Australia to chart its own course on Palestinian statehood, without Trump’s say-so.
Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.
9 August 2025 Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/australia-to-chart-its-own-course-on-palestinian-statehood-without-trumps-say-so/
Australia’s decision on whether to recognise a Palestinian state will not be dictated by Washington – and that, apparently, was enough to attract howls of condemnation and disapproval from sections of the Murdoch media.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed this week that he was unlikely to consult with U.S. President Donald Trump before making any decision on recognition. It’s a simple case of Australia acting in Australia’s national interest, emphasising that the issue will be decided in Canberra, not in the White House.
The reaction from the Murdoch media was swift and fierce. Headlines and opinion columns framed Albanese’s stance as a diplomatic snub to a “key ally,” warning of potential damage to the Australia–U.S. relationship. The coverage fits a familiar pattern: when leaders diverge from U.S. policy – especially under a Republican president – Murdoch media frequently portrays it as reckless or unpatriotic.
At the heart of the dispute is a deeper question of sovereignty. Critics argue that Australia should stand firm on charting its own foreign policy, particularly on sensitive Middle East matters, which have been shaped for decades by complex international law and humanitarian concerns. Recognition of a Palestinian state has long been debated within Australia, with supporters citing the need for a two-state solution and opponents warning of diplomatic repercussions with Israel and the United States.
Trump’s return to the White House has already shifted global diplomatic currents, with several leaders recalibrating their positions to maintain favour. By declaring that Australia’s decision will not be subject to U.S. approval, Albanese is signalling a willingness to resist that pressure – even if it means copping criticism from one of the country’s most powerful media empires.
In a political environment where foreign policy is often filtered through the prism of domestic politics and media narratives, Albanese’s comments draw a sharp line: Australia will make its own call. The real question is whether the public sees that as principled independence – or unnecessary defiance.
Either way, the stance taps into a deeper tradition in Australian foreign policy: the belief that while alliances matter, sovereignty matters more. From Whitlam’s recognition of China to Howard’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Australia has occasionally charted its own course against the preferences of powerful allies. Albanese’s decision – or even just his refusal to seek Trump’s blessing – may yet be remembered as another of those moments.
AUKUS delusions. More rivets pop in submarine drama.
by Rex Patrick | Aug 4, 2025 https://michaelwest.com.au/aukus-delusions-more-rivets-pop-in-submarine-drama/
Announcing a new one-sided subs-deal with the UK, resisting calls for a review, ignoring a US Admiral’s caution, while building hundreds of houses for US military. AUKUS is having a shocker. Former senator and submariner Rex Patrick reports.
On Friday, 25 July, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong stood beside their UK counterparts at a brief press conference in Sydney. They answered questions on a new 50-year treaty-level agreement between the UK and Australia related to the AUKUS submarine scheme.
The journalists who attended the press conference were not in possession of the text of the agreement, which was not actually signed by Marles and UK Defence Secretary John Healey until the following day, and not in Sydney but rather in Geelong. Without the text of the treaty being released, no hard questions could be asked (see below).
Marles apparently thought it more important to have the text signed a day after the ministerial discussions so that the “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” could be informally named after his hometown, as “the Geelong Treaty”.
The whole stage-managed affair was one that would have left everyone feeling warm and fuzzy in the halls of Parliament, where rhetoric counts for more than reality.
Meanwhile, in US Congress
About the same time, the Geelong Treaty was being announced, news was breaking in Australia of the testimony to the United States Senate of the nominee to serve as the next US Chief of Navy, Admiral Daryl Caudle. What he had to say did not augur well for Australia eventually being provided with three US Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines as envisaged under AUKUS.
“The question of Australia’s ability to conduct undersea warfare is not in question by me or by anyone,” the admiral told the Senate Armed Services Committee’s seapower subcommittee. “But as you know, the delivery pace is not where it needs to be to make good on the Pillar 1 of the AUKUS agreement, which is currently under review by our Defense Department”.
Caudle testified that “There are no magic beans.”
“We do have to understand whether or not the industrial base can produce the submarines required so that we can make good on the actual pact that we made with the U.K. and Australia, which is around 2.2., 2.3 Virginia-class submarines per year.”
“That’s going to require a transformational improvement, not a 10 percent improvement, not a 20 percent, a 100 percent improvement.”
Of course, none of this was really news. The US Congressional Research Service and numerous other well-informed observers have been spelling out these facts for some time, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Marles remain wilfully blind to the facts. Having put all their political chips on AUKUS, they don’t want to see or hear anything negative. Instead of a pause, they’ve been writing taxpayer-funded cheques to gift United States shipyards.
They quietly slipped the US Government another non-refundable $800M last week – following on from a non-refundable $800M in February.
No control, no warranty
By Monday, the ‘Geelong Treaty’ had been tabled in the Parliament.
A read of the treaty documents revealed the completely lop-sided nature of the partnership with the UK. Whilst Australia gets to have a bit of a say, the UK get to decide the design of SSN-AUKUS. Australia will be buying and building a British design, and the success, delivery schedule, and cost will be absolutely dependent on the United Kingdom’s currently run-down and struggling submarine industrial base.
And if it doesn’t work in the end, there is no warranty.
During the election campaign, a number of cross-benchers and the Greens started calling for an AUKUS inquiry, a call repeated this week by Senator David Shoebridge. He lodged a motion to establish a Select Committee into what is our most expensive and purportedly most important Defence procurement project ever.
The inquiry motion was originally set to be voted on on Tuesday, but as the week progressed, Senator Shoebridge kept postponing it. That’s a signal that he didn’t have the numbers to get a ‘yes’ vote. The Labor Party has already ruled out an inquiry, and it looks like the Senator is trying to get the Liberal Party on board.
We’ll now find out the inquiry’s fate on 25 August. The Liberal Party are unlikely to support the inquiry. They want to criticise the government’s handling of the US alliance, but they have no intention of questioning AUKUS, which, after all, was first conceived by their man, Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
It’s an all-eggs-in-the-one-$368B-basket capability acquisition full of risk – but it appears as though there will be no oversight.
As the Parliament appears reluctant to review AUKUS, in true Trump tariff negotiation style, the US Defence Department announced its review of AUKUS would not be completed until “fall” (the next three months).
Housing bill waved through
To add icing on the cake, the government’s first Housing Bill in the 48th Parliament, voted through the House on Wednesday by the duopoly, was one to build houses, not for Australians, but for foreign military personnel and their families in Perth.
As Senator Shoebridge tried to have this Bill referred to a Senate Committee, he laid it out:
“In the last parliament, we saw Labor coming up with a million reasons they couldn’t do anything on public housing. They couldn’t help people out on rents, they couldn’t build public housing, and they kept saying it was all the Greens’ fault for not supporting their crap bills. Then, in this parliament, they start with a public housing bill. Well done, Labor! You bring a public housing bill into the chamber. You push it through the lower house. And do you know what public housing they’re building? They’re building public housing for US troops under AUKUS. That’s their public housing bill.”
“Please, minister, you haven’t explained in the bill how much this is going to cost; is it going to come from the Defence budget or some other budget?”
No answer was given, and no referral to a committee occurred.
The AUKUS week closed with some lobbying on Sky by former Secretary of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzulo. Pezzulo is officially disgraced, but is not without expertise on national security issues.
Pezzulo does know something about the financing of Australia’s defence capabilities, and he issued a blunt warning about the scale and urgency of Australia’s AUKUS commitments, saying the nuclear submarine program will demand a national effort on par with Medicare.
“It’s like having the military version of Medicare. It’s something that’s got to become an all-consuming, focused effort that transcends Commonwealth, state, territory governments into industry, academia, the training pipeline through both universities and vocational educational training institutions.”
All that statement does is roll out the trifecta. The US can’t deliver Virginia Class submarines to us; the UK submarine industry is a cluster fiasco; and Australia’s not ready. And, we will have to make AUKUS submarines our number one national priority if we are to have any chance of success.
In 2023 Paul Keating – without knowledge of the total $4.7B that is to be gifted to the United States, or the similar amount that is being gifted to the UK, nor the facts that the US is unlikely to deliver, and that we really don’t have any rights in relation to the SSN-AUKUS – called it “the worst deal in all history”.
Knowing what we know now, Keating was wrong. He should have said “dumbest deal in all history”.
