Barely a day passes without a story in the British or Australian media that ramps up fear about the rulers in Beijing, reports the investigative website Declassified Australia.
According to an analysis by co-editors Antony Loewenstein and Peter Cronau, the Australian and British media are ramping up public fear, aiding a major military build-up — and perhaps conflict — by the United States and its allies.
The article is a warning to New Zealand and Pacific media too.
Citing a recent article in the Telegraph newspaper in Britain headlined, “A war-winning missile will knock China out of Taiwan – fast”, says the introduction.
“Written by David Axe, who contributes regularly to the outlet, he detailed a war game last year that was organised by the US think-tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
“It examined a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and concluded that the US Navy would be nearly entirely obliterated. However, Axe wrote, the US Air Force ‘could almost single-handedly destroy the Chinese invasion force’.
“‘How? With the use of a Lockheed Martin-made Joint Air-to-Surface Strike Missile (JASSM).
“‘It’s a stealthy and highly accurate cruise missile that can range hundreds of miles from its launching warplane,’ Axe explained.
“‘There are long-range versions of the JASSM and a specialised anti-ship version, too — and the USAF [US Air Force] and its sister services are buying thousands of the missiles for billions of dollars.’
“Missing from this analysis was the fact that Lockheed Martin is a major sponsor of the CSIS. The editors of The Telegraph either didn’t know or care about this crucial detail.
“One week after this story, Axe wrote another one for the paper, titled, ‘The US Navy should build a robot armada to fight the battle of Taiwan.’
“‘The US Navy is shrinking,’ the story begins. ‘The Chinese navy is growing. The implications, for a free and prosperous Pacific region, are enormous.’”
Branding the situation as “propaganda by think tank”, the authors argue that some sections of the news media are framing a massive military build-up by the US and its allies as necessary in the face of Chinese aggression.
“These repetitive media reports condition the public and so allow, or force, the political class to up the ante on China,” Loewenstein and Cronau write.
The abhorrent racism on display in the lead-up to a historic vote on Indigenous constitutional recognition in Australia has underscored exactly why the legislation is sorely needed.
Australia will hold a historic Indigenous rights referendum on 14 October. First Nations have lived on the continent for at least 60,000 years. If Australians vote yes, the country’s constitution would recognise First Nations and Torres Strait Islanders for the first time.
Crucially, the so-called ‘Voice to Parliament’ would enshrine Indigenous peoples’ right to be consulted on laws that impact their communities. Specifically, it’s a proposal to set up an Indigenous-led independent body to advise Australia’s Parliament.
‘Voice to Parliament’ referendum to redress racism
At the crux of this proposal is the cold hard fact: Australia is a deeply unequal, racist society.
More than two centuries after the first British colonists dropped anchor in Sydney Harbour, the colonised country has failed to address its striking racial disparities for its Indigenous residents. Discrimination and the resulting inequality pervades everything from education, healthcare, through to justice.
Shocking no one with an ounce of racial awareness, the state is ten times more likely to incarcerate First Nations and Torres Strait Islanders than non-Indigenous inhabitants. Of course, it all boils down to a deadly systemic cocktail of racial profiling, over-policing, and state surveillance. Despite making up just 2% of the general population, Indigenous people comprise 26% of those the criminal justice system imprisons. Moreover, Indigenous deaths in custody are rife.
Inquest after coronial inquest have led to the sum total of bugger all change, as deaths continue to soar. Over 30 years after they were made, the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) – predictably – remain largely unimplemented.
Clearly, these deep inequalities cannot be separated from the intergenerational impacts of colonial violence against the First Nations. Policing academic Amanda Porter has pointed out how Australian police forces were:
founded on violence: racist violence, imperial violence and settler colonial violence.
Given this, as the International Working Group for Indigenous Affairs has explained:
The cycle of colonial control continues, as these Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families become vulnerable to a lifetime of government surveillance and potential criminalisation by the system.
In short, like many settler nations, Australian society has yet to truly look its colonial past in the face. Moreover, it has still to reckon with the ongoing racism its violent colonial history underpins and emboldens. Enter the Voice to Parliament; the referendum now offers tentative, early steps towards redressing these imbalances.
Racism and conspiracies at large
Inevitably, the vote for Indigenous representation – however moderate it might be – has drawn out the vile bigots in their droves.
As the BBChas reported, people have splashed sickening anti-Indigenous memes across social media. Prominent Indigenous campaigner for the Vote Yes drive Thomas Mayo told the broadcaster that online trolls have directed vitriol and threats to him throughout.
Like a moth to flame, racist pundits, activists, and lawmakers have stoked a virulent disinformation campaign against the vote. The Guardian’s Van Badham listed some of the absurd conspiracies she has encountered on social media during the referendum campaign:
The Indigenous voice to parliament proposal is not a secret UN plot to steal Australian land. It is not a proposal for a “third chamber of parliament”. It is also not a conspiracy to stop dairy farming, impose “backdoor communism”, force people to listen to rap music or start a new religion … though I have been told all these things on social media this past fortnight.
Rap music, communism, and a healthy dose of anti-dairy sentiment strikes fear in the hearts of racist conspiracy nuts – good to know. Predictably, there’s clear crossover with the Covid conspiracy crowd too.
Unsurprisingly however, much of the misinformation has centred round race. One senator has nonsensically equated the Voice with apartheid. Meanwhile, other opponents have claimed the referendum will create greater inequality.
Translation: their fragile egos can’t countenance a break from the white settler status quo. It figures that a mild chance to put Indigenous voices into policy-making has the right wing frothing at the mouth.
The misinformation machine
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, of the conservative Liberal Party, spearheaded the No campaign in Parliament. Dutton has claimed that the vote “divides the nation”. As the BBChighlighted, disinformation analysts have found that a lot of the misinformation content online:
mirrors the narratives that underpin the No campaign. That includes claims from Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton that the Voice will “permanently divide” the nation based on race, creating an “Orwellian effect” that gives First Nations communities greater rights and privileges.
And who better to fan the falsehoods than right-wing racist misinformation mogul-in-chief Murdoch? The billionaire media tycoon’s Sky News has racked up views on its Youtube channel amplifying a series of deceitful No campaign claims. For instance, this has included the patently incorrect suggestion that the referendum’s success would render parliament powerless.
Right-wing senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, an Indigenous Australian who opposes the Voice, said it would sow division and discontent. As the Canary’s Maryam Jameela has articulated before, this once again proves that:
Getting Black and brown faces into positions of power means very little if those same people don’t use their power to make life better for the most vulnerable people in society.
Jameela explained how diversity metrics can be naive, since political representatives are:
in these positions of power because they’ve chosen to act in the interests of power.
Indigenous communities mobilise
Of course, the limits of diversity are also a core reason why the Voice itself can only go so far. Its mild demands would simply establish an advisory position for representatives of First Nations and Island peoples to input their thoughts on legislation.
Crucially, parliamentarians would be under no obligation to heed the advice or act in favour of Indigenous communities. The countless commissions and inquests on Indigenous rights and injustice that have gone ignored do not instill confidence in this regard, either.
Nonetheless, in spite of its limitations, Indigenous Australians have passionately championed the referendum.
Campaign group Yes23 has said that “more than 80 percent of Indigenous Australians” were behind the looming referendum. On Sunday 17 September, Australians rallied around the country to fight for the landmark Indigenous rights reform. Tens of thousands joined “Walk for Yes” events in major cities ahead of the vote.
However, recent surveys have shown that about 60% of voters are against the reform, versus 40% in support. This is a near reversal of the situation a year ago.
Ultimately, the persistent and pernicious scale of systemic and institutional racism towards Indigenous citizens has spelled out exactly why they need a channel to lawmakers in the corridors of power.
Yet for some egotistical racists, even this modest proposal is a step too far, too fast. First Nations peoples have a right to be heard on the issues that affect them. Now the only question remaining is: will the people of Australia listen to their Indigenous neighbours and vote yes on 14 October?
Australia and France have signed a pact to work more closely on critical minerals supply chains, as the European Union looks to reduce its dependency on China for lithium and other heavy rare earths. Resources minister Madeleine King signed the Bilateral Dialogue on Critical Minerals agreement with France’s Minister for the Energy Transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher…
An Australian advocacy group supporting West Papuan self-determination has appealed to Foreign Minister Penny Wong to press Indonesia to halt all military operations in the region following new allegations of Indonesian atrocities reported in The Guardian newspaper.
In a letter to the senator yesterday, the Australia West Papua Association (AWPA) protested against the report of torture and killing of civilians in West Papua.
Quoting Raga Kogeya, a West Papuan human rights activist, the report said:
“Wity had been interrogated and detained along with three other boys and two young men under suspicion of being part of the troubled region’s rebel army.
“They were taken by special forces soldiers who rampaged through the West Papuan village of Kuyawage, burning down houses and a church and terrorising locals.
“Transported by helicopter to the regional military headquarters 100km away, the group were beaten and burnt so badly by their captors that they no longer looked human.
“Kogeya says Wity died a painful death in custody. The other five were only released after human rights advocates tipped off the local media.
“‘The kids had all been tortured and they’d been tied up and then burned,’ says Kogeya, who saw the surviving boys’ injuries first-hand on the day of their release.”
The AWPA letter by spokesperson Joe Collins said: “Numerous reports have documented the ongoing human rights abuses in West Papua, the burning of villages during military operations and the targeting of civilians including children.”
The most recent cited report was by Human Rights Monitor titled “Destroy them first… discuss human rights later” (August 2023), “brings to attention the shocking abuses that are ongoing in West Papua and should be of concern to the Australian government”.
“This report provides detailed information on a series of security force raids in the Kiwirok District, Pegunungan Bintang Regency, Papua Pegunungan Province (until 2022 Papua Province) between 13 September and late October 2021.
“Indonesian security forces repeatedly attacked eight indigenous villages in the Kiwirok District, using helicopters and spy drones. The helicopters reportedly dropped mortar grenades on civilian homes and church buildings while firing indiscriminately at civilians.
“Ground forces set public buildings as well as residential houses on fire and killed the villagers’ livestock.”
The AWPA said Indonesian security force operations had also created thousands of internal refugees who have fled to the forests to escape the Indonesian military.
“It has been estimated that there are up to 60,000 IDPs in the highlands living in remote shelters in the forest and they lacking access to food, sanitation, medical treatment, and education,” the letter stated.
In light of the ongoing human rights abuses in the territory, the AWPA called on Senator Wong to:
urge Jakarta to immediately halt all military operations in West Papua;
urge Jakarta to supply aid and health care to the West Papuan internal refugees by human rights and health care organisations trusted by the local people; and to
rethink Australia cooperation with the Indonesian military until the Indonesian military is of a standard acceptable to the Australian people who care about human rights.
A New Zealand advocacy group has also called for an immediate government response to the allegations of torture of children in West Papua.
“The New Zealand government must speak out urgently and strongly against this child torture and the state killing of children by Indonesian forces in West Papua this week,” said the West Papua Action Aotearoa network spokesperson Catherine Delahunty.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has awarded L3Harris Technologies an A$328 million contract to deliver new underwater sensors that will improve the Royal Australian Navy (RAN)’s underwater tracking capabilities, the company announced on 20 September. The contract is being provisioned for under the DoD’s SEA1350 Phase 3 Maritime Underwater Tracking Ranges (MUTR) programme. According […]
A Charles Sturt University journalism academic says the evolving communication course at his institution in Australia continues to feed the ranks of the irrepressible “Mitchell Mafia’”.
Cheetham said he was surprised to wake up and read a media report in late July suggesting journalism was not being taught separately at Charles Sturt University.
Quality journalism has never been more important, and Charles Sturt has an enviable reputation for producing some of the world’s best, most-renowned journalists.
“That day I spent six hours teaching news and media, also known as ‘journalism’,” he said.
“Actually, on that Tuesday we had ABC veteran Trevor Watson visit us on campus to give a guest talk on journalism, specifically news writing, which was also streamed to online students.
“Before that talk, I spent two hours with a class analysing media coverage of The Voice to Parliament Referendum campaigns. After Trevor’s talk, I held a news writing tutorial doing practice exercises on the hard news style of reporting.”
‘Pretty journalistic day’
He said it was a “pretty journalistic” day.
“We’re still teaching journalism, with practical opportunities to work in newsrooms, such as National Radio News,” he said.
Cheetham emphasised that quality journalism had never been more important, and Charles Sturt had an enviable reputation for producing some of the world’s best, most-renowned journalists.
As the original ABC article noted, over the past five decades, the university has nurtured some of the nation’s most high-profile communicators, including Andrew Denton, Melissa Doyle, Samantha Armytage, Hamish Macdonald, Chris Bath, and current ABC News Europe correspondent Nick Dole.
“Charles Sturt University will continue to educate and train journalists for the evolving media landscape,” Cheetham said.
