Australia has announced more than A$68 million over the next five years to strengthen and expand Australian broadcasting and media sector engagement across the Indo-Pacific.
As part of the Indo-Pacific broadcasting strategy, the ABC will receive just over $40m to increase its content for and about the Pacific, expand Radio Australia’s FM transmission footprint across the region and enhance its media and training activities.
And the PacificAus TV programme will receive over $28 million to provide commercial Australian content free of charge to broadcasters in the Pacific.
The strategy provides a framework to help foster a vibrant and independent media sector, counter misinformation, present modern multicultural Australia, and support deeper people-to-people engagement.
It focuses on three key areas, including:
supporting the creation and distribution of compelling Australian content that engages audiences and demonstrates Australia’s commitment to the region;
enhancing access in the region to trusted sources of media, including news and current affairs, strengthening regional media capacity and capability; and
boosting connections between Australian-based and Indo-Pacific media and content creators.
Crucial role
Foreign Minister Penny Wong said media plays a crucial role in elevating the voices and perspectives of the region and strengthening democracy.
Wong said the Australia government was committed to supporting viable, resilient and independent media in the region.
Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said Australia and the Pacific shared close cultural and people-to-people links, and an enduring love of sport.
“These connections will be further enriched by the boost in Australian content, allowing us to watch, read, and listen to shared stories across the region — from rugby to news and music.
Conroy said Australia would continue and expand support for media development, including through the new phase of the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme (PACMAS) and future opportunities through the Australia-Pacific Media and Broadcasting Partnership.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said a healthy Fourth Estate was imperative in the era of digital transformation and misinformation.
“This strategy continues Australia’s longstanding commitment to supporting a robust media sector in our region,” she said.
“By leveraging Australia’s strengths, we can partner with the region to boost media connections, and foster a diverse and sustainable media landscape.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This conference, the first of its kind in 20 years, served as a crucial platform to address the pressing challenges and core issues faced by Pacific media.
Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, the convenor of the conference and co-editor of the new book, emphasised the conference’s primary goals — to stimulate research, discussion, and debate on Pacific media, and to foster a deeper understanding of its challenges.
“Our region hasn’t escaped the calamitous impacts of the two biggest events that have shaken the media sector — digital disruption and the covid-19 pandemic,” he said.
“Both events have posed significant challenges for news media organisations and journalists, to the point of being an existential threat to the industry as we know it. This isn’t very well known or understood outside the news media industry.”
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific, authored by Dr Singh, Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, and Dr Amit Sarwal, offers a comprehensive collection of interdisciplinary research, insights, and analyses at the intersection of media, conflict, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific – a region experiencing rapid and profound change.
Dr Singh noted that media issues had grown increasingly complex due to heightened poverty, underdevelopment, corruption, and political instability.
“Media and communication play vital roles in the framing of conflict, security, and development in public and political discourses, ultimately influencing progression or regression in peace and stability. This is particularly true in the era of digital media,” Dr Singh said.
Launching the Waves of Change book . . . contributor Dr David Robie (from left), co-editor Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad, PNG Minister of Information and Communication Technology Timothy Masiu, co-editor Associate Professor Shailendra Singh, and co-editor Dr Amit Sarwal. Image: The Australia Today
Dr Amit Sarwal said that the primary aim of the new book was to address and revisit critical questions linking media, peacebuilding, and development in the Pacific. He expressed a desire to bridge gaps in training, publishing, and enhance practical applications in these vital areas particularly amongst young journalists in the Pacific.
Winds of Change . . . shedding light on the intricate relationship between media, peace, and development in the Pacific. Image: APMN
Professor Biman Prasad is hopeful that this collection will shed light on the intricate relationship between media, peace, and development in the Pacific. He stressed the importance of prioritising planning, strategising, and funding in this sector.
“By harnessing the potential of media for peacebuilding, stakeholders in the Pacific can work towards a more peaceful and prosperous future for all,” Professor Prasad added.
Waves of Change: Media, Peace, and Development in the Pacific has been published under a joint collaboration of Australia’s Kula Press and India’s Shhalaj Publishing House.
The book features nine chapters authored by passionate researchers and academics, including David Robie, John Rabuogi Ahere, Sanjay Ramesh, Kalinga Seneviratne, Kylie Navuku, Narayan Gopalkrishnan, Hurriyet Babacan, Usha Sundar Harris, and Asha Chand.
Dr Robie is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review, which also celebrated 30 years of publishing at the book launch.
The 2024 Pacific International Media Conference was organised in partnership with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN).
Australia is “missing an open goal” by not joining the European Union’s flagship research and innovation program, research and businesses leaders have warned while calling on a reluctant federal government to reconsider. The leaders voiced disappointment after the Albanese government confirmed it has no plans to follow Canada and sign an agreement to join Horizon…
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) announced on 8 July that it will acquire the US-made Switchblade 300 precision loitering munition for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to enhance their battlefield advantage. The Switchblade 300 is a battle-proven loitering munition developed by uncrewed air and ground vehicles specialist AeroVironment designed to boost the firepower of […]
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) announced on 8 July that it will acquire the US-made Switchblade 300 precision loitering munition for the Australian Defence Force (ADF) to enhance their battlefield advantage. The Switchblade 300 is a battle-proven loitering munition developed by uncrewed air and ground vehicles specialist AeroVironment designed to boost the firepower of […]
Was there any need for this? Australia’s Albanese government, harried by the conservative opposition for going soft on pro-Palestinian protests and the war in Gaza while allegedly wobbling on supporting Israel, has decided to bring a touch of bureaucracy to the show. Australia now has its first antisemitism envoy, a title that sits in that odd constellation of deceptive names that can be misread for darkly comic effect. We see them often: the professor of homelessness who might be confused for encouraging it, or a researcher in genocide studies who might be misunderstood for being a practitioner.
When a government is in trouble, new committees are born, officials appointed, and fresh positions created. An essential lesson in governing is to give the impression of governing, however badly, or ineffectually, it might prove to be. Best to also badge the effort with some lexical trendiness, ever important for the shortsighted and easily distracted.
On this occasion, “social cohesion” is the ephemeral term that saddles the enterprise. In the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, “There is no place for violence, hatred or discrimination of any kind in Australia.” As part of the government’s efforts “to promote social cohesion, we have appointed Jillian Segal AO as Special Envoy to combat Antisemitism.”
In a press release, the PM turns social worker and community healer – all in the name of social cohesion, a vapid term which, read a different way, can be construed as not rocking the boat, or upsetting any applecarts. Call it tolerable muzzling, or permissible dissent. “Australians are deeply concerned about this conflict, and many are hurting. In times like this, Australians must come together, not be torn apart.” Having “built our nation’s social cohesion together over generations [Australians] must work together to uphold, defend and preserve it.”
Albanese explains that the appointment of a special office with a singular purpose is nonetheless intended to reflect a universal aspiration. “Every Australian, no matter their race or religion, should be able to feel safe and at home in any community, without prejudice or discrimination.” A noble sentiment. Then, the throwaway line, the gentle flick: “We have advocated for a two-state solution on the world stage, at the United Nations.”
Duly stated, Albanese goes on to speak of the specialised role of Segal, who “will listen and engage with Jewish Australians, the wider Australian community, religious discrimination experts and all levels of government on the most effective way to combat Antisemitism.” She will keep company with “other Special Envoys to combat Antisemitism” in attending the World Jewish Congress to be held in Argentina next week.
The new appointee conveyed the gravity of her appointment. “Antisemitism is an age-old hatred,” Segal explained. “It has the capacity to lie dormant through good times and then in times of crisis like pandemic, which we’ve experienced, economic downturn, war, it awakens, it triggers the very worst instincts in an individual to fear, to blame others for life’s misfortunes and to hate.” Listening to such comments conveys a hermetic impression, one which resists explication on cause and effect. They serve to cauterise the grotesquery of war and obscure the fury it engenders in those who respond.
In what is becoming a force of habit, Albanese’s announcement had the scouring effect on the very cohesion he was praising. While also announcing that a Special Envoy for Islamophobia was in the works, with details to “be announced shortly”, the impression was unmistakable: the concerns and fears of one group had been chronologically privileged and elevated in the pantheon of policy.
The response from the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) expressed that very sentiment. The move of appointing “a taxpayer-funded special envoy on antisemitism” was “particularly concerning as it singles out antisemitism for special government investment and attention, while failing to address the increasingly frequent and severe forms of racism experienced by Palestinians, Muslims, First Nations people and other marginalised communities.”
APAN President Nasser Mashni expanded on the theme: “This seems to be yet another example of the Australian Government pandering to pro-Israel groups, and pitting parts of the Jewish community against the Palestinian Muslim communities – and against each other – rather than working to realise equal right and justice for all.” Not too socially cohesive, then.
The organisation also worried that the creation of a dedicated office to combat one form of religious and ethnic prejudice was at odds with current work to combat “existing systemic approaches to anti-racism” being undertaken by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s recently appointed Race Discrimination Commissioner.
To show that such concerns were not confined to non-Jewish voices, Sarah Schwartz of the Jewish Council of Australia’s executive office saw the appointment as needlessly provocative. “We are concerned that an anti-Semitism envoy in Australia … will increase racism and division by pitting Jewish communities against Palestinian, Muslim and other racialised communities.”
