Recent visits by the Australian and Indian Prime Ministers to each other’s country gives expression to Australia’s newfound relationship with India – a major power in the Indo-Pacific, the world’s fifth-largest economy and the largest democracy on the planet. For the past decade, successive Australian governments and diplomats have been attempting to court India, seeking…
The Commonwealth’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) has selected EM Solutions to upgrade the Royal Australian Navy’s SATCOM systems across its existing fleet of vessels. This is by far the largest contract ever signed by EM Solutions and demonstrates how support for the Sovereign Defence Industry, particularly Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs), can deliver […]
They think we are mugs – and it’s insulting. It’s all fine for politicians to be swimming, swerving and tossing about in the goo of paranoia that is surveillance, chatting to the ghost called foreign interference; but to expect the rest of the citizenry to be morons is rather poor form. But the formula has always been such: We terrify you; you vote us in, and we increase the budget of the national security state.
Regarding the business of the Russian embassy site in Canberra, this is all the more stunning. Australia’s parliamentarians rarely pass bills and motions at such speed, but the measure to ensure that the Russian embassy would not have a bit of real estate 500 metres from the people’s assembly was odd, at best. On June 15, legislation was whizzed through, effectively extinguishing Russia’s lease.
It was also prompted by a rather bruising matter: the Russians had already been triumphant in the Federal Court. They had been granted the lease for the Yarralumla site in December 2008 by the National Capital Authority. But the 99-year lease was cancelled by the same body on the basis that “ongoing unfinished works detract from the overall aesthetic, importance, and dignity of the area reserved for diplomatic missions.”
Russia duly challenged the cancellation and won. In May, the court found in its favour, negating the cancellation of the lease. This seemed to have a curiously unifying effect in Parliament: agents of the Kremlin would be a mere stone’s throw away from the elected chamber.
Members of the Albanese government were tediously, predictably, on message, claiming that their intelligence services were all cognisant of a threat no one else could possibly take seriously. According to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the government had “received very clear security advice as to the risk presented by a Russian presence close to Parliament House.” The whole parliamentary measure had taken place “to ensure the lease site does not become a formal diplomatic presence.”
The cabinet’s most eager of beavers, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, affirmed the Prime Minister’s concerns. “The principal problem with the proposed second Russian embassy in Canberra is its location,” she suggested. “The government has received clear national security advice that this would be a threat to our national security and that is why the government is acting decisively to bring this longstanding matter to a close.”
This entire comic episode also led Albanese to anticipate Russian stroppiness and reference to precedents in international law. This prompted the remark that Russia was not “in a position to talk about international law, given their rejection of it so consistently and so brazenly with their invasion of Ukraine.”
Over stiffening, proud vodkas at the eventual Russian embassy site, Australian officials will be able to do a merry jig and say that they have been tearing strips off international law for decades. From race relations to illegal invasions, the good guys have been wondrously bad. Remember Iraq in 2003, when we deviously and cowardly subverted the United Nations Charter and aided the destruction of a sovereign country? (Oh, the laughter!) Or those negotiations with an impoverished East Timor over its access to natural resources? (We almost got away with bugging the negotiators – but for those insufferable whistleblowers well read in international law and principle!)
Such officials will also be able to recall the efforts of Australian intelligence agents to undermine international law during the Cold War, playing a starring role in overthrowing Chile’s democratically elected Allende government in the 1970s, at the very same time the Central Intelligence Agency was conferencing on how to get rid of that pesky Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. It was beautifully, if diabolically symmetrical.
Saliently stunning in this splutter of rage from Australia’s politicians is that any embassy position near Parliament House, notably from Russia, would make any difference at all. Two issues spring to mind.
The first is that Australia’s all commanding superior, the US government, tends to privilege technology to the point of childish obsession. For all their technological genius in specific, idiosyncratic areas, the Russians have tended towards the craft, cut and cultivation of human contacts in intelligence. The embassy’s proximity would not matter one jot.
The other aspect of the embassy debate is cringingly odd. Why bother listening to anything Australia’s Parliament has to say that might influence the events of the world? Vassal states are poor fare in the marketplace of intelligence and policy; their returns for any foreign power are junk food quality, limp cold chips and hardly worth bothering about. (Recently, the politicisation of sexual assault is all the rage – there is, what might be politely called in diplomatic channels, a woman problem in the great chambers of the capital.)
The true clearance stores for Australian intelligence lie in the bowels of the US State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency. Yes, the fallback position is always that Australia is a “Five Eyes” member in the sacred Anglophone intelligence sharing agreement that makes it a target. But why go for the inferior imitation if you can get the original?
