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Category: Australia

  • Red Sea Deployments: Canberra Says No

    The failure of the United States to convince the Australian government to send one vessel to aid coalition efforts to deter Houthi disruption of international shipping in the Red Sea was a veritable storm whipped up in a teacup.  The entire exercise, dressed as an international mission titled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is intended as a response to the growing tensions of the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.

    Washington has made no secret of the fact that it wants to keep Iran away from Israel’s predations by deterring any provocative moves from Teheran’s proxies.  But Israel’s murderous war in the Gaza Strip is not exactly selling well, and a special coalition is being seen as something of a distracting trick.  But even within this assembly of states, the messages are far from uniform.

    France’s Defence Minister, for instance, has promised that its ships would remain under French command, supplementing an already pre-existing troop presence.  Italy’s Defence Ministry, in sending the naval frigate Virginio Fasan to the Red Sea, has its eye on protecting the interests of Italian shipowners, clarifying that the deployment would not take place as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.  Likewise Spain, which has noted that EU-coordinated and NATO-led missions took priority over any unilateral Red Sea operation.

    To that end, the Australian government has been unusually equivocal.  In recent months, the tally of obedience to wishes from Washington has grown.  But on the issue of sending this one vessel, the matter was far from certain.  Eventually, the decision was made to keep the focus closer to home and the Indo-Pacific; no vessel would be sent to yet another coalition effort in the Middle East led by the United States.

    The sentiment, as reported in The Guardian Australia, was that Australia would reduce its naval presence in the Middle East “to enable more resources to be deployed in our region.”  In doing so, Canberra was merely reiterating the position of the previous Coalition administration.

    In October 2020, the Morrison government announced an end to the three-decades long deployment of the Royal Australian Navy in the Middle East.  Then Defence Minister Linda Reynolds revealed that Australia would no longer be sending a RAN ship to the Middle East on an annual basis, and would withdraw from the US-led naval coalition responsible for patrolling the Strait of Hormuz by 2020’s end.

    It was good ground for Australia’s current Labor Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, to build on.  In his words, “We’ve actually consulted our Australian Defence Force heads about these matters and with our American friends.  That’s why you’ve seen no criticism from the US administration”.  When pressed for further clarification about the allegedly inadequate state of Australia’s naval capabilities, the PM simply affirmed the already guaranteed (and dangerous) commitment of Canberra to “the Indo-Pacific, a fairly large region that we look after” with “our American friends.”

    The warmongers were particularly irate at the modest refusal.  Where there is war, they see no reason for Australia not to participate.  And if it concerns the United States, it follows, by default, that it should concern Australian military personnel and the exercise of some fictitious muscle.  This slavish caste of mind has dominated foreign policy thinking in Canberra for decades and asserted itself in an almost grotesque form with the surrender of sovereignty to the US military industrial complex under the AUKUS agreement.

    The Coalition opposition, displeased with Albanese’s decision, had no truck for diplomacy.  Lurking behind their reasoning were script notes prepared for them by the US-Israeli concern that Iran, and its Houthi allies, be kept in their box.  “Is Mr Albanese seriously claiming that Australia can assert diplomatic influence over the Houthi rebels?” asked the Shadow Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie and the Shadow Treasurer, Angus Taylor.

    In the Murdoch press, two-bit, eye-glazing commentary on Australia neglecting its duties to the US war machine in distant seas could be found in frothy fury.  Here is Greg Sheridan, more cumbersome than ever, in The Australian: “We are saying to the Americans and the Brits – under AUKUS we expect you to send your most powerful military assets, nuclear submarines, to Australia to provide for our security, but we are so small, so lacking in capability and so scared of our own shadow, that under no circumstances can we spare a single ship of any kind to help you protect commercial shipping routes – from which we benefit directly – in the Red Sea.”

    The Royal Australian Navy, Sheridan splutters, is simply not up to the task.  One of its eight ANZAC frigates is almost never in the water.  The RAN is short of crews and short of “specialist anti-drone capabilities.”  The implication here is evident: the government must, in the manner of Viv Nicholson’s declaration on her husband winning the football pools in 1961, “spend, spend, spend.”

    Paul Kelly, another Murdoch emissary also of the same paper, was baffled about the “character” of the Labor government when it came to committing itself to the Middle East.  The Albanese government should have been more bloodthirsty in its backing of Israel’s war against Hamas.  It dared back, along with 152 other UN member states, “an Arab nation resolution calling for ‘an immediate humanitarian ceasefire’ – a resolution, given its wording, that was manifestly pro-Palestinian.”

    What struck Kelly as odd, suggesting the glaring limits of his understanding of foreign relations, was that Australia did not commit to the coalition to protect shipping through the Red Sea because it does not have the naval capability to do so.  But armchair pundits always secretly crave blood, especially when shed by others.  And to have members of the RAN butchered on inadequate platforms was no excuse not to send them to a conflict.

    Aspects of Sheridan’s remarks are correct: Australian inadequacy, the fear of its own shadow.  The conclusions drawn by Sheridan are, however, waffling in their nonsense.  It is precisely such a fear that has led the naval and military establishment fall for the notion that Canberra needs nuclear-propelled boats to combat the spectre of a Yellow-Red Satan to the north.  With a good degree of imbecility, an enemy has been needlessly created.

    The result is that Australian insecurity has only been boosted.  Hence more military contracts that entwine, even further, the Australian military with the US Armed Forces.  Or more agreements to share military technology that give Washington a free hand in controlling the way it is shared.  In history, Albanese’s refusal to commit the RAN to the Red Sea will be seen as a sound one.  His great sin will be the uncritical capitulation of his country to US interests in the Indo-Pacific.

    The post Red Sea Deployments: Canberra Says No first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Balloon Beats the Beamers

    A suspicious balloon launched by the People’s Republic of China crosses North America focusing attention on radar coverage of Canadian and American Arctic regions. The first balloon arrived on 28 January. Entering United States (US) airspace above the Aleutian Islands in the northern Pacific Ocean, it took a leisurely path into Alaska. Journeying across the […]

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  • A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia!

    The secretive Australian government just cannot help itself.  Clamouring and hectoring of other countries and their secret arrangements (who can forget the criticism of the Solomon Islands over its security pact with China for that reason?) the Albanese government is a bit too keen on keeping a lid on things regarding the withering away of Australian independence before a powerful and spoiling friend.

    A degree of this may be put down to basic lack of sensibility or competence.  But there may also be an inadvertent confession in the works here: Australians may not be too keen on such arrangements once the proof gets out of the dense, floury pudding.

    It took, as usual, those terrier-like efforts from Rex Patrick, Australia’s foremost transparency knight, forever tilting at the windmill of government secrecy, to discover that Western Australians are in for a real treat.  The US imperium, it transpires from material produced by the Australian Department of Defence, will be deploying some 700 personnel, with their families, to the state.  And to make matters more interesting, Western Australia will also host a site for low-level radioactive waste produced by US and UK submarines doing their rotational rounds under the AUKUS arrangements.

    The briefing notes from the recently created Australian Submarine Agency reveal that the Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West) will host as many as four US nuclear submarines of the US Navy Virginia-class at HMAS Stirling and one UK nuclear-powered boat from 2027.  As part of what is designated the first phase of AUKUS, an Australian workforce of some 500-700 maintenance and support personnel is projected to grow in response to the program before Australia owns and operates its own US-made nuclear-powered boats.  Once established and blooded by experience, “This workforce will then move to support our enduring nuclear-powered submarine program and will be a key enabler for SRF-West.”

    The ASA documents go on to project that “over 700 United States Personnel could be living and working in Western Australia to support SRF-West, with some also bringing families.”  The UK will not be getting the same treatment, largely because the contingent from the Royal Navy will be moving through on shorter rotations.

    The stationing of the personnel in question finally puts to rest those contemptible apologetics that Australia is not a garrison for the US armed forces.  At long last Australians can be reassured, if rather grimly, that these are not fleeting visits from great defenders, but the constant, and lingering presence of an imperial power jealously guarding its interests.

    The issue of storing waste will have piqued some interest, given Australia’s current and reliably consistent failure to establish any long-term storage facility for any sort of nuclear waste, be it low, medium or high grade.  But never fear, the doltish poseurs of the Defence Department are always willing to please and, as the department documents show, learn in their servile role.

    As Patrick reveals, the documents released under FOI tell us that “operational waste” arising from the Submarine Rotational Force operation at HMAS Stirling will include the storage of low to intermediate level radioactive waste on Australian defence sites.  One document notes that, “The rotational presence of United Kingdom and United States SSNs in Western Australia as part of the Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF-West) will provide an opportunity to learn how these vessels operate, including the management of low-level radioactive waste from routine sustainment.”

    The ASA also confirms with bold foolhardiness that, “All low and intermediate radioactive waste will be safely stored at Defence sites in Australia.”  The storage facility in question is “being planned as part of the infrastructure works proposed for HMAS Stirling to support SRF-West.”

    The Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles has retained a consultant, Steve Grzeskowiak, to the remunerative value of AU$396,000 from February to December this year to identify a suitable site on land owned by the Commonwealth. Absurdly, the same consultant, when Deputy Secretary of Defence Estates, conducted an analysis of over 200 Defence sites in terms of suitability for low-level waste management, finding none to pass muster.

    In a troubling development, Patrick also notes that the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023, in its current form, would permit the managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an AUKUS submarine, which would include UK or US submarines.  Importantly, that waste could well be of a high-level nature.  “While the Albanese Government has made a commitment that it will not do so, the Bill leaves the legal door open for possible future agreement from the Australian Government to store high-level nuclear waste generated from US or UK nuclear-powered submarines.”

    To round matters off, Australia’s citizenry was enlightened to the fact that they will be adding some $US3 billion (AU$4.45 billion) to the US submarine industrial base.  In the words of the ASA, “Australia’s commitment to invest in the US submarine industrial base recognises the lift the United States is making to supporting Australia’s acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.”  This will entail the pre-purchase of “submarine components and materials, so they are on hand at the start of the maintenance period” thereby “saving time” and “outsourcing less complex sustainment and expanding planning efforts for private sector overhauls, to reduce backlog”.

    Decoding such naval, middle-management gibberish is a painful task, but nothing as painful as the implications for a country that has not only surrendered itself wholly and without qualification to Washington but is all too happy to subsidise it.

    The post A Merry AUKUS Surprise, Western Australia! first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Flirting With Nuclear Energy Down Under

    It was a policy that was bound to send a shiver through the policymaking community.  The issue of nuclear energy in Australia has always been a contentious one.  Currently, the country hosts a modest nuclear industry, centred on the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), nuclear medicine and laboratory products.  But even this has created headaches in terms of long-term storage of waste, plagued by successful legal challenges from communities and First Nation groups.  The advent of AUKUS, with its inane yet provocative promise of nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy, adds yet another, complicating dimension to this fact.  Without a clear idea of a site, a vital part of the nuclear dilemma remains unresolved.

    Broadly speaking, the nuclear issue, in manifold manifestations, has never entirely disappeared from the periphery of Australian policy.  The fact that Australia became a primary testing ground for Britain’s nuclear weapons program was hardly something that would have left Canberra uninterested in acquiring some nuclear option.  Options were considered, be they in the realm of a future weapons capability, or energy generation.