“At the University campus in Bathurst we continue to have cutting-edge facilities, such as a TV studio, a community broadcasting radio station, and editing suites, for our students to gain skills and insights into working in their chosen fields.
“We’re also investing substantial funds in the communications hub that will provide new facilities for our future students.”
For example, graduates from 2021 include 7News (Central West) journalist Reuben Spargo who won the 2021 JERAA Ossie Award for ‘national student journalist of the year’.
“Charles Sturt threw practical skills at me and helped grow my confidence as a communicator,” Spargo said.
“The connections I made and the experiences I shared allowed me to hit the ground running within the industry.”
Keeping pace
Cheetham said to keep pace with the ever-changing media industry and digital advancements, Charles Sturt had launched a new communication course with its first intake last year, 2022.
“The new Bachelor of Communication offers specialisations in strategic communication, news and media — journalism, which I teach — and design and content creation,” he said.
“Teaching the critical role of journalism is still very much a priority at Charles Sturt. The changes represent a transition from one version of the journalism degree, which we have offered for more than 50 years, into a new degree program.
“The philosophy behind the new course remains the same — we’re aiming to produce people who are good storytellers.” Image: CSU
“The philosophy behind the new course remains the same — we’re aiming to produce people who are good storytellers. We have retained a lot of the strongest elements of the old course bringing them into the new course.”
Having industry and alumni co-design the course with academic staff offers students a unique combination of academic, discipline-specific specialisations with a sound understanding of the industry through the networking and industry connections embedded within the course.
The format of the new degree combines first-hand industry knowledge and advice, and to have industry professionals sharing knowledge, expertise and daily experiences will be a real game changer for the students.
Australia’s support for the Solomon Islands media sector is long-standing and is now providing support for the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) to get ready for the 2023 Pacific Games in November.
ABC International Development (ABCID) has delivered more training to the SIBC earlier this month which focused on the use of mobile journalism (MoJo) kits.
More than half of the SIBC staff received training from Dave McMeekin, a leading content quality advisor from ABC News in Adelaide, on September 12-16.
The ABC recently distributed MoJo kits to all its locations in Australia so the SIBC staff are now using the best equipment available as preferred by journalists in Australia.
MoJo kits consist of an android phone, microphone, tripod, and other components that allow a single person to capture high-quality audio and video.
The content can be recorded on the phone for later use or sent back to a studio for immediate broadcast.
These kits are designed to be portable and operated by one person.
Setting up, maintenance
During the training sessions, conducted in small groups of four or five SIBC staff members, the focus was on setting up and maintaining the MoJo kits.
In addition, the training included techniques for visual storytelling, which makes it easier to capture short stories in the field.
Practical exercises were carried out on the streets of Honiara, including in the Central Market and the Art Gallery.
Last Saturday, SIBC journalists used the MoJo kits to report on the Solomon Airlines Peace Marathon — putting into practice the training and equipment they will use during the Pacific Games.
As part of the Australian project, managed by ABCID, SIBC will receive two MoJo kits.
SIBC also plans to purchase two additional kits, with one of them being stationed in Gizo.
These four kits will be used by SIBC reporters to file stories leading up to and during the Pacific Games.
The Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands runs from November 19 until December 2.
Republished with permission from SBM Online.
Trainer Dave McMeekin . . . . briefing a group of SIBC journalists during the MoJo training in Honiara earlier this month. Image: SBM Online
It was a short stint, involving a six-member delegation of Australian parliamentarians lobbying members of the US Congress and various relevant officials on one issue: the release of Julian Assange. If extradited to the US from the United Kingdom to face 18 charges, 17 framed with reference to the oppressive, extinguishing Espionage Act of 1917, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks risks a 175-year prison term.
Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan, are to be viewed with respect, their pluckiness admired. They came cresting on the wave of a letter published on page 9 of the Washington Post, expressing the views of over 60 Australian parliamentarians. “As Australian Parliamentarians, we are resolutely of the view that the prosecution and incarceration of the Australian citizen Julian Assange must end.”
This is a good if presumptuous start. Australia remains the prized forward base of US ambitions in the Indo-Pacific, the spear pointed against China and any other rival who dares challenge its stubborn hegemony. The AUKUS pact, featuring the futile, decorative nuclear submarines that will be rich scrapping for the Royal Australian Navy whenever they arrive, also makes that point all too clear. For the US strategist, Australia is fiefdom, property, real estate, terrain, its citizenry best treated as docile subjects represented by even more docile governments. Assange, and his publishing agenda, act as savage critiques of such assumptions.
The following views in Washington DC have been expressed by the delegates in what might be described as a mission to educate. From Senator Shoebridge, the continued detention of Assange proved to be “an ongoing irritant in the bilateral relationship” between Canberra and Washington. “If this matter is not resolved and Julian is not brought home, it will be damaging to the bilateral relationship”.
Senator Whish-Wilson focused on the activities of Assange himself. “The extradition of Julian Assange as a foreign journalist conducting activities on foreign soil is unprecedented.” To create such a “dangerous precedent” laid “a very slippery slope for any democracy to go down.”
Liberal Senator Alex Antic emphasised the spike in concern in the Australian population about wishing for Assange’s return to Australia (some nine out of 10 wishing for such an outcome). “We’ve seen 67 members of the Australian parliament share that message in a joint letter, which we’ve delivered across the spectrum”. An impressed Antic remarked that this had “never happened before. I think we’re seeing an incredible groundswell, and we want to see Julian at home as soon as possible.”
On September 20, in front of the Department of Justice, Zappia told reporters that, “we’ve had several meetings and we’re not going to go into details of those meetings. But I can say that they’ve all been useful meetings.” Not much to go on, though the Labor MP went on to state that the delegation, as representatives of the Australian people had “put our case very clearly about the fact that Julian Assange pursuit and detention and charges should be dropped and should come to an end.”
A point where the delegates feel that a rich quarry can be mined and trundled away for political consumption is the value of the US-Australian alliance. As Ryan reasoned, “This side of the AUKUS partnership feels really strongly about this and so what we expect the prime minister [Anthony Albanese] to do is that he will carry the same message to President Biden when he comes to Washington.”
The publisher’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, also suggests that the indictment is “a wedge in the Australia-US relationship, which is a very important relationship at the moment, particularly with everything that’s going on with the US and China and the sort of strategic pivot that is happening.” Assange, for his part, is bound to find this excruciatingly ironic, given his lengthy battles against the US imperium and the numbing servility of its client states.
Various members of Congress have granted an audience to the six parliamentarians. Enthusiasm was in abundance from two Kentucky Congressmen: Republican Senator Rand Paul and Republican House Representative Thomas Massie. After meeting the Australian delegation, Massie declared that it was his “strong belief [Assange] should be free to return home.”
Georgian Republican House member Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed her sense of honour at having met the delegates “to discuss the inhumane detention” of Assange “for the crime of committing journalism,” insisting that the charges be dropped and a pardon granted. “America should be a beacon of free speech and shouldn’t be following in an authoritarian regime’s footsteps.” Greene has shown herself to be a conspiracy devotee of the most pungent type, but there was little to fault her regarding these sentiments.
Minnesota Democrat Congresswoman Ilhan Omar also met the parliamentarians, discussing, according to a press release from her office, “the Assange prosecution and its significance as an issue in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Australia, as well as the implications for freedom of the press both at home and abroad.” She also reiterated her view, one expressed in an April 2023 letter to the Department of Justice co-signed with six other members of Congress, that the charges against Assange be dropped.
These opinions, consistent and venerably solid, have rarely swayed the mad hatters at the Justice Department who continue to operate within the same church consensus regarding Assange as an aberration and threat to US security. And they can rely, ultimately, on the calculus of attrition that assumes allies of Washington will eventually belt up, even if they grumble. There will always be those who pretend to question, such as the passive, meek Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong. “We have raised this many times,” Wong responded to a query while in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. “Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken and I both spoke about the fact that we had a discussion about the views that the United States has and the views that Australia has.”
Not that this mattered a jot. In July, Blinken stomped on Wong’s views in a disingenuous, libellous assessment about Assange, reminding his counterpart that the publisher had been “charged with very serious criminal conduct in the United States in connection with his alleged role in one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of our country.” The libel duly followed, with the claim that Assange “risked very serious harm to our national security, to the benefit of our adversaries, and put named sources at grave risk – grave risk – of physical harm, and grave risk of detention”. That gross falsification of history went unaddressed by Wong.
Thus far, Blinken has waived away the concerns of the Albanese government on Assange’s fate as passing irritants at a spring garden party. However small their purchase, six Australian parliamentarians have chosen to press the issue further. At the very least, they have gone to the centre of the imperium to add a bit of ballast to the effort.
RAFAEL Australia (RAFAEL) has finalised a substantial acquisition contract with the Australian Government to provide the Australian Defence Force (ADF) with the next generation of Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) systems; RAFAEL’s SPIKE LR2 Anti-Tank Guided Missile. This is the ADF’s first GWEO acquisition under the leadership of inaugural Chief of the GWEO Group, […]
Lekima Tagitagivalu knows too well how the French are rugby crazy and wasn’t surprised about the support shown to the Flying Fijians in last weekend’s Rugby World Cup match against Australia.
Playing for Pau in the Top 14 competition, the 27-year-old flanker is a favourite in the French competition.
He is one of several Fijian players in the Flying Fijians squad who plays in France. Like in the match against Wales, the French turned out in numbers to support their second favourite team — Fiji.
Their cheers and those of Fijians who travelled from around the world to the Stade Geoffroy Guichard in Saint Etienne on Monday, rang through the stadium.
“That [French support] means a lot to us,” said the man from Marou, Naviti in Yasawa.
“A lot of the boys play here in France. It means so much knowing that they are behind us too. It’s more like a home game for us.”
He said the win against Australia would rejuvenate spirits in the team camp for the rest of their RWC campaign — matches against Georgia and Portugal.
“I’m really proud of the boys for the performance and being able to create a part of Fiji rugby’s history.
“It was a tough game and we stuck in there for the whole 80 minutes,” said Tagitagivalu, adding that the win meant a lot to their World Cup campaign.
“Georgia is next and we won’t take any team lightly because they have all been preparing well for this world cup. We’ll take one game at a time, learn from our mistakes and move on to the next mission.
“I would like to dedicate this win to my family, to all the families in Fiji and all our supporters around the world who have been messaging us. We’ve been receiving all videos.”
Fiji plays against Georgia on October 1.
Rodney Duthieis a Fiji Times journalist. republished with permission.
The Flying Fijians won its Rugby World Cup Pool C match against Australia 22-15 in Saint Etienne with the team’s fourth choice kicker, Simione Kuruvoli, leading them.
And the win came after 69 long years since Fiji last defeated the Wallabies in 1954.
Kuruvoli, who is ranked behind the injured Caleb Muntz, Teti Tela and Frank Lomani as a kicker, started the game at halfback and was given the goal-kicking duties.
He did not disappoint and his personal tally of 14 points ensured the Fijians managed to outpoint the Wallabies in the end, in a match that kept the 41,294 fans at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard on their toes.
Head coach Simon Raiwalui called Kuruvoli into the starting line-up ahead of Lomani and the 24-year-old stamped his mark.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to start and the trust that was given to me by the coach and team management,” he said.
“It was a tense game and I just focused on my kicks to make sure that we were able to get the points needed.”
Fiji dominated
Fiji dominated the game — and in all facets of the game.
It was something similar to what they did against Wales in Bordeaux two Sundays ago.
The only difference is this time they were able to convert the statistical advantage into winning points in the end.
Fiji flyhalf Simione Kuruvoli . . . kickable options saw him stepping up to the mark, claiming crucial points. Image: WRC2023/RNZ Pacific
Kickable options saw Kuruvoli stepping up to the mark, claiming crucial points.
Coach Raiwalui said it was a great win and thanked the boys for sticking to the job at hand.
“We focused on Australia this week and the boys executed the game plan very well,” he said.
“Great to have the win but we are still building and will need to focus on the next one after this.
“Mostly proud of the boys. It’s not just for today, it’s a combination of work over time.
Two hard games next
“Two very hard games coming up. Let’s enjoy this win, will review tonight. I think a lot of the boys will be sore but super proud.”
Captain Waisea Nayacalevu thanked the players and fans for their support.
“Great team effort and the fans were fantastic,” he said. “Proud of the boys for the effort.”
The win means Fiji and Australia are tied in pool C with six points each.
Fiji will need to win both their remaining matches against Georgia and Portugal and hope that the Wallabies fall against Wales in their crunch match.
But that aside, the win over the Australians was celebrated by those who turned up, including Fijians who had flown in from Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and across Europe.
French fans who turned up to watch the game backed Fiji as they could be heard cheering for Fiji on the grandstand and they booed the Australians every time they were penalised in the match.
Australian Fijians say it was tough
The Australians had five Fijians in their line-up, with two of them, wingers Mark Waqanitawase and Suliasi Vunivalu, scoring their tries.