While Segal’s appointment has already disturbed the policy waters, the looming question is what tangible effect it will have. Having now named an official for the specific task of combating a phenomenon time immemorial, the assumption is that it can be drawn out and struck down in isolation.
This raises a host of concerns. At what point, for instance, does criticism of Israel’s particularly brutal Gaza campaign veer into the fetid swamps of antisemitic indulgence? Will pro-Palestinian protestors, activists and advocates have reason to fear even greater scrutiny, in public fora or the universities? The latter question has already interested the opposition for some months, hungry for the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry into claims of antisemitism on Australian university campuses.
In this case, the government may well have inflated a specific problem by creating an office to combat it. Well-wishers will say that this is necessary to combat a monstrous blight that, if not addressed, infects the polity. But those left out in the naming game of social cohesion are already gnashing their teeth and demanding their own representatives.
If the pen is mightier than the sword, then an army of journalists has assembled in Fiji’s capital to discuss the state and future of the industry in the region.
The three-day Pacific Media Conference 2024 on July 4-6 is organised and hosted by the University of the South Pacific, in collaboration with the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), with more than 50 speakers from 11 countries.
A keynote speaker and veteran journalist Dr David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, says the conference is crucial.
“It’s quite a trailblazer in many respects, because this is probably the first conference of its kind where it’s blended industry journalists all around the region, plus media academics that have been analysing and critiquing the media and so on.
“So to have this joining forces like this . . . it’s really quite a momentous conference.”
Dr Robie is a distinguished author, journalist and media educator and was recognised last month as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for his contribution to journalism and education in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region for more than 50 years.
Speaking to William Terite on Radio 531pi’s Pacific Mornings, Dr Robie said the conference was a way to bolster solidarity to others in the industry and address common challenges.
“In many Pacific countries a lot of their fledgling institutions, and essentially, politicians, have no understanding of media generally, and have a tendency to crack down on media when they have half a chance.
“So it’s partly to get a much better image of journalism and how important journalism is in democracy and development in many countries in the Pacific.”
Journalists at the Pacific Media Conference 2024 in Suva. Image: PMN News/Justin Latif
Turning the page for media The conference theme is “Navigating challenges and shaping futures in Pacific media research and practice”.
In April last year, Fiji revoked media laws that restricted media content. PMN chief-of-news Justin Latif is attending the conference, and said Fijian media were in celebration-mode, saying “democracy has returned to Fiji”.
“They talked about how such a conference had happened under previous regimes, basically the police and army would have had a presence there and would have been just noting names and checking up that nothing was said that was anti-government.”
Latif said regional journalists showed a deep sense of purpose and drive.
“People do see their roles as a calling, and so often are willing to take less pay and harder conditions,” he said.
“They see their job as building their nation and being part of helping strengthen the country, and so it’s probably quite different if you were to get a group of journalists together in New Zealand, they probably wouldn’t have quite the same sense of that kind of fervour for the role in terms of what it can mean for the country.”
The Pacific Journalism Review, a journal examining media issues and communication in the region, celebrated its 30-year anniversary. It has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and is regularly cited by scholars.
Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie (left) with Fiji Deputy Prime Minister Professor Biman Prasad at the launch of the 30th anniversary edition of Pacific Journalism Review at the 2024 Pacific Media Conference in Fiji. Image: Del Abcede/APMN
Global tussle for Pacific attention The United States is one of the main funders of the conference, and there are representatives from some Asia-Pacific countries such as Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Latif said China’s involvement in Pacific media was openly questioned by the US deputy chief of mission, John Gregory.
“He gave a very detailed breakdown of all the ways that China are influencing elections: using Facebook to spread misinformation to try and basically encourage the three Pacific nations who still support or maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, how they’re trying to influence those nations to have a regime change, and it was quite shocking information about the lengths that China is going to, or that the State Department believed China is going to.”
The United States in putting investment into journalism in the Pacific, said Latif, sending 13 journalists from Fiji to the US for exchanges.
“There is a clear US agenda here about wanting the media to be strengthened and to be supported so that they can have a strong foothold in the Pacific, because the influence of China is definitely being felt.”
A bold, future vision for Pacific media Dr Robie has described the current state of news media in the Pacific as “precarious”, and warned some nations can be susceptible to “geopolitics and the influences of other countries”.
“We’ve got China trying to encourage media organisations to be very much under an authoritarian wing, taking journalists across to China . . . but now we’re getting a lot more competition from Australia and the US and so on, upping the game, putting more money into training, influencing, whereas for many years they didn’t care too much about the media in the region.
“Journalists very often feel like they’re the meat in the sandwich in the competition between many countries, and it’s not good for the region generally.”
Dr Robie has worked across the Pacific, including five years as head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea, and then as the coordinator of the journalism programme at USP.
He encouraged Pacific media to continue upholding democratic values while holding leaders to account.
“Most media organisations in the Pacific are quite small and vulnerable in the sense that they’ve got small teams, limited resources, and it’s always a struggle, to be honest, and things are probably the toughest they’ve been for a while.
“Pacific countries and media need to stand up tall and strong themselves, be very clear about what they want and to stand up for it, and not be overshadowed by the influence of major countries.”
Today, the United States is leading the world’s largest multinational maritime war exercise from occupied Honolulu, Hawai’i. 25,000 personnel from 29 nations, including NATO allies and other strategic partners, are participating in the Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, under the command of the US Pacific Fleet, a major component of the US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).
With RIMPAC now underway, the lands and waters surrounding the Hawaiian Islands are being intensively bombed and shelled as participating forces practice amphibious landings and urban combat training, and the Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) find their sovereignty once again violated after more than 130 years of colonization by the US.
RIMPAC aims to fortify the colonization and militarization of the Pacific, ensuring the security of the West’s imperialist agenda against the rise of China and other threats to the US-led capitalist system.
In the interest of advancing a political education around the history and purpose of INDOPACOM as part of U.S. militarism, the Solidarity Network for the Black Alliance for Peace has published this comprehensive Fact Sheet on INDOPACOM.
WHAT IS INDOPACOM?
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, or INDOPACOM, is one of the U.S. Department of Defense’s eleven unified combatant commands that together span the globe. INDOPACOM’s area of responsibility (AOR) covers half of the earth’s surface, stretching from California to India’s western border, and from Antarctica to the North Pole. INDOPACOM claims 38 nations within its AOR, which together comprise over half of the world’s population. Its AOR includes the two most populous countries in the world, China and India, while also encompassing small island nations, such as Diego Garcia, Guam, Palau, and Samoa, all of which are under some form of U.S. colonial occupation. INDOPACOM comprises multiple components and sub-unified commands. They include U.S. Forces Korea, U.S. Forces Japan, U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific, U.S. Pacific Fleet, U.S. Marine Forces Pacific, U.S. Pacific Air Forces, and U.S. Army Pacific.
According to INDOPACOM, this large and diverse area is optimal terrain to implement its “combat credible deterrence strategy.” This includes an estimated 366 bases and installations across 16 nations–more than any other command structure due to large concentrations in Guam, Hawai’i, Japan, Korea, and Okinawa. Many of the military installations strategically surround China and major trade routes.
Headquartered at Camp H.M. Smith of occupied Honolulu, Hawai’i, INDOPACOM claims to enhance stability and ensure “a free and open Indo-Pacific” through military and economic partnerships with countries in the region. Nonetheless, it also claims to advance “U.S. national security objectives while protecting national interests.” INDOPACOM states its mission is to build a combat-ready force “capable of denying its adversaries sustained air and sea dominance.”
THE HISTORY OF INDOPACOM
INDOPACOM is the U.S. military’s oldest and largest combatant command. It is the result of a merger between three commands–Far East Command, Pacific Command and Alaskan Command–which were established after World War II in 1947. The first commander of the Far East Command, General Douglas MacArthur, was tasked with “carrying out occupation duties of Korea, Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, the Bonin Islands, the Philippines and the Mariana Islands.” From the end of WWII to 1958, the U.S. military conducted 67 nuclear tests throughout the Marshall Islands under “Operation Crossroads.” It conducted another 36 nuclear detonations at Christmas Island and Johnston Atoll in 1962 under “Operation Dominic,” which permanently destroyed the natural biomes.
Against the backdrop of the Korean War, the key predecessor to INDOPACOM, Pacific Command, was primarily oriented toward combat operations in Korea and later, the Philippines. The ongoing Korean War has resulted in millions of casualties as well as the demarcation of North and South Korea since 1953. By 1957, Pacific Command saw a major expansion and strategic reorientation of its AOR, absorbing the Far East Command and most of the Alaskan Command. Camp H.M. Smith of occupied Honolulu, Hawai’i was selected as the new headquarters because the U.S. Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, the largest maritime invasion force in the world, was already located there.