    In a June 29, 1961 letter from Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies to his counterpart in the UK, Harold Macmillan, concerns over the impediments imposed by a potential treaty that would impose limitations on countries the subject of nuclear testing were candidly expressed.  Were that treaty to go ahead, it “could prove a serious limitation on the range of decisions open to a future Australian Government in that it could effectively preclude or at least impose a very substantial handicap on Australia’s acquisition of nuclear weapons.”

    Menzies put forth a suggestion that was ultimately never pursued – at least officially.  An arrangement deemed “more practical,” suggested the Australian PM, might involve “the supply of ready-made weapons” at the conclusion of such a treaty.

    A sore point here were efforts by the Soviets to insist that countries such as Australia be banned from pursuing their own nuclear program.  Menzies therefore wished Macmillan “to accord full recognition of the potentially serious security situation in which Australia could find herself placed as a result of having accommodated United Kingdom testing.”

    Australia eventually abandoned its nuclear weapons ambitions with the ratification of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in February 1970, preferring, instead, the nuclear umbrella of extended deterrence offered by the United States. (The nature of that deterrence has always seemed spectacularly hollow.)  Domestically, nuclear technology would be sparingly embraced.  Nuclear power stations, however, were banned in every state and territory, a policy left unchallenged by a number of parliamentary inquiries.

    The quest of meeting emissions reduction targets during the transition to the goal of net zero was bound to refocus interest on the nuclear power issue.  The Liberal-National opposition is keen to put the issue of nuclear power back on the books.  It is a dream that may never see the light of day, given, according to the chief government scientific body, the CSIRO, its uncompetitive nature and the absence of “the relevant frameworks in place for its consideration and operation within the timeframe required.”

    Australian politicians have often faced, even when flirting with the proposition of adopting nuclear power, firm rebuke. South Australian Premier Malinauskas gave us one example in initially expressing the view late last year that “the ideological opposition that exists in some quarters to nuclear power is ill-founded.”  It did not take him long to tell the ABC’s 7.30 program that he did not wish “to suggest that nuclear should be part of the mix in our nation.”  Australia had to “acknowledge that nuclear power would make energy more expensive in our nation & [we should] put it to one side, rather than having a culture war about nuclear power.”

    Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been by far the boldest, pitching for a gentler exit from the fossil-fuel powered nirvana Australia has occupied for decades.  Australia, he is adamant, should join “the international nuclear energy renaissance”.  Of particular interest to him is the use of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), which might be purposefully built on coal generator cites as part of the general energy package alongside renewables.  SMRs, as Joanne Liou of the International Atomic Energy Agency explains, “are advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of up to 300 Mw(e) per unit, which is about one-third of the generating capacity of traditional nuclear power reactors.”

    The heralded advantages of such devices, at least as advertised by its misguided proponents, lie in their size – being small and modular, ease of manufacture, shipping and installation.  They also offer, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, “savings in cost and construction time, and they can be deployed incrementally to match increasing energy demand.”

    For all these benefits, the cold reality of SMR designs is how far they have yet to go before becoming viable.  Four SMRs are currently in operation, though these, according to Friends of the Earth Australia’s lead national nuclear campaigner, Jim Green, hardly meet the “modular definition” in terms of serial factory production of components relevant to such devices.

    Russia and China, despite hosting such microreactors, have faced considerable problems with cost blowouts and delays, the very things that SMRs are meant to avoid.  Oregon-based NuScale has tried to convince and gull potential patrons that its small reactor projects will take off, though the audience for its chief executive John Hopkins is primarily limited to the Coalition and NewsCorp stable.  The company’s own cost estimates for energy generation, despite heavy government subsidies, have not made SMR adoption in the United States, let alone Australia, viable.

    In his second budget reply speech in May, Dutton showed little sign of being briefed on these problems, stating that “any sensible government [in the 21st century] must consider small modular nuclear as part of the energy mix.”  Labor’s policies on climate change had resulted in placing Australia “on the wrong energy path.”

    Such views have not impressed the Albanese Government.  Energy Minister Chris Bowen insists that counterfeit claims are being peddled on the issue of the role played by nuclear energy in Canada along with false distinctions between the costs of nuclear power and renewable energy.

    “If they are serious about proposing a nuclear solution for Australia, the simplistic bumper stickers and populist echo chamber has to come to an end.  Show the Australian people your verified nuclear costings and your detailed plans about where the nuclear power plants will go.”

    Such verification will be a tall order indeed.  As the CSIRO concedes, “Without more real-world data for SMRs demonstrating that nuclear can be economically viable, the debate will likely continue to be dominated by opinion and conflicting social values rather than a discussion on the underlying assumptions.”

    The post Flirting With Nuclear Energy Down Under first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Australia awards infantry fighting vehicle contract to Hanwha

    The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has inked acquisition and initial support contracts worth A$4.5 billion with Hanwha Defense Australia (HDA) aimed at delivering 129 Redback infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to the Australian Army under its Land 400 Phase 3 programme, The DoD announced on 8 December that the contracts also include the development and […]

    The post Australia awards infantry fighting vehicle contract to Hanwha appeared first on Asian Military Review.

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  • Equipping for Disaster Relief

    The major earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria in early February have provided a stark reminder for the need to be prepared for disasters, natural or otherwise. The earthquake in Turkey was the deadliest worldwide since the Haiti earthquake of 2010, and is reported to be the fifth largest earthquake of the 21st century. Sadly, […]

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  • Equipping for Disaster Relief

    The major earthquakes that hit Turkey and Syria in early February have provided a stark reminder for the need to be prepared for disasters, natural or otherwise. The earthquake in Turkey was the deadliest worldwide since the Haiti earthquake of 2010, and is reported to be the fifth largest earthquake of the 21st century. Sadly, […]

    The post Equipping for Disaster Relief appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • AS9 Huntsman self-propelled howitzer undergoes local test firing

    The Australian Army has test-fired “hundreds” of artillery rounds from an AS9 Huntsman 155 mm/52 calibre self-propelled howitzer (SPH), the Australian Department of Defence (DoD) announced on 5 December. According to the DoD, the testing at the Proof and Experimental Establishment in Port Wakefield was conducted in late November and overseen by the Joint Proof […]

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  • Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees and Secondary Punishment

    In most instances, the justice system of a liberal democracy presumes absence of arbitrary and cruel treatment by the State. Punishment, when levelled, is finite. It might see out the term of a convict’s natural life, but that would only be for the most extreme cases. Even then, the whiff of parole, while far off, might still be possible.

    On being released, the usual assumptions apply. Time served is time done. Past punishment will not be revisited upon you; the State will not send its hounds and officers of the thin blue line after you. This would only happen in instances of re-offending – recidivism remains a risky feature of the post-release citizen. But in Australia, a current hysteria, fed like a hungry gargoyle by politicians on both sides of the aisle, has come to roost over the federal Parliament.

    The High Court of Australia, having had the good, just sense of finding the indefinite administrative detention of refugees an unwarranted excess of executive power, was always going to make matters challenging for the government. For one thing, few expected it. That same body had previously held in Al-Kateb v Godwin (2004) that such forms of indefinite confinement were perfectly legal, even if those refugees could never have a reasonable prospect of either settling in Australia or a third country. But in November, it all changed.

    In the NZYQ case, the High Court affirmed the constitutional principle that detention is a form of punishment and is a judicial power exercisable once a person is found guilty of a crime. Laws authorising the administrative detention of non-citizens by the executive arm of government could only be constitutionally valid if reasonably necessary for a legitimate non-punitive purpose. The law authorising the detention of NZYQ, a stateless Rohingya man, was not appropriately adapted to the purpose of his removal, given that he had “no real prospect of removal from Australia becoming practicable in a reasonably foreseeable future”.

    Of particular concern to the Albanese government was the issue of what to do with those administrative detainees with convictions, but had, as such, done the time. On paper, it should not have been controversial. With their sentence served, they would surely be permitted their liberty subject to the usual caveats of forfeiture. But those in immigration detention were seen as exceptional, the undesirable, unconventional sort who had come by boat. Rather than being permitted to disappear into Australia’s own version of legal purgatory, they were let out instead, posing an unacceptable risk. How that risk was unacceptable relative to that posed by other convicts was never explained.

    Instead of finding a sober, mature approach to dealing with the matter, a quarry for hysterical rhetoric was opened. Heavy digging commenced with reports of a growing though small number of reoffenders, including an Afghan refugee who was charged with two counts of indecent assault in Adelaide.

    The Liberal-National Coalition, led by the icy Peter Dutton, histrionically claimed that the released detainees posed exceptional risk. A media release from the Liberal Party wondered “why the Government panicked and urgently released in excess of 140 detainees when the [High Court] decision clearly applies to the single detainee NZYQ.” The insinuation was clear: irrespective of the High Court’s ruling, most of the detainees could still be confined, as long as the reason was sufficiently cooked.

    Labor, historically vulnerable to the anti-refugee hysterics of the LNP, could only come up with a pale version of the same. It has attacked Dutton as a “protector of paedophiles” for opposing draft proposals for paedophile school ban zones. “They came here,” raged Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, “and instead of supporting Labor’s attempts to criminalise paedophiles, who loiter near daycare centres and schools, the leader of the opposition came in here and played politics instead.”

    Immigration Minister Andrew Giles also lamented before his fellow parliamentarians that, “The government did not choose to be in this position. The situation was imposed on this parliament by the High Court.” Both sides of politics meet at a dubious apex: that refugees with convictions must be treated as a monstrous category. The important thing was identifying a suitable preventative regime to achieve that purpose.

    The laws just rushed through parliament permit the immigration minister to seek a court order to detain individuals released from immigration detention. Two conditions must be met: that the person be convicted for a crime, be it in Australia or overseas, carrying a sentence of at least seven years’ imprisonment; and the court’s agreement that the person poses “an unacceptable risk of committing a serious violent or sexual offence” with “no less restrictive measure available” to maintain community safety.

    Other impediments are also imposed upon those released into the community as part of what is known as the Bridging Visa R subclass. Many of these are repurposed from anti-terrorist legislation, with a focus on monitoring devices, regular reporting, curfews and restrictions on work and financial matters.

    While the government has included the judiciary in the process of seeking re-detention, the process has a distinctly punitive flavour, constituting a form of secondary punishment. It is also especially discriminatory, applying to non-Australian citizens. Yet again, the non-citizen is being treated as a non-person. As Michelle Peterie and Amy Nethery pertinently observe, “Australians with the same criminal histories and risk profiles will not be subject to the preventative detention regime under this legislation.” A potential legal challenge, for precisely that reason, may be in the offing.

    The hideous spectacle leaves us a desperate, disturbing conclusion. Even after time is served behind bars, refugees will be subject to the very discriminatory and punitive regimes that the UN Refugee Convention guards against. The agenda here is to perpetrate a regime of permanent punishment and surveillance, using an actuarial model of justice. Released refugees are to be treated no less as potential terrorists, permanently menacing. And it is a conflation the government and the main opposition parties are willing to entertain.

    The post Actuarial Justice: Released Refugees and Secondary Punishment first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Foreign companies with Aust operations will be eligible for NRF

    Foreign companies will be eligible for investments, loans and guarantees through the National Reconstruction Fund, Industry and Science minister Ed Husic has confirmed, following last week’s launch of the NRF Corporation’s investment mandate. Mr Husic told InnovationAus.com that while the government’s “big focus is to grow Australian industry” – particularly to export scale – he…

    The post Foreign companies with Aust operations will be eligible for NRF appeared first on InnovationAus.com.