Julian Assange Joins Historic Anti-Genocide March Across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 3 August 25, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/08/03/assange-joins-historic-anti-genocide-march-across-sydneys-harbour-bridge/
Julian Assange joined at least 90,000 and as many as 300,000 people who marched across Australia’s most famous bridge on Sunday to protest Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, his wife Stella and brother Gabriel Shipton joined Australian journalist Mary Kostakidis and, according to police estimates, 90,000 other people, but according to organizers as many as 300,000, to march across Sydney’s Harbour Bridge on Sunday to demand an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported:
“At least 90,000 pro-Palestine protesters walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge and into history through the pelting rain, as a larger crowd than expected used the landmark as a symbol, bringing the city to a standstill and leading police to sound the alarm of a potential crowd crush.
In the face of the sheer size of the protest against the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, which organisers say drew between 200,000 and 300,000 people, police were forced to ditch plans for the march to end at North Sydney and redirected the crowd. … The last major march across the bridge was 25 years ago, when 250,000 people marched in support of reconciliation [with Indigenous Australians.]”
Kostakidis is in court accused of racial hatred by the Zionist Federation of Australia for her social media reporting and commentary critical of the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
[Consortium News was on the bridge and will be providing a full video report.].
The New South Wales premiere and police both tried to stop the march from happening by making protestors liable to arrest for blocking traffic. It took a Supreme Court ruling on Saturday to let it go ahead. About four times as many people turned up than organizers had expected — even in a driving winter rain — because of the concerted effort to stop it, an organizer told The Sydney Morning Herald.
The paper quoted Palestine Action Group organiser Josh Lees as saying said the march was “’even bigger than we dreamt of’ after people travelled from across the country to attend. He called the event a ‘monumental and historic’ success. ‘Today was just a huge display of democracy,’ he said.”
The massive turnout shows the revulsion a good number of Australians feel for Israel’s ongoing slaughter and for their government’s complicity. “Netanyahu/Albanese you can’t hide. Stop supporting genocide,” the protestors chanted.
Police were not prepared for the outpouring of outrage. The Herald said:
“NSW Police acting deputy commissioner Peter McKenna said the march came ‘very close’ to a ‘catastrophic situation’ and that officers had been forced to make a snap decision to turn tens of thousands around to avoid a crowd crush as people exited for North Sydney. McKenna said part of the problem was the organisers’ application to march stated that 10,000 people were likely to attend, not the 90,000 people the police estimated turned up.”
Australia’s Senate launches inquiry into who is funding fake astroturf anti-renewables groups.
Rachel Williamson, Jul 31, 2025, https://reneweconomy.com.au/senate-launches-inquiry-into-who-is-funding-fake-astroturf-anti-renewables-groups/?fbclid=IwY2xjawL7lhVleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFYcTREaGZqTGVKTWZZSW15AR5cMmu1PBB20ZAr6159zOAR8q2xQnTPPQwVB8SWse9kOCEuKiGNiOnOwzpF3g_aem_zBcQMv8fwSb8s4qbxBk1uA
Australians have a right to know who is funding anti-climate campaigns and, if a new Senate inquiry can uncover those money trails, the findings could be shocking, says the Smart Energy Council’s Tim Lamacraft.
The new Senate committee was installed last night and tasked with investigating climate and energy mis- and disinformation campaigns and uncovering which foreign and local organisations are funding “astroturfing”, fake grassroots movements that are actually coordinated marketing campaigns.
“Australians have a right to know who’s really behind the clogging up of their social media feeds with anti renewables, anti climate, anti science propaganda. Rest assured, they’ll be shocked when they find out,” Lamacraft told Renew Economy.
“We saw from the last federal election campaign, where [conservative lobby group] Advance Australia had a $15 million warchest, $14 million of that was in dark money where we don’t know where it came from.
“The most important thing to do with shadowy networks like this is to shine a light. It’s extremely damaging to our democracy to allow millions of dollars from shadowy multinationals, and hidden domestic interests, to influence public policy for their personal gain, not the public.”
The inquiry, formally known as the select committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy, will also question whether Australia’s laws preventing foreign interference in national politics are strong enough to fight off internationally-funded domestic political campaigns.
That work will encompass the role of social media in building astroturf campaigns through the coordinated use of bots and trolls, messaging apps and AI to spread fake ideas and news.
It will be the first step towards finding out who is financing sophisticated anti-renewable energy campaigns and misinformation, and whose interests they truly serve, says committee chair Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson.
“For decades, vested interests have been waging a global war of disinformation against the clean energy transition, including environmental and climate legislation, and these vested interests have recently achieved significant political success in nations such as the US,” he said in a statement.
“In the last parliament, evidence was provided to the Senate Inquiry into offshore wind industry that strategies such as establishing fake community groups – otherwise known as astroturfing – were being used in Australia to spread lies about renewable energy.
“It’s critical that parliament continues this work and now examines these interests for what they are and who they serve.”
Devastating impact of astroturfing
The inquiry comes on the back of years of sophisticated anti-climate campaigns masquerading as grassroots movements.
These seek to demonise a climate or renewable energy issue and rally support for nuclear power, a position known to be a cover for retaining a fossil fuel status quo.
Campaigns against everything from offshore wind to individual projects have polarised public opinion and are having a tangible impact.
Coordinated anti-offshore wind campaigns in 2023 peddled fears such as that offshore turbines kill whales and any in the waters around Wollongong would block out the sunrise.
As a result, the federal government reduced the Illawarra offshore wind zone by a third and pushed it 10km further offshore, while in Queensland the Stop Chalumbin Wind Farm claimed the scalp of the Wooroora Station proposal by claiming risks to the nearby world heritage rainforests.
Ark Energy, which was behind the Wooroora Station project, also scrapped the Doughboy wind project in NSW after the New England landowners involved in the project changed their minds.
Organised anti-renewables groups are weaponising NSW’s planning process by forcing projects into the Independent Planning Commission, the final arbiter of development applications if more than 50 opposing submissions are lodged during the regular planning process.
David and Goliath battles
For genuine activist groups, going up against well-funded, apparently grassroots campaigns that are peddling half truths and outright lies is “incredibly frustrating”, says Surfers for Climate CEO Joshua Kirkman.
“We simply do not have the financial resources as an advocacy group… against big forces like that which the Senate inquiry will actually find out about,” he told Renew Economy.
“I really hope this inquiry can put the spotlight on the realities of where the support for these voices in Australia comes from. I think the public have a right to know, and I think the public wants to understand how their democracy is being influenced by nefarious parties with ill-intent for the environment.”
Kirkman says climate change is a big enough problem without tactical misdirection and influence undermining the work being done.
Organisations such as Responsible Future (Illawarra Chapter) are what Kirkman is up against.
The anti-wind, pro-nuclear organisation was registered in April 2024 and claims to be funded by donations. Founder Alex O’Brien declined to comment on a series of basic questions about the organisation sent by Renew Economy last year.
Follow the money
The risks of foreign funding influencing Australian climate debates is not a conspiracy theory: the issue was raised in the Senate last year after an inquiry into offshore wind recommended the government act to stop foreign lobby groups from crowding out local community voices in public debates.
Last year, Walker published a submission which highlighted the similarities between US anti-wind campaigns and those targeting offshore wind in Australia.
He found similarities between the claims made by groups like Stop Offshore Wind, such as the same imagery and messaging in social media campaigns saying turbines kill whales, as used in campaigns overseas funded by conservative US lobby the Atlas Network.
But he was only able to guess at actual funding trails into Australia.
It’s known that deep-pocketed conservatives such as mining billionaire Gina Rinehart and the multimillion-dollar Liberal Party investment arm Cormack Foundation have been sponsors of the likes of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), Menzies Research Centre and the ‘campaign group’ Advance Australia, all of which have strongly campaigned against renewable energy.
Walker has linked their campaigns with those of a global network of conservative think tanks.
Albanese government substantially expands renewable energy scheme amid 2030 target concerns
Albanese government substantially expands renewable energy scheme amid
2030 target concerns. Chris Bowen says Labor will increase size of its main
climate and energy program by 25% to capitalise on falling cost of solar
panels and batteries. The Australian government will substantially expand a
renewable energy underwriting scheme as it aims to capitalise on the
falling cost of solar panels and batteries and combat concerns it may
struggle to meet its 2030 climate target.