Samu Kerevi, Rob Valetini and Marika Koroibete were strong in defence and made some good runs but they were nullified by their fellow Fijians, who hit them with some bone-crunching tackles.
Vunivalu congratulated Fiji and said they were consistent.
“They started well and kept that throughout,” he said.
“We tried to come back, but they were very strong.”
Koroibete said it was a physical battle.
“They were on from the start to the end, we tried to keep up with them from the start but they were good,” he said.
“As a team we did not work upfront enough to counter that physicality.”
He said they will now have to focus on Wales.
Fiji head coach Simon Raiwalui (left) . . . “Great to have the win but we are still building and will need to focus on the next one after this.” WRC23 screenshot APR
Best Fiji team ever – Serevi Sevens King Waisale Serevi, who was in the crowd supporting Fiji, said the Flying Fijians team in France was the best ever.
“I think it is the best team ever to play at the World Cup because we are going up and we have beaten Australia now,” he said.
“I believe that maybe we have won a game in the World Cup and going to the quarter-final, we still have two more games and the way we played today showed they can compete on this level.
“The Australia team are a good team, but I think the [Fiji] boys were better today.
“They played to the plan, they played to the strengths of the game they wanted to play. They did everything right and they did compete at the breakdown which is not really the Fijian way of playing rugby.
“I believe with the team that we have we can go through to the quarter-final and we have every opportunity to get to the semi-final.”
First half lead set the pace Fiji led at halftime 12-8 with halfback Kuruvoli kicking all of Fiji’s points through the boots.
Australia managed a try to Waqanitawase, after the Wallabies had taken a quick lineout throw, with Samu Kerevi running through and passing on to Waqanitawase who dived over.
Fullback Ben Donaldson missed the conversion, but he had opened the scoring in the game with an earlier penalty close to the posts.
Australia was able to defend well against the Fijians in the first 40 minutes, keeping their opponents at bay inside their own half.
Fiji put together several phases and attacks in the first spell, with Kuruvoli masterminding their moves.
Josua Tuisova, Semi Radradra and captain Nayacalevu were all busy on attack while the forwards dominated in the ruck and scrum situations.
A telling factor Fiji displayed was their strong forward plays, holding their own in the scrums and lineouts as well.
But Australia challenged their throw-ins towards the end of the first spell and won two successive Fijian throw-ins near their own line.
Good start in second spell The Fijians got straight back into the game in the second spell and Man of the Match, winger Tuisova scored out wide after he collected a bouncing ball from a Kuruvoli place kick off the base of a ruck.
They then missed a penalty attempt from Lomani and Tuisova swung the ball wide and out the sideline as they had an opportunity to run the ball with four players sitting outside him.
It was tit-for-tat after that as both teams tried to put phases together.
A penalty midway inside the Wallabies side of the field gave Lomani another opportunity to extend their lead and he made it 22-8 from that kick.
Australian fullback Ben Donaldson converted Vunivalu’s try and closed the gap to 22-15.
Fiji hung on with some great steals in ruck-ball situations to end the game with the famous win, even though Lomani’s last kick sailed wide.
Australia 15 – Tries: Mark Nawaqanitawase (23′), Suli Vunivalu (68′); Conv: Ben Donaldson (70′); Pens: Ben Donaldson (3′).
Other Pacific results:
Results in other Pacific matches at the World Cup were mixed with Manu Samoa defeating newcomers Chile 43-10 at Bordeaux in pool D while Tongan coach Toutai Kefu admitted his Ikale Tahi side had been outclassed 59-16 by top-ranked Ireland at Nantes in pool B.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Elbit Systems announced today that its partner in the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 project (the “Project”), Hanwha Defense Australia (“Hanwha”), has reported that it was downselected by the Australian Government, as the preferred tenderer for the Project, with final Government approval to be sought at the conclusion of contract negotiations. Hanwha further reported that […]
The Free Papua Organisation (Organisasi Papua Merdeka-OPM) has sent an open letter to the United Nations leadership demanding that “decolonisation” of the former Dutch colony of West New Guinea, the Indonesian-administered region known across the Pacific as West Papua, be initiated under the direction of the UN Trusteeship Council.
The letter accuses the UN of being a “criminal accessory to the plundering of the ancestral lands” of the Papuans, a Melanesian people with affinity and close ties to many Pacific nations.
According to the OPM leader, chairman-commander Jeffrey Bomanak, West Papuans had been living with the expectation for six decades that the UN would “fulfill the obligations regarding the legal decolonisation of West Papua”.
OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak . . . an open letter to the UN calling for the UN annexation of West Papua in 1962 to be reversed. Image: OPM
Alternatively, wrote Bomanak, there had been an expectation that there would be an explanation “to the International Commission of Jurists if there are any legal reasons why these obligations to West Papua cannot be fulfilled”.
The open letter was addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi and Trusteeship Council President Nathalie Estival-Broadhurst.
‘Guilty’ over annexation
“The United Nations is guilty of annexing West New Guinea on Sept 21, 1962, as a trust territory which had been concealed by the UN Secretariat from the Trusteeship Council.”
Indonesia has consistently rejected West Papuan demands for self-determination and independence, claiming that its right to sovereignty over the region stems from the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969.
But many West Papuans groups and critics across the Pacific and internationally reject the legitimacy of this controversial vote when 1025 elders selected by the Indonesian military were coerced into voting “unanimously” in favour of Indonesian rule.
A sporadic armed struggle by the armed wing of OPM and peaceful lobbying for self-determination and independence by other groups, such as the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), have continued since then with persistent allegations of human rights violations with the conflict escalating in recent months.
“The UN is a criminal accessory to the plundering of our ancestral lands and to the armament exports from member nations to our murderers and assassins — the Indonesian government,” claimed Bomanak in his letter.
“West Papua is not a simple humanitarian dilemma. The real dilemma is the perpetual denial of West Papua’s right to freedom and sovereignty.”
Bomanak alleges that the six-decade struggle for independence has cost more than 500,000 lives.
West Papua case ‘unique’
In a supporting media release by Australian author and human rights advocate Jim Aubrey, he said that the open letter should be read “by anyone who supports international laws and governance and justice that are applied fairly to all people”.
“West Papua’s case for the UN to honour the process of decolonisation is a unique one,” he said.
“Former Secretary General U Thant concealed West Papua’s rights as a UN trust territory for political reasons that benefited the Republic of Indonesia and the American mining company Freeport-McMoRan.
“West Papua was invaded and recolonised by Indonesia. The mining giant Freeport-McMoRan signed their contract to build the Mt Grasberg mine with the mass murderer Suharto in 1967.
“The vote of self-determination in 1969 was, for Suharto and his commercial allies, already a foregone conclusion in 1967.”
Aubrey said that West Papuans were still being “jailed, tortured, raped, assassinated [and] bombed in one of the longest ongoing acts of genocide since the end of the Second World War”.
Western countries accused
He accused Australia, European Union, UK, USA as well as the UN of being “accessories to Indonesia’s illegal invasion and landgrab”.
About Australia’s alleged role, Aubrey said he had called for a Royal Commission to investigate but had not received a reply from Governor-General David Hurley or from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
PRESS RELEASE
OFFICIAL OPM Press Release 14 September 2023
OPM LEADER ACCUSES UN OF GIFTING WEST PAPUA TO INDONESIA & US MINER FREEPORT-MCMORAN – DEMANDS DECOLONIZATION
Jeffrey P Bomanak accuses United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, General Assembly President Csaba… pic.twitter.com/gggZl3wLyc
Tonga has named their strongest match-day 23 to face world No 1 Ireland in the French city of Nantes in their first Rugby World Cup pool match on Sunday morning (New Zealand time).
French-based prop forward Ben Tameifuna will lead the side against the Irish in a tactical move that sees captain Sonatane Takulua starting off the bench.
Manu Samoa, who arrived in Bordeaux yesterday afternoon, have also announced a strong team that will battle World Cup debutants Chile at the Stade de Bordeaux, also early on Sunday morning.
Head coach Seilala Mapusua has named his experienced flyhalves Christian Leali’ifano and Lima Sopoaga in the match-day 23.
Meanwhile, Fiji is expected to make changes for the crucial game against Australia at Saint-Etienne on Monday morning (NZ time).
Tonga focused ‘Ikale Tahi head coach Toutai Kefu said they are focused on Ireland, which began the World Cup with an 82-8 thrashing of Romania last weekend.
“This is a very exciting Tonga team who I think will prove to be very competitive against the best in the world,” he told media in Paris before the team left for Nantes.
“The players are looking forward to playing the best and testing themselves against a confident, capable Ireland team. We’ve been watching them for 12 months now and they definitely deserve the number one team in the world tag.
“The boys are excited to get out there and play. There will be no lack of motivation to do their country and their families proud.”
Kefu has retained the front-row trio of Tameifuna, Siegfried Fisi’ihoi and hooker Paula Ngauamo.
He has also gone for height and speed in the loosies and locks selections.
Vice-captain Halaleva Fifita and Samiuela Lousi start at locks while Tanginoa Halaifonua, Sione Havili and Vaea Fifita complete the loose trio.
In a major move, Kefu has opted to give Augustine Pulu the nod ahead of Takulua.
Takulua, Tonga’s most capped player, has been the first-choice halfback for the last six years.
Kefu’s backline choice sees William Havili at fly half while Pita Akhi pairs former All Blacks Malakai Fekitoa in midfield.
Former Mate Ma’a Tonga and Auckland Warriors winger Solomone Kata pairs Afusipa Taumoepeau on the wings, with former All Black Salesi Piutau manning the fullback berth.
Respect for Chile Manu Samoa coach Seilala Mapusua said they respected the South Americans and have named a strong team to face them.
“The whole lead-up to the Rugby World Cup has been about Chile, our first game.
“And we are giving them the respect they deserve and making sure we not only do our own people proud but also make sure we are taking steps towards our own goal as Manu Samoa,” Mapusua told media in Bordeaux yesterday.
Mapusua said they do not underestimate Chile and believed their opponents had played well against Japan in their opening pool game last weekend.
“We need to start well. This is our first game at the Rugby World Cup,” he said.
“We have to nail the opportunities we get.”
He has named both his co-captains Michael Ala’alatoa and Chris Vui in the starting team.
With two experienced flyhalves in former Wallaby Christian Leali’ifano and former All Black Lima Sopoaga both available to him, Mapusua has gone for Leali’ifano to start.
He said he was lucky to have such talented flyhalves and both could play as well as the other.
“They are very similar in their roles with us. I expect them to control the game and really manage the team over the full 80 minutes.
“We are blessed to have them.”
Former All Black Steven Luatua gets to run in at No 8.
Manu Samoa lineup: 1. James Lay, 2. Seilala Lam, 3. Michael Alalatoa, 4. Chris Vui, 5. Theo MacFarland, 6. Taleni Seu, 7. Fritz Lee, 8. Steven Luatua, 9. Johnathan Taumateine, 10, Christian Leialiifano, 11. Nigel Ah-Wong, 12. Tumua Manu, 13. Ulupani Junior Seuteni, 14. Danny Toala, 15. Duncan Paia’aua; Reserves – 16. Sama Malolo, 17. Jordan Lay, 18. Paul Alo-Emile, 19. Sam Slade, 20. Sa Jordan Taufua, 21. Ereatara Enari, 22. Lima Sopoaga, 23. Ed Fidow.
Fiji to ring the changes Meanwhile, the Flying Fijians are expected to make some changes to their team that lost 32-26 to Wales last Sunday in Bordeaux.
The Fijians meet the Wallabies on Monday morning (Fiji time) in a must-win game for them.
Josua Tuisova is expected to start at No 12, pushing Semi Radradra out to the wing, with Levani Botia also expected to start at No 7.
Coach Simon Raiwalui will name his team on Friday local time.
Raiwalui said their focus this week had been on the Wallabies.
“We have very good spirit, the boys were laughing again and they were training well,” Raiwalui said.
Fiji sits on two points behind both Australia and Wales and needs to win against the Wallabies to keep their hopes of a quarter-final spot alive.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Australia and the Philippines jointly announced that both countries have entered into a strategic partnership during the inaugural meeting of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr in Manila on 8 September. Both countries reaffirmed their mutual interests in “building prosperity and preserving peace in the Indo-Pacific” and that stability in […]
The tear-squeeze remembering those who died in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington has become an annual event. In the words of US President George W. Bush, it was an attack on “our very freedom”. The US had been targeted because it was “the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world.”
Five decades ago, that brightest beacon of freedom and opportunity proved instrumental in destroying a democracy in Latin America. (Others before and since followed.) The 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in favour of General Augusto Pinochet, an anti-communist, pro-Washington butcher, received abundant logistical, disruptive support from the Central Intelligence Agency.