Throughout the U.S. war on Vietnam, Pacific Command controlled all U.S. military forces, including South Vietnamese assets, and operations within the country. Leading both the U.S. Pacific Air Forces and Pacific Fleet, Pacific Command’s brutal campaigns resulted in some of the most egregious atrocities, such as the My Lai massacre in 1968. Pacific Command’s operations also included some of the heaviest aerial bombardments, like “Operation Rolling Thunder.” In its numerous campaigns, which also included “Operation Bolo,” “Linebacker I and II”, “Ranch Hand,” and “Arc Lightdropping,” Pacific Command dropped over 5 million tons of bombs and at least 11 million gallons of the highly corrosive herbicide known as “Agent Orange” on Southeast Asia. Pacific Command was also responsible for covert bombing operations targeting Cambodia and Laos during the war, dropping over 2.5 million tons of bombs through “Operation Menu.”
Pacific Command saw subsequent alterations to its AOR after U.S. forces fled Vietnam in 1973. Responsibility for Afghanistan and Pakistan was delegated to US Central Command after its inauguration in 1983, while Pacific Command assumed new responsibility for China and North Korea that same year. U.S. Secretaries of Defense Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfield respectively oversaw territorial expansions to Pacific Command’s AOR in 1989 and 2002, into INDOPACOM’s current formation.
INDOPACOM NOW
The United States continues to view the Asia-Pacific region as pivotal to the pursuit of its material interests, emphasizing that the region is home to some of the largest and fastest-growing economies and militaries. The Obama administration’s 2011 “Pivot to Asia” marked a stronger push by Pacific Command for confrontation not only with China but any nation or movement that poses a threat to U.S. hegemony in the region.
In 2018, Pacific Command was rebranded to Indo-Pacific Command, or INDOPACOM, as it is known today. This move was meant to recognize the strategic importance of India, following heightened aggression toward China during the Obama and Trump presidencies. INDOPACOM regularly conducts joint naval training exercises in the South China Sea with countries like Japan and Australia in clear violation of international law and even secretly stationed U.S. special-operations and support forces in Taiwan since 2021.
Massive military exercises like the largest international maritime warfare training, the “Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC),” and others like “Cape North” and Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center trainings occur frequently in occupied Hawai’i and Guam, without the consent of the Indigenous populations. In 2023, INDOPACOM carried out new iterations of its“Talisman Sabre” exercise in Australia and its “Super Garuda Shield” exercise in Indonesia. These exercises involved tens of thousands of military personnel from 13 and 19 nations, respectively, including the Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Tonga for the first time.
INDOPACOM’s major military partners in the Asia-Pacific region include Japan and South Korea. The U.S. military holds significant leverage over each nation’s armed forces via agreements undergirding the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and U.S. Forces Japan (USFJ), essentially commanding additional joint military structures with their own distinct mission, vision, and objectives in support of INDOPACOM. USFK continues to prevent reunification in Korea as part of its mission to “defend the Republic of Korea,” while USFJ remains committed to the colonial occupation of Okinawa as part of its mission of “provid[ing] a ready and lethal capability…in support of the U.S.-Japan Alliance.”
BAP AGAINST INDOPACOM
INDOPACOM works to extend U.S. military influence throughout the Asia-Pacific region and to promote the militarism and violence required to fulfill the material interests of the U.S. ruling class. By portraying China as a global bogeyman, INDOPACOM serves to obfuscate the indigeneity and legitimacy of liberation movements like those occurring on the occupied islands of Guam, Hawai’i, Okinawa, and Samoa, as well as nearly every other nation across the region from Indonesia and Malaysia to the Philippines. INDOPACOM’s aggressive role in the region serves to create the very instability it uses to justify its own existence and mask the responsibility of U.S. officials provoking new wars.
The Black Alliance for Peace stands against the influence and power of INDOPACOM, and the ever-increasing militarization of the region. Informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition, we understand that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the achievement, by popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and global white supremacy. As referenced in our Principles of Unity, BAP takes a resolute anti-colonial, anti-imperialist position that links the international role of the U.S. empire–one based on war, aggression and exploitation–to the domestic war against poor and working-class African/Black people in the United States.
Tasmania-based company CBG Systems has signed a contract with Hanwha Defence Australia (HDA) to supply its proprietary SolarSigmaShield Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) for the latter’s tracked Redback infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) being procured for the Australian Army under the LAND 400 Phase 3 programme. CBG Systems made the announcement in a 1 July social media […]
Tasmania-based company CBG Systems has signed a contract with Hanwha Defence Australia (HDA) to supply its proprietary SolarSigmaShield Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) for the latter’s tracked Redback infantry fighting vehicle (IFV) being procured for the Australian Army under the LAND 400 Phase 3 programme. CBG Systems made the announcement in a 1 July social media […]
As many as 200,000 AI-related jobs could be created in Australia by 2030 if the federal government provides deliberate policy support, according to a new report by the Tech Council of Australia. The Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Workday-backed ‘Meeting the AI skills boom’ report, to be published on Tuesday, argues that reaching an AI workforce of…
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is now back in the country of his birth, having endured conditions of captivity ranging from cramped digs in London’s Ecuadorian embassy to the maximum-security facilities of Belmarsh Prison. His return to Australia after striking a plea deal with the US Department of Justice sees him in a state with some of the most onerous secrecy provisions of any in the Western world.
As of January 2023, according to the Attorney-General’s Department, the Australian Commonwealth had 11 general secrecy offences in Part 5.6 of the Criminal Code, 542 specific secrecy offences across 178 Commonwealth laws and 296 non-disclosure duties spanning 107 Commonwealth laws criminalising unauthorised disclosure of information by current and former employees of the Commonwealth.
In November 2023, the Albanese Government agreed to 11 recommendations advanced by the final report of the review of secrecy provisions. While aspiring to thin back the excessive overgrowth of secrecy, old habits die hard. Suggested protections regarding press freedom and individuals providing information to Royal Commissions will hardly instil confidence.
With that background, it is unsurprising that Assange’s return, while delighting his family, supporters and free press advocates, has stirred the seething resentment of the national security establishment, Fourth Estate crawlers, and any number of journalistic sellouts. Damn it all, such attitudes seem to say: he transformed journalism, stole away our self-censorship, exposed readers to the original classified text, and let the public decide for itself how to react to disclosures revealing the abuse of power. Minimal editorialising; maximum textual interpretation through the eyes of the universal citizenry, a terrifying prospect for those in government.
Given that the Australian press establishment is distastefully comfortable with politicians – the national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, for instance, has a central reporting bureau in Canberra’s Parliament House – Assange’s return has brought much agitation. The Canberra press corps earn their crust in a perversely symbiotic, and often uncritical relationship, with the political establishment that furnishes them with rationed morsels of information. The last thing they want is an active Assange scuppering such a neat understanding, a radical transparency warrior keenly upsetting conventions of hypocrisy long respected.
Let’s wade through the venom. Press gallery scribbler Phillip Coorey of the Australian Financial Review proved provincially ignorant, his mind ill-temperedly confused about WikiLeaks. “I have never been able to make up my mind about Assange.” Given that his profession benefits from leaks, whistleblowing and the exposure of abuses, one wonders what he is doing in it. Assange has, after all, been convicted under the US Espionage Act of 1917 for engaging in that very activity, a matter that should give Coorey pause for outrage.
For the veteran journalist, another parallel was more appropriate, something rather distant from any notions of public interest journalism that had effectively been criminalised by the US Republic. “The release of Julian Assange has closer parallels to that of David Hicks 17 years ago, who like Assange, was deemed to have broken American law while not in that country, and which eventually involved a US president cutting a favour for an Australian prime minister.”
The case of Hicks remains a ghastly reminder of Australian diplomatic and legal cowardice. Coorey is only right to assume that both cases feature tormented flights of fancy by the US imperium keen on breaking a few skulls in their quest to make the world safe for Washington. The military commissions, of which Hicks was a victim, were created during the madly named Global War on Terror pursuant to presidential military order. Intended to try non-US citizens suspected of terrorism held at the Guantánamo Bay detention facility, they were farcical exercises of executive power, a fact pointed out by the US Supreme Court in 2006. It took Congressional authorisation via the Military Commissions Act in 2009 to spare them.
Coorey’s colleague and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, Peter Hartcher, was similarly uninterested in what Assange exposed, babbling about the publisher’s return as the moment “Assangeism came into plain view”. He had no stomach for “the cult” which seemed to have infected Canberra’s cold weather. He also wondered whether Assange could constructively “use his global celebrity status to campaign for public interest journalism and human rights”. To do so – and here, teacher’s pet of the political establishment, beater of the war drum for the United States – Assange would have to “fundamentally” alter “his ways to advance the cause”.
All this was a prelude for Hartcher to take the hatchet to the journalistic exploits of a man more decorated with journalism awards that many in the Canberra gallery combined. The claim that he is “a journalist is hotly contested by actual journalists.” Despite the US government conceding that the disclosures by WikiLeaks had not resulted in harm to US sources, “there were many other victims of Assange’s project.” The returned publisher was only in Australia “on probation”, a signal reminder that the media establishment will be attempting to badger him into treacherous conformity.
Even this language was too mild for another Australian hack, Michael Ware, who had previously worked for Time Magazine and CNN. With pathological inventiveness, he thought Assange “a traitor in the sense that, during a time of war, when we had American, British and Australian troops in the field, under fire, Julian Assange published troves of unredacted documents”. Never mind truth to power; in Ware’s world, veracity is subordinate to it, even in an illegal war. What he calls “methods” and “methodology” cannot be exposed.