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  • What Do Asian Consumers Want From Plant-Based Meat? 4 Startup Founders Spill All.

    10 Mins Read

    At a major APAC food tech conference in Singapore last month, I spoke to four alt-meat founders from India, China, the Philippines and Australia to find out what Asian consumers want from plant-based meat products.

    Last month, as part of the Singapore International Agri-Food Week (SIAW), the Asia-Pacific Agri-Food Innovation Summit organized by Rethink Events welcomed over 1,000 global leaders to meet and learn about Asia’s agri-food system to “accelerate the transition to a climate-smart food system” as organizer Rethink Events states on the event website.

    As part of the week’s programming, I chaired a discussion about the ‘Healthier Proteins Shaping the Future for Plant-Based Innovation’ on stage. Joining me were four founders and leaders from plant-based meat startups in the APAC region, each representing some of the biggest markets in India, China, the Philippines and Australia, as well as the APAC Science and Technology Director from one of the world’s leading flavour companies.

    Our discussion spanned a range of topics, from how important are clean labels to whether Asian consumers are still actively purchasing these products. We talked about what factors influence decision-making, what new ingredients are being developed in the sector, and what brands can do to build confidence in the nutritional value and overall quality of plant-based products

    Most of all, the question we were trying to answer was: what does the Asian plant-based consumer want? The key takeaway from the discussion is that each Asian market is unique and its consumers have very specific and very different needs.

    The below transcriptions have been edited for clarity and concision.

    Anand Nagarajan, Co-Founder at Shaka Harry on Indian Consumers

    Shaka Harry
    Courtesy: Shaka Harry

    On the Indian plant-based meat consumer: India is not one market. We’ve got 1.4 billion people, so it’s important not to view the Indian market as one ubiquitous market. The relationship to meat is complicated. In terms of who our consumer is, we have a very simple definition: anyone who has an affinity for the taste of meat is the consumer we’re looking for. We are going after the two-thirds of Indians who eat meat. Culturally, a large percentage of the Indian population that still consumes meat would abstain from it for close to 150 days of the year for various reasons. Some people abstain from meat on certain days. Some people will not eat meat at home. Some people only eat meat when they travel. Some people won’t eat meat on festival days. But all these people may want something that’s a familiar taste. This is where we position Shaka Harry.

    On creating products for specific occasions: How do we create salience in a customer’s life, rather than trying to over-intellectualize the conversation? If something needs a lot of education…it won’t scale. We can’t educate a billion people individually. Even if I were to take the 100-200 million high-end consumer market, I can’t sit down and educate every single one of them. Instead, we focus on occasions. How do I win breakfast? How do I win school lunch prep? How do I win at a Saturday family gathering? We’re saying: here’s a very good product, it’s priced well and it is tasty. We’ll give you an occasion for when you need to have this at home. And we find that a far easier method to scale, rather than pursuing micro-markets.

    On whether Indians want healthier products: Do Indian consumers want healthier products? There’s a disconnect between what the consumer tells you they want versus what they’re ready to pay for. When they go into the store, and you give them two products, one being healthier but with a 20-30% price premium, they will choose the value product. That’s what we are seeing. 

    On We have an entire line of clean-label products coming out soon with easy-to-read, natural ingredients. Thanks to consumer insights, we’ve developed a millet range. Millets is something that traditionally Indians have consumed a lot and consumers have very positive connotations about it. But here the point is not to mimic a meat experience. Rather we’re saying: here’s a very good product. We’re going to ‘de-junk’ your regular roti and paratha. We’re taking the gluten out.  We’re adding natural fiber. The initial market response has been fantastic. So de-junking regular meals and giving consumers a superior version of everyday foods is working really well.

    Shaka Harry is a plant protein company based out of India with a range of ready-to-eat products designed for the Indian palate and for Indian cuisines. 

    Astrid Prajogo, Founder and CEO at Haofood on Chinese Consumers

    peanut meat
    Haofood co-founder Astrid Prajogo exhibited the new peanut-based pork dumplings in Berlin | Courtesy: Haofood/LinkedIn

    On the Chinese consumer base: Our consumer base is very interesting. They’re not flexitarian, but they’re gym-goers. So they choose our product because they are looking for specific protein with specific features- that’s one type of consumer that is pretty loyal to us. We also have the forein vegan community. Although not a large group, they have strong purchasing power. They also have a voice, which can be powerful. Finally, we have the local Chinese vegan community as well, they continue to support our products.

    On what Chinese consumers are looking for from meat: We have spent the last couple of years studying how Chinese consumers approach buying meat. Not just plant-based meat, just meat. That’s what we want to understand. And taste is absolutely key, especially umami. China is the land of tasty food, every single part of the country has great-tasting food. So first: taste – they demand great taste. Second is safety. McKinsey published research earlier this year that revealed that for Chinese consumers, health and safety are the most important. Part of safety is for a product not to contain ingredients that consumers deem less safe, like methylcellulose or added gums so our definition of clean-label is free from added artificial ingredients, be it binders or perseveratives. We combine different types of plant proteins and we work with fruit fibres, so we can make a clean-label product where the cost is actually reasonable- we’re down to under $3.5 per kilogram.

    Haofood is a Shanghai-based specialist in Asian plant-based meat designed for Asian applications.

    Stephen Michael, Co-Founder and CEO at WTH Foods on Filipino consumers 

    Courtesy WTH Foods

    The Philippines is a pretty sizable country- we have over 110 million Filipinos, and it’s a very meat heavy culture. As a predominantly Catholic country, we don’t have any dietary restrictions, so I’m jealous of my Thai and Malaysian friends whose vegetarian market exists already. In the Philippines, it’s almost non-existent and that’s what we are up against. Culturally and traditionally, a lot of dishes are meat-based, so putting out a plant-based meat product might not be the best idea. We’re continuously trying to figure out what the Filipino consumer wants. It seems they see something as healthy when it is local with added functional benefits in terms of beauty or physical aspects. So for example, if plant-based meat products are helpful for slimming, or if eating these products can help radiate beauty- that’s a driver. The entry point for the Filipino market is health, more than whether something is plant-based. Sustainability and animal welfare are very, very far down the list in terms of our consumers adopting plant-based meat.

    When Filipinos think about health, they go for descriptive words like ‘organic’ or ‘cholesterol-free’, ‘low sodium’, ‘low fat’, ‘low sugar. Adding to that, Filipino consumers want their food to be more fortified or to have a unique ingredient like a local oil. For example, we’re trying mungbeans as an additive to respond to that demand- it’s a local and natural ingredient. to add a more local and natural ingredient to that. Consumers want to avoid preservatives and flavor enhancers so they do look at the ingredient list and want a cleaner label as well. For more of our plant-based meats, we fortify with local proteins or local ingredients to give them a more local and healthier profile. 

    There’s actually been a bit of pushback with plant-based meats when we offer Filipino favourites like sisig and sausages and holiday hams, where Filipinos will go for the real thing instead of the plant-based version, which has been a difficult scenario. So we’re done pretending to be meat. Achieving something as close to meat as possible will require that long list of ingredients and our customers are looking at labels, and if they don’t understand certain ingredients, they deem it to be less healthy. So we are actually in the midst of a pivot in terms of products. We are decreasing the number of our ingredients for our second generation of products and we don’t try so hard to be the meat product. I believe in the alternative protein industry and I believe there will be increased demand and need for protein, so we’re looking into high-protein snacks in more shelf-stable formats. The Philippines is an archipelago shipping frozen meat across all the islands is a logistical nightmare. So it’s a triple challenge: how do you ship your products across an archipelago, while making them shelf-stable and reducing the number of ingredients so they can be clean-label?

    WTH Foods is a plant-based alternative protein startup based in Manila.

    Chris Coburn, General Manager APAC at v2food on Australian plant-based meat consumers

    Courtesy: v2food

    On why Australia is different from the rest of Asia: I would say Australia is a little bit different from the rest of Asia, where I think we’re still seeing animal protein as being aspirational. Consumers in the rest of the region are looking to purchase animal products now that there’s more wealth available and a growing middle class. In Australia, as in a number of the developed markets, we’re seeing this trend to be a reducetarian, where people who have reached peak meat consumption are probably looking to come back the other way. If you look at animal consumption per capita in Australia, obviously it’s at levels that are close to the UK and US, unlike the rest of Asia.

    On v2foods’ Australian consumer base: I would say v2food’s consumer base is the conscious consumers, those who are looking to reduce their meat intake, so we have a different challenge to the rest of Asia. Probably half of our retail sales are from this younger demographic -the millennials / the single-income-no-kids / the double-income-no-kids / those coming into families over the next 10 years- those conscious consumers looking to reduce meat consumption and consume alternatives.

    On clean labels: I think from a portfolio point of view, we’re looking at the clean-label issue in two different ways and trying to distinguish from those more indulgent occasions where consumers are looking for that great taste and probably a treat and those everyday occasions where people are looking for more healthy options. In the first group of our products, we have burgers and sausages, and we’re competing against animal protein products which are highly processed, and for those, we are really trying to drive taste as the priority for our target consumers. Our biggest fear is that sometimes our competitors’ products are not good, and consumers are having a bad experience. So we really feel like taste is important for the category of products like sausages, burgers, and nuggets. 

    v2food is Australia’s number-one plant-based meat company.

    Ai Mey Chuah, APAC Science & Technology Director at Givaudan Singapore on Asian Consumer Tastes 

    Courtesy: Givaudan

    Ultimately for our customers, the most important thing is taste. If their products don’t taste good, and don’t look appealing, they won’t get a repurchase by the consumers. So in our business, what we do is customize the solutions to meet the needs of their consumers from the regions that they are marketing their products to. 

    I would say that in APAC cost is still a very important factor. So while for our Europe and US business, clean-label and natural solutions are very important, for the APAC region cost is still the determining factor- we help our clients change their label to be more cost-effective, rather than clean-label, as our [clean-label] solutions tend to be more expensive. 

    Some markets like China have well-educated consumers who don’t like artificial ingredients or additives in their products, so when it comes to replacing ingredients like methylcellulose, Asia is slowly gaining traction and we have products in our portfolio like citrus fibre that can act synergistically with certain proteins to actually provide that texture that is meat-like, juicy and succulent. 

    Givaudan is a global leader in fragrance and flavour; the company develops tastes and scents for food companies all over the world.

    The post What Do Asian Consumers Want From Plant-Based Meat? 4 Startup Founders Spill All. appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Nine editors double down in ‘tense’ war on Gaza editorial ban meeting

    By Cam Wilson in Sydney

    A senior Nine staff journalist has resigned and readers are angrily cancelling their newspaper subscriptions as Sydney Morning Herald and Age editors defend a decision to ban staff who signed a letter protesting about Australian media’s handling of the Israel-Gaza conflict from covering the war.

    The fallout continues from a last Friday afternoon announcement in response to the open letter addressed to Australian newsrooms that called on them to “support ethical reporting on Israel and Palestine”.

    The petition, which had more than 100 signatures from journalists, including some from Nine’s mastheads, advocated covering credible allegations of war crimes and disclosing whether staff had taken sponsored trips to the region.

    Editors for Nine’s metro papers SMH, The Age, Brisbane Times and WAToday — comprising executive editor Tory Maguire, SMH editor Bevan Shields, Age editor Patrick Elligett and SMH national editor David King — reacted by saying they would remove any staff who signed the letter from reporting or producing content related to the war.