Guardian 29th July 2025,
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jul/29/australia-expands-renewable-energy-scheme-2030-target
“We can do that:” Australian Energy Market Operator says the country’s power system can be run on 100 pct renewable energy.
The head of the Australian Energy Market Operator says he confident that
the country’s main grid – and its smaller ones for that matter – can
be run on 100 per cent renewable energy. “At AEMO, I set an ambition in
2021 for us to understand what it takes to run a power system on 100%
renewable energy,” Westerman said in an address to the Clean Energy
Summit in Sydney on Tuesday. “And today, we’re confident that with
targeted investments in system security assets, we can do just that. I’m
incredibly proud of this, but the future is coming at us fast and those
system security investments are needed urgently run a power system on 100%
renewable energy.”
Renew Economy 29th July 2025,
https://reneweconomy.com.au/we-can-do-that-aemo-says-power-system-can-be-run-on-100-pct-renewable-energy/
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says Israel’s denial of starvation in Gaza ‘beyond comprehension’
ABC News, By national affairs correspondent Jane Norman, 29 July 25
In short:
Anthony Albanese has expressed his astonishment at claims made by Israel’s prime minister that “there is no starvation in Gaza”, telling Labor MPs that statement is “beyond comprehension”.
The prime minister made the comments in response to a question from a Labor backbencher about when Australia would move to recognise Palestinian statehood.
What’s next?
Overnight, US President Donald Trump also appeared to dispute Mr Netanyahu’s statement, but Opposition Leader Sussan Ley later declined to say whether she believed starvation was occurring.
Anthony Albanese has expressed his astonishment at claims made by Israel’s prime minister that “there is no starvation in Gaza”, telling Labor MPs that statement is “beyond comprehension”.
The prime minister made the comments in response to a question from a Labor backbencher about when Australia would move to recognise Palestinian statehood.
Mr Albanese — who has been sharpening his criticism of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip — appeared to directly criticise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who posted a clip to X saying “there is no starvation in Gaza, no policy of starvation in Gaza”.
That assertion was repeated in Canberra yesterday by Israeli’s deputy ambassador to Australia, Amir Meron.
“Those claims that there’s no starvation in Gaza are beyond comprehension,” Mr Albanese told the Labor caucus, according to a spokesperson.
The prime minister outlined Australia’s pre-conditions for recognition, including “democratic reforms” in the Palestinian territory, but indicated these obstacles were not insurmountable, referencing a famous quote from Nelson Mandela that “it always seems impossible until it’s done”.
……………………………………………………….. The prime minister’s intervention came amid growing international concern about both the number of deaths at aid centres managed by the Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the level of hunger in the enclave………………………………………………………………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-29/pm-criticises-israels-denial-of-starvation-in-gaza/105585494
All energy costs rise but small nuclear most reactive.
Small modular nuclear reactors proved the most expensive technology of the eight options by a large margin, with the report basing its costs on Canada’s Darlington nuclear project, announced in May.
Small modular nuclear reactors proved the most expensive technology of the eight options by a large margin, with the report basing its costs on Canada’s Darlington nuclear project, announced in May.
By Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson, July 29 2025 , https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9027259/all-energy-costs-rise-but-small-nuclear-most-reactive/
Next-generation nuclear reactors are the most expensive of all energy-producing technologies, a report has found, and would significantly increase electricity prices in Australia.
Establishing a large-scale nuclear power plant for the first time would also require more than double the typical costs, and estimates for wind projects had inflated by four per cent due to unforeseen requirements.
The CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, released its GenCost report on Tuesday, revealing rising construction and finance costs would push up prices for energy projects of all kinds in the coming years.
The findings come after a heated debate about introducing nuclear power to Australia and after members of the federal coalition questioned the nation’s reliance on renewable energy projects to achieve net zero by 2050.
The final GenCost report for 2024-2025 analysed the cost of several energy-generating technologies, including variations of coal, gas, nuclear, solar and wind projects.
Renewable technology continued to provide the cheapest energy generation, the report’s lead author and CSIRO chief energy economist Paul Graham said.
“We’re still finding that solar PV and wind with firming is the lowest-cost, new build low-emission technology,” he told AAP.
“In second place is gas with (carbon capture storage) … then large-scale nuclear, black coal with CCS, then the small modular reactors.”
Small modular nuclear reactors proved the most expensive technology of the eight options by a large margin, with the report basing its costs on Canada’s Darlington nuclear project, announced in May.
The 1200-megawatt development is estimated to cost $23.2 billion and will be the first commercial small modular reactor built in a Western country.
The new reactors produce one-third the power of typical nuclear reactors and can be built on sites not suitable for larger plants, but have only been built in China and Russia.
“This is a big deal for Canada – it’s their first nuclear build in 30 years,” Mr Graham said.
“It’s not just about meeting electricity demand … they’ve said a few things that indicate they’re trying to build a nuclear SMR industry and export the technology.”
In addition to the cost of different technologies, the report estimated “premiums” for establishing first-of-a-kind energy projects, with the first large-scale nuclear project expected to command 120 per cent more and the first offshore wind development expected to cost an extra 63 per cent.
The cost of wind projects also grew by four per cent as researchers factored in building work camps to accommodate remote employees, and capital financing costs rose by one per cent.
Developing energy projects was also expected to cost between six and 20 per cent more by 2050, the report found, due to the rising price of materials such as cement and wages, as detailed in a report by Oxford Economics Australia.
Findings from the CSIRO report would help inform the design of future energy infrastructure, Australian Energy Market Operator system design executive general manager Merryn York said.
“We’ll use the capital costs for generation and storage from GenCost in the upcoming Draft Integrated System Plan in December,” she said.
Nuclear technology is banned as an energy source in Australia, which has a target of achieving 82 per cent renewable energy in the national grid by 2030 and reaching net zero by 2050.
Out of Step with the World: Australia’s Refusal to Recognise Palestine is a Moral Failure
27 July 2025, Michael Taylor, https://theaimn.net/out-of-step-with-the-world-australias-refusal-to-recognise-palestine-is-a-moral-failure/
In a world that is finally waking up to the urgent need for justice and peace in the Middle East, Australia has chosen silence and hesitation. While 147 of the 193 United Nations member states have formally recognised the State of Palestine – including France, Spain, Ireland, and Norway – Australia continues to sit on its hands. This refusal is not only out of step with global momentum; it is out of step with the values of fairness, dignity, and the will of the Australian people.
Recognition of Palestine is not an endorsement of violence, nor is it a rejection of Israel’s right to exist. It is a simple acknowledgement that the Palestinian people – stateless for 76 years – deserve the same rights and recognition afforded to others. It is a step toward equality, toward dialogue, and ultimately toward peace.
Yet Australia clings to a failed policy of “not yet” – as though Palestinian dignity must forever be postponed for fear of offending a powerful ally. In doing so, our government aligns itself not with justice or international law, but with the shrinking minority of countries who continue to look the other way.
This decision does not reflect the views of the Australian public. Poll after poll shows a majority of Australians support Palestinian statehood and an end to the occupation. We are a people who believe in the fair go, in standing up for the underdog, in peace over power. And yet, our government refuses to act – cowed by geopolitical caution and domestic political pressure.
Refusing to recognise Palestine is not a neutral act. It is a political choice – one that undermines the international consensus, emboldens the status quo, and tells the Palestinian people that their suffering is invisible.
Australia once stood tall in the fight against apartheid. We helped build international pressure that led to its end in South Africa. Why, then, do we hesitate now?
If we truly believe in a two-state solution – if we truly believe in peace – then we must recognise both states. It is time for Australia to find its moral courage and join the vast majority of the world in recognising Palestine.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
AUKUS Submarine Regulations: Friends of the Earth Adelaide submission
Friends of the Earth Adelaide > Publications > Adelaide FoE Notes > AUKUS Submarine Regulations: FoE Adelaide submission
Philip White July 24, 2025, https://adelaidefoe.org/aukus-submarine-regulations-foe-adelaide-submission/
Friends of the Earth Adelaide today (24 July 2025) sent a submission in response to the government’s call for public comments on draft Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Regulations. These Regulations were drafted under the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act, which was passed in October last year. Our submission can be accessed here.