Such gutter journalism has its necessary cognate in gutter politics. All regard information was threatening unless appropriately handled, its more potent effects for change stilled. Leader of the opposition in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, found it “completely unnecessary and totally inappropriate for Julian Assange to be greeted like some homecoming hero by the Australian Prime Minister.” Chorusing with hacks Coorey, Hartcher and Ware, Birmingham bleated about the publication by Assange of half a million documents “without having read them, curated them, checked to see if there was anything that could be damaging or risking the lives of others there.” Keep the distortions flying, Senator.
Dennis Richardson, former domestic intelligence chief and revolving door specialist (public servant becomes private profiteer with ease in Canberra), similarly found it inexplicable that the PM contacted Assange with a note of congratulation, or even showed any public interest in his release from a system that was killing him. “I can think of no other reason why a prime minister would ring Assange on his return to Australia except for purposes relating to politics,” moaned Richardson to the Guardian Australia.
For Richardson, Assange had been legitimately convicted, even if it was achieved via that most notorious of mechanisms, the plea deal. The inconvenient aside that Assange had been spied upon by CIA sponsored operatives, considered a possible object of abduction, rendition or assassination never clouds his uncluttered mind.
Sharp eyes will be trained on Assange in Australia, however long he wishes to stay. He is in the bosom of the Five Eyes Alliance, permanently threatened by the prospect of recall and renewed interest by Washington. And there are dozens of journalists, indifferent to the dangers the entire effort against the publisher augurs for their own craft, wishing that to be the case.
The search for Australia’s next chief scientist has begun, in preparation for Dr Cathy Foley’s departure at the end of this year. Dr Foley, a quantum physicist, was appointed as Australia’s ninth chief scientist in January 2021. After completing the initial three-year term her tenure was extended to the end of 2024. As chief scientist,…
Global Voices interviews veteran author, journalist and educator David Robie who discussed the state of Pacific media, journalism education, and the role of the press in addressing decolonisation and the climate crisis.
INTERVIEW:By Mong Palatino in Manila
Professor David Robie is among this year’s New Zealand Order of Merit awardees and was on the King’s Birthday Honours list earlier this month for his “services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education.”
His career in journalism has spanned five decades. He was the founding editor of the Pacific Journalism Review journal in 1994 and in 1996 he established the Pacific Media Watch, a media rights watchdog group.
He was head of the journalism department at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993–1997 and at the University of the South Pacific from 1998–2002. While teaching at Auckland University of Technology, he founded the Pacific Media Centre in 2007.
In 2015, he was given the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) Asian Communication Award in Dubai. Global Voices interviewed him about the challenges faced by journalists in the Pacific and his career. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
MONG PALATINO (MP): What are the main challenges faced by the media in the region?
DAVID ROBIE (DR): Corruption, viability, and credibility — the corruption among politicians and influence on journalists, the viability of weak business models and small media enterprises, and weakening credibility. After many years of developing a reasonably independent Pacific media in many countries in the region with courageous and independent journalists in leadership roles, many media groups are becoming susceptible to growing geopolitical rivalry between powerful players in the region, particularly China, which is steadily increasing its influence on the region’s media — especially in Solomon Islands — not just in development aid.
However, the United States, Australia and France are also stepping up their Pacific media and journalism training influences in the region as part of “Indo-Pacific” strategies that are really all about countering Chinese influence.
Indonesia is also becoming an influence in the media in the region, for other reasons. Jakarta is in the middle of a massive “hearts and minds” strategy in the Pacific, mainly through the media and diplomacy, in an attempt to blunt the widespread “people’s” sentiment in support of West Papuan aspirations for self-determination and eventual independence.
MP: What should be prioritised in improving journalism education in the region?
DR: The university-based journalism schools, such as at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, are best placed to improve foundation journalism skills and education, and also to encourage life-long learning for journalists. More funding would be more beneficial channelled through the universities for more advanced courses, and not just through short-course industry training. I can say that because I have been through the mill both ways — 50 years as a journalist starting off in the “school of hard knocks” in many countries, including almost 30 years running journalism courses and pioneering several award-winning student journalist publications. However, it is important to retain media independence and not allow funding NGOs to dictate policies.
MP: How can Pacific journalists best fulfill their role in highlighting Pacific stories, especially the impact of the climate crisis?
DR: The best strategy is collaboration with international partners that have resources and expertise in climate crisis, such as the Earth Journalism Network to give a global stage for their issues and concerns. When I was still running the Pacific Media Centre, we had a high profile Pacific climate journalism Bearing Witness project where students made many successful multimedia reports and award-winning commentaries. An example is this one on YouTube: Banabans of Rabi: A Story of Survival
MP: What should the international community focus on when reporting about the Pacific?
DR: It is important for media to monitor the Indo-Pacific rivalries, but to also keep them in perspective — so-called ”security” is nowhere as important to Pacific countries as it is to its Western neighbours and China. It is important for the international community to keep an eye on the ball about what is important to the Pacific, which is ‘development’ and ‘climate crisis’ and why China has an edge in some countries at the moment.
Australia and, to a lesser extent, New Zealand have dropped the ball in recent years, and are tying to regain lost ground, but concentrating too much on “security”. Listen to the Pacific voices.
There should be more international reporting about the “hidden stories” of the Pacific such as the unresolved decolonisation issues — Kanaky New Caledonia, “French” Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), both from France; and West Papua from Indonesia. West Papua, in particular, is virtually ignored by Western media in spite of the ongoing serious human rights violations. This is unconscionable.
Mong Palatino is regional editor of Global Voices for Southeast Asia. An activist and former two-term member of the Philippine House of Representatives, he has been blogging since 2004 at mongster’s nest. @mongsterRepublished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by Pacific Media Watch.
The WikiLeaks project was always going to put various noses out of joint in the journalistic profession. Soaked and blighted by sloth, easily bought, perennially envious, a good number of the Fourth Estate have always preferred to remain uncritical of power and sympathetic to its brutal exercise. For those reasons, the views of Thomas Carlyle, quoting the opinion of Edward Burke in his May 1840 lecture that “there were Three Estates in Parliament; but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all” seem quaintly misplaced, certainly in a modern context.
The media response to the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from his scandalous captivity after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the US Espionage Act of 1917 provides a fascinating insight into a ghastly, craven and sycophantic tendency all too common among the plodding hacks.
Take, for instance, any number of journalists working for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, official national broadcaster and devotee of the safe middle line. One, a breakfast news anchor for the network’s meandering twenty-four-hour service, has a rather blotted record of glee regarding the mistreatment of Assange over the years.
Michael Rowland, torturously insipid and ponderously humourless, had expressed his inexpressible joy when the Ecuadorian government cut off Assange’s access to the Internet while confined to the country’s London embassy. “A big gold star to Ecuador,” he chirped on March 28, 2018. Andrew Fowler, another journalist and far more seasoned on the rise of WikiLeaks, reproached Rowland on Twitter, as the X platform was then called. “Why would silencing a fellow journalist be supported?” For Rowland, the matter was as clear as day. “That remains a disputed opinion, Andrew. Publisher and activist yes. But you put yourself in a small camp calling him a journalist.”
These points matter, because they go to the central libelling strategy of the US government’s prosecution so casually embraced by mainstream outlets. In such a generated smokescreen, crimes can be concealed, and the revealers shown to be those of bad faith. Labels can be used to partition truth, if not obscure it altogether: a publisher-activist is to be regarded more dimly than the establishment approved journalist.
The point was rather well made by Antony Loewenstein, himself an independent journalist keen to ferret out the grainier details of abusive power. When interviewed by none other than Rowland himself, he explained, with unflagging patience, the reasons why Assange and Wikileaks are so reviled by the orthodox scribblers of the Fourth Estate. WikiLeaks, he stated with salience, had confronted power, not succumbed to it.
Rowland could only reiterate the standard line that Assange had admitted guilt for a “very serious offence”, refusing to examine the reasons for doing so, or the implications of it. Again, the vulgar line that Assange had “put US lives at risk” with the WikiLeaks disclosures was trotted out like an ill-fed nag. Again, Loewenstein had to remind Rowland that there was no evidence that any lives had been exposed to harm, a point made in several studies on the subject from the Pentagon to the Australian Defence Department.
The tendency is pestilential. While more guarded in his current iteration as a professor of journalism, Peter Greste, formerly a journalist for Al Jazeera, was previously dismissive in the Sydney Morning Herald of Assange’s contributions as he was brutally evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. “To be clear, Julian Assange is no journalist, and WikiLeaks is not a news organisation.” An organisation boasting “the libertarian idea of radical transparency” was “a separate issue altogether from press freedom.”
While approving the publishing activities centred on the release of the Collateral Murder video showing the killing of civilians including two Reuters journalists by Apache helicopters, and the release of the Afghanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs and “Cablegate”, Greste fell for the canard that the publisher did not redact names in documents to “protect the innocent” by dumping “them all onto his website, free for anybody to go through, regardless of their contents or their impact they might have had.”
There is no mention of the decrypting key carelessly included in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy by its bumbling authors David Leigh and Luke Harding, or the fact that the website Cryptome was the first to publish the unredacted files ahead of WikiLeaks. There is certainly no discussion of the extensive redacting efforts Assange had made, as many of his collaborators testify to, prior to the release in November 2010.
