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does Australia spend so much on defence? Defence growth is politically tied to the U.S. alliance and AUKUS, not citizen demand.
Who are we really defending against? Australia’s rising defence spending is driven more by alliance politics than genuine threats. No nation threatens Australia. The real danger is being drawn into conflicts created by foreign powers.
Can public money fund housing and health without cuts elsewhere? Yes, as the currency issuer, Australia can fund both. The constraint is resources, not revenue.
What would happen if 10 per cent of defence spending were redirected? Billions would build thousands of homes, hire nurses and teachers, and ease cost-of-living pressure.
Who will guarantee the ‘offtake’ for Australia’s rare earths mining boom? Jude Manning on the prospect of a China price war and long-term government subsidies.
Anthony Albanese got plenty of media fanfare this week for a successful visit to Washington, despite some bizarre hysteria over a pretty good humoured exchange between Trump and Ambassador Kevin Rudd. The deal involved AUKUS and critical minerals, where they announced joint funding for projects in Australia and the US to diversify supply chains away from China.
No sweat on AUKUS, unsurprisingly, although apparently the deal needed ‘shoring up’. The King has made a habit of squeezing his allies lately, so Trump waving the subs deal through without so much a second glance tells you everything you need to know about how good that deal is, for him. by Jude Manning | Oct 24, 2025 |
Critical Minerals
The “substance” was in critical minerals. The “$US8.5 billion deal” really involves only an $US1B commitment from each country to kickstart projects in the US and Australia. The $US8.5B figure speculates on the value of the projects, and anticipates private sector funding to make up the $US6.5B gap. A cynic might suggest the US and Australia have agreed to spend $1USB each in their own critical minerals industries.
Two projects here in Australia have been confirmed: $307m in the Alcoa-Sojitz Gallium refinery, and $153m for Arafura’s Nolans Rare Earths Project – with nine others receiving interest from the US and Australian governments, including upgrades to Nyrstar’s Port Pirie smelter to produce Antimony.
Rare earths are a subset of critical minerals which refer to 17 elements with similar optical, magnetic and electrical properties. Contrary to their name, they are not particularly rare. They exist in low concentrations across the globe, but are difficult to extract in large quantities.
Rare earths are essential for any advanced manufacturing, from solar panels and wind turbines, to jets, data centres, and oil refining.
The aim of the deal is to break China’s stranglehold on critical minerals, and specifically rare earths mining and processing. China currently makes up about 70% of rare earth mining, and 90% of global processing. The deal comes as a response to China imposing restrictions on a proliferation of its rare earths, or products containing them, accelerating fears of Chinese economic coercion.
Benefits for Australia
Tim Buckley, director of Climate Energy Finance, was optimistic about the deal, and argued Australia should leverage its natural advantages, as well as its position in the US-China trade war, to move up the export value chain by expanding its onshore processing and refining capacity.
“It’s about time Australia stood up and looked out for its geopolitical interests … Other countries have been subsidising their industries while we’ve been playing by the free market. Which means, we lose.”
Buckley said he’d like to see Australia make this kind of deal with other governments like Japan, India, the UK and the EU. He also argued developing this capability was crucial for Australia’s Future Made in Australia plans, and suggested that the technology transfer, expertise, infrastructure and capital involved could improve the viability of adjacent projects and industries, such as Green Iron.
“Substance and follow-through over words will be key to the credibility and real-world impacts of this new announcement.”
Environmental concerns
The open questions about this deal aren’t just a matter of substance, however. The two parties have promised to slash red and green tape to get the projects up and running as soon as possible, prompting concern that environmental and community outcomes won’t be properly considered. Or, if they are, that proposed project timelines are unrealistic.
The agreement states:
“The Participants are taking measures to accelerate, streamline, or deregulate permitting timelines and processes, including to obtain permits for critical minerals and rare earths mining, separation, and processing within their respective domestic regulatory systems, consistent with applicable law.”
The prospect of hurried environmental approvals is particularly frightening given the nature of rare earth mining and refining, which is notoriously damaging to the environment and water intensive. Processing rare earths often involves separating them from radioactive materials like uranium and thorium, waste that is very difficult to deal with. It’s part of the reason we gave up rare earth mining in the first place.
Who is footing the bill?
The other big question when it comes to pouring taxpayer money into Australian critical minerals, is who will guarantee the offtake – an agreed floor price for the output. Fierce price competition from China, which already produces enough rare earths to meet global demand, is inevitable.