The consultation is open until 30 July 2025. Details can be found on the following web site: https://www.defence.gov.au/about/reviews-inquiries/australian-naval-nuclear-power-safety-regulations-public-consultation
FoE Adelaide’s submission can be summarised as follows:
— AUKUS should be cancelled. It compromises Australia’s sovereignty and is not in our strategic, economic, or environmental interests.
— If it is not cancelled, there should be a proper consultation about the Stirling and Osborne designated zones, which were declared in the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act without consultation.
— The principles of “free, prior and informed consent” should be followed in siting any site for storage and disposal of radioactive waste.
— That includes respecting laws of State and Territory governments that restrict or prohibit siting of nuclear waste facilities.
— The Regulator must be completely independent of the Defence portfolio. In the current proposal it will be answerable to the Minister for Defence.
— All submissions should be published in full, unless the submitter specifically requests otherwise. Government representatives informed us on 17 July at a public forum in Port Adelaide that they only intend to publish a summary put together by bureaucrats.
Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity?
by Rex Patrick | Jul 22, 2025 , https://michaelwest.com.au/trillion-dollar-aukus-subs-plus-nuclear-waste-in-perpetuity/
Everything about AUKUS nuclear waste is a political secret, including the cost, which will more than double the $368B announced AUKUS price tag. Former submariner Rex Patrick with the story.
Rex Patrick with the story.
If we ever get these subs, the total price tag may well be over $1 trillion. I’m in the Federal Court at present, trying to pry open a November 2023 report into how the Government intends to deal with the high-level nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines.
But there’s already a lot we can deduce by combining what has been extracted from the Government using Freedom of Information (FOI) laws, from Senate testimony and also looking at how the United States does and doesn’t take care of its naval nuclear waste.
Cost explosion
For starters, there was a short but insightful exchange in Senate Estimates last year between Senator Lidia Thorpe and the head of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA), Admiral Jonathon Mead.
After making quick reference to the cost of nuclear waste facilities overseas, Senator Thorpe asked about the waste costs for AUKUS, “There’s no costing as yet; is that right?” Mead responded, “That’s correct”.
For an organisation that is required to cost its capability from cradle to grave, including support facilities, it’s a huge omission. It might be the case that
“they’re too frightened to do the math.”
As I will set out below, the price of safely storing AUKUS waste is likely to double the AUKUS price tag. But first, we need to take a look at what radioactive waste AUKUS will produce and what will be done with it.
Low-level waste
We know that Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines will produce small amounts of low-level waste every year (disposable gloves, wipes, reactor coolant and Personal Protective Equipment). ASA Senate Estimates briefs obtained under FOI suggest that this will amount to “roughly the volume of a small skip bin each year.”
This, along with low-level waste from US and UK submarines operating out of Perth, will be stored at HMAS Stirling until the Australian Waste Management Agency builds and commissions the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility.
Barely noticed by the national media, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works approved the construction of a ‘Controlled Industrial Facility’ at HMAS Stirling in August 2024.
High-level waste
When each AUKUS submarine decommissions, Australia will need to handle the recovery, transport, storage and disposal of two different types of high-level nuclear waste: spent nuclear fuel, about the size of a small hatchback, and the reactor compartment, about the size of a four-wheel drive.
Noting the total lack of transparency around Australia’s plans, MWM is making a reasonable assessment as to how this waste will be handled by looking to the US.
Fuel rods will be removed from the submarine at a decommissioning yard (possibly Henderson in WA for the Virginia Class and Osborne in SA for the SSN-AUKUS submarines).
The hull is cut open, and a defueling enclosure is installed on the submarine to provide a controlled work area. The fuel is removed into a shielded transfer container and moved to a wharf enclosure. It’s then placed into a specially designed shipping container for transfer to, in the case of the US, an intermediate ‘storage site’ in Idaho. Despite 70 years of nuclear-powered submarine operations (USS Nautilus was commissioned in 1955), the US has not yet sorted out its long-term ‘disposal site’.
It is not clear whether Australia will have an intermediate ‘storage site’ and a ‘disposal site’ or a combined site. Certainly, both storage and disposal are talked about in the information that has been released under FOI.
Australia is not permitted, by the text of the AUKUS Treaty and by commitments made to the International Atomic Energy Agency, to reprocess the fuel. Reprocessing involves separating the plutonium and fissile uranium from the spent fuel to reduce the amount of spent fuel that needs to be stored long term, but doing so raises nuclear weapon proliferation concerns.
For Australia, we have to find a geologically suitable place to bury the fuel in the state it was when it left the submarine. Whilst the Defence Minister has declared this will be on ’Defence land’, the ASA can identify a news site and the Minister can compulsory acquire it – anywhere in Australia.
Reactor compartment
To deal with the reactor compartment, all of the elements of the reactor that will remain in the compartment – the pressure vessel, piping, tanks and fluid system components – are drained to the maximum extent practicable. About 2% of the liquid remains trapped in discrete pockets.
All openings are then sealed.
The reactor compartment is then cut from the submarine, and with the pressure hull remaining as part of the disposal package, the high-strength steel serves as an outer seal.
In the United States, the reactor compartment is transported to “Trench 94” in Washington state.
It is not yet known whether the Australian Government will bury the reactor compartments in a final disposal site.
Looking after high-level nuclear waste is complex. You can’t responsibly just bury it or dump it in a deep mine shaft.
Nuclear waste facility
A waste facility must be carefully located, away from seismic activity, away from flooding and other weather events and generally where geological structure allows for deep, very long-term storage. Geoscience Australia has looked at suitable locations for a high-level radioactive Waste store on occasions between 1976 and 1999 (subject to a National Archives request).
It must also be located with suitable transport pathways from the submarine dismantling yard or possibly several yards.
The site must be prepared and built/bored. It must have access to electricity supplies, water, communications and sewerage. It must allow for the safe receipt and storage of fuel and the reactor compartments, it must be resilient to loss of heating or ventilation, loss of electricity, flow blockages, structural failures, etc.
“It must be resilient for well over a millennium.”
It must also be designed with the necessary security in mind, with access control, constant monitoring, intrusion detection and central alarms in place, and be secure in relation to protest and sabotage and have a co-located response capability. It must provide for safe long-term storage, with multiple barriers in place to prevent release of radioactive material, and be designed to deal with large accidental radioactive releases.
At the same time, the facility will be subject to international non-proliferation safeguards overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which will require periodic access and perhaps remote monitoring and surveillance.
It will likely need a level of remoteness, but be able to be staffed by relevantly qualified personnel, and to receive surge responders in the event of an emergency.
Design and construction would take close to ten years.
What will it take?
The Government has committed to consultation as it selects a site for long-term disposal, yet the law does not require it.The decision to locate a National Radioactive Waste Management facility at Kimba in South Australia involved a lot of communication, some consultation, but very little listening. The Federal Court ultimately found that the decision-making process for that site was seriously flawed. The Liberals get a D minus.
Labor got the Parliament to declare both HMAS Stirling in Perth and the shipyard precinct at Osborne in Adelaide a ‘designated zone’ for nuclear activities. There was no consultation, so they get an F.
Section 10(2)(c) of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Act 2024 allows the minister to designate more zones. The consultation can be of a ‘tick-the-box’ nature.
While we don’t know what the cost of an underground storage/disposal facility would be, documents released under FOI show that a 2019 cost estimates study by Altus Expert Services placed the cost of an above ground facility at Kimba at $923 million. We could reasonably expect a deep storage facility could cost billions.
Then there are the ongoing operational costs of the facilities, over several hundred years.
Even at an annual cost of only $30 million per annum, that’s close to $4B over 120 years. And if the site is then sealed for 100,000 years, as the Finnish intend to do with their underground facility, there’s even more cost. Even if monitoring of sealed waste only cost 1/10th of the yearly operating cost, say $3million, the cradle-to-grave cost of dealing with AUKUS high level waste will add up to more than $300 billion; $300B that seems to have slipped ASA’s minds.
One thing’s for sure, there’s been too much secrecy around this radioactive hot potato. Maybe things will fall my way in the Federal Court. But it would be much better if the Government was just be up-front with everyone, particularly as we tax-payers have to pay for it.
Rex Patrick
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the “Transparency Warrior.”