Writing on June 25 in The Conversation, Greste displays the emetic plumage of someone who has done an about face. “It is worth pausing for a moment to consider all Assange has been through, and to pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate his release,” he writes distastefully, also reflecting on his own carceral experiences in an Egyptian prison cell. He also claims that the role of WikiLeaks, in checking “the awesome power that governments wield”, should be celebrated, while stating, weakly, that he never believed that Assange should “have been charged with espionage.”
In such shifting views, we see wounded egos, cravenness, and the concerns about an estate whose walls had been breached by a usurping, industrious publisher. By all means use the spoils from Assange and his leakers, even while snorting about how they were obtained. Publish and write about them in the hope of getting a press award. Never, however, admit that Assange is himself a journalist with more journalism awards than many have had hot dinners. In this grotesque reality, we are now saddled with a terrifying precedent: the global application of a US espionage statute endangering journalists and publishers who would dare discuss and run material on Washington’s national security.
But many, such as the NGO ARTICLE 19, have a warning: However, this is not a slam-dunk win for press freedom. The US should have never brought these charges. The single remaining criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defence documents puts investigative journalism at severe risk in the United States and beyond. Journalists that cover national security, the armed forces and defence do this day in and day out as part of providing transparency and accountability to hold abuses of power in check.
‘We are all at risk if the government can hold an archaic law, the Espionage Act, over the heads of journalists to silence them.’ The charge under the Espionage Act undermines the principles of media freedom, accountability, and independent journalism that Assange, his legal team, and campaigners had championed throughout his case, which began in 2012. The fact that his release from Belmarsh prison is a result of plea deal is a clear reminder of how important it is to redouble our efforts defending media freedom and pushing for accountability.
Julian Assange has landed in Australia a free man, reuniting with his family Wednesday after pleading guilty to one charge of violating the U.S. Espionage Act as part of a deal with the Justice Department. The WikiLeaks publisher entered his plea on the Pacific island of Saipan, part of the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands, which lets him avoid further prison time following five years behind bars in the U.K. awaiting possible extradition to the U.S. He had been facing a possible 175 years in U.S. prison if convicted on charges related to his publication of classified documents in 2010 that revealed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This case is an attack on journalism, it’s an attack on the public’s right to know, and it should never have been brought,” the WikiLeaks founder’s wife, Stella Assange, said at a press conference Wednesday. “Julian should never have spent a single day in prison. But today we celebrate, because today Julian is free.” We also play comments from members of Assange’s legal team, Jennifer Robinson and Barry Pollack, who said the use of the World War I-era Espionage Act to go after a publisher put press freedoms at grave risk.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
One of the longest sagas of political persecution is coming to its terminus. That is, if you believe in final chapters. Nothing about the fate of Julian Assange seems determinative. His accusers and inquisitors will draw some delight at the plea deal reached between the WikiLeaks founder’s legal team and the US Department of Justice. Others, such as former US Vice President, Mike Pence, thought it unjustifiably lenient.
Alleged to have committed 18 offences, 17 novelly linked to the odious Espionage Act, the June 2020 superseding indictment against Assange was a frontal assault on the freedoms of publishing and discussing classified government information. At this writing, Assange has arrived in Saipan, located in the US commonwealth territory of Northern Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, to face a fresh indictment. It was one of Assange’s conditions that he would not present himself in any court in the United States proper, where, with understandable suspicion, he might legally vanish.
As correspondence between the US Department of Justice and US District Court Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona reveals, the “proximity of this federal US District Court to the defendant’s country of citizenship, Australia, to which we expect he will return at the conclusion of proceedings” was also a factor.
Before the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands, he will plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information under the Espionage Act of 1917, or section 793(g) (Title 18, USC). The felony carries a fine up to $10,000 and/or up to 10 years in prison, though Assange’s time in Belmarsh Prison, spent on remand for some 62 months, will meet the bar.
The felony charge sheet alleges that Assange knowingly and unlawfully conspired with US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then based at Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, to receive and obtain documents, writings and notes, including those of a secret nature, relating to national defence, wilfully communicated those documents from persons with lawful possession of or access to them to those not entitled to receive them, and do the same from persons unauthorised to possess such documents.
Before turning to the grave implications of this single count and the plea deal, supporters of Assange, including his immediate family, associates and those who had worked with him and drunk from the same well of publishing, had every reason to feel a surreal sense of intoxication. WikiLeaks announced Assange’s departure from London’s Belmarsh Prison on the morning of June 24 after a 1,901 day stint, his grant of bail by the High Court in London, and his release at Stansted Airport. Wife Stella regularly updated followers about the course of flight VJ199. In coverage posted of his arrival at the federal court house in Saipan, she pondered “how overloaded his senses must be, walking through the press scrum after years of sensory depravation and the four walls” of his Belmarsh cell.
As for the plea deal itself, it is hard to fault it from the emotional and personal perspective of Assange and his family. He was ailing and being subjected to a slow execution by judicial process. It was also the one hook upon which the DOJ, and the Biden administration, might move on. This being an election year in the US, the last thing President Biden wanted was a haunting reminder of this nasty saga of political persecution hovering over freedom land’s virtues.
There was another, rather more sordid angle, and one that the DOJ had to have kept in mind in thinning the charge sheet: a proper Assange trial would have seen the murderous fantasies of the CIA regarding the publisher subject to scrutiny. These included various possible measures: abduction, rendition, even assassination, points thoroughly explored in a Yahoo News contribution in September 2021.
One of the authors of the piece, Zach Dorfman, posted a salient reminder as news of the plea deal filtered through that many officials during the Trump administration, even harsh critics of Assange, “thought [CIA Director Mike] Pompeo’s extraordinary rendition plots foolhardy in the extreme, and probably illegal. They also – critically – thought it might harm Assange’s prosecution.” Were Pompeo’s stratagems to come to light, “it would make the discovery process nightmarish for the prosecution, should Assange ever see trial.”
From the perspective of publishers, journalists and scribblers keen to keep the powerful accountable, the plea must be seen as enormously troubling. It ultimately goes to the brutal exercise of US extraterritorial power against any publisher, irrespective of outlet and irrespective of nationality. While the legal freight and prosecutorial heaviness of the charges was reduced dramatically (62 months seems sweetly less imposing than 175 years), the measure extracts a pound of flesh from the fourth estate. It signals that the United States can and will seek out those who obtain and publish national security information that they would rather keep under wraps under spurious notions of “harm”.
Assange’s conviction also shores up the crude narrative adopted from the moment WikiLeaks began publishing US national security and diplomatic files: such activities could not be seen as journalistic, despite their role in informing press commentary or exposing the venal side of power through leaks.
From the lead prosecuting attorney Gordon Kromberg to such British judges as Vanessa Baraitser; from the national security commentariat lodged in the media stable to any number of politicians, including the late California Democrat Dianne Feinstein to the current President Joe Biden, Assange was not of the fourth estate and deserved his mobbing. He gave the game away. He pilfered and stole the secrets of empire.
To that end, the plea deal makes a mockery of arguments and effusive declarations that the arrangement is somehow a victory for press freedom. It suggests the opposite: that anyone publishing US national security information by a leaker or whistleblower is imperilled. While the point was never tested in court, non-US publishers may be unable to avail themselves of the free speech protections of the First Amendment. The Espionage Act, for the first time in history, has been given a global, tentacular reach, made a weapon against publishers outside the United States, paving the way for future prosecutions.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s court hearing in Saipan is set to make “this dot in the middle of the Pacific” the centre of the world for one day, says a CNMI journalist.
The Northern Marianas — a group of islands in the Micronesian portion of the Pacific with a population of about 50,000 — is gearing up for a landmark legal case.
In 2010, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified US military documents on Washington’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — the largest security breaches of their kind in US military history.
Assange is expected to plead guilty to a US espionage charge in the US District Court for the Northern Mariana Islands today at 9am local time.
Saipantribune.com journalist and RNZ Pacific’s Saipan correspondent Mark Rabago will be in court, and said it was a significant moment for Saipan.
“Not everybody knows Saipan, much less can spell it right. So it’s one of the few times in a decade that CNMI or Saipan is put in the map,” he said.
He said there was heavy interest from the world’s media and journalists from Japan were expected to fly in overnight.
‘Little dot in the middle’
“It’s significant that our little island, this dot in the middle of the Pacific, is the centre of the world,” Rabago said.
Assange was flying in from the United Kingdom via Thailand on a private jet, Rabago said.
He said it was not known exactly why the case was being heard in Saipan, but there was some speculation.
“He doesn’t want to step foot in the continental US and also Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, is the closest to Australia, aside from Guam,” Rabago said.
The reported plea bargain between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the United States government brings to a close one of the darkest periods in the history of media freedom, says the union for Australian journalists.
While the details of the deal are still to be confirmed, MEAA welcomed the release of Assange, a Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance member, after five years of relentless campaigning by journalists, unions, and press freedom advocates around the world.
MEAA remains concerned what the deal will mean for media freedom around the world.
The work of WikiLeaks at the centre of this case — which exposed war crimes and other wrongdoing by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan — was strong, public interest journalism.
MEAA fears the deal will embolden the US and other governments around the world to continue to pursue and prosecute journalists who disclose to the public information they would rather keep suppressed.