    The Australian journalists' open letter
    Part of the Australian journalists’ open letter . . . claims that the “devastating” Israeli bombing of Gaza and the media blockade “threatened newsgathering and media freedom in an unprecedented fashion”. Image: MEAA

    Following the letter, the editors organised an in-person meeting on Tuesday morning and invited Nine’s signatories to the open letter along with the mastheads’ house committee members of journalist union Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA).

    According to five staff who spoke to Crikey on the condition of anonymity, little was known about the meeting prior to it being held. Initially, some staff were concerned the meeting would be about further repercussions for the letter’s signatories while others wondered if the editors were planning on softening their stance.

    What became clear soon into the 90-minute meeting was that the editors had no intention of backing down. Multiple staff described them as “doubling down” in a “tense” meeting.

    ‘Mostly defensiveness’
    “I would say the vibe was a lot of open discussion but mostly defensiveness from the editors,” one staff member told Crikey.

    Editors stressed that their decision to sideline staff who had signed the letter was motivated by a desire to protect their mastheads’ reputations from a perception of bias.

    They argued that the bans — while saying they were hesitant to use the word “ban” to describe them — were not punitive and were set to last as long as the conflict does.

    A point of contention was the “hypocrisy” of treating staff as potentially biased for signed the letter about media coverage, while not applying that same standard to staff who have attended sponsored trips to Israel. (Crikey reported earlier this week that Maguire, Shields, Elligett and King have all made such trips.)

    When one editor raised that a hypothetical reader coming across a Nine journalist’s name on the open letter would affect their perception of the paper, a staff member asked why it would not be the same for someone who had been on a trip, especially given that they were not required to disclose it.

    While saying that going on a junket “years ago” would not affect a journalist’s coverage, editors singled out two journalists in the newsroom for having gone on trips — one supported by a movie studio and the other by environmental advocacy group Greenpeace — and whether they would need to disclose this.

    In both cases, these journalists, who declined to comment to Crikey, had disclosed the relationship as part of their coverage.

    “They [the editors] tried to make comparisons that weren’t really comparisons,” one journalist said.

    ‘Punished’ over backgrounds
    Staff also used the meeting to raise concerns about what management was doing to retain diverse staff, describing feeling as being “punished” for their own backgrounds.

    Maguire, Shields, Elligett and King did not respond to questions from Crikey about the meeting, including asking what Nine’s leadership was doing to retain diverse staff. A Nine spokesperson responded with a general statement instead.

    “The editorial leaders are in constant communication with a vast range of newsroom staff, representing all perspectives, and will continue to encourage open dialogue on all issues, including this one,” they said in an emailed statement.

    Shortly after the meeting on Wednesday afternoon, 17-year Age veteran and environment reporter Miki Perkins posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) that she was resigning from her role.

    “I have made the decision that it’s time to seek broader horizons and I will be leaving,” she wrote.

    Perkins, who hopes to stay working in journalism, was one of the journalists singled out in the meeting and had been assisting in circulating the open letter to journalists. She did not mention the meeting but Age staff believe that Nine management’s handling of the matter was the final straw.

    Angry comments
    Meanwhile, Nine’s Slack channel #feedback-smh-website, which automatically posts responses to a feedback survey, has been filled with angry comments from current and former readers who took issue with the editors’ response to the letter.

    One metro paper journalist said that the last time they had seen such directed reader feedback was during the backlash to SMH‘s outing of Rebel Wilson.

    “My family has been a subscriber to the Age consistently for around 100 years — but this is too far. Please end my subscription immediately,” wrote one respondent.

    “Vale Herald. You shall be missed,” wrote another.

    Cam Wilson is a journalist for the independent Crikey website in Australia. Republished by Pacific Media Watch.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Australia selects future army landing craft design, orders more patrol boats

    The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has selected Birdon Group as preferred designer for the Project Land 8710 Phase 1 programme, which seeks to deliver 18 new 60 m-long Littoral Manoeuvre Vessel-Medium (LMV-M) crafts that will replace the Australian Army’s ageing Landing Craft Medium 8 (LCM 8) crafts from 2026. Birdon’s LMV-M design will be […]

    The post Australia selects future army landing craft design, orders more patrol boats appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Since the war on Gaza began, violence against Palestinians has surged in the West Bank

    ANALYSIS: By Tristan Dunning, University of Queensland, and Martin Kear, University of Sydney

    While the world remains fixated on the devastating October 7 Hamas attacks and the subsequent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, there has been a pronounced — and mostly unnoticed — escalation in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

    Before the recent events, this had already been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, with about 200 fatalities, mostly attributed to Israeli security forces.

    This figure has more than doubled since October 7, including the killings of 55 children. That brings the yearly fatality total in the West Bank to more than 450 Palestinians so far, according to the United Nations.

    The UN has also recorded 281 settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, resulting in eight deaths. Four Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.

    In nearly half of the settler attacks, Israeli security forces either “accompanied or actively supported the attackers”, according to the UN.

    A sharp increase in displacements
    It is no coincidence the upsurge in anti-Palestinian violence this year has corresponded with the coming to power of the most right-wing nationalist government in Israeli history.

    The new hardline government promised to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since capturing the territory in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

    This has emboldened Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, who now regularly engage in violence and provocative nationalist actions around the al-Aqsa mosque compound.

    Since 1967, Israel has built over 270 settlements containing approximately 750,000 settlers. Despite these settlements being deemed illegal under international law, they remain protected by the Israeli military and their own security squads.

    In February, the Israeli government transferred the West Bank from military to civilian control, which critics claimed could represent a step towards legalised annexation.

    Since October 7 alone, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem reports that 16 Palestinian communities have been “forcibly transferred” in Area C, which covers about 65 percent of the West Bank and is under complete Israeli control. Overall, more than 1000 Palestinians have been displaced in the West Bank due to settler violence and access restrictions, according to the UN.

    "High Fives" . . . Hamas release more hostages
    “High Fives” . . . Hamas release more hostages to the ICRC on Day 6 of the temporary truce. Image: Palestine Online/ @OnlinePalEng

    According to a group of UN experts:

    Israel’s continuous annexation of portions of the occupied Palestinian territory […] suggests that a concrete effort may be under way to annex the entire occupied Palestinian territory in violation of international law.

    Settler violence against Palestinians also includes the uprooting of hundreds of olive trees, destruction of property, blocked roads, armed raids and sabotaged wells. Military checkpoints and barriers make movement between Palestinian areas increasingly difficult.

    Settlers also enjoy civilian and political rights in the West Bank, while Palestinians are subjected to military rule. This has been described by human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, as well as prominent Israelis, as apartheid.

    In a study of 1,000 cases of settler violence submitted to the Israeli judiciary between 2005 and 2021, the human rights organisation Yesh Din found 92% were dismissed.

    A recipe for more violence
    The West Bank continues to be run, at least in parts, by the internationally recognised Palestinian Authority (PA), led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

    However, the PA is considered corrupt, nepotistic and is deeply unpopular among Palestinians in the territories. Recent polling revealed 78 percent of Palestinians want Abbas to resign. Primarily, this is because the PA is seen by Palestinians in the West Bank as nothing more than Israel’s security subcontractor and has suppressed demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza.

    As a result, a younger generation of Palestinian fighters has emerged in West Bank towns and cities that transcend the longstanding divide between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank.

    These self-defence battalions are intended to defend Palestinians against Israeli incursions, especially in the Jenin refugee camp and the old city of Nablus, both of which have repeatedly been the subject of Israeli raids this year.

    Meanwhile, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister and the leader of the Jewish Power Party, continues to openly defend settlers’ actions, setting the stage for more attacks.

    Earlier this year, a joint statement by the Israeli military, Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic security agency) and Israeli police condemned Jewish settler violence against Palestinians, saying the increased vigilantism contradicted Jewish values and were a form of “nationalist terror in the full sense of the term”. Days later, though, Ben-Gvir blocked condemnation of the settlers and is reported to have called them “sweet kids” who had been turned into adults in detention.

    After the October 7 attacks, Ben-Gvir’s ministry announced it had purchased 10,000 assault rifles to be distributed to civilian security teams around the country, including in West Bank settlements.

    Other senior Israeli politicians have also been seen to encourage violence. In March, for instance, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also in charge of the civil administration of the West Bank, said a Palestinian town called Huwara should be “wiped out”.

    The US State Department said the comment amounted to an incitement of violence and called it “repugnant”. Smotrich later apologised, calling it a “slip of the tongue”.

    All of this has helped create an environment of fear, frustration and desperation among Palestinians in the West Bank. Following five weeks of war in Gaza, the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research reported 69 percent of Palestinians say they “fear future settler attacks”.

    The upshot of this continued violence in the West Bank is the prospects for a viable two-state solution are more remote than ever, leaving Palestinians with little alternative then to continue resisting. The Conversation

    Tristan Dunning, honorary research fellow, The University of Queensland and Martin Kear, sessional lecturer Dept Govt & Int Rel., University of Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Sovereignty Surrendered: Subordinating Australia’s Defence Industry

    One could earn a tidy sum the number of times the word “sovereignty” has been uttered or mentioned in public statements and briefings by the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese.

    But such sovereignty has shown itself to be counterfeit.  The net of dependency and control is being increasingly tightened around Australia, be it in terms of Washington’s access to rare commodities (nickel, cobalt, lithium), the proposed and ultimately fatuous nuclear-propelled submarine fleet, and the broader militarisation and garrisoning of the country by US military personnel and assets. (The latter includes the stationing of such nuclear-capable assets as B-52 bombers in the Northern Territory.)

    The next notch on the belt of US control has been affirmed by new proposals that will effectively make technological access to the Australian defence industry by AUKUS partners (the United States and the United Kingdom) an even easier affair than it already is.  But in so doing, the intention is to restrict the supply of military and dual-use good technology from Australia to other foreign entities while privileging the concerns of the US and UK.  In short, control is set to be wrested from Australia.

    The issue of reforming US export controls, governed by the musty provisions of the US International Trade in Arms Regulations (ITAR), was always going to be a feature of any technology transfer, notably regarding nuclear-propulsion.  But even before the minting of AUKUS, Canberra and Washington had pondered the issue of industrial integration and sharing technology via such instruments as the Defense Cooperation Treaty of 2012 and Australia’s addition to the National Technology and Industrial Base in 2017.

    This fundamentally failed enterprise risks being complicated further by the latest export reforms, though you would not think so, reading the guff streaming from the Australian Defence Department.  A media release from Defence Minister Richard Marles tries to justify the changes by stating that “billions of dollars in investment” will be released. Bureaucratic red tape will be slashed – for the Australian Defence industry and the AUKUS partners.  “Under the legislation introduced today, Australia’s existing trade controls will be expanded to regulate the supply of controlled items and provision of services in the Defence and Strategic Goods List, ensuring our cutting-edge military technologies are protected.”

    Central to the reforms is the introduction of a national exemption that will cover trade of defence goods and technologies with the US and UK, thereby “establishing a license-free environment for Australian industry, research and science.”  But the broader object here is unmistakably directed, less to Australian capabilities than privileged access and a relinquishing of control to the paymasters in Washington.  A closer read, and it’s all got to do with those wretched white elephants of the sea: the nuclear-powered submarine.