The election of the socialist Allende had caused rippling apoplexy in the White House, with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger warning US President Richard Nixon that something needed to be done about the Allende government, given its “insidious model effect”. In ultimately destroying this model of left-democratic insidiousness, they had help from a strange quarter.
In 1983, Australia’s Attorney-General Senator Gareth Evans told the Senate that no Australian security agency had gotten its hands dirty in activities that eventually led to the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende. In what can only count as a stunning whopper of a statement, Evans stated the following: “To the extent that some intelligence co-operation activity may have occurred at an earlier time, there is no foundation for any suggestion that Australia in any way assisted any other country in any alleged operations or activity directed against the Allende regime.”
This pricked the ears of Clyde Cameron, a former Minister for Labor and Immigration in the Whitlam government. Cameron had previously told the ABC Four Corners program that Australian agents had been involved. His views, also conveyed in a letter, did nothing to “change the substance of the answer” Evans had given.
The letter from Cameron revealed his astonishment on becoming Minister for Immigration in 1974 that the department had been providing generous overseas cover for 19 full-time Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation agents. “I was further advised,” wrote Cameron, “that one of these so-called migration officers had been operating in and out of Santiago around the time of the military coup which murdered the democratically elected President of Chile.” Two points of interest are then disclosed: that Prime Minister Gough Whitlam informed Cameron that he was aware of ASIS involvement; and that Cameron, off his own bat, found that his “ASIO ‘migration’ officer, together with ASIS, had acted as liaison officers with the CIA which masterminded that coup.”
The denial by Evans is also stranger given the 1977 admission by then opposition leader Whitlam to the federal parliament “that when my government took office Australian intelligence personnel were still working as proxies and nominees of the CIA in destabilising the government of Chile.” His comments came in the context of leaks from the first 8-volume secret report, authored by Justice Robert Hope as part of the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security surveying the conduct of Australian intelligence activities. To this day, the detail on Australia’s Chilean operations in the report remains classified.
In February 1984, a Conference on Commissions, Contempt and Civil Liberties held at the Australian National University was told that Canberra had sent three intelligence officers to assist the US Central Intelligence Agency in the aftermath of Allende’s coming to power. It was also an occasion for journalist Marian Wilkinson to discuss the leaks from the second Hope report. What it revealed was Canberra’s appetite for continuing a covert operations program encouraging international subversion without any coherent definition of that vague coupling of words “the national interest”.
As Wilkinson discussed, six Canberra mandarins had met in 1977 to endorse a program of covert action involving “‘dirty tricks’ in foreign countries, disruption, deception, destabilisation and the supply of arms.” (Rules based orders are fine till they are inconvenient.)
Those in attendance at the meeting were the head of the Prime Minister’s Department, Sir Alan Carmody, Sir Arthur Tange of Defence, Sir Nicholas Parkinson of Foreign Affairs, Sir Clarrie Harders of the Attorney-General’s department, John Taylor of the Public Service Board and Ian Kennison, director of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service. The latter was keen to impress upon his colleagues that, were the covert program to be uncovered, it would be justifiably covered up and denied.
The subtext of the meeting was that Australia would happily continue the practice of supplying its own agents to the cause of its allies, notably the United States. Australia’s national interest only mattered in the service of another power.
In 2017, Clinton Fernandes of the University of New South Wales, along with barrister Ian Latham and solicitor Hugh Macken, girded their loins in an effort to access ASIS records on the Santiago station from the early 1970s. In their storming of the citadel of stubborn secrecy, documents began surfacing, released with teeth-gnashing reluctance.
In September 2021, the National Security Archive, that estimable source hosted by George Washington University, published a selection of Fernandes’s findings. They chart the evolution of the Santiago “station” that was requested by the CIA in the fall of 1970. Then Liberal Party external affairs minister William McMahon granted approval to ASIS in December 1970 to open the station at the heart of Chilean power.
In June 1971, a highly placed Australian official, whose name is redacted, began having second thoughts about, “The need to go ahead with the Santiago project at all, at this stage.” The “situation in Chile has not deteriorated to the extent that was feared, when we made our submission”. ASIS officials, despite begrudgingly admitting that “Allende had so far been more moderate than expected,” still wished the opening of the station to “go forward now, and not be deferred.” The pull of the CIA was proving all too mesmeric.
Once it got off the ground, the station endured various difficulties. A report from its staff in December 1972 notes concerns about the timeliness of reporting, the problems of using telegraphed reports, and how best to get communications to the “main office” securely. There is even a reference, with no elaboration, to “two most recent incidents” regarding “biographic details concerning” individuals (redacted from the document), something that did “little for our Service reputation.”
With the coming to power of Labor’s Gough Whitlam, a change of heart was felt in Canberra. In April 1973, the new prime minister rejected a proposal by ASIS to continue its clandestine outfit, feeling, as he told ASIS chief William T. Robertson, “uneasy about the M09 operation in Chile”. But in closing down the Santiago station, he did not, according to a telegram from Robertson to station officers sent that month, wish to give the CIA the impression that this was “an unfriendly gesture towards the US in general or towards the CIA in particular.”
Five decades on, some Australian politicians, having woken up from their slumber of ignorance, are calling for acknowledgement of Canberra’s role in the destruction of a democracy that led to the death and torture of tens of thousands by the Pinochet regime. The Greens spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Peace, Senator Jordon Steele-John, stated his party’s position: “50 years on we know Australia was involved, as it worked to support the US national interest. To this day, Australia’s secretive and unaccountable national security apparatus has blocked the release of information and has denied closure for thousands of Chilean-Australians.”
In calling for an apology to the Chilean people, the Greens are also demanding the declassification of any relevant ASIS and ASIO documents that would show support for Pinochet, including implementing “oversight and reform to our intelligence agencies to ensure that this can never happen again.” With the monster of AUKUS enveloping Australia’s national security, the good Senator should not hold his breath.
In recent months, anti-trans activists have targeted gender-affirming care, asserting that the evidence supporting it isn’t “high quality” according to the Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system’s standards — a system that places a premium on randomized clinical trials. However, scientific experts and federal court judges have found the use of the term…
An odder political bunch you could not find, at least when it comes to pursuing a single goal. Given that the goal is the release of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange makes it all the more striking. Six Australian parliamentarians of various stripes will be heading to Washington ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s October visit to test the ground of empire, maybe even plant a few seeds of doubt, about why the indictment against their countryman should be dropped.
That indictment, an outrageous, piffling shambles of a document comprising 18 charges, 17 based on that nasty, brutish statute, the Espionage Act of 1917, risks earning Assange a prison sentence in the order of 175 years. But in any instrumental sense, his incarceration remains ongoing, with the United Kingdom currently acting as prison warden and custodian.
In the politics of his homeland, the icy polarisation that came with Assange’s initial publishing exploits (former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was convinced Cablegate was a crime) has shifted to something almost amounting to a consensus. The cynic will say that votes are in the offing, if not at risk if nothing is done; the principled will argue that enlightenment has finally dawned.
The Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Opposition leader, Peter Dutton, agree on almost nothing else but the fact that Assange has suffered enough. In Parliament, the tireless work of the independent MP from Tasmania, Andrew Wilkie, has bloomed into the garrulous Bring Julian Assange Home Parliamentary Group.
The Washington mission, which will arrive in the US on September 20, comprises former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, the scattergun former Nationals leader, Labor MP Tony Zappia, Greens Senators David Shoebridge and Peter Whish-Wilson, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and the competent independent member for Kooyong, Dr. Monique Ryan.
What will be said will hardly be pleasing to the ears of the Washington establishment. Senator Shoebridge, for instance, promises to make the case that Assange was merely telling the truth about US war crimes, hardly music for guardians from Freedom’s Land. Sounding like an impassioned pastor, he will tell his unsuspecting flock “the truth about this prosecution”.
Joyce, however, tried to pour some oil over troubled waters by insisting on ABC News that the delegates were not there “to pick a fight”. He did not necessarily want to give the impression that his views aligned with WikiLeaks. The principles, soundly, were that Assange had not committed any of the alleged offences as a US national, let alone in the United States itself. The material Assange had published had not been appropriated by himself. He had received it from Chelsea Manning, a US military source, “who is now walking the streets as a free person”.
To pursue the indictment to its logical conclusion would mean that Assange, or any journalist for that matter, could be extradited to the US from, say, Australia, for the activities in question. This extraterritorial eccentricity set a “very, very bad precedent”, and it was a “duty” to defend his status as an Australian citizen.
The Nationals MP also noted, rather saliently, that Beijing was currently interested in pursuing four Chinese nationals on Australian soil for a number of alleged offences that did not, necessarily, have a nexus to Chinese territory. Should Australia now extradite them as a matter of course? (The same observation has been made by an adviser to the Assange campaign, Greg Barns SC: “You’ve got China using the Assange case as a sort of moral equivalence argument.”)
Broadly speaking, the delegation is hoping to draw attention to the nature of publishing itself and the risks posed to free speech and the journalistic craft by the indictment. But there is another catch. In Shoebridge’s words, the delegates will also remind US lawmakers “that one of their closest allies sees the treatment of Julian Assange as a key indicator on the health of the bilateral relationship.”
Ryan expressed much the same view. “Australia is an excellent friend of the US and it’s not unreasonable to request to ask the US to cease this extradition attempt on Mr Assange.” The WikiLeaks founder was “a journalist; he should not be prosecuted for crimes against journalism.”
While these efforts are laudable, they are also revealing. The first is that the clout of the Albanese government in Washington, on this point, has been minimal. Meekly, the government awaits the legal process in the UK to exhaust itself, possibly leading to a plea deal with all its attendant dangers to Assange. (The recent floating of that idea, based on remarks made by US ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy, was scotched by former British diplomat and Assange confidante Craig Murray in an interview with WBAI radio last week.) Best, then, to leave it to a diverse set of politicians representative of the “Australian voice” to convey the message across the pond.
Then there is the issue of whether the delegation’s urgings will have any purchase beyond being a performing flea act. US State Department officials remain glacial in their dismissal of Canberra’s “enough is enough” concerns and defer matters to the US Department of Justice. The unimpressive ambassador Kennedy has been the perfect barometer of this sentiment: host Australian MPs for lunch, keep up appearances, listen politely and ignore their views. Such is the relationship between lord and vassal.
In Washington, the perspective remains ossified, retributive and wrongheaded. Assange is myth and monster, the hacker who pilfered state secrets and compromised US national security; the man who revealed confidential sources and endangered informants; a propagandist who harmed the sweet sombre warriors of freedom by encouraging a new army of whistleblowers and transparency advocates.
Whatever the outcome from this trip, some stirring of hope is at least possible. The recent political movement down under shows that Assange is increasingly being seen less in the narrow context of personality than high principle. Forget whether you know the man, his habits, his inclinations. Remember him as the principle, or even a set of principles: the publisher who, with audacity, exposed the crimes and misdeeds of power; that, in doing so, he is now being hounded and persecuted in a way that will chill global efforts to do something similar.
On August 1, protesters against the Burrup Hub expansion in Western Australia, a project of one of Australia’s most ruthless fossil fuel companies, took to the Perth home of its CEO, Meg O’Neill. The CEO of Woodside was not impressed. In fact, she seemed rather distressed. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a member of the business community, in professional athletics, or just a school kid… everybody has the right to feel safe in their own home,” she subsequently told a breakfast event. “What happened Tuesday has left me shaken, fearful, and distressed.” In distress, opportunities for revenge grow.
Members of the Disrupt Burrup Hub have had Woodside in their sights for some time. Their primary object of concern: the Burrup Hub project, consisting of the Scarborough and Browse Basin gas fields, the Pluto Project processing plant, and various linked liquified gas and fertiliser plans found on the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region.
On this occasion, the group’s practical efforts proved stillborn. One of the protestors, Matilda Lane-Rose, found herself facing over a dozen counter-terrorist police lying in wait on O’Neill’s property. Lane-Rose, along with three other members of Disrupt Burrup Hub, were charged with conspiracy to commit and indictable offence.
The howl of indignation has been eardrum splitting. Mark Abbotsford, Woodside’s executive vice president, stated that there was a line, and it had been crossed. Former Greens MP, Alison Xamon, questioned the wisdom of the protest, suggesting that there “is a sense that people’s homes should almost be off limits.” The media imperium owned by the mogul Kerry Stokes expressed fury at the antics of “eco fanatics”.
Seven West Media also took the national broadcaster to task for having covered the actual protest as part of an intended program for Four Corners. Their journalists, for one, suggested that the ABC had overstepped, despite those from their own stable having done precisely the same thing on two previous occasions. In 2021, for instance, Channel Seven found itself covering a protest that blockaded Woodside’s facilities on Burrup. They even got live crosses into the market ready for breakfast television.
The Western Australian Premier, whose electability in that state is determined by fossil-fuellers, was also critical of the ABC. In a letter to its chair, Ita Buttrose, Roger Cook wished to “express [his] serious concerns about the ABC crew’s actions and urge you organisation to reflect on the role it played in this matter.”