MEAA media federal president Karen Percy welcomed the news that Julian Assange has already been released from Belmarsh Prison, where he has been held as his case has wound its way through UK courts.
“We wish Julian all the best as he is reunited with his wife, young sons and other relatives who have fought tirelessly for his freedom,” she said.
‘Relentless battle against this injustice’
“We commend Julian for his courage over this long period, and his legal team and supporters for their relentless battle against this injustice.
“We’ve been extremely concerned about the impact on his physical and mental wellbeing during Julian’s long period of imprisonment and respect the decision to bring an end to the ordeal for all involved.
Julian Assange boards flight at London Stansted Airport at 5PM (BST) Monday June 24th. This is for everyone who worked for his freedom: thank you.#FreedJulianAssangepic.twitter.com/Pqp5pBAhSQ
“The deal reported today does not in any way mean that the struggle for media freedom has been futile; quite the opposite, it places governments on notice that a global movement will be mobilised whenever they blatantly threaten journalism in a similar way.
Percy said the espionage charges laid against Assange were a “grotesque overreach by the US government” and an attack on journalism and media freedom.
“The pursuit of Julian Assange has set a dangerous precedent that will have a potential chilling effect on investigative journalism,” she said.
“The stories published by WikiLeaks and other outlets more than a decade ago were clearly in the public interest. The charges by the US sought to curtail free speech, criminalise journalism and send a clear message to future whistleblowers and publishers that they too will be punished.”
Percy said was clearly in the public interest and it had “always been an outrage” that the US government sought to prosecute him for espionage for reporting that was published in collaboration with some of the world’s leading media organisations.
Julian Assange has been an MEAA member since 2007 and in 2011 WikiLeaks won the Outstanding Contribution to Journalism Walkley award, one of Australia’s most coveted journalism awards.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange boarding his flight at Stansted airport on the first stage of his journey to Guam. Image: WikiLeaks
It was given top billing, a near absurd show intended to rope in content on a global social media platform, thereby denying all outside Australia access to it. Because an Australian official had deemed a video too disturbing and offensive for Australians of ordinary sensibility (the standard remains opaquely absurd), the world’s citizenry were also to be barred from viewing it. It did not matter that those in the US, for instance, could readily digest the same, unabridged content, or that news networks in that country could readily broadcast the material in its entirety.
On April 16, Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, smacked X (formerly known as Twitter) and Meta with legal notices to remove links to a video within 24 hours depicting what her office declared to be “gratuitous or offensive violence with a high degree of impact and detail”. The video featured a livestreamed church service at Sydney’s Assyrian Orthodox Christ the Good Shepherd Church, which was abruptly interrupted by a stabbing assault. The perpetrator was a 16-year-old youth. Two churchmen, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and Rev. Isaac Royel, were injured.
X Corp’s erratic, truculent CEO thought differently about this overly generous extension of Australia’s Online Safety Act. Elon Musk found Inman Grant’s demand insensible, calling her a “censorship commissar” in her insistence on global content bans. While he was happy to acquiesce to restricting access to the video in Australia, the world was quite something else.
The issue wound its way to the Federal Court. On May 15, the Commissioner’s case received something of a sinking blow. Justice Geoffrey Kennett pondered the “potential consequences for orderly and amicable relations between nations, if a notice with the breath contended for were enforced”. It would, for instance, “be ignored or disparaged in other countries”. In the United States, no court would agree to enforce any relevant injunction requiring X Corp to take down the relevant URLs, numbering 65.
The judge acknowledged that the Online Safety Act covered “acts, omissions, matters and things outside Australia” but did not stipulate what “all reasonable steps” were in the context of removing material. “A clear expression of intention would be necessary to support a conclusion that Parliament intended to empower the Commissioner to issue removal notices with the effect for which she contends.” It followed that she had failed to establish “that compliance with the removal notice entails blocking access to the 65 URLs by all users of X Corp.”
The matter should have ended there, but the regulatory instinct of condescending officials is often obstinate. As proceedings continued through the month, more opposition manifested. On May 27, Justice Kennett granted orders permitting the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) leave to intervene. The intervention, reasoned FIRE, sought “to focus the court’s attention on how a global takedown order would disregard the strong free speech protections of countries like the US and lend an air of legitimacy to repressive regimes’ efforts to assert control over online content everywhere.”
On June 5, the Commissioner finally filed a notice of discontinuance in proceedings against X. The EFF stated with much satisfaction “that the Commissioner saw the error of her efforts”, reasoning that such global take down notices “threaten freedom of expression around the world, creating conflicting legal obligations, and lead to the lowest common denominator of internet content being available around the world”. Doing so permitted “the least tolerant legal system to determine what we all are able to read and distribute online.”
Very true – except that the Commissioner showed few signs of enlightenment, and certainly nothing in mending her crypto-authoritarian ways. A statement from Inman Grant showed that her program of infantilisation and regulation of the Internet is an ongoing one. “Our sole goal and focus in issuing our removal notice was to prevent this extremely violent footage from going viral, potentially inciting further violence and inflicting more harm on the Australian community. I stand by my investigators and the decisions eSafety made.”
In Inman Grant’s mind, Australians generally accepted (very good of her to think so) that such “graphic material should not be broadcast on television, which begs an obvious question why it should be allowed to be distributed freely and accessible online 24/7 to anyone, including children.” As the country’s online safety regulator, she expected “reasonable companies to be taking action in relation to this type of content.”
Unfortunately for free speech advocates and information libertarians, the Commissioner’s paranoia does have an audience. Ever since its creation, the Australian Commonwealth has shown a parental obsession with censorship. And now, we have such sentiments as those of Michael Miller, Executive Corp Australasia Executive Chairman, lecturing the public about the need for big tech companies to pay “a social license” should they “want access to Australian consumers”.
Such an encumbering license would permit the Australian government “to make the platforms liable for all content that is amplified, curated, and controlled by their algorithms or recommender engines”. It would also grant the government powers to “ultimately block access to our country and our people if they refuse to play by our rules.”
When an entity such as News Corp gives advice on what should or should not be accessible to the broader citizenry of any country, the bells should be going off. The Big Tech behemoths have much to answer for – the destruction of privacy, the ruthless monetisation of user data, behavioural modification and hypnotic seduction. But governments of all hues always cling to the same logic: the public is a dangerous beast best fed morsels of information rather than the whole buffet. Ignorance breeds manageable docility.
The Australian government said Tuesday it has complained to Beijing after Chinese officials tried to block formerly jailed Chinese state TV journalist Cheng Lei from view during a news conference by Premier Li Qiang during his visit to the country.
Two Chinese officials stood next to Cheng, an Australian citizen who formerly worked as a business reporter for China’s state-run CGTN. She was jailed in China for nearly three years in 2022 after being accused of “illegally providing state secrets she acquired at work to overseas institutions.”
She was deported and reunited with her family in Australia in November after serving the sentence.
Cheng, who now works for Sky News, attended Li’s news conference in Canberra on Monday, but Chinese officials appeared keen to ensure she didn’t make it into any news footage of the event.
That prompted a complaint from the Australian government, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Australian broadcaster ABC on Tuesday.
“Our officials have followed up with the Chinese Embassy to express our concern,” Albanese said. “When you look at the footage, it was a pretty clumsy attempt, frankly, by a couple of people to stand in between where the cameras were and where Cheng Lei was sitting.”
The footage also shows Cheng switching to a different seat, and an Australian official speaking with one of the Chinese officials.
Chinese officials try to block cameras from filming Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei (covered) attending a signing ceremony by Premier Li Qiang and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, June 17, 2024. (Lukas Coch/Pool via Reuters)
Two Australian officials then stand next to Cheng in her new seat, preventing Chinese officials from getting close enough to block her out of shot.
“Australian officials intervened, as they should have, to ask the Chinese officials who were there at the press conference to move, and they did so,” Albanese said, adding: “When I held my press conference, Cheng Lei got the first question.”
Protests outside
Li’s visit was also marred by protests outside the Australian Parliament on Monday, where protesters chanted in support of “Hong Kong independence” and against the Chinese Communist Party’s territorial claims on democratic Taiwan.
The protests themselves were also disrupted by clashes with supporters of Beijing, who started hitting protesters for tearing down China’s national flag as part of their demonstration.
Chinese national flags compete for space with human rights banners in a protest outside the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, June 17, 2024. (Lionel TC/RFA)
“One member who was shouting loudly was slapped by a Chinese guy, then a group of elderly Chinese started surrounding us and blocking us from view,” a Hong Kong protest organizer who gave only the nickname Isaiah told RFA Cantonese on Monday.
“When we opened our umbrellas, some of them pushed back at the umbrellas,” he said. “They started it by hitting us, and we acted with reasonable force out of self-defense.”
A protester who gave only the nickname Bonnie said the pro-China activists had targeted the women in their group.
“At one point, Chinese patriots targeted our female members and tried to wrap the Chinese flag around our heads and then pull it,” she told RFA Mandarin.
Trampled Tibetan flag
Several witnesses reported that Beijing’s supporters had also snatched a Tibetan Snow Lion flag and threw it to the ground and trampled on it.