Australia obstructed probe into deadly ‘Rainbow Warrior’ bombing
David Robie, July 10, 2025 , https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/07/australia-obstructed-probe-into-deadly-rainbow-warrior-bombing/
France’s ‘Operation Satanique’ bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, 40 years ago this month, was state-sponsored terrorism – and Australia had a part in helping French secret agents to escape.
A DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA SPECIAL REPORT
The French Government terror bombing of Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, 40 years ago in Auckland harbour backfired on the French disastrously. It added to mounting Pacific and global pressure to force France 11 years later to abandon nuclear testing on its Pacific island colonies.
Australia’s obstruction of the New Zealand police investigation of the French secret agents who conducted the terror bombing still rankles, 40 years on.
David Robie, the only journalist on board the ship in the weeks leading up to the bombing, looks back on the event and on the legacy of this sordid act of state terrorism in a New Zealand port.
Was dubbed “Blunderwatergate”. This was an apt epithet for the Jacques Tati-like farce marking the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.
And the bungled attempts to cover up the murky trail leading back to the highest levels of government, the military and intelligence in Paris.
It was tragic too. The killing of Greenpeace’s photojournalist Portuguese-born Fernando Pereira that night at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf was a shock to the crew – and to me as a journalist who had been on board documenting the ship’s voyage for 10 weeks.
But we had no illusions about French involvement. The Greenpeace ship had just arrived in Auckland and was preparing for a protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll, in the French Pacific territory of Tahiti, to highlight the French nuclear testing.
A combination of a swift investigation by New Zealand police, and curious bystanders, led to the arrest and charging with murder of two French secret agents from France’s secret service, the Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE). The arrested agents had been posing as Swiss honeymooners in the days that followed the bombing.
A lack of co-operation and actual obstruction by Australian authorities stymied an attempt to arrest four more French DGSE agents who had fled to Australian territory of Norfolk Island.
French terror in Opération Satanique
In a sense it was lucky that the death toll on board the Rainbow Warrior that night wasn’t a lot higher. Fernando had gone below deck after the first blast looking for a missing crew member and to rescue his camera gear.
In their appropriately titled “Opération Satanique”, the French spies used a deadly double detonation to bomb the ship twice, precisely seven minutes apart. This technique has similarities to the now-familiar “double tap” bombing that often results in first responders and rescuers being targeted, and has been described as a war crime as it violates the Geneva Convention by targeting civilians and the wounded.
Fernando died when the second bomb exploded, rapidly flooding the ship further and crippling the propellor shaft just behind his cabin – and next to my own.
Ten other crew members on board scrambled off, some thrown into the water. More people could have died, as several had been asleep after the lively 29th birthday party for campaign co-ordinator Steve Sawyer earlier in the evening.
Some were still chatting in the mess when the first French Naval limpet mine went off, blasting a massive hole the size of a garage door in the hull at the engine room, at 10 minutes to midnight.
There had been no warning from the French to the crew or others on board in this worst case of state terrorism ever to happen in New Zealand. And no warning of the second blast to come.
The final voyage
The man killed in the blast, Fernando Pereira, aged 36 and the father of two young children, was on the Rainbow Warrior’s Pacific voyage almost by chance.
At the beginning of the voyage, co-ordinator Steve Sawyer had been seeking a wirephoto machine for transmitting photographs to the world of the campaign voyage to the Marshall Islands.
He phoned Fiona Davies, then heading the Greenpeace photo office in Paris. But he wanted the machine and a photographer separately.
“No, no – I’ll get you a wire machine,” replied Davies. “But you’ll have to take my photographer with it.”
So Fernando Pereira joined the Rainbow Warrior in Hawai’i and he covered the voyage to Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands The islanders there wanted help to leave their contaminated ancestral home, and in May 1985, Greenpeace’s ship, the Rainbow Warrior, set out to help them.
They suffered serious health problems because of radioactive fallout that had dusted their island home from at least five “dirty” US nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. Marshall Islands, 3500kms north-east of Australia, had been occupied by US forces since WW2, and in 1979 voted to exercise sovereignty in a Compact in Free Association with the United States.
The 15-megaton “Bravo” test on 1 March 1954, a thousand times more powerful than the US atomic bomb that devastated Hiroshima, was the most lethal to the islanders. Hundreds of people were living on the downwind atolls of Rongelap, Rongerik and Utirik, barely 150km to the east. They are left with a deadly legacy of thyroid tumours, cancers, still births, and a host of other illnesses.
Neglected by both the US and Marshall Islands authorities, and despite losing their homes and much cultural heritage, the islanders urged the Greenpeace flagship to evacuate them to Mejatto on Kwajalein Atoll, 120km away.
It took four return voyages for the Rainbow Warrior to move about 320 Rongelapese with their dismantled homes and belongings — some hundreds of tonnes — to their new atoll.
Their future and their health remain uncertain four decades after Greenpeace helped them. But the media spotlight on the humanitarian voyage helped pressure the US to partially make amends.
The US did provide US$150 million as part of the agreement for the Compact of Free Association, to establish a Nuclear Claims Tribunal to deal with health claims over the testing. Established in 1988, the Tribunal ran out of funds in 2011 and ceased to function.
It also provided US$45 million to the Rongelap people to “clean up” the atoll – but so far just one of 60 islands has been cleaned up. The islanders are debating a return to their homeland of Rongelap, but many are not convinced that their atoll is safe yet.
Australian involvement in Opération Satanique
One aspect of the police investigation that rankled with New Zealanders was the lack of co-operation verging on obstruction by Australian authorities. This was the pursuit of the DGSE agents posing as the crew of the yacht Ouvéa that had been chartered in New Caledonia and was suspected of smuggling the explosives into New Zealand.
On 15 July, five days after the deadly bombing, a team of eight New Zealand detectives — including two French speakers — and a forensic scientist on the hunt for the fleeing French agents, were flown in a New Zealand Air Force plane to Australia’s Norfolk Island.
They interviewed the three crew on board (they missed the leader Dr Xavier Maniguet, who had earlier managed to fly to Sydney) – DGSE agents Chief Petty Officer Roland Verge, 32; Petty Officer Gerald Andries, 32; and Petty Officer Jean-Michael Barcelo, 33. They all claimed to be “tourists”.
The next day the detectives searched the Ouvéa, took scrapings from the yacht’s bilges to check for explosives, and seized documents. They also found a map of Auckland with a near-harbour Ponsonby address of a Greenpeace member handwritten on it – later shown to be a map sent by the French spy Christine Cabon, who had infiltrated Greenpeace, to the DGSE. She later fled to Israel, but managed to elude a New Zealand detective who tracked her down.
The 11-metre yacht the Ouvéa had been secretly chartered by the “covert action” arm of the DGSE French spy agency, to carry the two limpet bombs, the diving gear, a zodiac dingy, and radios and other gear to Auckland harbour.
The information collected after analysis produced enough evidence to charge the three agents with murder on the same basis as the two DGSE agents already arrested, but the New Zealand police needed time for the analytics, and even the passport checks took five days.
However, the Australian police and immigration officials on Norfolk Island, without doubt operating under instructions from Canberra (where the Bob Hawke Labor Government was in power), would not allow extra time for holding the suspects.
They gave New Zealand police just one day — an impossible deadline of 2pm on 16 July — and after that the yacht crew and their boat were free to depart, unimpeded by Australian authorities.
By the time the New Zealand police had obtained arrest warrants for the arrest of the Ouvéa crew on 26 July on charges of arson and murder, they and their boat had already sailed away from Australian territory.
Australian assistance to the French may have been more than mere obstruction.
A former head of DGSE in his memoir admitted to many covert sabotage and espionage operations against Greenpeace. He described how its “traditional allies” had ”on several occasions” been informed of plans for covert operations and had either lent a hand or “turned a blind eye on such-and-such a day”.
Whether Australia’s intelligence agencies also directly assisted the French with intelligence, surveillance, or preparations for carrying out the bombing, or in the escape of their agents, is unclear.
Tahitian sources said the DGSE agents, after being released by Australian authorities from Norfolk Island, had rendezvoused with the French Navy’s nuclear-powered attack submarine Rubis which was used for Special Forces deployment and surveillance, and had been conveniently deployed to the Coral Sea area.
The Ouvéa yacht was then scuttled. An empty life raft was detected in the area shortly after by a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion surveillance plane dispatched to hunt for the yacht and for the French submarine known to be in the area. The DGSE agents were landed ashore from the submarine at the French Pacific territory of Tahiti.