    As the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy, states, “This legislation is an important step in the Albanese Government’s strategy for acquiring the state-of-the-art nuclear-powered submarines that will be key to protecting Australians and our nation’s interests.”  In doing so, Conroy, Marles and company are offering Australia’s defence base to the State Department and the Pentagon.

    With a mixture of hard sobriety and alarm, a number of expert voices have voiced concern regarding the implications of these new regulations.  One is Bill Greenwalt, a figure much known in the field of US defence procurement, largely as a prominent drafter of its legal framework.  He is unequivocal in his criticism of the US approach, and the keen willingness of Australian officials to capitulate.  “After years of US State Department prodding, it appears that Australia signed up to the principles and specifics of the failed US export control system,” Greenwalt explained to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.  “Whenever it cooperates with the US it will surrender any sovereign capability it develops to the United States control and bureaucracy.”

    The singular feature of these arrangements, Greenwalt continues to elaborate, is that Australia “got nothing except the hope that the US will remove process barriers that will allow the US to essentially steal and control Australian technology faster.”

    In an email sent to Breaking Defense, Greenwalt was even more excoriating of the Australian effort.  “It appears that the Australians adopted the US export control system lock, stock and barrel, and everything I wrote about in my USSC (US Studies Center) piece in the 8 deadly sins of ITAR section will now apply to Australian innovation.  I think they just put themselves back 50 years.”

    The paper in question, co-authored with Tom Corben, identifies those deadly sins that risk impairing the success of AUKUS: “an outdated mindset; universality and non-materiality; extraterritoriality; anti-discrimination; transactional process compliance; knowledge taint; non-reciprocity; and unwarranted predictability.”

    When such vulgar middle-management speech is decoded, much can be put down to the fact that dealing with Washington and its military-industrial complex can be an imperilling exercise.  The US imperium remains fixated, as Greenwalt and Corben write, with “an outdated superpower mindset” discouragingly inhibiting to its allies.  What constitutes a “defence article” within such export controls is very much left to the discretion of the executive.  The archaic application of extraterritoriality means that recipient countries of US technology must request permission from the State Department if re-exporting to another end-user is required for any designated defence article.

    The failure to reform such strictures, and the insistence that Australia make its own specific adjustments, alarms Chennupati Jagadish, president of the Australian Academy of Science.  The new regulations may encourage unfettered collaboration between the US and UK, “but I would require an approved permit prior to collaborating with other foreign nationals.  Without it, my collaborations could see me jailed.”  The bleak conclusion: “it expands Australia’s backyard to include the US and UK, but it raises the fence.”  Or, more accurately, it incorporates, with a stern finality, Australia as a pliable satellite in an Anglo-American arrangement whose defence arrangements are controlled by Washington.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • High-End Threat: The Accelerating Pace of Hypersonic Weapons

    As peer-level adversaries develop and deploy hypersonic weapons while the United States and its allies look to match and counter those capabilities, a new frontier in strategic weapon systems is emerging. Hypersonic weapons – typically glide vehicles deployed by ballistic missile or cruise missiles that exceed Mach 5 – have emerged as the latest technological […]

    The post High-End Threat: The Accelerating Pace of Hypersonic Weapons appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The Rise of the Desk Clerk Academic

    It is a particularly quotidian breed in the modern, management-driven university.  The desk clerk who pretends to be an academic and researcher but is neither.  The desk clerk who admires rosters, work plans and “key performance indicators”, thinking that the process of knowledge is quantifiable by productivity targets and financial returns.  The desk clerk who pilfers the work of undergraduates, sports a dubious doctoral thesis, and who rarely sets foot within the sacred surrounds of a library.

    The rise of such a figure in the global university scene, one neither fish nor fowl, is no accident.  As universities have declined, bureaucracy has bubbled with furious enthusiasm.  The decline of teaching and its quality is complemented by the rise of the paranoid penpusher and spreadsheet artist.  With a decline in substantive learning, the emergence of soft, watered-down syllabi, diminished reading lists (how dare one expect students to read one book a subject, let alone a few journal articles?), an increased focus on entertainment (flickering videos, please), the desk clerk has become sovereign, dominant, and terrifying.  Shallow, weak, insipid, such beings occupy a particular space of decline, subsided by the toilers who put in the hours in often shoddy conditions.  For the casual or sessional workforce, this is particularly acute.

    Importantly, the desk clerk cadres perform the role of keeping actual academics with unhealthily industrious standards in check, acting as a sinister Varangian Guard for the broader management of the universities.  They monitor staff emails without warning, undermine privacy with habitual criminality, conduct surveillance with pathological tendency.  They straitjacket thought, curtail originality, quash dissent.  To assist them in their mission is a vicious set of regulations known as the “Code of Conduct”, a document that would be neatly slotted into any KGB manual on thought control.  Good to be on your best behaviour: the Desk Clerk is keeping an eye on you.  Be a team member.  Don’t question university policy, however criminal or moronic. If not, to the cooler, a disciplinary hearing devoid of natural justice precepts.

    So, where do we find these crawling creatures so menacing to learning and murderous to thought?  In the position of Deans, associate deans and their collaborating adjutants.  Program managers on the make.  Colourless gauleiters, humourless henchmen, women and those in between hoping to make a buck or two out of the neuroses of identity politics. (Fancy an aboriginal cause we can advance?)  In the role of directors of learning and teaching.  (Universities are in a bad way if they need such areas.)  In sections with names resembling toilet cleaning products or carcinogenic chemicals.

    These people are, in turn, given orders by nameless, unaccountable individuals in the upper echelons of the institution, crowned by that most unaccountable of officers, the Vice-chancellor.  Usual corporate and commercial laws do not apply, be there in terms of remuneration or governance decisions.  This is particularly the case in Australia’s universities, where the average salary for the VC hovers around A$1 million.  Despite being treated as corporate institutions, such universities are not controlled by the same disclosure requirements that companies must follow.  The results are predictable enough: the sloshing and moving of dark money, the prevalence of shady deals, and poor, even bankrupting decisions.

    The desk clerk’s orders, often crafted on a ghastly template, are followed without question, delivered at meetings held with academics who should know better.  (An academic who has time for meetings is obviously not pulling any weight.)  It is one of the greatest conflicts of interest in the academy: the associate dean, having a chat with staff in a discipline meeting ostensibly to address a critical issue of merit.  Given that the associate dean in question is not beholden to staff welfare but the unelected officialdom of a mini-police state, the spectacle is not merely farcical but scandalous.

    Debate is supposedly held, discussion conducted.  Academic staff babble, gossip and chat in convivial surroundings pretending to follow a serious agenda.  But these meetings only ever serve to rubberstamp the bleak reality that is hatched in the University Chancellery, where thought is purposely killed in favour of middle-management speak, corrupt goals, and self-feathering.  For desk clerks keen to rise up the greasy pole, it’s best to be obedient and steely in resolve, kick down against the opposition, and suppress the contrarians.  Never mind that students are ignored, a toxic workplace rife with bullying neglected, or that the university is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

    The favourite occasion of the year for the desk clerk is the announcement of the promotions round.  Bootlickers and coprophagic devotees delight in the news that they have gained an associate professorship or even professorship, despite having not authored work of note – or any work for that matter.  The time has surely come to strip such individuals of academic positions and admit them to the role of administrators, with salaries adjusted downwards.  Because that is what a desk clerk, after all, is.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ghost Shark Program Announces Vital Australian Supplier Partnerships

    Anduril is announcing partnerships with ten key Australian suppliers who are collaborating on the Ghost Shark program. Through these partnerships, Anduril is building a resilient Australian supply chain as manufacturing of the first prototype accelerates ahead of schedule.  The Ghost Shark collaboration uniquely brings together Defence Science and Technology Group’s scientific smarts, Royal Australian Navy’s battlespace […]

    The post Ghost Shark Program Announces Vital Australian Supplier Partnerships appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Rot in the Civil Service: Farewelling Mike Pezzullo

    There was no better example of Australia’s politicised public service than its Home Affairs Secretary, Mike Pezzullo.  In most other countries, he would have been the ideal conspirator in a coup, a tittletattler in the ranks and bound to brief against those he did not like.  Give him a dagger, and he was bound to use it.

    His rise to power paralleled that of the emergence of that super amalgam of a ministry that arose during the Turnbull government.  Falling for the fatal error that centralising power assures the consolidation of efficiency, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was swayed by arguments that a broader ministry of home affairs was just the sort of thing Australia needed.  What the Commonwealth got in 2017, instead, was a monster run by the twin-headed beast of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, and Secretary Pezzullo.

    The extent of Pezzullo’s involvement in the machinations of government, and, it followed, party policy, was revealed by texts sent to Liberal Party lobbyist and former vice president of the NSW Liberals, Scott Briggs.  These became the subject of a joint investigation mounted by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes.

    In August 2018, when the nation’s capital was privy to yet another potential palace coup against a sitting Prime Minister, Pezzullo was opening up to Briggs with indiscreet relish.  In one message he longed to be part of history.  “I don’t want to interfere but you won’t be surprised to hear that in the event of Scomo [Scott Morrison] getting up I would like to see [Peter] Dutton come back to HA [Home Affairs].  No reason for him to stay on the backbench that I can see.”  Briggs does not demur.

    Pezzullo’s targets in the government varied.  Defence Minister Marise Payne was deemed “completely ineffectual” and a poor fit for office.  Former Liberal Attorney-General George Brandis was excoriated for befuddling public servants, though Pezzullo’s reasons for doing so are clear: it was Brandis, as Australia’s top legal officer, who expressed concerns that Canberra did not need a ministry of such size.

    While the Coalition was in power, Pezzullo was coarsely candid about his feelings on war and conflict.  Fancying himself as something of a historian, he told gathered staff in his 2021 ANZAC Day address that Australians best prepare for war.  “Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war”.  The speech is marked by a blatant misuse and misunderstanding of the legacies left by two US generals: Douglas MacArthur and Dwight D. Eisenhower.  Fittingly, Pezzullo ignores one vital aspect of MacArthur: his sacking for being a bit too defiant of the commander-in-chief of the time, President Harry S. Truman.

    Australia’s much more modest version of that commander, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has now received the findings of an independent inquiry into Pezzullo’s conduct conducted by Lynnelle Briggs.  In a short statement untroubled by any fuss, Albanese revealed that Pezzullo’s position as department secretary had been terminated.

    We have little to go on regarding the substance of the findings.  But press reports note that the now former secretary used his duty, power, status or authority to gain benefits and advantages for himself; engaged in gossip and disrespectful critique of ministers and public servants; failed to keep sensitive government information confidential; failed to remain apolitical in his office and failed to disclose any relevant conflicts of interest.

    Unfortunately, the report itself will not be made public, an unsatisfactory state of affairs that does little to restore confidence in the civil service.  The argument advanced in this case is that publication will lead to the disclosure of personal information.  But what of it?  The insinuation here is hard to avoid: keeping such an investigation buried suggests a closed shop, with officials keen to keep matters out of the public glare.  Given that Pezzullo was the most notable panjandrum in Canberra’s bureaucratic tangle, the rot is hardly likely to have remained at the head.  Who else, the question must be asked, breached protocol?  The list is likely to be ugly and long,

    As former Senator Rex Patrick stated, Albanese “has done the right and necessary thing in terminating Mike Pezzullo’s appointment as Home Affairs Secretary.  But in the interests of transparency and accountability he must also table Lynelle Briggs’s report in Parliament today.”