“In about a year from now, we’ll have so many critical minerals and rare earths that you won’t know what to do with them. They’ll be worth about two dollars”
Trump said it perfectly. Breaking China’s stranglehold on rare earths will inevitably result in oversupply: the west has decided it wants to cut out 90% of the existing market. Experts and industry leaders are sober about the fact
‘the industry will be dependent on government support well into the long term. ‘
Australia’s demand for rare earths and critical minerals is nothing compared to advanced manufacturing nations like Japan and the US, regardless of how lucid our Future Made in Australia visions are. Does Australia have any business subsidising an industry which, by its own admission, is unprofitable?
There are benefits to be had by moving into rare earth mining and processing, if countries who actually need the finished product stump up the capital. (Even the Reserve Bank has warned this week that rare earths could be more of a “trickle than a boom”).
Even if they do, will Australians see a royalty for their natural resources? It’s easy to imagine how a critical minerals ‘boom’ becomes another LNG, where we lure in a foreign industry, at massive environmental cost,
“in return for few jobs and a pittance in tax and royalty revenue, all while the profits go offshore. “
Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people
Australia is paying for America’s submarines, striking a deal with a President we still have to fact-check. Dr Kim Sawyerreports.
HE IS THE MASTER showman. He knows where to position the actors, where to position the cameras, where to position the lights. He knows how to spray on his make-up and the make-up of others. Every press conference, every Cabinet meeting is the reality show of the showman.
“Young Donald Trump had been an athlete as a teenager, and he aspired to a career in Hollywood. He ultimately fulfilled his father’s desire for a successor in the family business in real estate. But what the son really always wanted was to be a star.”
The reality show The Apprentice made him a star. The Apprentice was his apprenticeship. Trump knows who is willing to be conned; he knows their price or how to determine their price. He thinks he knows the price of everything and everyone, but really knows the value of nothing. He is the confidence man.
Trump is the confidence man of fiction best understood by reading Ibsen’s Master Builder or by viewing the 1958 episode‘The End of the World’ of the CBS series Trackdown that featured a character who wanted to build a wall, and who had all the confidence of the confidence man. Sound familiar? The fictitious character was called Trump. He was finally exposed as a fraud. The fictitious Trump was finally arrested.
The meeting of Trump and Albanese was his latest reality show, the Master and the Apprentice. The Master got what we wanted. He got the deference he craved. He got the deal he wanted. The Apprentice got what he wanted. He got the endorsement of power of the Confidence Man.
The art of the deal.
Perforce, the deal is a con. Turnbull and Keating understand. Morrison and Albanese do not. We should never have agreed to AUKUS. It’s not just the cost of $368 billion over 30 years that includes $123bn as a contingency for the risk of a cost blowout. The risks are everywhere.
We have already paid more than $3 billion, the premium for a very uncertain insurance policy. As Turnbull has noted, the submarines are currently being produced at a rate of 1.1 per year.
“They need to get to two by 2028 to be able to meet their own requirements, and to 2.33 to meet their own, plus Australia’s. And they have not been able to lift production rates despite expenditure of over $10 billion over the last six or seven years. So, they’ve got a real problem.”
We’ve got a bigger problem.
Governments are like portfolio managers. The government needs to understand diversification, that you do not put all your eggs in a basket of submarines. The defence budget is so tied up in submarines, we don’t have room to invest in emerging defence technologies, in patrol boats, frigates or the amphibious landing craft we need for immediate problems like evacuations. The budget is being skewed towards submarines that will not be supplied until the early 2030s, away from writing off the $70 billion of student debt that three million young Australians face. The cost of the deal.
We have become so inured to the lies of the conman, we have to fact-check everything he says. When Trump said he had been to Australia, I thought it was another porky, but no, he had visited Australia, not as the President but as a spruiker to the National Achievement Congress in 2011. The conman spruiked the message of the grifter as to how to get everyone else to pay his debts. It wasn’t Trump’s first visit to the antipodes. In August 1993, Trump visited Auckland as part of a consortium bidding for a casino operator’s licence. At the time, Trump was mired in debt. The bid was unsuccessful.
Truth and falsity are transactional for Trump. He has always used the mantra. “If you say something often enough, it becomes true.” Interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald in 2011, Trump criticised Obama’s job plan as doomed and unlikely to have any impact. At the time, the unemployment rate was nine per cent, at the end of Obama’s term, unemployment was 4.9 per cent. Trump was always anti-Obama. Trump was always false.