Four other French agents remained undetected in New Zealand. One of the agents nonchalantly flew out unimpeded through Sydney, while the others laid low under cover for two weeks before quietly slipping out of the country.
French state violence against Greenpeace
So why was the Rainbow Warrior bombed? Many in the French military were blinded by an intense paranoia over Greenpeace and other activists working to highlight nuclear testing in the South Pacific and in supporting independence struggles in their Pacific colonies.
The French secret service, the DGSE, was given a free hand by Defence Minister Charles Hernu to “neutralise” the environmental organisation.
The French prime minister at the time, Laurent Fabius, claimed in a TVNZ interview in 2005 that he had been “betrayed” by his defence minister. Hernu died in 1990 – still popular in France over the bombing.
The sabotage attack on the Rainbow Warrior certainly wasn’t out of character with many other brutal actions taken by French authorities against Greenpeace vessels protesting against nuclear testing in the Pacific.
In 1973, for example, French commandos boarded the Greenpeace yacht Vega off Moruroa Atoll and savagely beat two of the crew, including one of the founders of Greenpeace, David McTaggart, who almost lost an eye.
McTaggart filed a civil action against the French Navy, accusing it of piracy. The Paris court found the Navy guilty of having deliberately rammed the Vega.
In 1995, Greenpeace led another flotilla to Moruroa. Ten years after the lethal bombing in Auckland, French commandos boarded the Rainbow Warrior II, smashed equipment, fired tear gas at crew on the ship’s bridge, arrested Greenpeace activists, and seized the ship.
France only returned the vessel to Greenpeace several months later.
And I also had my personal run-ins with French authorities as a journalist covering environmental and independence issues in the 1980s.
In January 1987, a year after the first edition of my book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior, was published, I was arrested at gunpoint by French troops in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia /Kanaky, near the New Caledonian village of Canala.
The arrest followed a week of being tailed by secret agents in the capital, Nouméa. When I was handed over by the military to local gendarmes for interrogation, accusations of my being a “spy” and questions over my book on the _Rainbow Warrior_bombing were made in the same breath.
After about four hours of questioning by the gendarmes, I was released.
Greenpeace, after being awarded $8 million in compensation — but no apology — from France by the International Arbitration Tribunal, finally towed the Rainbow Warrior to Matauri Bay and scuttled her off Motutapere, in the Cavalli Islands in northern New Zealand on 12 December 1987, to create a living reef.
Her namesake, the Rainbow Warrior II, formerly the Grampian Fame, was launched in Hamburg exactly four years after the bombing, to continue the environmental advocacy work
Cutting a deal
The diplomatic pressure from France heaped upon New Zealand to release the DGSE agents was huge. A deal was finally agreed but it sparked almost as much anger in New Zealand as the bombing itself, when France threatened to block trade access to New Zealand’s European markets.
The compensation deal for New Zealand, mediated in 1986 by then UN secretary-general Javier Perez de Cuellar, awarded the government $13 million. The money was used to fund anti-nuclear projects and the Pacific Development and Conservation Trust.
The compensation agreement and an apology by France was in exchange for the deportation of the two jailed DGSE secret agents, Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur (“the honeymooners”), after they had served less than a year of their 10-year sentences for manslaughter and wilful damage of the bombed ship.
They were transferred to Hao Atoll in French Polynesia to serve three years in exile at a “Club Med”-style nuclear and military base.
But the bombing scandal didn’t end there. The same day as the “burial at sea” of the Rainbow Warrior in 1987, the French government told New Zealand that Mafart had a “serious stomach complaint”.
French authorities repatriated him to France – in defiance of the terms of the UN agreement and protests from David Lange’s Labour Government.
It was later claimed by a Tahitian newspaper, Les Nouvelles, that Mafart was being smuggled out of Tahiti on a false passport hours before New Zealand was even told of his “illness”.
The other French agent, Prieur, was also repatriated to France in May 1988 because she was pregnant. France ignored protests by the New Zealand Government, and the secret agent pair were honoured, decorated and promoted in their homeland.
A supreme irony is that such an act of terrorism should be publicly rewarded, given the past two decades efforts against terrorism in the so-called “war on terror”.
Satanique mea culpa
In May 2005, the French agents’ lawyer, Gerard Currie, tried to block footage of their 1985 guilty pleas in the New Zealand High Court — shown on closed circuit to journalists, including myself, at the time but not seen publicly — from being broadcast in TVNZ’s Sunday program.
Losing the High Court ruling, the DGSE ‘s lawyer appealed against the footage being broadcast. But the two former agents had lost any spurious claim to privacy over the act of terrorism by publishing their own memoirs – Agent Secrete (Prieur, 1995) and Carnets Secrets (Mafart, 1999).
More than three decades after the bombing, in September 2015, the French secret agent who planted the French Naval limpet mines on the hull of the Rainbow Warrior, “outed” himself and apologised to Greenpeace, the Pereira family, and the people of New Zealand, describing the operation as a “big, big failure”.
Retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister (alias Alain Tonel), revealed in simultaneous interviews with TVNZ’s Sunday program reporter John Hudson and French investigative journalist Edwy Plenel, publisher of _Mediapart_, his role in the sabotage.
Colonel Kister revealed that an early French proposal to merely damage the ship’s engine in Auckland Harbour was rejected.
“There was a willingness at a high level to say: ‘This has to end once and for all. We need to take radical measures’.
“We were told we had to sink it,” Kister said in the interview.
“I have the blood of an innocent man on my conscience, and that weighs on me. We are not cold-blooded killers. My conscience led me to apologise and explain myself.”
The legacy of nuclear resistance
Bengt Danielsson, a Swedish anthropologist, and his French wife, Marie-Thérèse, were an inspiration to the nuclear-free and independent Pacific movement, especially in the Cook Islands, New Zealand and Tahiti.
Along with Elaine Shaw of Greenpeace Aotearoa, they played a vital role in raising public awareness of the plight of Tahitians harmed by the years of French atmospheric nuclear tests.
While the Danielssons published several scientific studies and popular books on the islands, including _Moruroa, Mon Amour_ and Poisoned Reign, they constantly campaigned to expose French nuclear colonialism.
They were honoured for their commitment and achievements with Bengt being awarded the Right Livelihood Award, an alternative Nobel Peace Prize-style international recognition, “exposing the tragic results of and advocating an end to French nuclear colonialism”.
However, Bengt Danielsson’s health deteriorated after this honour and he died in July 1997, barely a year after French nuclear testing in the Gambier Islands ended for good. Marie-Thérèse died six years later in 2003.
France agreed to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty after a swansong package of eight planned nuclear tests to provide data for simulation computer software.
However, such was the strength of international hostility and protests and riots in Pape’ete that Paris ended the nuclear program after just six tests. France officially ratified the CTBT on 10 September 1996.
Elaine Shaw worked for Greenpeace Aotearoa for 16 years and developed it with a core group into the small but lively movement it had become by the time of the bombing.
But she was not comfortable with the changes and rapid growth of the organisation after the bombing. She worked tirelessly for the people of Rongelap as well as “French” Polynesia, the victims of nuclear testing until she died of cancer in 1990.
“I sensed that her interest stemmed from her concern for the people rather than any political ideology,” said Tahitian activist Tea Hirshon. “She went to many islands and saw for herself what people in the Pacific wanted.”
Still other Greenpeace stalwarts have died since the Rainbow Warrior bombing, including Warrior of the Rainbow author and journalist Robert Hunter (2005), founding president of Greenpeace; and David McTaggart (2004), for many years the inspirational chairman of Greenpeace International.
Kawhia-based Owen Wilkes, who had joined a Vega voyage to the Cook Islands in mid-1986, and Fijian nuclear-free and independent Pacific campaigner Amelia Rokotuivuna, both also died in 2005.
The campaign co-ordinator of the fatal voyage, Steve Sawyer, died of pneumonia caused by lung cancer in 2019. One of the crew members on the Rongelap mission, the Rainbow Warrior’s chief engineer Davey Edward, also died of cancer in 2021.
The best possible memorial for Elaine Shaw, Amelia Rokotuivuna, Owen Wilkes, the Danielssons and other Pacific campaigners came in 2004 when Tahitians elected Oscar Temaru as their territorial President.