    Having left the Australian Public Service Code in tatters, Pezzullo will undoubtedly find himself on the board of a defence or security company and take his place in the military-industrial complex.  He might finally get a chance to join a think tank.  His sacking, however, was the culmination of a culture long in the making.  Over the decades, the major parties have made political appointments a matter of course, subordinating expertise and fearless advice to party loyalties.  Perversely enough, Pezzullo was a perfect exponent of that tendency: a political civil servant.  The result: Canberra is awash and sinking with officialdom terrified to take a different stance to the political agenda of the day.  Agree with those in government, or risk languishing, demotion or worse.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Naval Radars Set to Work Onboard Australia’s Anzac Frigate

    Anschütz has reached a milestone in their supply of naval navigation radars for the Australian Anzac class frigates modernisation programme, as they have been successfully set to work. The radar systems combine transceivers from Terma and Naval Radar NX applications from Anschütz on ruggedised consoles. “We are pleased to have established a trusted and successful relationship […]

    The post Naval Radars Set to Work Onboard Australia’s Anzac Frigate appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Eco-Camouflage and the Fossil Fuel Lobby: The War against Wind Farms

    The fossil fuel lobby has had a busy year on the eco-camouflage front.  Earlier this year, interest started to rumble and rage against the stranding of humpback whales on the east coast of the United States.  Suddenly, opponents of wind turbine technology – and renewable technology more broadly – had identified an invaluable, if tenuous nexus: a link between whale mortality and offshore wind farms.

    One true enthusiast for the proposition proved to be Donald Trump.  Speaking at a rally in South Carolina in September, for example, the Republican presidential contender suggested that these “windmills” were driving whales “crazy”, inflicting death in such numbers that they were washing up on shore “on a weekly basis”.

    Such technology is the subject of frenzied study, and it would be remiss not to mention that various environmental concerns have been raised.  These are often specific to their intended locales.  One need only consult recent work commissioned by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an adjunct of the US Department of the Interior, to appreciate the complexity of the field.  The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concerned the Nantucket Shoals region, an area of complex hydrodynamics and ecology.  The authors acknowledged that large turbines of the size planned for the region had not, as yet, been built in US waters, and would therefore require extensive modelling on oceanographic effects, notably on zooplankton populations upon which whales feed.

    Rob Deaville of the Zoological Society of London’s Cetacean Strandings Investigation Programme also admits that disruptions to marine wildlife can take place in the construction phase of wind farms given the presence of percussive noise.  Animals such as porpoises or dolphins “may move out of that area while you’re installing the wind farms, but then the longer-term picture: in some areas they may never come back, in some they may come back in larger numbers than before.”

    Such concerned albeit cautious observation sits differently with claims of mass whale mortality that has become a hobby horse for opponents of renewable energy sources.  But look behind these newly converted whale-loving types, and you are likely to find an avid fossil-fuel lobbyist, the cash-filled account of the commodities sector, or those advocating the merits of nuclear energy.

    The issue has also made its way across the Pacific to Australia, that great bastion of fossil feud mania.  In the state of New South Wales, residents of the Hunter and Illawarra regions woke up to posters making the claim about the harmful effects of wind turbine technology.   A roadside billboard in Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, featured a beached whale with a background of wind turbines, sporting the words, “Stop Port Stephens Offshore Wind Farms”.

    Fictional articles have also made similar claims.  One, in particular, purports to have been published in the academic journal Marine Policy, asserting that offshore wind farms in the Illawarra and Hunter would result in an annual whale death toll of 400.  The journal’s disconcerted editor-in-chief, Quentin Hanich, could find no evidence of the phantom study with its alleged origins in the University of Tasmania, which had been shared on a Facebook group No Offshore Wind Farm for the Illawarra.  “We never received this imaginary paper … I am seeing no evidence that the study ever took place.”

    None of this seems to trouble members of the Liberal National Coalition.  The federal opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has claimed, somewhat erroneously, that there had been “no environmental consideration of what these huge wind turbines, 260 to 280 metres out of the water, will mean.”

    Another example of a fossil fuel parliamentarian turned green populist is Queensland Nationals Senator, Matt Canavan, who recently admitted that he had a soft spot for these cetacean casualties.  But then again, he also claims to have a fondness for all of Mother Nature’s glories, now facing the scourge of wind farm technology.  As he told Sky News, that favourite network for scratching populists and reactionaries, “massive amounts of wind farms, and solar panels which take up enormous amounts of land […] destroy koala habitat [and have] a massive impact on our environment … we destroy the environment to try and save it.”

    The same senator has been a spoiler of any net zero emissions policy regarding greenhouse gases, much to the consternation of many members of his own party, and could barely conceal his delight at the wording of the 2021 Glasgow Climate Change communique that countries “phase down” rather than “phase out” coal burning.  For Canavan, this meant that COP26 had given the “green light” for Australia to keep digging and “supply the world with more coal because that’s what brings people out of poverty.”

    This burst of anti-wind farm criticism ignored the inconvenient fact that almost all the humpback whale strandings the subject of concern showed signs of vessel strike.  In February 2023, the Marine Mammal Commission released a statement confirming the view that “there is no evidence to link these strandings to offshore wind energy development”.

    This month, Greenpeace published a piece stating that “offshore wind farms aren’t killing whales.”  While admitting the answer is a nuanced one, it concluded that “building offshore wind is way, way better for ocean wildlife than fossil fuels, especially offshore gas and oil.”  No single peer-reviewed study, Greenpeace went on to note, has found that offshore wind farms are responsible for whale mortality.

    The greatest threat to various whale populations lies in fishing, ship strikes, and oceanic disruptions arising from climate change.  As, it would seem, those figures in eco-camouflage such as Dutton and Canavan, who continue to coddle fossil fuel companies intent on seismic blasting and offshore drilling.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Duty to Obey: David McBride, Whistleblowing and Following Orders

    The unpardonable, outrageous trial of Australian whistleblower David McBride was a brief affair.  On November 13, it did not take long for the brutal power of the Commonwealth to become evident.  McBride, having disclosed material that formed the Australian public about alleged war crimes by special forces in Afghanistan, was going to be made an example of.

    McBride served as a major in the British army before becoming a lawyer for the Australian Defence Force, serving two tours in Afghanistan over 2011 and 2013.  During that time, he gathered material about the culture and operations of Australia’s special forces that would ultimately pique the interest of investigators and lead to the Brereton Inquiry which, in 2020, made 36 referrals to the Australian Federal Police related to alleged war crimes.

    McBride was subsequently charged with five national security offences.  He was also denied immunity from prosecution under the near-unworkable provisions of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth).

    A central contention of the Crown was that McBride had, first and foremost, a duty to follow orders as a military lawyer.  Such a duty flows on from the oath sworn to the sovereign, and no public interest could trump that undertaking.  “A soldier,” contended Trish McDonald in her astonishing submission, “does not serve the sovereign by promising to do whatever the soldier thinks is in the public interest, even if contrary to the laws made by parliament.”

    Even a layperson’s reading of the oath would surely make a nonsense of this view, but Justice David Mossop was in little mood to suggest otherwise.  “There is no aspect of duty that allows the accused to act in the public interest contrary to a lawful order.”  It was a point he would be putting to the jury, effectively excluding any broader public interest considerations that might be at play in disobeying a military order.

    For anybody vaguely familiar with military law since the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders in 1945, such orders are never absolute, nor to be obeyed without qualification.  Following orders without question or demur in all cases went out – or so the 1945 trials suggested – with Nazi officialdom and the Third Reich.  There are cases when a soldier is under a positive duty to disobey certain orders.  But McDonald was trapped in a fusty pre-Nuremberg world, evidenced by her use of a 19th century authority on military justice that would have sat well with the German defence team: “There is nothing so dangerous to the civil establishment of the state as an undisciplined or reactionary army.”

    Chief counsel representing McBride, Stephen Odgers, hoped to drag Australian military justice into the twenty-first century, reaffirming the wisdom of Nuremberg: there are times when a public duty supersedes and transcends the narrow demands of authority, notably when it comes to the commission or concealment of crimes.  The oath McBride swore as a member of the ADF to serve the sovereign comprised an element to act in the public interest, even when opposed to a lawful order.

    There being no direct Australian decision on the subject (in itself, a startling fact) McBride’s legal team took the matter of duty to the Court of Appeal of the Australian Capital Territory on November 16, hoping to delay the trial and argue the point.  Chief Justice Lucy McCallum heard the following submission: “His only real argument is that what he did was the right thing.  There was an order: don’t disclose this stuff, but he bled, and did the right thing, to use his language, and the question is does the fact that he’s in breach of orders mean that he’s in breach of his duty, so that he’s got no defence?”

    If such an approach was adopted, Odgers went on to state, it “may well mean that the consequence is that he’s got no real alternative but to enter pleas of guilty and that would obviously shorten things but he seeks an opportunity to have that critical issue determined by the court of appeal.”  Were the jury to understand that a public interest test applied in certain cases, they would then work on the “basis that there is a powerful public interest that members of the defence force do obey orders, but circumstances might arise in which that is not in the public interest.”

    What Justice Mossop was essentially saying was “not that orders are relevant to the question of duty but rather that they trump anything else, so that you must obey”.  This was irrespective of “how unreasonable or in breach of fundamental principles of justice they may be, and will commit criminal offence if he does not”.

    Odgers suggested an example elementary but salient.  Picture a junior officer, being given a supposedly lawful order to commit what would be seen as a war crime.  “Is that junior officer necessarily in breach of his duty?  And there’s no way that a jury can say no he didn’t have a duty to obey that order?  That’s the implications we say of his honour’s decision.”

    Unfortunately for McBride, McCallum would not be swayed.  Mossop’s ruling was “not obviously wrong.”  She did not feel “that there is sufficient doubt about his honour’s ruling on either issue to warrant interrupting the trial.”

    With the trial resuming on November 17, Mossop issued another stinging order: that the Attorney-General’s office remove classified documents in McBride’s possession that could be presented to the jury at trial.  As one of the defence team, Mark Davis, told reporters, “We received the decision just this afternoon, which was in essence to remove evidence from the defence.”  In doing so, “The Crown, the government, was given the authority to bundle up evidence and run out the backdoor with it.”

    With such gloomy prospects, McBride requested a new indictment on lesser charges, to which he pleaded guilty.  Facing sentencing in the new year, he may be eligible to serve time outside carceral conditions, though a decade long stint is also in the offing. “The result of today’s outcome,” wrote transparency advocate and former Senator Rex Patrick, “is one brave whistleblower likely behind bars and thousands of prospective whistleblowers lost from the community.”

    In June this year, Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus proudly claimed that “the Albanese government has delivered on our promise to the Australian people to strengthen protections for public sector whistleblowers.”  Hardly.  While modest amendments were made to the unspeakably clumsy Public Interest Disclosure Act, including the establishment of a National Anti-Corruption Commission, McBride had little reason to cheer.  Dreyfus refused to use Section 71 of the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth), which gives the country’s chief lawmaker to drop prosecutions against individuals charged with “an indictable offence against the laws of the Commonwealth”.

    Dreyfus, however, did discontinue the obscene prosecution of former ACT attorney-general Bernard Collaery under that same provision but refrained from exercising that same power regarding McBride and the Australian Tax Office whistleblower, Richard Boyle.  His reasoning proved strikingly inconsistent: only in “very unusual and exceptional circumstances” could Dreyfus use such discretion.  We are on slippery terrain when revealing alleged war crimes is a matter usual and unexceptional.