The other leading actor in the show that we watched last Monday was our own Prime Minister. Albanese had a lot to thank Trump for; perhaps that’s why he had wanted so much to meet him. The polls in February 2025 had the coalition leading 51–49, and then the Trump-Dutton factor came into play. Dutton was Albo’s trump card. No wonder he wanted the selfie with Trump. He invited Trump to visit, perhaps to spruik why Australia is paying for America’s submarines.
Albanese wore a lot of make-up to the meeting. The real Albo shared his confidences in private, perhaps with the other actor who sat opposite Trump, the Ambassador who Trump did not like. Albanese may come to regret his meeting with Trump, the deal and the endorsement by Trump. He may have underestimated the risk in kissing the ring of the Confidence Man.
The risk was everywhere to be seen. Two days before, 7 million joined the No Kings’ protests. Thirty years ago, when Albo was a man of principle, he may have joined those same protests, but now he was a man of compromise, the politician who has exchanged principles for politics.
On the day that Albo met Trump in the Whitehouse, the East Room was being demolished. In 1984, on a tour of the Whitehouse, we were asked to stand still, as the President appeared. Reagan had just left the East Room, where he had given a speech, where Carter, Obama, and FDR gave speeches. The East Room was built by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902.
Apparently, there was no heritage overlay, at least for Trump. Betty Ford reflected on its significance. “If the West Wing is the mind of the nation, then the East Wing is the heart.” Confirmation that Trump is heartless.
Australia should have put AUKUS on hold to let the people decide whether it should proceed. After all, we will pay for AUKUS, and we pay the salaries of the representatives of the people. However, most will never get to see the submarines, not like the HECS debt on their tax bill. Australia has been too subservient, too sycophantic, too risk-averse in our dealings with Trump. There is a cost to being risk-averse just as there is a cost to being a risk-taker.
The Democrats paid the price for not dealing with Trump as they should have dealt with him. Dealing with Trump is like dealing with the devil; you must deal on your terms, not his terms. He is a convicted felon, a fraudster, a showman, the confidence man who became President.
The No Kings protests showed the divergence between the people and the institutions, between those who will not defer to Trump and those who will defer to him; between right and wrong. History may rewrite some of the story, but not the story of the Master and the Apprentice.
Former British defence secretary Ben Wallace has dismissed assurances given my Donald Trump about the future of the AUKUS deal, saying “Trump struggles to think in timescales longer than a round of golf.” As the Pentagon reviews the merits of the trilateral defence partnership between the US, the United Kingdom and Australia, the US president publicly guaranteed Canberra would receive its promised fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
Joy and delight! Australia is to have a booming rare earths industry, mining and PROCESSING – jobs jobs jobs! Money money money!. And we can stick it up to China, confronting its near monopoly on the industry!
The reality is something very different.
Apart from the enormous and time-consuming problems involved in establishing this industry, and in competing economically with China, there’s that other unmentionable problem – RADIOACTIVE WASTES.
Western Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths company knows all about this. They’ve had no end of trouble with their rare earths processing and its radioactive wastes. They were smart enough, had the foresight, to set up processing in another country. Lynas moved its rare earths processing to Malaysia because of Malaysia’s less stringent laws. But what they didn’t reckon with, was Malaysia’ ‘s history, and awareness of radioactive waste danger. As Lynas’ plant started operations in 2012 – in Kuala Lumpur: 10,000 marched for 13 days, rally against Lynas rare earths processing plant. Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad imposed stringent conditions on Lynas’ operations.
Malaysians remember the environmental and health disaster of Bukit Merah; where, early this century, rare earth processing left a toxic wasteland.
A longer explanation is provided in this documentary –
It is very hard to get information on Lynas’ processing operations in Malaysia. I remember that a few years ago, there was a controversy, and an Australian protest movement against Lynas’ plan to dump these wastes into an old growth forest in Malaysia. I can now find no record of this. And indeed, many news items of the controversies of Lynas’ Malaysia operations have now vanished from the internet.
If Malaysia’s history of radioactive pollution from processing of rare earths is scandalous, – what about China’s history?
I know that in recent years, China has cleaned up its act on industrial pollution. But its history is shocking – with a legacy of “cancer villages” –
Whole villages between the city of Baotou and the Yellow River in Inner Mongolia have been evacuated and resettled to apartment towers elsewhere after reports of high cancer rates and other health problems associated with the numerous rare earth refineries there. – China’s legacy of radioactive pollution from rare earths processing.
Well, is everybody now pretending that that to introduce rare earths processing in Australia is a good thing, no problem, it’s progress – blah blah?
This new development comes just as Australia’s government introduces its new reforms to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act – including the aim to simplify and speed up approvals for development. We wait to see what that entails – could it be the weakening of environmental standards?