He had established the first nuclear-free municipality in the Pacific Islands when he was mayor of the Pape’ete suburb of Faa’a.
Since the Temaru coalition came to power, demands increased for a full commission of inquiry to investigate new evidence of radiation exposure from the atmospheric tests in the Gambiers in French Polynesia from 1966-1974.
Altogether France carried out 193 nuclear tests in the South Pacific, 46 of them dumping more than nine megatons of explosive energy into the atmosphere – 42 over Moruroa, and four over Fangataufa atolls.
It was recently revealed that the French Atomic Energy Commission has spent at least €90,000 in a vain campaign to undermine the research by an investigative journalism unit called Disclose and revealed in the book _Toxique,_ published in 2021 and an associated website “The Moruroa Files“.
The investigators trawled some 2000 pages of declassified documents and carried out scores of interviews, concluding that French authorities consistently underestimated the scale of the impact on the environment, geology and the health of the islanders of the French nuclear testing in Polynesia.
The CEA produced its own booklet, “Nuclear tests in French Polynesia: why, how and with what consequences”, printed 5000 copies, and distributed these around Pacific countries.
However, the pressure on France to atone for its actions will continue.
From death springs life
The sordid Rainbow Warrior affair was a diplomatic debacle for the French, and it has taken years for Paris to recover some mana — spiritual power and authority — in the South Pacific region.
Greenpeace and the general environmental movement have grown dramatically and matured over the past four decades. Greenpeace is currently operating Rainbow Warrior III as its campaign flagship.
Campaigns have broadened from the dangers of nuclear power, into issues such as the climate crisis, driftnet fisheries, genetic engineering, glacier retreat, the illegal rainforest timber trade, and now the growing threat of deep sea mining industry.
The original Rainbow Warrior’s last voyage and the death of Fernando Pereira were not in vain. The struggle lives on.
Republished from Declassified Australia , 1 July 2025
A Vassal’s Impulse: Australia Backs US Strike on Iran
The Australian position, along a number of European states, also failed to acknowledge the General Conference Resolutions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (in particular GC(XIXI)/RES/444 and GC(XXIV)/RES/533) declaring that “any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the United Nations Charter, international law and the Statute of the Agency.”
29 June 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/a-vassals-impulse-australia-backs-us-strike-on-iran/
The initial statement from Australian government sources was one of constipated caution and clenching wariness. Senator Penny Wong’s time as head of the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs has always been about how things come out, a process unsatisfyingly uncertain and unyielding in detail. Stick to the safe middle ground and sod the rest. These were the cautionary words of an Australian government spokesperson on June 22: “We have been clear that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program has been a threat to international peace and security.”
That insipid statement was in response to Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike on three nuclear facilities in Iran by the US Air Force, authorised by US President Donald Trump on June 22. With such spectacular violence came the hollow call for diplomatic prudence and restraint. There was an importantdifference: Tehran, not Israel or Washington, would be the subject of scolding. Iran would not be permitted nuclear weapons but jaw jaw was better than war war. “We note the US president’s statement that now is the time for peace,” stated the spokesperson. “The security situation in the region is highly volatile. We continue to call for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy.”
Within twenty-four hours, that anodyne position had morphed into one of unconditional approval for what was a breach of the United Nations Charter, notably its injunction against the threatened or actual use of force against sovereign states in the absence of authorisation by the UN Security Council or the necessity of self-defence. “The world has long agreed Iran cannot be allowed to get a nuclear weapon, and we support action to prevent this. That is what this is,” accepted Wong.
This assessment was not only silly but colossally misguided.It would have been an absurd proposition for the US to make the claim that they were under imminent threat of attack, a condition seen as necessary for a pre-emptive strike. This was a naked submission to the wishes of a small, destabilising and sole (undeclared) nuclear power in the Middle East, a modern territorial plunderer celebratory of ethnonational supremacy.
The Australian position, along a number of European states, also failed to acknowledge the General Conference Resolutions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (in particular GC(XIXI)/RES/444 and GC(XXIV)/RES/533) declaring that “any armed attack on and threat against nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes constitutes a violation of the United Nations Charter, international law and the Statute of the Agency.”
Wong also misrepresented the circumstances under which Iran was told they could negotiate over their nuclear program, erroneously accepting the line from the Trump administration that Tehran had “an opportunity to comply”. Neither the US diplomatic channel, which only permitted a narrow, fleeting corridor for actual negotiations, nor Israel’s wilful distortion of the IAEA’s assessment of Iran’s uranium enrichment plans and prevarication, ever gave chance for a credible resolution.Much like the calamitous, unlawful invasion of Iraq in 2003 by a crew of brigand nations – the merry trio of US, UK and Australia stood out – the autopilot to war was set, scornful of international law.
Wong’s shift from constipated caution to free flow approval for the US attack, with its absent merits and weighty illegalities, was also a craven capitulation to the warmonger class permanently mesmerised by the villain school of foreign relations. This cerebrally challenged view sees few problems with attacking nuclear facilities, the radioactive dangers of doing so, and the merits of a state having them in the first place.
The US attack on Iran found hearty approval among the remnants of the conservative opposition, who tend tospecialise in the view that pursuing a pro-Israeli line, right,wrong, or murderous, is the way to go. Liberal Senator and former Australian ambassador to Israel, David Sharma, thought the Albanese government’s initial response “underwhelming and perplexing,” claiming that support for this shredding of international law “a straightforward position for Australia to adopt.” Sharma is clearly getting rusty on hislaw of nations.
His side of politics is also of the view that the attacked party here – Iran – must forgo any silly notion of self-defence and retaliation and repair to the table of diplomacy in head bowedhumiliation. “We want to see Iran come to the negotiating table to verify where that 400 kilos of enriched uranium is,” stated a very stern opposition home affairs minister, Andrew Hastie. “I’m very glad to see that Penny Wong has essentially endorsed our position and I’m glad we have bipartisanship on this.”
Australia’s response has been that of the weary poltroon. Little has been asked about Canberra’s standout complicity in assisting the US imperium fulfil its global reach when it comes to striking targets. The role of the intelligence signals facility in Pine Gap, cutely and inaccurately called a joint venture, always lends its critical role to directing the US war machine through its heavy reliance on satellite technology. Wong, when asked about the role played by the facility in facilitating the attacks on Iran, had little to say. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was also cold towards disclosing any details. “We are upfront, but we don’t talk about intelligence, obviously. But we’ve made very clear this was unilateral action taken by the United States.”
At least on this occasion, Australia did not add its forces to anillegal adventure, as it all too wilfully did in 2003. Then, Iraq was invaded on the spurious grounds that weapons of mass destruction not only existed but would somehow be used either by the regime of Saddam Hussein or fictional proxies he might eventually supply. History forever shows that no such weapons were found, nor proxies equipped. But the Albanese government has shown not only historical illiteracy but an amnesia on the matter. Unfortunately, it’s the sort of amnesia that has become contagious, afflicting a goodly number of Washington’s satellites, vassals and friendly states.
Three Blows Against Zionism in a Single Day
A court ruling in Australia, an election result in New York and a military setback for Israel, all coming on Tuesday this week, signaled a serious turn of events for Zionism and its supporters, writes Joe Lauria.
By Joe Lauria, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/26/three-blows-against-zionism-in-a-single-day/
The impunity with which Zionism invades and bombs its neighbors and shuts up its critics in Western nations was thrown into question perhaps as never before on Tuesday as Zionism suffered a legal, a political and a military defeat all in one day.
A Military Defeat in the Morning
On Tuesday morning Washington time, President Donald Trump announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a cessation of hostilities after an 11-day war that saw Israel seriously deplete its air defenses, undermine its economy and suffer the worst damage from enemy fire in memory.
A war that Israel — and especially its prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu — had lusted after for three decades had finally been launched. Netanyahu at last found an American president willing to join him in unprovoked aggression against Iran to extend Israel’s regional dominance well beyond the Jordan River.
That would require the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and the overthrow of the Iranian government to be replaced by a puppet regime led by Israel and the United States.
Instead, Israel had to cut short the operation despite U.S. involvement because it was not going to plan. U.S. intelligence says the so-far merely civilian nuclear program was only set back a few months and the Iranian government has never been made more secure.