The prosecuting police, holding their side of the bargain protecting a citizen of such sweet purity as O’Neill, painted a picture of sinister domestic insurgency at her doorstep. In the Perth Magistrates Court, WA Police prosecutor Kim Briggs had stern words for two of the protestors seeking bail, Jesse Noakes and Gerard Mazza. “They prepared their actions in detail including surveillance and reconnaissance.” They also “parked near the residence and Ms O’Neill’s departure time was worked out to maximise disruption.”
The intention of such conduct, Briggs alleged, “was to damage the property using spray paint and lock themselves [to a gate] with a D-lock to hinder the ability of Ms O’Neill to leave the property.”
Whatever the immediate merits of the publicity seeking exercise by the Disrupt Burrup Hubbers, Woodside had a devilish card to play. After all, anything that might divert, or at least stifle interest in an expansionist agenda that promises to produce billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2070, would prove inevitable.
Despite already having protective bail conditions in place that would prevent the protesters from approaching O’Neill in any capacity, let alone any Woodside property, the company wanted more. A legal remedy to effectively extinguish speech and coverage on the executive, the company and the protest, would be sought. The target, in other words, was publicity itself. In a novel, even shocking way, Woodside sought Violence Restraining Orders against the protestors. A VRO is intended to restrain a person from any one of the following: committing an act of abuse, breaching the peace, causing fear, damaging property or intimidating another person.
Through August, VROs were served on Lane-Rose, Emil Davey and Gerard Mazza. The relevant clauses note that the campaigners are not to “make any reference to [the Woodside CEO] by any electronic means, including by using the internet and any social media application” or “cause or allow any other person to engage in conduct of the type referred to in any of the preceding paragraphs of this order on your behalf”.
This could only be taken for what it was: a violent effort to stomp on speech, especially of the critical sort. Barrister Zarah Burgess, representing Disrupt Burrup Hub, described it as “a transparent and extraordinary attempt to gag climate campaigners from speaking about Woodside’s fossil fuel expansion.” Never before had she seen the VRO system used in such a manner. “The intended purpose for granting VROs is to protect people, predominantly women and children, usually in the context of family violence.”
A dismayed Alice Drury of the Human Rights Law Centre was blunt: “Woodside and the multibillion dollar fossil fuel industry are trying to send a chilling message to anyone who dares to speak out: you will be intimidated and silenced.”
This brutal reaction from O’Neill and company says everything about Woodside and its place in Australian society. It advertises itself as “a global energy company, founded in Australia with a spirit of innovation and determination.” And, just in case you forget, the company provides “energy the world needs to heat and cool homes, keep lights on and enable industry.” To that, can be added another jotting: it will seek to prevent, and even criminalise free speech and protest on the environment if permitted. The legal authorities in Western Australia, at least pending appeal, agree.
Ambrose Bierce, whose cynicism supplies a hygienic cold wash, suggested that politics was always a matter of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. It involved conducting public affairs for private advantage. How right he was. One way of justifying such an effort is through using such words as the “national interest” or “public interest” in justifying government policies, from the erroneous to the criminal. They become weasel-like terms, soiling and spoiling language.
In various large-scale industries, companies can find themselves in the pink with governments keen to underwrite their losses during times of crisis while taking a soft approach to their profiteering predations in time of prosperity. The former is a policy that socialises losses, thereby throwing public money after deals gone bad; the latter is simply called, absurdly, the free market (another weasel term), where corporate gains are put down to entrepreneurial genius.
There is no evident sign of that genius in the global aviation market. In Australia, with a market typically in the stranglehold of a handful of firms, its absence is conspicuous. In one of the world’s most concentrated markets in the field, two operators reign: Qantas and Virgin. This classic duopoly has made the idea of reduced airfares a dreamy nonsense, an aspiration of the deluded.
The picture from an international perspective is also dire. Despite its appalling conduct over the last two years, be it towards ground staff, the gruff cancellation of flights, the stubbornness in refunding them, and the squeezing of extortionate fares, Qantas was privileged by a government decision to block an offer by another carrier to operate more flights into Australia. The move also had the faint odour of protectionism, made somewhat stronger by the A$2.47 billion in profits registered by the only aviation outfit that was generously cushioned by Commonwealth government funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In July, Canberra rejected a bid by Qatar Airways to add 21 extra flights per week into Australia’s three largest cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. These would have supplemented the 28 weekly flights currently on offer. But it took till August for the government to cook up a feeble justification for having made a decision that will annually cost the Australian economy, according to one estimate, between A$540 million and $788 million.
According to federal Transport Minister, Catherin King, speaking to Parliament, “We only sign up to agreements that benefit our national interest, in all of its broad complexity, and that includes ensuring that we have an aviation sector, through the recovery, that employs Australian workers.”
Given that Qantas has relished sacking workers – in certain cases illegally – the comment was not only patently wrong but distasteful. But King seemed happy enough to continue distastefully, claiming that an agreement to furnish “additional services is not in our national interest, and we will always consider the need to ensure that there are long-term, well-paid, secure jobs by Australians in the aviation sector when we are making these decisions.”
The decision was at least perplexing enough to excite the interest of such Labor Party stalwarts as former Australian treasurer Wayne Swan. In his view, expressed as the party’s current national president, an “appropriate review” of the whole matter was necessary. (Reviews, in such cases, is code for identifying the damnably obvious.)
The rejection certainly drew baffled consternation from the inaugural chair of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC), Alan Fels. “It’s really a bad decision by any standards, especially if the government is talking about doing a competition review.” Prices, he noted, were already 50% higher than they had been before the pandemic. “They would come down a lot if Qatar entered.”
Much the same view was expressed by another former ACCC chair, Rod Sims. “What we see now particularly in Australia is very high airfares internationally and not enough capacity. If there was a time to allow new entrants in, this is it.”
The federal government’s decision is also a curious one in light of policies pursued by the State governments. Queensland, for instance, made a decision to attract airlines to the state drawing from a fund worth $A200 million. The scheme yielded agreements with some 25 international airlines.
While this was happening, the ACCC was marshalling its resources to launch an action in the Federal Court of Australia alleging that Qantas, has “engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct, by advertising tickets for more than 8,000 flights it had already cancelled but not removed from sale [between May and July 2022].” The ACCC is also alleging that, for more than 10,000 flights scheduled to depart between May and July 2022, the company continued selling tickets on its website for an average of more than two weeks. In certain cases, this persisted for up to 47 days after flights were cancelled. Not content with robbing actual ticket holders, the carrier is happy to advertise tickets for spectral journeys.
There is nothing to suggest that more flights will automatically reduce prices, per se. As Karl Marx documents with expansive brilliance, markets tend towards concentration. In time, companies, much in the manner of hoodlums carving up neighbourhoods for their drugs trade, will divvy up their share and keep prices lucratively high. Miserable customers make for happy shareholders.
In the Qantas-Qatar Airways affair, the basic motivation to at least moderate the pricing regime in the short term is simply not there. Threatened, Qantas would have to respond. To date, given its traditional, enduring dominance, the approach of the Flying Kangaroo has been to stomp and box competitors into the ground, always aware that it has the backing of the Commonwealth government. That’s the sort of private enterprise its outgoing CEO, Alan Joyce, is most pleased with.
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) announced on 25 August that it has selected TAE Aerospace to upgrade the test system for the General Electric F414 turbofan engines that power the Boeing F/A-18F Super Hornet and EA-18G Growler aircraft used by the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). According to the DoD, TAE Aerospace will replace […]
Australia experienced this in February 2021. Facebook had gotten nastily stroppy, wishing to dictate public policy to the Commonwealth government. To teach Canberra mandarins a lesson, it literally unfriended the entire country, scrubbing all news platforms of content and making any posted links through the platform inaccessible. It mattered not that the content involved the tawdry details of celebrity love affairs gone wrong or advice on how to respond to a cyclone. The users of an entire country had been cancelled. For a time, a blissful blackhole had appeared at the centre of Australia’s information scape.
Facebook’s parent company Meta had one fundamental problem. The Australian government had proposed a bargaining code that would distribute income from news shared on digital platforms with its providers. The measure was designed to rescue an ailing sector from demise, and ironically served to aid the likes of Rupert Murdoch and such media moguls struggling to keep dying empires afloat. Digital giants such as Facebook and Google were told to swallow a regulatory regime that would force them into income sharing agreements that they deemed illogical and much against the spirit of the internet.
Meta eventually came over to the view that “refriending” Australia was in its best interests. The then treasurer Josh Frydenberg had convinced them that the much detested code could work. In truth, Frydenberg had merely caved in, more or less easing off on most of the demands, such as a full disclosure of algorithms on sharing material. Independent agreements with news outlets were rapidly reached. Everyone came out of it a villain, except small, independent news outlets deemed irrelevant in the negotiations. They were the true victims.
Canada’s Online News Act proposed something similar in regulating “digital news intermediaries to enhance fairness in the Canadian digital news marketplace and contribute to sustainability.” Mimicking the Australian model, digital platforms and news businesses could “enter into agreements respecting news content that is made available by digital news intermediaries.”
In reaching such agreements, factors such as the “significant bargaining power imbalance between [the digital news intermediary] operator and news businesses” would be taken into account. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission was also vested with powers to “impose, for contraventions of the enactment, administrative monetary penalties on certain individuals and entities and conditions on the participation of news businesses in the bargaining process.”
The digital platforms, in turn, took issue: why should they have to pay media outlets for doing their job, having offered them a gratis platform in the first place? Arguments from the Australian example were re-run. Meta, as it outlined in a statement, had “made it clear to the Canadian government that the legislation misrepresents the value news outlets receive when choosing to use our platforms. The legislation is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true.”
In June, Meta announced that it had “begun the process of ending news availability in Canada” as part of its moves to comply with the Act. It was a statement of general smug finality, indicative of the company’s own self-belief as an exclusive platform for news. For media outlets, this meant that links and content posted by news publishers and broadcasters in the country would no longer be available for those in Canada. Content posted by international news publishers and broadcasters outside Canada would also not be viewable by those within the country.
It did not take long for the consequences of such a policy to bear bitter fruit. As summer fires raged in Canada, forcing tens of thousands from their homes and threatening cities such as Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, information was meagre on measures and responses from the authorities. “Right now, in an emergency situation where up to date local information is more important than ever, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of peoples safety,” the indignant Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau huffed at a news conference in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island.
Trudeau thought it “inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits of insuring that local news organizations can get up to date information to Canadians.” British Columbia Premier David Eby also found it “astonishing that we are at this stage of the crisis and the owners of Facebook and Instagram have not come forward and said ‘We’re trying to make a point with the federal government, but it’s more important that people are safe’.” These men obviously know little about the workings of this dark entity.
Meta, in response, claimed that those in Canada could still use Instagram and Facebook “to connect with their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations.”
The obvious question here was why Trudeau was placing such astonishing reliance on a private corporation’s information sharing services, one with no allegiance to the Canadian government, let alone the citizenry, to do so. The onus should have been on national and local broadcasting outlets to inform the population of the disasters. As always, governments gravitate in low fashion for the cheapest alternative. The payment of peanuts results in a monkey return.
In Australia, for instance, the initial ban imposed by Facebook led to an upsurge of interest in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which has its own set of digital sharing tools. It became clear that an information environment without Facebook offered healthier alternatives – without the creepy world of surveillance capitalism.
The Australian and Canadian examples serve as salient lessons to those in government who forget their duties to the public. If you get into the bed of a sociopathic, petulant founder who could only conceive of dating girls through digital networks, using such skin-crawling argot as “the poke”, you are asking for trouble. Even more to the point, you are asking for some share of the blame in forfeiting your duties. Surely it would be more prudent for governments to establish their own information channels in times of crisis, invest in public broadcasters and improve their services to areas of a country, however remote?
An Australian academic has lit the fuse of diplomatic fury by publicly criticising Indonesia’s brutal response to the Papuan independence movement, a sensitive topic for governments of both countries. Duncan Graham reports from Indonesia on the silent war to the north.
ANALYSIS:By Duncan Graham
An Australian academic is risking an eruption of diplomatic fury by publicly criticising Indonesia’s brutal response to the Papuan independence movement, a hypersensitive topic for the governments of both countries.
Queensland historian Dr Greg Poulgrain last month told a Jakarta seminar that the Indonesian government’s approach “has long been top-heavy, bureaucratic, clumsy and self-serving.
“The military arrived in 1962 and 60 years later they’re still there in strength . . . more troops there now than ever before.
“The NGO Kontras declared that 734 Papuans were killed in 2022. That’s two-and-a-half times the number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli army last year. And from (the Highland province) Nduga there were 60,000 refugees.”