Coincidentally, Mr Trump’s USA is changing the standards on radiation safety. An Executive Order from the White House states:
“In particular, the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard, which is predicated on LNT. Those models are flawed”, – ORDERING THE REFORM OF THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION.
This will likely result in a significant weakening of the current standards at a time when the evidence strongly suggests that they are in need of further tightening.
The environmental movement fights on – but with a wave of enthusiasm for renewable energy development. A recent article discussed recycling of rare earths from our many digital devices. That’s an idea that seems to be ahead of its time, especially given the extreme difficulty of retrieving those elements from mobile phones, laptops etc.fficulty of retrieving those elements from mobile phones, laptops etc.
Well, it’s the (?) futuristic idea of the circular economy. It fits in with those unfashionable concepts of energy efficiency, energy conservation. We used to hear about them, in the early days of action on climate change.
These concepts are anathema to our billionaire leaders, as we are all drawn into the mindless rollercoaster of ever more artificial intelligence, with its ever more energy use.
Australia, federally and in each State has strong restrictions on radioactive processes. The nuclear lobby has tried for decades to weaken or overthrow those restrictions, and to introduce radioactive waste dumping in a big way.
We’ll be pitched the story that the radioactive wastes from rare earths processing are “minor” “low key” – acceptable. Let’s not worry – after all, the whole rare earths thing is so complex, and so far into the future.
But Albanese so readily agreed with Trump, that Australia can have both the mining and the processing of rare earths – it opens the door up to radioactive waste dumping,
Meanwhile, the issue is also relevant to Australia’s agricultural industry, particularly in Victoria. Victoria being blessed with rich agricultural land, regions like the Wimmera and Gippsland could be threatened by these new industries. The nuclear lobby, too, has long salivated on the possibility of a thorium industry there, too
It’s a sad thing – that history is forgotten, in these days of super-fast “progress’ into the Age of AI. We are being led by the nose by those technobillionaires surrounding Donald Trump – to believe that we don’t need to do much working, or thinking – as we race into this golden age, and embrace this new radioactively-polluting industry.
Sydney’s record October heat; high winds battering both Melbourne and New Zealand, causing death and destruction; the algal bloom caused by South Australia’s marine heatwave wreaking havoc on our marine environment; coral in both the Great Barrier and Ningaloo reefs suffering horrific bleaching.
There’s barely an Australian who hasn’t been affected by one extreme weather event or another, some badly. Some have lost their lives, their homes or both. The seas around our country are suffering a marine heatwave. Just a few degrees above normal is causing these climate change-fuelled warmer oceans to put our weather on steroids, intensifying heat, rainfall and wind.
And that intense rainfall will lead to increased plant growth, so another record bushfire season is inevitable at some point. But this is really only the beginning: global warming has reached an average of nearly 1.5C, and we’re set to see warming of at least 2.7C by the end of the century if we don’t take more action.
Australians have an obvious interest in action against global warming. Focusing on gas instead of renewables for the energy transition risks sabotaging our future.
The Australian Conservation Foundation acknowledges Environment Minister Murray Watt’s announcement today that the Albanese government intends to establish a national Environment Protection Authority (EPA).
The details announced fall short of creating a fully independent EPA. A better model than the one announced by Minister Watt would be one in which the Environment Minister makes nature protection rules, and the EPA assesses and approves projects and enforces the rules based on strong National Environmental Standards.
“For decades, ministers have been able to be influenced and pressured by developers. Tragically, this has resulted in millions of hectares of valuable bushland and habitat being razed by bulldozers, and Australia’s natural wealth significantly degraded,” said ACF Acting CEO Paul Sinclair.
“We remain strongly of the view that independent, expert decision making by the EPA on assessments and approvals is the best way to the deliver the consistency and certainty that is needed under our national nature protection laws. Arm’s length decision making is better for nature and better for business. We will carefully consider the details of the model proposed in the context of the entire reform package by the government once we see the legislation.
“A strong EPA is an important step in addressing the woeful lack of enforcement under the EPBC Act, especially in relation to agricultural deforestation. But an EPA alone will not be enough. We need stronger nature protection laws, we need all decisions to account for climate harm, and deforestation loopholes that allow rampant clearing of precious habitat must be closed. An independent referee is only as good as the rules they have to follow”
Trump furious War Chief Hegseth didn’t kill all on Venezuelan boat No. 6 he sent to Davy Jones Locker. A US Strike in Caribbean Leaves Survivors, Reports Say.
Antinuclear 