As it touts itself as the most invincible (and “moral”) army, the failure to achieve its goals in Iran and the physical damage it took from Iranian missile and drone attacks makes what just transpired a humiliating military defeat for Zionism.
And though U.S. presidents have privately groused about Israeli leaders before, never has Israel been cursed out before in public by a president, as Trump did on Tuesday morning.
A Legal Defeat in the Evening
Then at 8:15 pm Tuesday, U.S. East Coast time (10:15 am Wednesday in Australia), a federal judge in Sydney found the courage to stand up to the organized thuggery of Zionist lobbies by ruling that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) had succumbed to intense pressure from Israel lobbyists to sack a radio presenter because she shared an instagram post from Human Rights Watch which accurately reported that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war.
That is the exact charge formally leveled in Netanyahu’s arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Australian judge ruled that the presenter, Antoinette Lattouf, was wrongly dismissed and that the ABC must pay her restitution.
Judge Daryl Rangiah said the ABC had “appease[d] … pro-Israel lobbyists” because Lattouf “held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.” Rangiah said that “the complaints [to the ABC] were an orchestrated campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists to have Ms Lattouf taken off air.”
ABC managing director Hugh Marks apologized to the public on air, saying, “Any undue influence or pressure on ABC management or any of its employees must always be guarded against.”
It was a major setback for a powerful Israel Lobby in a Western nation. These lobbies have been untouchable until now no matter what underhanded tactics they employ to create cover for genocide and wars of aggression by smearing and silencing legitimate critics of Israel.
A Political Defeat in the Night
Still on Tuesday, at around 11 pm in New York City, a Muslim politician who has vowed to arrest Netanyahu based on the ICC warrant if he steps foot in the city while he is mayor, defeated a Democratic Party machine politician in the party’s primary election for mayor.
Despite being repeatedly smeared as an anti-semite, Zohran Mamdani has refused to renounce his strong support for Palestinians, including refusing to retract his labelling of Israel’s war on Gaza “genocide.”
Mamdani’s electoral victory has incensed Zionists everywhere, setting off gnashing of teeth. “NY Democrats have fully embraced Marxism, antisemitism, anti-capitalism, and sheer insanity,” said fanatical Zionist Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler called Mamdani “a radical, antisemitic socialist.”
The election result shows that a sizeable number of voters in the city with the largest population of Jews after Tel Aviv don’t care anymore about the taboos constructed and enforced against criticizing Israel. Israel has their live-streamed genocide to thank for that.
A Beginning, Not an End
Anyone of these events alone would signify a momentous turning of the tide against decades of built-up injustice committed by Israel and its lobby. The baseless smears of anti-semitism are losing their effect. The image of an all-powerful Israeli military is tarnished.
June 24, 2025 may be seen as the day in which fear of Israel was overcome on a scale not seen before. There is a long road ahead filled with enormous obstacles, but this day could usher in an era in which Israel and its enablers are at last held accountable for their many crimes.
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Why is Australia Supporting the US Attack on Iran?
24 June 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Denis Hay https://theaimn.net/why-is-australia-supporting-the-us-attack-on-iran/
Description
Why is Australia supporting the US attack on Iran despite no proven nuclear threat? Explore the truth behind the alliance and why our national interest is at stake.
Introduction: The Flashpoint
Location: Parliament House, Canberra – just hours after the US launched strikes on Iranian facilities.
The Prime Minister steps up to the podium. Flashbulbs pop. He says solemnly, “We support action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
But there’s a problem: Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Nor has the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found proof of an active nuclear weapons program. Yet, Australia is once again supporting US attack on Iran, despite lacking credible evidence.
By supporting the US attack on Iran, Australia reinforces a troubling trend of endorsing military aggression based on disputed intelligence.
This article delves into the underlying reasons behind this decision, separating rhetoric from reality.
The Problem: Why Australia Is Supporting the US Attack on Iran
A History of Following Washington
Since Vietnam, Australia has followed the US into conflicts: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The justification is often “shared values”, but the outcomes? Displacement, destabilisation, and destruction.
“We’re not a central player,” the PM insists. Yet, we continue to echo Washington’s every move.
No Proof, Yet Full Support
The IAEA has repeatedly said there’s no verified Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran enriched uranium to 60%, but weapons-grade is 90 %+. Still, our leaders claim this is reason enough for supporting the US attack on Iran, even without definitive proof.
What Was Actually Hit?
According to US sources, the strikes targeted “nuclear-related sites”. But independent verification is scarce. And our Prime Minister won’t confirm whether Pine Gap or other Australian resources were involved. This silence raises concerns that supporting the US attack on Iran also involves more profound complicity behind the scenes.
The Consequences of Obedience
Civilian Risk and Global Fallout
Imagine being an Australian working in Tehran. One day, you’re sending postcards home. Next, you’re rushed to the Azerbaijani border under armed escort. Over 3,000 Australians were left scrambling.
“We’re evacuating staff,” Foreign Minister Wong said. “Airspace is closed.”
Damaged Diplomacy, Rising Insecurity
Supporting the US attack on Iran damages Australia’s credibility as an independent voice in global affairs. We’re seen less as an independent nation and more as a military proxy. This makes us, and our citizens, potential targets.
The Illusion of Peace Through Bombs
Our leaders claim they “support de-escalation.” Yet, they support an illegal airstrike that has only escalated tensions.
Peace isn’t achieved through provocation – it’s forged through diplomacy.
Double Standards in Nuclear Politics
The Real Nuclear Threats: Israel and the USA
While Iran is accused of developing nuclear weapons without proof, Israel, a state with confirmed nuclear warheads, faces no sanctions or inspections. Worse still, Israel continues to violate international law, commit human rights abuses, and face allegations of war crimes. Yet, it is never threatened with airstrikes.
The United States remains the only country in history to use nuclear weapons in war, dropping them on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Despite indications that Japan was already seeking surrender, the bombs were deployed, not just to end the war, but as a geopolitical message to the world.
Many historians now consider the attacks to have been militarily unnecessary and politically motivated.
“You don’t stop a nuclear war by attacking countries that don’t even have nuclear weapons. You stop it by holding those with them accountable.”
US Militarism: A Global Record of Havoc and Misery
From Vietnam to Iraq, Libya to Syria, and coups in Latin America and Africa, the United States has caused immense suffering worldwide. Their justification – “freedom” and “democracy” – rarely materialises for the people left behind.
Australia’s uncritical support not only aligns us with this destruction, but it also makes us complicit.
A Foreign Policy True to Australia’s Interests
Uphold International Law, Not Just Alliances
Australia must reaffirm its commitment to the UN Charter, which permits the use of military force only in self-defence or with the approval of the Security Council. Unilateral aggression is illegal.
Prioritise Evidence Over Allegiance
Before expressing support for military action, the Australian Government must demand verifiable intelligence. Without proof, there should be no participation – military or moral.
Transparency About Pine Gap and Involvement
Pine Gap plays a critical role in US surveillance and drone strikes. Citizens have a right to know whether their country is taking actions that violate international law.
Leverage Our Dollar Sovereignty
Australia issues its own currency, meaning we are not financially dependent on any foreign state. We can afford to fund independent diplomacy, peace building, and humanitarian aid rather than militarism.
“We are not broke. We are not beholden. Let’s act like it.”
The Price of Following, The Power of Leading
For decades, Australia has marched in step with the United States, often at the cost of our principles, safety, and independence.
This time, we are supporting the US attack on Iran, a strike on a country accused of a crime without evidence, risking war, instability, and the lives of Australians abroad.
Yet, we have the means, through monetary sovereignty, public accountability, and diplomacy, to reject supporting the US attack on Iran and shape a better, more independent path. We need the political will to make the choice.
Q&A Section
Q1: Was Iran about to build a nuclear weapon?
A: The IAEA has confirmed Iran has enriched uranium to 60%, which is not weapons-grade. There is no verified evidence of an active nuclear weapons program.
Q2: Could Australia have refused to support the strike?
A: Yes. Australia is a sovereign nation that can choose an independent foreign policy. We were not compelled to support a strike, especially without legal backing.
Q3: What role does Pine Gap play in US operations?
A: Pine Gap is a joint US-Australia intelligence base. While our leaders avoid specifics, it’s widely known that Pine Gap supports surveillance and targeting data for US military operations, including drone strikes.
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