    In McBride’s understandably distressed reading of the result, he warned that, in joining the Australian military, you were not “joining a noble profession, just a criminal gang like any other criminal gang: silence and complicity are the touchstones.  A judge has made that clear.”  And, sadly, more besides.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • EOS wins continued RWS business in Southeast Asia

    Canberra-based firm Electro Optic Systems (EOS) has secured a contract worth A$28 million to supply spares of its R600 remote weapon system (RWS) to an undisclosed military customer in Southeast Asia, the company announced on 13 November. “EOS is proud of this achievement, which not only strengthens its presence in the South East Asian defence […]

    The post EOS wins continued RWS business in Southeast Asia appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Naval ship designs a talking point at Indo Pacific 2023

    New surface warfare platform designs being proposed for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN)’s hotly debated modernisation programmes took centre stage at the recently concluded Indo Pacific 2023 maritime exposition in Sydney from 7-9 November. Amid uncertainty over the future of the RAN’s Hunter-class frigate programme, which seeks to deliver nine ships worth A$45 billion, contracted […]

    The post Naval ship designs a talking point at Indo Pacific 2023 appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The Politics of Indefinite Detention in Australia

    The High Court of Australia is not known for its zealotry in protecting human rights, and certainly not when considering the persuasive pull of international law and conventions.  The Australian Parliament is usually given a generous hand in making policies that tend to outrage such conventions, a freedom made that much easier by an absence of any bill of rights.

    A grim example of this was the 2004 High Court decision of Al-Kateb v Godwin, which gave the Commonwealth full assurance that policies on indefinitely detaining unwanted, designated “unlawful” arrivals were entirely within its power.  The case concerned the application of various provisions of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) requiring an officer of the Commonwealth to detain those reasonably suspected to be unlawful citizens in the migration zone and held in immigration detention till their deportation or grant of a visa.

    In such provisions, a pincer movement against such “unlawful citizens” had been enshrined with stunning cynicism. Once detained and having their status determined, such individuals might be found to be refugees.  Accordingly, they might receive a visa, though not if they were those undesirables marooned in the offshore concentration camps of Nauru and Manus Island.  Since 2013, Australian governments have proclaimed that those undocumented souls seeking refuge in Australia by boat would never be given the chance to settle in the country.  Even in the event of being deemed refugees, they might still be refused a visa on character grounds or face the prospect of deportation to a third country, the latter being something of a favourite of Australian policy makers for two decades.  (A gaggle of European states have also been impressed by this formula.)

    What, then, of stateless citizens found to be refugees and without fault?  Or those who would not be accepted by a third country?  Or those who, having been convicted of an offence and served time for it, could be placed in a vicious limbo of de facto carceral administration for the rest of their natural lives, undesired by any country, and not allowed out in the Australian community for failing to meet visa requirements and deemed a threat to society?

    To answer these questions, the facts of Al-Kateb are worth recounting.  Ahmed Ali Al-Kateb was a stateless Palestinian born in Kuwait in 1976, having sought sanctuary in Australia in December 2000 without a passport or visa.  He was duly detained under the Migration Act.  Efforts to gain a protection visa proved futile.  The Refugee Review Tribunal and the Federal Court agreed with the decision makers.  With Australia having ceased to be an option, Al-Kateb informed the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs that he wished to be transferred to Kuwait or Gaza.  Those efforts also came to naught.

    Al-Kateb’s cupboard of legal options started looking increasingly threadbare.  With little else possible, he resorted to that immemorial principle of Britannic common law that he be released on habeas corpus grounds.  After all, the Australian authorities surely had no reason to continue detaining him.  He had committed no crime, and there was “no real likelihood or prospect” of Al-Kateb’s removal outside the country in the reasonably foreseeable future, a point acknowledged by the Federal Court.

    In a granite hard decision, the High Court rejected the claim. For one thing, the discretion was mandatory under the legislation, not discretionary.  Nor was the exercise of such a detention power punitive, thereby violating the separation of powers.  In Chief Justice Gleeson’s words: “A person in the position of the appellant might be young or old, dangerous or harmless, likely or unlikely to abscond, recently in detention or someone who had been there for years, healthy or unhealthy, badly affected by incarceration or relatively unaffected.  The considerations that might bear upon the reasonableness of a discretionary decision to detain such a person do not operate.”

    Justice McHugh also reiterated the view that the Migration Act required “the indefinite detention of Mr Al-Kateb, notwithstanding that it is unlikely that any country in the foreseeable future will give him entry to that country.  The words of the three sections [189, 196, 198] are too clear to read them as being subject to a purposive limitation or an intention not to affect fundamental rights.”  With Australia lacking any express constitutional protection of habeas corpus, Al-Kateb was doomed.

    Efforts to challenge this ghastly precedent over the years faltered.  In the meantime, periods of lengthy immigration detention ballooned.  Currently, the average period of time individuals held in immigration detention by Australian authorities is 708 days.  In May 2022, the detention period reached a dubious peak of 736 days, with 138 having spent time in detention for over five years.

    All this has changed.  On November 8, the High Court handed down a stunning decision in NZYQ v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs & Anor, thereby archiving Al-Kateb as a dark, judicial episode.

    NZYQ was a stateless Rohingya applicant who had fled Myanmar and journeyed to Australia by boat in September 2012.  He received a bridging visa in September 2014.  In January 2015, he was arrested and charged with a child sexual offence, his visa cancelled, and prison term imposed.  Despite receiving parole in May 2018, he was immediately thrown into immigration detention.  As a person regarded as stateless by Myanmar and facing a genuine risk of persecution on his return, NZYQ also faced the prospect of perennial detention for not having a visa.  On character grounds, Australian authorities could continue to refuse granting it.  It also seems that no third country option arose as a serious possibility, though this will only be known with certainty once the judgment is published.

    Much to the surprise of those present, NZYQ’s legal team received the news after two days of oral argument that it was unconstitutional to detain a person where there was no real prospect of being removed from Australia.  As a consequence, the court held that provisions under the Migration Act obliging the authorities to detain “unlawful non-citizens” for such inordinate periods should be read as beyond the immigration power of the Commonwealth.  NZYQ’s administrative detention, being deemed unlawful, necessitated his release.

    The decision immediately affects 92 people in immigration detention.  But as the Australian Human Rights Commission reminds us, the perverse cruelties of Australia’s detention system has, over the last two decades, affected “the lives of tens of thousands of people, most of whom came to this country seeking protection as refugees.”

    Panicked, the Albanese government has tried dousing the fires of concern, though some of these have been lit by a few parliamentarians prone to pyromania.  Public safety, it has been suggested, might be compromised by these reprobates newly found with their freedom in the Australian community.  Instead of acknowledging the human rights dimension of the case, the Home Secretary Claire O’Neil came close to slighting the High Court.  “If I had any legal power to do it, I would keep every one of those people in detention.”  This was irrespective of the fact that they had served time for any offences they had committed.

    A government spokesperson was also quick to point out in the immediate aftermath of the High Court decision that, “Individuals released into the community from immigration detention may be subject to certain visa conditions.”  But instead of waiting for the decision’s full publication, the government has cobbled a mash of legislative measures in a paroxysm of populism.

    On November 16, Immigration Minister Andrew Giles introduced laws applicable to 83 released detainees, among them three murderers and a number of unspecified sex offenders.  “The Australian community reasonably expects that all non-citizens in Australia will obey Australian laws.”  Some would, for instance, be electronically tagged.  Curfews could also be imposed.  Attached visa conditions could also include notification requirements for changes of address, any illegal activities or change of address. “These measures,” Giles stated, “are consistent with the legitimate objective of community safety and the rights and interests of the public.”  How these objectives square with such savage punishments as five-year prison terms in violation is hard to see.

    The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, was left unsatisfied by the proposals.  As a proud, demagogic hater of civil liberties, he feels that prolonged punishment is the preferred formula.  How this will be done constitutionally is not something that bothers his minute, vengeful imagination. But he proved enough of a fantasist to link the release of the detainees to the threat of rising antisemitism in Australia, a cavalier effort verging on the imbecilic.

    In responding to Dutton’s conflating resolution, Prime Minister Albanese thundered that linking “antisemitism with the decision of the high court, is beyond contempt.”  But the entire chapter had been beyond contempt.  Instead of respecting the central tenets of a fair judicial system, the major parties have heaped scorn upon it.  It affirms the penological fixation Australian politicians continue to suffer from when considering the plight of refugees and asylum seekers who dare arrive via unconventional channels.  They are the pseudo-criminals who pay people traffickers, the indecent queue jumpers, the unprincipled, cashed up opportunists.

    Given that Australia already has a suppressive regime of post-release control measures that effectively mock and caricature sentences served by prolonging state surveillance and control of society’s “most dangerous”, another set of legal measures seeking to achieve precisely the same purpose serves to deaden liberty that bit more.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Australia’s First MQ-4C Triton Takes Flight

    Northrop Grumman Corporation successfully completed the first flight of Australia’s multi-intelligence MQ-4C Triton uncrewed aircraft on Thursday, Nov. 9 at its Palmdale Aircraft Integration Center in California. The flight marks a major production milestone as Northrop Grumman progresses toward delivery of Australia’s first Triton in 2024. Built for the U.S. Navy and Royal Australian Air […]

    The post Australia’s First MQ-4C Triton Takes Flight appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The Militarised University: Where Secrecy Goes to Thrive

    For anyone wishing to bury secrets, especially of the unsavoury sort, there is one forum that stands out.  Call it a higher education institution.  Call it a university.  Even better, capitalise it: the University.  This is certainly the case in Australia, where education is less a pursuit of knowledge as the acquiring of a commodity, laid out spam for so much return.  On that vast island continent, the university, dominated by a largely semi-literate and utterly unaccountable management, is a place where secrets are buried, concealed with a gleeful dedication verging on mania.

    In its submission to what will hopefully become the Australian Universities Accord, the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP) notes the following: “Unfortunately, university managements are increasingly disconnected from and unaccountable to academic values and academic communities.  Students, Government and granting bodies, pay universities to deliver services according to academic values, but academics are impeded from working in accordance with academic values by interfering management.  Further, the managers themselves do not work in accordance with academic values.”

    Those in the defence industry have taken note. By turning such institutions of instruction into supply lines for research and development in armaments, they can be assured of secrecy conditions the envy of most intelligence agencies.  Consulting, viewing, gaining access to relevant agreements, documentation and projects for reasons of public discussion is virtually impossible.  These are always seen as “commercial” and “in confidence”.

    Only the overly fed and watered members of the University Politburo are granted such access.  Entry into the arcana of its deliberations is ceremonially tolerated via Academic Board meetings or Senatorial deliberations.  Furthermore, academics throughout the university sport a reliable, moral flabbiness that will prevent them from spilling the beans and airing a troubled conscience, even in cases where leaking the documentation might be possible.  Middle class, mortgage-laden status anxiety is the usual formula here, one that neuters revolutionary spirits – not that there was much to begin with.

    Across Australia’s universities, the AUKUS military initiative between the US, UK and Australia, primarily focused on developing nuclear powered technology for a new submarine design, has titillated the managerial wonks of the tertiary education sector.  In September, the Defence Department announced that 4,000 additional Commonwealth supported places (CSPs) for undergraduate students would be funded as part of its “Nuclear-Powered Submarine Student Pathways” strategy.