His comments were made just as the West Papua independence movement failed to get Pacific Islands’ backing at a stormy meeting of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Vanuatu with an Indonesian delegation walk-out.
The bid was thwarted by an alleged “corrupt alliance” of member states apparently after pressure from Indonesia which is funding Vanuatu airport repairs (including the VIP lounge) worth A$1.47 million. More of this later.
A report of the Jakarta seminar, organised by the government research agency Baden Riset dan Inovasi Nasional (BRIN), was published in Indonesia’s leading newspaper Kompas. It ran to 830 words but never mentioned Dr Poulgrain or his comments, although he was the invited international guest speaker.
Australian government stays hush
An estimated 500,000 indigenous Papuans are alleged to have died in the past 50 years through Indonesian military action. But the Australian government stays hush.
Before she became Foreign Minister, Senator Penny Wong, wrote that Labor was distressed by “human rights violations” in West Papua. However, there is a “don’t touch” clause in a two-nation pact signed 17 years ago “to address security challenges”.
New England University academics Dr Xiang Gao and Professor Guy Charlton claim “non-interference” limits Australian responses “despite the domestic sympathy much of the Australian public has given to the West Papuan population”.
They quote a 2019 website post from Wong saying the treaty “remains the bedrock of security cooperation” between Australia and Indonesia.
Dr Poulgrain told his Jakarta audience that the military’s presence in Papua “has led to amazing problems.
“In the first 40 years, the Papuan death toll was horrendous. In 1983 the London-based Anti-Slavery Society sent me to check a report that Papuan under-fives in the Asmat district (South Papua) were dying like flies — six out of ten were dying. The report was correct.
Hardly any benefit at all
“We’re dealing with a people about whom very little effort to understand has been made. It has been claimed that the indigenous inhabitants of Papua should be grateful that so much money is spent . . . but the benefit they receive (as a percentage of the intended amount) is hardly any benefit at all.”
The Indonesian government says it has allocated more than Rp 1,036 trillion (A$106 million) in the past eight years for development (mainly roads) in a bid to appease self-government demands. That’s a tiny sum against the income.
The Grasberg mine in Central Papua has “proven and probable reserves of 15.1 million ounces of gold”. If correct that makes it the world’s biggest gold deposit.
It is run by PT Freeport Indonesia, a joint venture between the Indonesian government and the US company Freeport-McMoRan.
Dr Poulgrain claims gross revenue from the mine last year was about A$13 billion:
“We can be sure that the immense wealth of gold was a crucial influence on the sovereignty dispute in the 1950s and still influences the politics of Papua and Indonesia today.”
Despite the riches, Papua is reportedly one of the least developed regions in Indonesia, with poverty and inequality levels up to three times above the national average of 9.5 percent, as calculated by the Asian Development Bank.
In 1962 control of the Western half of the island of New Guinea, formerly part of the Dutch East Indies, was temporarily run by the UN. In 1969 it was ceded to Indonesia after a referendum when 1025 “leaders” hand-picked by the Indonesian military voted unanimously to join Jakarta.
‘Act of No Choice’
It was labelled an Act of Free Choice; cynics called it an “Act Free of Choice”, of “Act of No Choice”.
Historian Dr Emma Kluge wrote: “West Papuans were denied independence also because the UN system failed to heed their calls and instead placed appeasing Indonesia above its commitment to decolonisation and human rights.”
Pro-independence groups have since been fighting with words at the UN and at first with spears and arrows in the Highland jungles. Some now carry captured modern weapons and have been ambushing and killing Indonesian soldiers and road workers, and suffering casualties.
In February the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB), the armed section of the umbrella Organisasi Papua Merdeka (OPM, Papua Freedom Organisation), kidnapped NZ pilot Philip Mehrtens and demanded independence talks for his release.
After searching for six months the Indonesian military (TNI) has so far failed to free the Kiwi.
The OPM started gaining traction in the 1970s. Indonesia has designated it a “terrorist group” giving the armed forces greater arrest and interrogation powers.
Amnesty International claimed this showed Indonesia’s “lack of willingness to engage with the real roots of the ongoing conflict”, although it failed to pick apart the “roots” or offer practical solutions.
Journalists are banned
Communications in the mountains are tough and not just because of the terrain. Cellphone signals could lead to discovery. Journalists are banned. Requests for entry by this correspondent were given verbal OKs but are now ignored.
The only news comes from Christian pastors smuggling out notes, and statements from different West Papua freedom movement factions like the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP).
The lobbying is angering Jakarta, a major donor to the region. Papuans identify as Melanesians and are mainly Christian. The Indonesian delegation walked out in Port Vila when Wenda got up to speak.
Indonesia’s deputy Foreign Minister Pahala Mansury was quoted as saying: “Indonesia cannot accept that someone who should be responsible for acts of armed violence in Papua, including kidnappings, is given the opportunity to speak at this honourable forum.”
Could not reach consensus
The ABC reported that the leaders could not reach a consensus, but Wenda told Radio NZ he was confident the ULMWP would eventually get full membership: “The whole world is watching and this is a test for the leadership to see whether they’ll save West Papua”.
PNG’s National Capital District Governor Powes Parkop told Asia Pacific Report: “I am totally disappointed in the failure of the MSG leaders to seize the opportunity to redefine the future of West Papua and our region.
“Fear of Indonesia and proactive lobbying by Indonesia again has been allowed to dominate Melanesia to the detriment of our people of West Papua.”
Curiously Indonesia is an associate member of the MSG though the republic is dominated and led by Javanese. Around two million (0.7 percent) Papuans are Indonesian citizens.
Dr David Robie, NZ-based publisher of Asia Pacific Report, responded: “The MSG has thrown away a golden chance for achieving a historical step towards justice and peace in West Papua by lacking the courage to accept the main Papuan self-determination advocacy movement as full members.
‘Terrible betrayal’
“Many see this as a terrible betrayal of West Papuan aspirations and an undermining of Melanesian credibility and solidarity as well as an ongoing threat to the region’s security and human rights.”
Wenda is not the only emigre: Prize-winning Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman is wanted by the Indonesian police for allegedly speaking out on violence in Papua.
Like Wenda, she says she does not support hostage-taking.
Koman lives in Australia, works with Amnesty International and says she gets death threats. Her parents’ house in Jakarta has reportedly been stoned.
Just like The Hague’s handling of Indonesian anti-colonialists in the 1945-49 Revolutionary War, Jakarta’s policy has been force. Protesters are dehumanised, tagged as “criminals” or “terrorists”, however mild their involvement, an ancient tactic in warfare making it legally easier to shoot than arrest.
The pro-independence cause gets little sympathy from Indonesians in other provinces. Papuan students in Java have been attacked and suffered racial abuse. Anyone caught flying the Morning Star flag of independence risks 15 years in jail.
Vice-President Ma’ruf Amin has urged the military to “get tough”. At a Jakarta ceremony in June, former President Megawati Soekarnoputri was quoted as saying: ‘”If I were still a commander, I would deploy the number of battalions there. That’s cool, right?”
Battalions will not solve the problem
No, said Dr Poulgrain: “The history of the Papuan people that has become the norm is not correct. This is still a problem today. It’s our perception that’s the problem. Adding battalions will not solve the problem today.”
Dr Poulgrain is a specialist in Indonesian history and an adjunct fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Malang State University in East Java. His interest in Papua goes back to his student years as a backpacker exploring the archipelago.
Dr Poulgrain said his involvement in the debate was as an independent historian seeking a peaceful settlement. After speaking in Jakarta he flew to Jayapura to address a seminar at the Papua International University.
In 1999, when Megawati was vice-president (she is now the chair of BRIN), he was invited to a meeting on Papua with 10 of her advisors:
“They said to me, quite frankly, Papua was a problem they did not know how to solve. I suggested vocational training schools. We started — but the whole educational project stopped when the East Timor referendum established independence. Times haven’t changed.”
In 2018, activists delivered a petition to the UN with 1.8 million signatures demanding an independence referendum. That has gone nowhere. Instead, Jakarta has split West Papua into six provinces supposedly to give locals more say, but to no real effect.
“As the US and Australia continue to support Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity in Papua, both administrations are unlikely to take bolder stances.
“International action in the situation is likely to remain limited to the Pacific Islands . . . Separatist violence, having shown its resiliency to Indonesia’s attempts to control the region, is thus likely to continue.’
Duncan Graham has been a journalist for more than 40 years in print, radio and TV. He is the author of People Next Door: Understanding Indonesia (UWA Press) and winner of the Walkley Award and human rights awards. He lives in East Java and is now writing for the English language media in Indonesia on a permanent resident visa with work rights. This took five years to get using sponsorship through his Indonesian wife. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and this article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.
In 2022, the US Army selected Bell Textron’s tiltrotor V280 as its Black Hawk replacement. This caused more than a few eyebrows to rise in consternation. The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, flown by the Marine Corps and Special Operations Command, has had what can only be euphemistically regarded as a patchy record. It has been singularly odd in terms of the procurement and acquisition process, topped off by a tendency for killing its users while continuing to maintain a keen following. To date, no one has been held to account for what would, in any other policy context, be deemed criminally negligent.
The V-22 platform was the first tiltrotor deployed by the military, a strange creature combining the characteristics of fixed-wing planes, helicopters and vertical take-off and landing craft. It was originally inspired by a Pentagon request to Bell and Boeing after the failure of the hostage rescue effort dubbed Operation Eagle Claw. The April 1980 attempt by the Carter administration, intended to rescue US citizens being held by Iranian authorities, resulted in the deaths of five air force personnel and three marines.
The platform is slated for flying till 2055 yet sports a very blood-spattered resume. Prior to 2007, it had had four crashes, resulting in 30 deaths. Two of the first five prototypes suffered a number of fatal crashes in the early 1990s resulting in 30 deaths, though it formally came into the service of the Marines in 2007. After 2007, a further 24 deaths were caused in a further 10 crashes.
The Marine Corps has persisted indulging its use, seeing it as central in fighting the new lighter version of conflict the US imperium envisages, one characterised by manoeuvrability and speed as marked out by the “Force Design 2030” strategy. “Proponents of Force Design 2030 argue,” writes ground forces specialist Andrew Feickert, “that current Marine Corps design is outdated and that new forces and operational concepts are required to prevail against China.”
One such appealing operational concept is EABO, otherwise known as Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. It is a concept that has been embraced by the de-facto colonial Marine force located at the top end in Australia, cutely called by publicists worried about that fact the Marine Rotational Force – Darwin. Occupying forces, the belief goes, do not rotate. The unit, comprising 2,500 soldiers, has been based in the Northern Territory from April to October every year since 2012.
On the morning of August 27, a V-22B Osprey with 23 US marines crashed on Melville Island just north of Darwin. Three marines were killed. Several others were left injured with varying degrees of severity. The episode brought back memories of another Osprey crash on Australian soil, which saw a failed effort on the part of the Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 265 to land on the flight deck of USS Green Bay on August 5, 2017. On that occasion, there were also three fatalities, along with 23 injuries.
Those with claimed military or aviation expertise flock to the defence of this beast of moron and myth, admiring its “revolutionary design”, “a kind of plane-helicopter hybrid,” writes Peter Layton, involving wings tilting upwards “for take-off and landing and back down again for level flight.” It is appealing to its users, most notably the Marine Corps, for having greater range than helicopters, with higher speed and formidable carrying capacity.
Layton goes on to sing the praises of this lethal hybrid. “The Osprey is at the leading edge of aviation technology, with nothing else in operational service like it.” There are marvellous, evident reasons for that, but he prefers to note its essential role in the US strategy of prosecuting EABO operations against China from Australian bases rather than its hazards.
The literature about the V-22 Osprey notes the thorny history of this supposed “dream machine” and the problems of the Major Defense Acquisition Program that brought it into existence. To follow its development and deployment was an act akin to faith and its accompanying delusions. Richard Whittle, writing on the problem-plagued machine, found that, no matter what he penned, he “could usually count on being chastised by someone, for the Osprey was as close as a defense issue gets to being a religious question. There were believers and nonbelievers, and neither had much use for those who gave credence to the other side.”
Certainly, believers can come up with the sort of waffle asserting that each “Osprey flight is a learning event for the pilots, the maintenance personnel and the aircraft’s manufacturer.” This begs the question as to whether such equipment should ever see the light of day, especially given how often it snuffs out the lives of its users.
Other reasons for such an unfathomably dangerous record are also offered to distract from this deeply flawed craft. The National Commission on Military Aviation Safety, for instance, noted the baleful safety record of the US military in toto in a 2020 study conducted at the behest of Congress. The audit found that between 2013 and 2018, US forces suffered a remarkable 6,000 aviation safety “mishaps” during training and routine operations, resulting in 198 deaths and 157 lost aircraft. The bill for this dubious achievement had been $9.41 billion. The Osprey, it would seem, found itself in good, perishable company.