When three Tibetans rushed into the group and tried to take back the flag, the Australian police immediately stepped forward to stop them and pinned one of the Tibetans to the ground, handcuffing him.
Police officers also restrained Australian journalist Vicky Xu by the neck and arms after she questioned their response to clashes between protesters and supporters of Beijing.
Australian police officers restrain journalist Vicky Xu by the neck and arms after she questioned their response to clashes between protesters and supporters of Beijing, outside the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, June 17, 2024. (Lionel TC/RFA)
The police later confirmed to RFA Mandarin that a man had been arrested outside the Parliament on Monday on suspicion of “breach of the peace,” a generic public order offense, and ordered not to go back there.
There was no response from the Chinese Embassy to requests for comment.
Life in prison
In his meeting with Li Qiang, Albanese also raised the case of Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who was handed a suspended death sentence for espionage by the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court in February.
According to the verdict, the court found Yang guilty of providing intelligence to Taiwan’s intelligence agency while working in Hong Kong in 1994, sentencing him to death, convertible to life imprisonment after two years, and depriving him of all his personal property.
Albanese has presided over a period of relative detente with Beijing since he took office in 2022, but analysts said Canberra is now much more cautious about how it manages ties with Beijing.
Li told the news conference that Beijing wants to build a “more mature, stable, and fruitful comprehensive strategic partnership” with Canberra, while Albanese said there had been progress on “military to military communication so as to avoid incidents.”
The two leaders also agreed that China will add Australia to its visa waiver programme to promote bilateral trade and tourism.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Lee Heung Yeung and Ray Chung for RFA Cantonese, Lionel TC for RFA Mandarin.
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Eastern European countries are not the only ones replacing legacy armoured vehicles. The Asia-Pacific nations are looking for new and modernised solutions. Concerns over the increasingly aggressive posturing of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK- North Korea) is causing many Asian-Pacific countries to re-evaluate the readiness and […]
Northrop Grumman Corporation announced on 4 June that it is partnering with Hanwha Defense Australia (HDA) to supply Mk44 Stretch Bushmaster Chain Guns (Mk44S) for integration on the Hanwha AS21 Redback tracked infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). Under the Australian Army’s LAND 400 Phase 3 programme, Northrop Grumman is contracted to manufacture 129 chain guns with […]
Australia’s modest sovereign wealth fund, modestly standing at A$272.3 billion, has crawled into some trouble of late. Investors, morally twinged, are keeping an eye on where the money of the Australian Future Fund goes. Inevitably, a good slice of it seems to be parked in the military-industrial complex, a sector that performs on demand.
Filed last October, a Freedom of Information request by Greens Senator David Shoebridge revealed that as much as A$600 million in public funds had found their way into defence company assets. In December, it was reported that the 30 defence and aerospace companies featured, with some of them receiving the following: Thales (A$3.5 million), Lockheed Martin (A$71 million), BAE Systems (A$26 million), Boeing (A$10.7 million), Rocket Lab USA (A$192 million) and Elbit Systems (A$488,768).
The findings gave Shoebridge a chance to spray the board administering the fund with gobbets of chastening wisdom. “The Future Fund is meant to benefit future generations. That rings hollow when they are investing in companies making equipment that ends future generations.”
Some cleansing of the stables was on offer, and the choice of what was cleaned proved popular – at least for the Canberra security establishment. In May, the Board upped stakes and divested from funds associated with the People’s Liberation Army of China. Eleven companies were noted, among them Xinjiang Guanghui Energy, a natural gas and coal producer whose chairman, Sun Guangxin, teased US officials by purchasing ranches for reasons of building a wind farm in proximity to a US Air Force base in Texas.
Relevant companies included Jiangsu GoodWe and LONGi, both with expertise in the line of solar energy generation. “Taxpayer funds and Australians’ retirement savings should never be invested in companies linked to serious human rights abuses, sanctions evasion or military suppliers to an authoritarian state,” gloated a satisfied opposition home affairs spokesman, Senator James Paterson. The same, it would seem, would not apply to human rights abuses committed by a purported democratic state.
To that end, things are somewhat murkier when it comes to the companies of other, friendlier powers. For some obstinate reason, Israel’s military poster boy, Elbit Systems, continues to make its presence felt in the field of Australian defence and finance. Despite a spotty reputation and a resume of lethal drone production; despite the ongoing murderous conflict in Gaza, the Israeli defence company managed to convince the Australian government to throw A$917 million its way in a contract signed in February. The contract, to be performed over a period of five years, will supply “advanced protection, fighting capabilities and sensors” for the Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs) of Korean design. With wonderful opportunism, the vehicles are being constructed in the same electorate that belongs to the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles.
And what of the near half-million dollars invested by the Future Fund in Elbit Systems? In October 2023, a list of the Fund’s direct holdings in various companies was published. It included Elbit Systems. An odd matter, given that the company, since 2021, is precluded from investing in the fund given, as Shoebridge tells us, the ratification by Australia of various “military weapons-related conventions or treaties”. The board, accordingly, had to furnish reasons “how it continues to invest in Elbit Systems despite the publicly announced direction it gave to withdraw those funds because of Australia’s international legal obligations.”
The internal correspondence of December 7, 2023, prompted by Shoebridge’s FOI request, including the prodding of Michael West Media, proved arid in detail. A Canberra bureaucrat in finance asks an official associated or attached to the Future Fund (both names are redacted) to clarify the status of Elbit Systems in terms of the exclusion list. The reply notes the role of “expert third party service providers” (who, pray?) who keep an eye on company activities and provide research upon which a decision is made by the Board every six months.
Elbit had been previously excluded as an investment option “in relation to its involvement in cluster munitions following its acquisition of IMI [Systems]”. IMI, rather than Elbit, was the spoiling consideration, given its role in producing technology that violates the Convention on Cluster Munitions. As of April 2023, Elbit was “no longer excluded by the portfolio. This reflects the updated research of our expert research providers.”
The response is not obliging on the exact details of the research. Banal talking points and information stifling platitudes are suggested, crude filling for the news cycle. The Board, for instance, had “a long-standing policy on portfolio exclusions and a robust process to implement” them. The policy was reviewed twice a year, buttressed by expert third party research. Recent media reporting had relied on an outdated exclusions list. The Board did not invest in those entities on the exclusions list. For the media establishment, this would have more than sufficed. The Board had said, and revealed, nothing.
Last month, Michael West noted that efforts to penetrate the veil of inscrutability had so far come to naught. The Future Fund and its Board of Guardians persisted in their refusal to respond to inquiries. “Since our last media request for comment, Israel has ramped up its war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank.” Given various interim orders by the International Court of Justice warning Israel of a real risk of committing genocide, even as it ponders South Africa’s application to make that finding, what are those expert researchers up to?
A new campaign calling itself PARC Against DARC has announced its official launch on Wednesday 29 May, aiming to stop UK/US/Australia militaries’ plans to create a 27-dish ‘Deep Space Advanced Radar Concept’ – ‘DARC’ high-power radar station at Cawdor Barracks, Brawdy, Pembrokeshire, in the heart of the St. David’s peninsula.
PARC Against DARC
Their brand new website, www.parcagainstdarc.com comes as part of the launch and states that the proposals are:
One of the most health-hazardous, tourism-ruining, skyline blighting military installations ever proposed anywhere in the UK.
As part of ‘AUKUS’ – the three-way security pact between Australia, the UK, and the US – the military plans are to build three DARC radar installations around the world, one in each of the three countries. The radars would track foreign countries’ communications and military satellites in space, so that British, US, and Australian aircraft could then destroy them with anti-satellite missiles at will.
This prompts the question on the PARC Against DARC website:
When did Dewisland, Pembrokeshire or humankind ever vote for the US military to control all of space?
A scoping report was submitted to Pembrokeshire County Council last year and in attempts to sell the project in a press release the US/UK Military made claims that the project would create one hundred new jobs. However, campaigners say these jobs would be mostly for American specialists and not locals, so in real terms this equates to a massive 300 job loss at the existing site.
PARC Against DARC is launching what it describes as an “extremely robust campaign website, ‘ram-packed’ with calls to action” along with social media pages, a petition, a campaign crowdfunder as well as lobbying tools.
The science is crystal clear, and decades of research show it: The higher incidence rates of cancers and other health complications experienced by residential populations in the closest vicinity of some particularly higher-powered, long range broadcast-capable radiofrequency installations are undeniable.
The campaign launch comes in response to announcements from the UK government’s defence minister Grant Shapps last December that St David’s is their ‘preferred UK site’ for the DARC radar array.
Campaigners point out that while the Ministry of Defence (MoD) might usually be shrouded in secrecy, it simply wouldn’t be right for it to use this lack of transparency to push through dangerous and potentially hazardous plans such as these. Therefore the onus and responsibility is squarely on the MoD to prove the safety of such a vast and environmentally impactful infrastructure proposal. They have a duty of care to do so.
PARC Against DARC will host a public launch meeting at Solva Memorial Hall at 7pm on Thursday 27 June where speakers and experts will update on the unfolding situation.
There will also be an open discussion at the meeting where all concerned parties can discuss plans to oppose the proposals and to get involved in the campaign. Organisers invite all residents, local businesses and elected representatives who have concerns about DARC to attend the meeting and make their voice heard.