    Institutes have sprung up running short courses to rake in the cash, such as the UWA Defence and Security Institute, which proudly claims to have created the “essential course for those seeking to gain a greater understanding of AUKUS Pillar 1 (nuclear powered submarines) and the impacts for Western Australia and beyond.”  A course running for thirteen hours does not seem particularly hefty, but this is a field of glitz over substance.

    Then come the true villains of the piece, the arms manufacturers and companies that make the military-university-industrial complex intimate and obscene.  One of interest here is Israel’s Elbit Systems.  For years, it has hammered out a reputation for manufacturing such lethal products as the Hermes 900 drone, which was first deployed in 2014 against targets in the Gaza Strip.  It supplies the lion’s share of drones used by the Israeli Defence Forces for strikes and surveillance (the figure may be as high as 85%).

    The company has managed to beef up many an activist’s resumé.  Members of the Palestine Action group claim to have scored a victory in securing the permanent closure of two of Elbit’s sites in 2022, including the London head office.  “The cracks in Elbit’s warehouse windows,” the organisation trumpeted in August this year, “do not simply represent cosmetic damage but also symbolise the crumbling foundations of Elbit’s relationship with the British State’s so-called defence interests.”

    The corporation has also fallen out of favour with a number of investors. HSBC and the French multinational AXA Investment Managers divested from the company in 2018 and 2019 given its role in producing and commercialising cluster munitions and white phosphoros shells.  In May 2022, the Australian sovereign wealth fund, Future Fund, excluded Elbit Systems Limited from its investment portfolio for much the same reasons.

    Despite this blotched and blotted record, Elbit could still stealthily establish a bridgehead in the university sector down under through its creation, in 2021, of a Centre of Excellence in Human-Machine Teaming and Artificial Intelligence in Port Melbourne.  Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA) had two special clients: the state government of Victoria, which provided some funding via Invest Victoria, and RMIT University’s Centre for Industrial AI Research and Innovation.  The two-year partnership with ELSA’s Centre of Excellence was intended to, according to ELSA’s then managing director and retired Major General Paul McLachlan, “research how to use drones to count the number of people in designated evacuation zones, then to co-ordinate and communicate the most efficient evacuation routes to everyone in the zone, as well as monitoring the area to ensure that everyone has been accounted for.”

    Despite such seemingly noble goals, the opening ceremony in February 2021 had a distinctly heavy military accent, with senior representatives from the Royal Australian Airforce, DST (Defence Science and Technology) Group and the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG).  No one present could deny that technology used in the context of civilian evacuations in the face of natural disaster could just as well be deployed in a military security context.  As Antony Loewenstein has observed, “If you partner, as a state or a university, with a company like Elbit, you have blood on your hands because the record of Elbit in Israel-Palestine, on the US-Mexican border and elsewhere is so damned clear.”

    Since the Hamas attacks on Israeli soil that took place on October 7, the ELSA-RMIT-Victorian relationship has seemingly altered.  A war of horrendous carnage is being waged in the Gaza Strip.  Activists claim to have scored a famous victory in securing the university’s hazy termination of any partnership with ELSA.  “This is a significant victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in Australia,” claims Hilmi Dabbagh of BDS Australia.  “Australian universities have been put on notice that they will be targeted if they partner with any Israeli company or institution complicit in human rights abuses and attacks on Palestinians.”

    Such confidence is admirably fresh, if a touch green.  It is worth looking at the university statement, which is revealing in ways that have been entirely missed in the enthusiastic pronouncements of the BDS movement.  The university claims to “not design, develop or manufacture weapons or munitions in the university or as part of any partnership.  With regard to Elbit Systems, RMIT does not have a partnership with Elbit Systems or any of their subsidiaries, including Elbit Systems of Australia (ELSA).”  Such wording avoids the language of termination, leaving the question open as to whether it ever had an arrangement to begin with, with its requisite project links.  This will, as with much else, be deemed commercial, in confidence, and buried in the bowels of secrecy we have come to expect from the antipodean university sector.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • HRW submission to Special Rapporteur focuses on child and youth human rights defenders

    Human Rights Watch’ submission discusses the risks climate activists have faced in Australia, India, and Uganda. It focuses on examples of activists under age 32, as requested by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders.

    Australia

    Following increased climate protest activity in New South Wales (NSW), the government in March 2022 established a new police unit known as the Strike Force Guard. The unit is designed to “prevent, investigate and disrupt unauthorized protests across the state.” On April 1, the state parliament introduced new laws and penalties specifically targeting protests that blocked roads and ports. Protesters can now be fined up to AU$22,000 (US$15,250) and be jailed for up to two years for protesting without permission on public roads, rail lines, tunnels, bridges, and industrial estates.

    In 2022, Human Rights Watch interviewed three climate protesters who had been arrested and charged under the new laws. These cases indicate that climate protesters are being targeted for disproportionate punishment.

    Violet (Deanna) Coco, a 31-year-old activist, took part in a climate protest on April 13, 2022, that stopped traffic in one lane on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Coco climbed on the roof of a parked truck and stood holding a lit emergency flare. After approximately 25 minutes, NSW police forcibly removed her and the other protesters from the road. Coco was charged with disrupting vehicles, interfering with the safe operation of a bridge, possessing a bright light distress signal in a public place, failing to comply with police direction, and resisting or hindering a police officer. She was also charged under explosives regulations for holding the emergency flare; with an incitement offense for “encouraging the commission of a crime” by livestreaming the protest on Facebook; and for uploading a video of a climate protest she took the previous week, and with disrupting traffic during three previous protests.

    Coco pleaded guilty to two charges – blocking traffic and failing to comply with police direction – and not guilty to the other charges. She was released on AU$10,000 (US$6,940) bail, but the magistrate ordered her not to leave her apartment for any purpose except for emergency medical assistance or to attend court. She was also ordered not to associate with any other Fireproof Australia member. Coco spent 21 days under what amounted to house arrest. On May 5, 2022, a magistrate amended her bail and, while she was allowed to leave her property, the authorities imposed a curfew banning her from leaving her address before 10 a.m. and after 3 p.m.

    In March 2023, Coco was issued with a 12-month conditional release order after a district court judge heard she had been initially imprisoned on false information provided by the New South Wales police.

    In August 2022, the state of Victoria followed New South Wales with harsh new measures targeting environmental protesters at logging sites with up to 12 months in jail or $21,000 in fines. In Tasmania, environmental activists now face fines of $13,000 or two years in prison, while nongovernmental organizations that have been found to “support members of the community to protest” face fines of over $45,000.

    On May 18, 2023, the South Australia government introduced harsh new anti-protest measures in the South Australian lower house in the morning and then rushed them through after lunch with bipartisan support after just 20 minutes of debate and no public consultation. The bill would increase the punishment for “public obstruction” 60-fold, from $750 to $50,000 or three months in jail, with activists also potentially facing orders to pay for police and other emergency services responding to a protest or action. On May 30, the laws were passed after a 14-hour debate in the South Australian upper house.

    India

    In February 2021, Indian authorities arrested Ravi who was sent to police custody for five days. Indian authorities also issued arrest warrants against Nikita Jacob, a lawyer, and Shantanu Muluk, an activist, who were granted pre-arrest bail. The authorities alleged Ravi was the “key conspirator” in editing and sharing an online toolkit shared by the Swedish Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg on social media, including Twitter, aimed at providing information to those seeking to peacefully support ongoing farmers protests. In granting bail to Ravi, the Delhi court said the evidence on record was “scanty and sketchy,” and that citizens cannot be jailed simply because they disagreed with government policies. It added: “The offense of sedition cannot be invoked to minister to the wounded vanity of governments.”

    The Indian government has enforced Information Technology Rules that allow for greater governmental control over online content, threaten to weaken encryption, and seriously undermine media freedoms, rights to privacy, and freedom of expression online. These rules put youth and other human rights defenders and journalists at further risk of being targeted by the authorities for their online content.

    Uganda

    Young people from across Uganda have faced reprisals for fighting for climate justice. On September 25, 2020, Ugandan police arrested and detained for eight hours eight youth climate activists while participating in the global climate strike in Kampala. The police told them election campaigns were not allowed, although the activists repeatedly explained that they were an environmental—not a political—movement. The activists, only two of whom were above the age of 18, were detained in a room for eight hours, questioned, and then allowed to leave.

    Human Rights Watch published a report that documented a range of restrictions on freedom of expression, association, and assembly related to oil development, including the planned East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) by the government. Civil society organizations and environmental defenders regularly report being harassed and intimidated, unlawfully detained, or arbitrarily arrested. Human Rights Watch interviewed 31 people in Uganda between March and October 2023, including 21 environmental defenders, and several of whom were under 32 years old.

    Many student climate activists protesting EACOP have been arrested and charged with various offences in Kampala since 2021. These protests have been largely peaceful and usually small in scale. Since 2021, there have been at least 22 arrests, largely of students, at anti-EACOP protests in Kampala. Nine students were arrested in October 2022 after demonstrating support for the European Parliament resolution on EACOP and charged with “common nuisance.” Their case was finally dismissed on November 6, 2023, after more than 15 court appearances. Another four protesters were arrested on December 9, 2022, as they marched to the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) to demand a re-evaluation of the environmental damage caused by EACOP. One of the detainees was kept at an unknown location until the morning of December 12 when all four were released.

    Another protesting student was arrested in Kampala on June 27, 2023, after trying to deliver a petition to the Speaker of the House of Uganda’s parliament. He told Human Rights Watch he was taken to an unlawful place of detention known as a “safe house” with his hands tied behind his back, questioned by plain-clothed security officials about who was providing the funding for the protests, before he was knocked to the floor. He said he awoke two days later in the hospital with serious injuries. On July 11, 2023, five individuals were arrested after protesting EACOP in downtown Kampala.

    On September 15, 2023, four student protesters were arrested after a “Fridays for Future” and “StopEACOP” joint protest at the Ugandan parliament as part of the “Global Fight to End Fossil Fuels,” a global mobilization and day of action. They were released on bond five days later and have been charged with “common nuisance.” Their next hearing is scheduled for November 27, 2023. One of the students described to Human Rights Watch being held in a room inside parliament and beaten by uniformed parliamentary security officials and others in civilian clothes with “batons, gun butts, and using their boots to step on our heads” before being taken to Kampala’s Central Police Station (CPS). At the CPS he described plainclothes intelligence officers asking: “Who are your leaders? Among us, who is your leader? How many are you? Who are your leaders in different universities? Who is managing your social media accounts?” They then described being beaten further in CPS cells by other prisoners, one of whom said, “We have order from above to discipline you. You need to stop working on EACOP.”

    Human Rights Watch encourages the Special Rapporteur to call on governments to:

    • Promote and protect universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, respect, and protect the work of climate activists, in line with their human rights obligations.
    • Publicly condemn assault, threats, harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary arrests of activists, and direct security and other government officials to stop arresting, harassing, or threatening activists for protesting or on false accusations.
    • End arbitrary arrests and prosecutions of human rights defenders, anti-EACOP activists, and peaceful protesters.
    • Respect and protect the rights of all human rights defenders and civil society organizations to exercise freedoms of association, assembly, and expression, in accordance with international human rights norms.
    • Where applicable, ratify and implement regional human rights agreements to ensure public participation in environmental decision-making and to protect environmental defenders.

    Submission to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

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