As with other religious questions, usually touching on doctrine and belief in some invisible, all-powerful tormentor, those saddled with it have paid the highest price. As US military policy continues its inexorable march to the next war, this time shamelessly using Australian strategic real estate for the purpose, it will also happily place its own personnel in machines as deadly to them as to any intended adversary.
The Vietnam War tormented and tore the societies who saw fit to participate in it. It defined a generation culturally and politically in terms creative and fractious. And it showed up the rulers to be ignorant rather than bright; blundering fools rather than sages secure in their preaching. Five decades on, the political classes in the United States and Australia are still seeking to find reasons for intervening in a country they scant understood, with a fanatic’s persuasion, and ideologue’s conviction, a moralist’s certainty. Old errors die hard.
Leaders are left the legacy of having to re-scent the candle, hoping that no one notices the malodorous stench left by history. Errors can be ignored in the aromatic haze. Broadcasters and producers of celluloid scutter about to provide softening programs explaining why soldiers who had no valid reason fighting a conflict, could find themselves in it. The ABC in Australia, for instance, released their series called Our Vietnam War, narrated by Kate Mulvany, whose bridge to the war was via her father. The very title is personal, exclusive, and seemingly excludes the Vietnamese who found themselves pawns, rebels, collaborators and insurgents.
The production also received the approval of the Australian Department of Veterans’ Affairs. “The series provides a unique opportunity for viewers to gain insights into the personal stories of veterans and the broader impact of conflict on Australia’s history and identity.”
The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has made 2023 a calendar year for reminding Australians about the Vietnam experience, albeit in a most slanted way. On March 29, he acknowledged veterans visiting Canberra in an address to parliament. The words “courage”, “sacrifice” and “bonds of camaraderie forged under fire, and cruel realities of loss”, were noted. Adversaries are not mentioned, nor was, curiously enough, opposition to the war that was expressed at the time from a number of brave Labor Party stalwarts, Arthur Calwell being foremost among them.
The speech continued in a more plangent tone. “Let us stand in this place, in this Parliament, and speak – loudly and clearly – about those who were sent to war in our name, who did their duty in our name, but whose names we did not hold up as proudly as we should have.”
On Vietnam Veterans’ Day (August 18), Albanese gave another speech, this time in Ipswich, Queensland, where he again apologised to the veterans. “We should have acknowledged you better as a nation then. But the truth is, as a nation we didn’t.” The platitudes are piled up, and merely serve to blunt the nature of Australia’s involvement in a brutal, rapacious conflict. “You upheld Australia’s name. You showed the Australian character at its finest.”
This distraction serves to cover the tracks of those who erred and bungled, not merely in committing the troops, but in ignoring the consequences of that deployment. The mistreatment dished out to the returnees was as much a product of civilian protest as it was a conscious effort on the part of veterans from previous conflicts to ignore it. It was a war never formally declared, conducted in conditions of gross deception.
A half-century on, it is striking to see the apologetics gather at the podium. The New South Wales branch of the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL), for instance, went out of its way to issue one for the way thousands of defence personnel were treated in the aftermath of the conflict. “RSL NSW acknowledges a generation of veterans who are still healing and we publicly recognise our charity’s past mistakes this Vietnam Veterans Day,” came the statement the organisation’s president Ray James.
In the making of war, those behind the policies for waging it tend to escape culpability. The Australians in this affair were, to put it politely, compliant, featherbrained creatures upset by the Yellow Peril north of Papua New Guinea and easily won over through invocations of the “Red Under the Bed”.
Canberra went out of its way to send material and aid to South Vietnam not merely to fight Asiatic atheists of a red hue, but to impress their increasingly bogged-down US allies. To aid the enterprise, the Menzies government introduced national service conscription in November 1964, a policy that became the source of much parliamentary acrimony, notably from the Labor Party.
In July 1966, on an official visit to Washington, Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt emetically appropriated the Democratic Party’s own campaign slogan by declaring that Australia was “All the way with LBJ”. At the National Press Gallery that same month, Holt declared that, “When it comes to American participation and resolution to see the war in south Vietnam through, Australia is undoubtedly all the way”. Spinelessness and crawling in a military alliance became political virtues, or what Albanese might like to call “values”.
Australia’s commitment was marred by problems of strategic worth, something which officials were well aware of as early as April 1967. As a government paper titled “Australia’s military commitment to Vietnam” documents, requests for a larger Australian commitment by US military sources in Saigon and Washington were made despite the open-ended nature of the conflict. The planners lacked certitude on basic objectives, not least on the issue of victory itself. The views of US Defence Secretary Robert S. McNamara, as expressed in meetings with his Australian counterparts, are expressly mentioned in all their obliqueness. The secretary “had no doubt that America could no longer lose the war, but they still had the problem of winning and that could be long and hard and there was no easy way which could point directly to victory.”
Add to this the fantastic delusion that the Vietnamese communist movement was a Peking-directed affair rather than an indigenous movement keen to remove foreign influence, and we have a conflict not merely futile on the part of Canberra and Washington, but wasteful and criminal. Fifty years later, and officials from both countries have the chance to make another round of potentially graver, more calamitous decisions.
Elbit Systems announced that its partner in the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 project (the “Project”), Hanwha Defense Australia (“Hanwha”), has reported that it was downselected by the Australian Government, as the preferred tenderer for the Project, with final Government approval to be sought at the conclusion of contract negotiations. Hanwha further reported that Elbit […]
Times of crisis can be glorious for some. The Great Depression bred its share of wealthy profiteers. The First and Second World Wars fostered many a multimillionaire. Over the bodies of millions, the returns for armaments companies were unparalleled. And during the current “cost of living crisis,” as it is so often dubbed, there are companies beaming at their profit margins even as they affect false modesty.
In the United Kingdom, for instance, earnings for household energy suppliers are booming, despite crushing bills. British Gas reported a staggering nine-fold increase in profits, from £98 million in 2022 to £969 million this year. Its parent company Centrica reported profits of £2.1 billion over the first six months of 2023, while Shell glowed with a profit of £3.9 billion for the second quarter in 2023.
In Australia, where the spirit of roguish exploitation remains strong, companies such as the national carrier Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank are rolling in cash. Supermarket outlets such as Coles have also announced huge returns. To them can be added such energy companies as AGL. While households are counting the dollars and cents for the weekly shopping and the fortnightly rental, corporate entities of a certain heft are thriving.
This is all fascinating stuff. For one thing, it does not necessarily attest to quality. It also brings out the market defenders who take issue with such terms as “price gouging”. “Profit outrage,” comes an editorial in The Australian, “has always been a fluid concept. It comes around every six months for listed companies, and for their CEOs it’s a balancing act.” Rather than asking the question why such companies are thriving as the commonfolk decline, the paper blames customers and workers for not defining “what an acceptable level of profit is.”
The company bosses such as Leah Weckert of Coles also argue that such profits are miniscule relative to the demands of shareholders. Much like a hospital regarding its patients as irritating fodder, she cites the wishes of the market as all conquering and relevant while ignoring the customer. Do shop with us, but we know where true allegiances lie.
The banksters are also advancing the arguments that their returns are hardly unexceptional. Despite the company’s earnings of A$10.16 billion in cash profit, the Commonwealth Bank’s chief executive, Matt Comyn, prefers the long view. “Our profitability has fallen substantially in the last decade and is currently lower than a number of international markets.” How terrible for him, given the company’s remorseless cutting of 251 jobs from its IT, Business Banking and Retail Baking Services roles.
What is unacceptable is the extent these companies seem to derive their profits even as they slash their employment base and offer unspeakably poor services, all in an effort to consolidate their dominant share of the market. Talk of competition and the balm of reduced prices has ceased to be relevant in the food, banking, insurance, energy and aviation industries. Behind the profits lie sackings, euphemistic restructuring, thinning, and the incidental benefits of war. (Oh Vladimir, go the company executives, we love you!)
Reassured in their dominant position in the pecking order, companies can behave appallingly. The service on Qantas is often an abomination, a brattish, shabby excuse for an airline. Despite that, it remained the sole beneficiary of government assistance in the airline business during the global pandemic, the guzzling, pampered Australian icon. To show its gratitude, the “Flying Kangaroo” became a beast of even greater indifference.
In 2022, the airline company made losing luggage, cancelling flights with a drunk’s compulsion, and keeping people waiting on calls matters of routine. Those seeking refunds were repulsed, frustrated and often ignored. And don’t even begin to mention their hopeless frequent flyer redemption system.
The financial pundits also took note of the tarnished brand, looking beyond the social media storm and understandable fury from the Transport Workers Union. (The latter took the company to court over the sacking of 1,700 ground staff during the pandemic.) The Australian Financial Reviewrevealed “anecdotal evidence that the brand damage is getting worse. It has spread to the elite C-suites of Australian business”.
In 2023, Qantas found itself very much in the pink. The 2023 financial year, the company recorded a A$2.5 billion pre-tax profit, raising the question as to what the appropriate profit returns in such cases would be. The controversial, outgoing CEO Alan Joyce, in a typically unconvincing public relations spray, suggested that such earnings were ordinary, given the last “normal” profit in 2019.
His successor, Vanessa Hudson, was also unmoved, seeing it as a logical outcome of solid planning. “All of the work we have done during COVID in terms of restructuring our cost base, we are going to see that as fares come down … with capacity coming back, that our cost position is going to materially improve going forward.”
The Joyce-Hudson rationale barely survives scrutiny. The company’s higher fares, its structural stripping to the value of A$1 billion and its return in invested capital, up from 18.4 percent in 2019 to 103.6 percent in 2023, has even prompted the question as to whether there is more than a bit of over-earning taking place here.
It’s little wonder that the heads of such outfits have attracted revulsion. Joyce, so devoid of empathy he is bound to become an Australian university chancellor, even suffered an egg and toilet paper attack on his family home in July last year. But the atrocious and incompetent are long in business, and far from being put down, they survive, striving to fight another day and announce, with pride, the next round of profits. Shouldering them will be desperate customers and unwilling taxpayers, aiding the whole affair. Market competition, as it so often tends to be, remains the great hoax of economics.
The battle to stop the destruction in Australia of critical koala habitats in state forests in Northern NSW has escalated in recent weeks. Wendy Bacon reports on the campaign from daring lock-ons and vigils in the depth of forests to rallies, parliament and courts in Sydney which has led to a halt to logging in Newry State Forest.
SPECIAL REPORT: By Wendy Bacon
Back in Feburary this year, campaigners celebrated as the then shadow Environmental Minister Penny Sharpe announced Labor’s support for a Great Koala National Park (GKNP), stretching along the Mid-North coast from Kempsey to Coffs Harbour.
The purpose of the park, which was first proposed more than a decade ago, is to protect critical habit for the koala and other threatened species.
Koala numbers in NSW plummeted by more than half between 2000 and 2020 due to logging, land clearing, drought and devastating bushfires. A NSW Parliamentary Inquiry in 2020 heard scientific evidence that koalas could be extinct by 2050 unless there are dramatic changes.
NSW is the only mainland state not to have a plan to stop logging of native forests, essential koala habitats.
Hopes raised by Labor’s narrow election win in March this year were quickly dashed. Hope has now turned to anger with 200 people marching in protest in the mid-north NSW city of Coffs Harbour earlier this month and nation-wide rallies.
NSW Forestry Corporation steps up logging When she received a petition calling for a moratorium on logging within the GKNP in June, Minister for Environment Penny Sharpe reiterated her commitment to the Park but confirmed that logging would not stop.
Instead the government-owned, NSW Forestry Corporation (NSWFC) has stepped up its logging inside the proposed GKNP, including in areas containing long-lasting koala hubs, carting off huge tree trunks and leaving devastated land in its wake. These operations are losing millions each year.
The campaign consists of a network of local community groups, such as the Friends of Orara East Forest, some of which conduct weekly vigils; the Belligen Activist Network and the Knitting Nannas, as well as larger environmental groups such as the National Parks Association.
It is supported by the NSW Greens, Animal Justice and some Independent MPs including MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich. Further north, the North East Forest Alliance has taken legal action to stop the NSWFC logging 77 percent of the Braemar forest, part of the proposed Sandy Creek National Park where koalas survive despite long standing koala communities being reduced by 70 percent in the 2019/2020 bush fires.
On June 28, a broad-based group of MPs and NGOS advocating for the park held a press conference calling on politicians across all parties to support a moratorium on the ongoing destruction of the GKNP and immediately start to work on transition plans for timber workers and development of the Park, including with local First Nations people.
But Minister Sharpe reiterated her intention to allow logging to continue.
A few days later, logging began in the Orara East and Boambee Forests, both of which are inside the Great Koala National Park. Vigils and petitions were clearly not working.
Civil disobedience begins On July 7, three HSC students on school holidays locked on to heavy machinery and a full barrel of cement in Orara East Forest. At the same time in Boambee Forest, two Knitting Nannas locked onto heavy machinery. Another protester occupied a tree. In all, logging was delayed by 10 hours.