Second time around for PARC
This isn’t the first time this battle has been fought.
PARC (Pembrokeshire Against Radar Campaign) was originally set up back in 1990 when the US Military attempted to build a similar radar installation on the Dewisland peninsula back then.
However, the PARC Campaign was so successful and achieved such strong support both locally and nationally that in 1991, Margaret Thatcher (the then-UK prime minister) was forced to publicly announce cancellation of the project in parliament.
Campaigners say that the strength of public opposition to the radar also led to the sitting Conservative MP Nicholas Bennett losing his seat in parliament.
The revamped 2024 operation already boasts an impressive and formidable level of support ranging from local, Welsh and UK organisations such as CND and Stop the War Coalition, as well as individual supporters such as Leanne Wood, Labour’s Beth Winter (MP for Cynon Valley), and Plaid Cymru’s Heledd Fychan MS for South Wales Central.
Campaigners say they especially encourage local businesses organisations and individuals to add their name to the growing list of supporters, highlighting that this support will be vital to demonstrate a vast and diverse range of opposition to the proposals.
Making Wales vulnerable
Anthony Slaughter, leader of Wales Green Party, said:
Wales Green Party fully supports the PARC campaign and will work together with them and others to resist the proposed Deep Space Advanced Radar Concept (DARC) being built in Pembrokeshire.
The proposed facility will make this part of Wales vulnerable to future attacks as part of any resulting conflict triggered by its use and represents an unacceptable militarisation of space. In an increasingly unstable world with multiple conflicts raging across the globe and impacting heavily on the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
The UK government should not be cooperating in this drive to extend these wars into space. Governments at every level have a duty to work towards creating a fairer, more equal and peaceful world for future generations and should play no part in this dangerous escalation of warmongering.
We also note the potential health risks and environmental damage that this project would cause which also underline the urgent need for this campaign to be supported at both local and national levels.
Stop the DARC
A spokesperson from PARC Against DARC concluded:
The fight is on! We fully intend to win the battle to stop the radar as they did in the 90’s. The MOD are making out as if it’s just a formality to gain planning permission for this huge project, even insinuating in their press that they just need to ‘run it past the local parish council’ or such like.
This is simply not the case; we know that major infrastructure projects like these require specialist planning permission which can only be granted by Pembrokeshire County Council, and that there will be several environmental impact assessment stages they’d have to clear long before they could ever begin building.”
Our plan is to fight them at every level and on every front to make absolutely sure that these proposals are never passed by our elected representatives in County Hall. We will build on the strong history of the previously victorious campaign and echo all of its strengths & successes.
Last time there were huge rallies, marches and demonstrations and ultimately the entire county stood strong together to fight off the proposals. We are absolutely confident that we will create this avalanche of opposition once again so that these plans will never see the light of day.
“In the aftermath of the ‘No’ denying an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia, I deeply sympathise with the Kanak people’s frustration, fear, and anger at being outvoted and dismissed,” writes Angelina Hurley.
COMMENTARY:By Angelina Hurley
After the trauma of completing a PhD on decolonising Australian humour, I needed a well-deserved break.
I always avoid places with throngs of patriotic Aussies, so I chose Nouméa, in New Caledonia, over Bali, settling on a small outer island.
One night, a smoke alarm jolted me awake. I went to the balcony and smelled smoke, seeing fires and smoke clouds from the mainland. The next morning, I learned from the only English-speaking news channel that riots had erupted there.
Protests against French control of New Caledonia have resulted in seven dead — five Kanaks, and two police officers (one by accodent) — and a state of emergency
I woke to a fleet of sailboats, houseboats, and catamarans anchoring near the island, ready to offer a quick escape for the rich (funny how the privileged are always the first to leave before things are handed back to them on return).
Travelling from hotel to hotel, I reached a quiet and desolate Nouméa in the late afternoon. Finding transport was difficult, but a kind French taxi driver picked me up, and we bypassed barricaded streets.
At the hotel, an atmosphere of anxiety and confusion lingered among tourists and staff, although I felt safe.
The staff worked tirelessly, maintaining normalcy while locals lined up for food outside supermarkets. With reports of deaths, I constantly scanned the internet for news from both French and Kanak perspectives. As days passed, the Aussie tourist twang grew louder and more restless.
Amusing, strange, disappointing: the reactions of the privileged The airport closed, and flights were cancelled indefinitely, fuelling frustration among Australians (and New Zealanders) who couldn’t access the consulate.
Australian government representatives eventually arrived to update us on the situation, leading to a surge of complaints.
Despite concerns about being stuck, I didn’t feel significantly inconvenienced beyond travel delays and added expenses. We were being well taken care of.
Not everyone agreed. Some found the answers insufficient.
The reactions of the privileged are amusing, strange, and disappointing: while anxiety about the unknown is understandable, some people need to get a grip.
Complaints poured in about the lack of access to information from Australia, despite the State of Emergency. There were debates and demands for updates via text (sorry, Gill Scott Heron, this revolution will be broadcast on WhatsApp).
It was amusing to hear people discussing social media information sharing while claiming lack of access, despite the readily available internet, English news on TV, and information from hotel staff.
As I listened, I humorously observed the gradual rise of White Aussie Privilege.
Their perception of disadvantage was very different to mine: an elderly migaloo woman requested daily personal phone updates to her room, while boomers threw tantrums over not being called on quickly enough.
There’s always the outspoken sheila, interrupting whenever she feels like it, and the experts proclaiming knowledge exceeding that of all the officials.
A rude collective sigh followed a man’s inquiry about the wellbeing of those handling the crisis outside, with someone retorting, ‘It’s their bloody job.’
The highlight was GI Joe informing the French, as if they didn’t know, of the presence of a helicopter pad attached to the hotel, angrily suggesting Chinook helicopters from Townsville should evacuate everyone.
What?! I burst out laughing, but no one seemed to find it as hilarious as I did.
The irony eluded him: the helicopters, named after the Chinook people, a Native American tribe Indigenous to the Pacific Northwest USA, would have First Nations saviours flying in to rescue the Straylians.
Despite the severity of the emergency situation, white travellers still found cause to complain about a lack of WhatsApp updates. Image: NITV
Despite the severity of the emergency situation, white travellers still found cause to complain about a lack of WhatsApp updates.
The Australian consulate rep patiently reminded everyone of the serious State of Emergency, with lives lost and the focus on safety and unblocking roads, making our evacuation less of a priority for the French at that time.
When crises hit, White people often react uncomfortably towards the only Black person in the room (which I was, besides an African couple).
They either look at you suspiciously, avoid eye contact, ignore you, or become overly ally-friendly.
The White Aussie Privilege resembled narcissistic behaviour — the selfishness, lack of empathy, and entitlement was gross.
The First Nations struggle around the world
Sitting safely in the hotel, the juxtaposition as an Indigenous person felt bizarre.
This isn’t my first such travel experience; I’ve been the bystander before in North America, Mexico, Belize, South America, South Africa, and India.
As a First Nations traveller, I’m always aware of the First Nations situation wherever I go.
Recently, the French National Assembly adopted a bill expanding voting rights for newer residents of Kanaky (New Caledonia), primarily French nationals.
It’s a move likely to further disenfranchise the Kanak people, impacting local political representation and future decolonisation discussions.
At least at home, we have representation in the government.
There are currently no representatives from Kanaky New Caledonia sitting in the French National Assembly.
No consultation with the First Nations people took place (sounds familiar).
In 1998, the Nouméa Accord was established between French authorities and the local government to transition towards greater independence and self-governance while respecting Kanak Indigenous rights.
Since 2018, three referendums on independence have been held, with the latest in 2021 boycotted by Indigenous voters due to the covid-19 pandemic’s impact on Kanaks.
With the Accord now lapsed, there is no clear process for continuing the decolonisation efforts.
As stated by Amnesty International (Schuetze, 2024), “The response must be understood through the lens of a stalled decolonisation process, racial inequality, and the longstanding, peacefully expressed demands of the Indigenous Kanak people for self-determination.”
An all-too familiar story
Relaying the story back to mob in Australia, conversations often turn to the behaviour of the colonisers.
We compare our predominantly passive and conciliatory approach as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, offering the hand of reconciliation only to be slapped away.
Despite not promoting violence, we note the irony of colonisers condoning violence as retaliation, considering it was their primary tactic during invasion.
As my cousin aptly put it, “French hypocrisy. So much for a nation that modelled itself on a revolution against an oppressive monarchy, now undermining local democracy and self-determination for First Nations people.”
After the overwhelming “No” vote denying an Indigenous Voice to Parliament in Australia, following decades of tireless campaigning by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, I deeply sympathise with the Kanak people’s frustration, fear, and anger at being outvoted and dismissed.
In French Polynesia, there are both movements for and against decolonisation.
As I sit amid this beautiful place, observing locals on the beaches and tourists enjoying their luxuries, I know things will return to the settler norm of control — and First Nations people are told they should be grateful.
Angelina Hurley is a Gooreng Gooreng, Mununjali, Birriah, and Gamilaraay writer from Meanjin Brisbane, a Fulbright Scholar and recent PhD graduate from Griffith University’s Film School. This article was first published by NITV (National Indigenous Television).