Seventeen-year-old Mason said: “I’m here on behalf of myself and my 14-year-old brother. The rate at which our government is auctioning off natural forests is frightening, and I feel powerless to do anything about it.
“We’ve tried protesting, and we can’t vote, which is why we feel driven to take this action against these machines ripping our trees down. The government can stop this and we just need them to take notice.”
The three students were arrested but released from custody with cautions and no charges laid.
On the same day, two Knitting Nannas Christine Degan and Susan Doyle were arrested in the Boambee State Park. Both are veterans of vigils and protests aimed at stopping logging and for action on climate change.
“Shame … shame … shame” banners in Orara State Forest. Image: Chris Deagan/CityHub
In desperation, they took a further step. They slept overnight in a home near the perimeter of the State Park.
Before day break, Degan and Doyle and supporters walked up a steep hill, using torches to find their way through the bush to the logging camp. There they were met by an angry security guard who burst into an aggressive tirade, accusing them of being terrorists.
While two supporters calmed him down, the two women were locked onto equipment. There they sat in two small beach chairs in drizzling rain and cold for eight hours until the NSW police arrived and arrested them.
A bulldozer in Orara State Forest. Image: Chris Deagan/CityHub
The two friends were released on condition that they did not contact each other, except through a lawyer, or go near any forests were logging was underway.
Earlier this month, they were each fined a total of $500 for entering and refusing to leave a forest.
Battle moves to Newry Forest A vigil camp is now in its third week in the Upper reaches of the Kalang River where other sites have recently been made “active” for logging.
Nearer the coast, the the battle front has moved to the Newry Forest near Belligen. For nine months in 2021, the community had joined the local Gumbaynggir elders in a blockade that successfully delay logging operations.
Although Newry is a core part of the GKNP, the NSWFC approved 2500 hectares of the forest for logging in May this year. In July, the listing went from “approved” to “active,” leading the Bellingen action group to organise a workshop to upgrade their direct action tactics.
On July 31, local Gumbaynggirr Elders, Traditional Custodians and supporters established a peaceful protest camp on sacred land within the forest. They were met with armed police and steel gates preventing the public from entering the forest.
A Gumbarnggirr spokesperson told the National Indigenous Times that the NSW Forestry Corporation (NSWFC) was endangering koala and possum gliders that are their totem animals.
“The values of Newry to the Gumbaynggirr people are precious, priceless and absolutely irreplaceable. …There is a desperate need for these appalling industrial logging operations to be stopped or we simply won’t have koalas left and priceless and irreplaceable Gumbaynggirr values and cultural heritage will be destroyed.”
“Hands off country” . . . protesters locked on in Newry Forest. Image: CityHub
Gumbaynggirr elder arrested after locking on
On the second day of logging, two younger protesters locked onto machinery. On the third day, Wilkarr Kurikuta, a Ngemba, Wangan and Jangalingou man, locked-on to a harvester.
“I’m here for my old people and my sister, a proud Gumbaynggirr woman, to exercise my sovereign right to protect country,” he said.
He told the NSW government that it should expect resistance until an end is put to the destruction of his people’s land and waters. He was violently removed, charged and held overnight in a cell.
The next day, two more young people locked onto industrial logging machinery in Newry Forest, again halting logging. They were arrested, charged and released. Logging had so far been disrupted on six days.
On August 2, Greens MP Sue Higginson moved a motion in the NSW Legislative Council to confirm the NSW government’s intention to protect critical koala habitat, noting that the Newry State Forest was “identified for protection in 2017 as having three koala hubs” and that a three-day survey had found five threatened plant species, evidence of koalas and high quality habitat for threatened koalas, the Glossy Black Cockatoo and Greater Glider.
She described the “industrial scale logging operation” as happening under “martial law”.
First Nations elders were integral to the protest at Newry Forest. Image: Bellingen Activist Network/Facebook/CityHub
“The community on the front line are not doing this because it is fun or because they want to, or because they dislike forestry workers or police,” she told Parliament.
“They are doing it as an act of hope in the democratic process in which they believe — the genuine hope that they will be seen and heard and that their actions will lead to political outcomes that protect this forest, which the government has promised to protect but is currently destroying.”
Labor opposed the motion with the Minister for the Environment Sharpe moving amendments which removed any reference to the factual core of the motion described above. Her amendments were passed with Liberal National Party support.
A reduced anodyne motion recording commitment to protect the koala was then passed.
In her response Penny Sharpe referred to “internal work” being done to proceed with the Park. She said she was working closely with the Minister for Forestry Tara Moriarty.
This will further concern forest campaigners because in Moriarty’s speech in support of Sharpe’s amendments, she supported the current logging operations as being done in line with sustainable ecologically sound forest management, with the NSW Environmental Protection Authority ensuring compliance with all policies.
This is the very issue that is being contested by the movement to save the forests. It suggests that Moriarty may not accept the findings of a recent NSW Auditor-General’s report which found that both the NSW Forest Corporation and the NSW Environmental Protection Authority were insufficiently resourced, trained and empowered to enforce compliance and that NSWFC’s voluntary efforts did not extend to satisfactorily ensuring contractors do not breach regulations and policies.
This issue is already before the courts. The North Eastern Alliance, which has previously taken successful court actions during the 34 year period it has been campaigning to protect forests, is arguing that the NSW Land and Environment Court should set aside approvals to log sections of the Braemar and Myrtle Forests further north at the Sandy Creek State Park which is also a proposed national park in the Richmond Valley.
The NSWFC has agreed to halt logging in these forests which are home to koalas and more than 23 threatened species, until the case is decided. The Alliance will be represented by the Environmental Defenders’ Office.
Alliance President Dailan Pugh, who has 44 years experience in protecting forests, said that “Myrtle and Braemar State forests are both identified as Nationally Important Koala Areas that were badly burnt in the 2019/20 wildfires, killing many of their resident koalas.
“Despite this, recent surveys have proved that most patches of preferred koala feed trees are still being utilised by Koalas. Logging of more than 75% of the larger feed trees … that koalas need to rebuild their numbers will be devastating for populations already severely impacted by the fires.”
Protesters hold a banner on cleared ground. Image: Bellingen Activist Network/Facebook/CityHub
The Environmental Defenders’ Office is arguing that the logging operations are unlawful for several reasons: because the operations are not ecologically sustainable, because Forestry Corp failed to consider whether they would be ecologically sustainable, and because the proposed use of “voluntary conditions” is in breach of the logging rules.
NEFA is asking the court to declare the logging approvals invalid and to restrain NSWFC from conducting the operations.
Pugh said: “We have been asking the NSW Government for independent pre-logging surveys on State forests to identify and protect core Koala habitat and climate change refugia, and protection of Preferred Koala Feed Trees (select species >30 cm diameter) in linking habitat. Our requests are falling on deaf ears, we hope this will make them listen.”
While Labor politicians insist that the logging is consistent with protecting biodiversity, the situation looks different to campaigners on the ground. Degan describes seeing crushed casuarinas which provide habitat for the Glossy Black Cockatoo when she visited the Newry Forest for the first time in four weeks.
“It’s just a vast area with trash that’s a metre deep, that no footed animal can get across. I couldn’t get across and I’d break an ankle or shoulder falling over. There’s no way that animals on foot could traverse that debris that’s left behind. It may be regrowth native forest but after 50 years it provides substantial decent habitat.”
Down in Hobart, another forest activist Collette Hamson is spending three months in prison because she broke conditions of a suspended sentence. Before she went to prison she said:
“The reason I commit these offences [is] because I am terrified of the worsening climate crisis. I am not a menace to society, yet here I am facing a jail term . . . I am not giving a finger to the entire judicial system, I am standing up for the forests, for takayna, a safer planet and if that makes me a dangerous criminal then I think we are going to need bigger prisons.”
Labor plans lengthy consultation While the Minister for Environment Penny Sharpe may be able to remove any mention of protests in a parliamentary motion, it is another thing to deal with the wave of civil disobedience that is likely to continue until native forest logging is halted. Sharpe says that A$80 million has been set aside for GKNP and planning is underway.
City Hub asked the Department of Environment to confirm that no consultation was yet underway and on what date one consultation would begin.
A National Parks and Wildlife Service spokesperson replied, stating that development of the park “will be informed by expert scientific advice, an independent economic assessment of impacts on jobs and the local community, and an inclusive consultation process with stakeholdes . . .
“Consultation with stakeholders will occur in the future, with specific timings still to be determined.”
This lengthy process could take most of NSW Labor’s term in government ending in 2027. Unless logging is halted while planning occurs, the proposed National Park along with threatened species it is supposed to protect could be decimated before it arrives.
Wendy Bacon was previously professor of journalism at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and supported the Greens in this year’s NSW election. This article was first published by CityHub on August 15 and is republished with permission. Wendy Bacon’s investigative journalism blog.
The leaders of five Melanesian countries and territories avoided a definitive update on the status of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua’s application for full membership in the Melanesian Spearhead Group in Port Vila.
However, the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit was hailed as the “most memorable and successful” by Vanuatu’s prime minister as leaders signed off on two new declarations in their efforts to make the subregion more influential.
As well as the hosts, the meeting was attended by Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and the pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front) of New Caledonia.
But the meeting had an anticlimactic ending after the leaders failed to release the details about the final outcomes or speak to news media.
The first agreement that was endorsed is the Udaune Declaration on Climate Change to address the climate crisis and “urging countries not to discharge potentially harmful treated nuclear contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean”.
“Unless the water treated is incontrovertibly proven, by independent scientists, to be safe to do and seriously consider other options,” Vanuatu Prime Minister Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau said at the event’s farewell dinner last night.
The leaders also signed off on the Efate Declaration on Mutual Respect, Cooperation and Amity to advance security initiatives and needs of the Melanesian countries.
This document aims to “address the national security needs in the MSG region through the Pacific Way, kipung, tok stori, talanoa and storian, and bonded by shared values and adherence to the Melanesian vuvale, cultures and traditions,” Kalsakau said.
He said the leaders “took complex issues such as climate change, denuclearisation, and human rights and applied collective wisdom” to address the issues that were on the table.
Stefan Armbruster reporting from Port Vila. Video: SBS World News
No update on West Papua The issue of full membership for the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP) was a big ticket item on the agenda at the meeting in Port Vila, according to MSG chair Kalsakau.
However, there was no update provided on it and the leaders avoided fronting up to the media except for photo opportunities.
Benny Wenda at the 22nd Melanesian Spearhead Group Leaders’ Summit in Port Vila . . . “I don’t know the outcome. Maybe this evening the leaders will announce [it].” Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
ULMWP leader Benny Wenda (above) told RNZ Pacific late on Thursday he was still not aware of the result of their membership application but that he was “confident” about it.
“I don’t know the outcome. Maybe this evening the leaders will announce at the reception,” Wenda said.
“From the beginning I have been confident that this is the time for the leaders to give us full membership so we can engage with Indonesia.”
According to the MSG Secretariat the final communique is now expected to be released on Friday.
Referred to Pacific Islands Forum
However, it is likely that the West Papua issue will be referred to the Pacific Islands Forum to be dealt with.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said after the signing: “on the issues that was raised in regards to West Papua…these matters to be handled at [Pacific Islands Forum]”.
“The leaders from the Pacific will also visit Jakarta and Paris” to raise issues about sovereignty and human rights,” he said.
Kalsakau said he looked forward to progressing the implementaiton of important issue recommendations from the 22nd MSG Leaders’ Summit which also include “supporting the 2019 call by the Forum Leaders for a visit by the OHCHR to West Papua”.
MSG leaders drink kava to mark the end of the meeting and the signing two declarations. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Indonesia ‘proud’ Indonesia’s Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs, Pahala Mansury, said Indonesia was proud to be part of the Melanesian family.
Indonesia is an associate member of MSG and has said it does not accept ULMWP’s application to become a full member because it claims that this goes against the MSG’s founding principles and charter.
During the meeting this week, Indonesian delegates walked out on occasions when ULMWP representatives made their intervention.
Some West Papua campaigners say these actions showed that Indonesia did not understand “the Melanesian way”.
“You just don’t walk out of a sacred meeting haus when you’re invited to be part of it,” one observer said.
However, Mansury said Indonesia hoped to “continue to increase, enhance and strengthen future collaboration between Indonesia and all of the Melanesian countries”.
“We are actually brothers and sisters of Melanesia and we hope we can continue to strengthen the bond together,” he said.
Australia and China attended as special guests at the invitation of the Vanuatu government.
China supported the Vanuatu government to host the meeting.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has awarded a contract to Rafael Australia to acquire and undisclosed number of Spike LR II anti‐tank guided missiles (ATGMs) for the Australian Army’s Boxer 8×8 Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles (CRVs). The company announced on 22 August that the acquisition constitutes part of Australia’s Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance (GWEO) […]