The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) has reactivated 9 Squadron on 11 June to prepare for the delivery of the Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton high-altitude long endurance (HALE) uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV). According to the RAAF, 9 Squadron was initially formed in 1939 and active service during World War 2 in the Mediterranean Sea and […]
The first Arctic ice-free summer could be in the 2030s, a decade earlier than projections reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. David Spratt writes we should not be shocked.
Kohei Saito argues there are five important reasons why we need to move beyond capitalism to deal with the ecological and social crises besetting the world today. Peter Boyle reports.
Throughout Australian history, housing has been an exception among essential services, otherwise provided by the state. Alistair Sisson argues Labor can be pushed to change its appoach.
As Australian protesters gathered outside the Brisbane detention centre calling for the freedom of a Nauru refugee, the man pleaded with authorities to release him.
Hamid has been held in a hotel room and then the detention centre for months.
“They want to kill me gradually with mental torture,” he said.
“New Zealand government, please save me from the cruel and inhuman clutches of Australian politicians,” Hamid, an Iranian who was held on Nauru for almost a decade, told RNZ Pacific.
He is one of hundreds of refugees who had sought asylum in Australia but was detained offshore.
He was brought to Australia in February 2023 for medical treatment and then kept in a hotel room in Brisbane.
“They are actually cruel. And they are actually killing me by mental torture,” Hamid said.
Other refugees released
Other refugees brought to Australia have been released from hotel detention within a week or two but not Hamid, who said he had been confined for weeks on end.
“And they didn’t release me and they released everyone in front of my eyes. So what is this after 10 years? After 10 years, they are putting me in a detention centre with a lot of criminal people. What is this? It’s torture!” Hamid said.
He was held first in the Meriton Hotel, in Brisbane, and on June 7 he was transferred to the Brisbane detention centre.
A protester at Brisbane’s immigration detention centre, BITA ( Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation), on Sunday . . . “Other refugees brought to Australia have been released from hotel detention within a week.” Image: Ian Rintoul/RNZ Pacific
“I’m not a criminal . . . I didn’t come to Australia illegally.
“But they keep me in detention,” Hamid said.
All meals were eaten in his room, and he was sometimes taken to the BITA Detention Centre for one hour’s exercise a day.
RNZ Pacific decided not to interview him in his fragile state while he was in isolation, but since he was moved to detention where he can exercise and walk around the compound, he wanted to speak out about his treatment.
Wish to go to NZ
“I’m sure the New Zealand government and people are lovely. And this is my wish. As soon as possible, go to New Zealand. And please do my process as soon as possible. Thank you so much,” Hamid said.
He begged the New Zealand government to speed up the immigration process which he has applied for under the AUS/NZ Agreement.
“I have to support my family — my wife and youngest daughter are in Iran. And I have to support them. They are my priority. My first priority in my life is to support them. And as they put me here I cannot,” Hamid said.
Protesters at Brisbane’s immigration detention centre, BITA ( Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation), on Sunday . . . Hamid was promised he would be released from detention in Australia. Image: Ian Rintoul/RNZ Pacific
Like others brought from Nauru, he was promised he would be released from detention in Australia, and was even asked whether he wanted to be released on a bridging visa or on a community detention order.
He has been awaiting news from the New Zealand government as to whether or not he will be accepted for the freedom he has waited almost a decade for.
Free Hamid rally For the last several months, the Australian Labor government has been transferring the remaining refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru to Australia, the Refugee Action Coalition said in a statement.
In December last year there were 72 people held offshore by Australia in Nauru. As of last week, 13 refugees were left but it is understood that another transfer was to be completed at the weekend.
Last Sunday, a “Free Hamid” rally was held outside the detention centre.
Hamid’s son, Arman, was released from hotel detention in Victoria in 2022 and spoke at the rally.
Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, said the Labor government has no more excuses.
“It’s way beyond time that Hamid was freed from detention and reunited with his son,” Rintoul said.
‘Strong progress’ made on NZ resettlement deal Australia’s Department of Home Affairs (DFAT) told RNZ Pacific in a statement that while it does not comment on individual cases, it is committed to an enduring regional processing capability in Nauru as a key pillar of “Operation Sovereign Borders’.
“The enduring capability ensures regional processing arrangements remain ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people smuggling,” the statement said.
DFAT said Australia was focused on supporting the Nauru government to resolve the regional processing caseload, and that “strong progress” had been made on the New Zealand resettlement arrangement.
“I’m so tired of the Australian government, just the government, you know, not the people,” Hamid said.
Immigration New Zealand has told RNZ Pacific it is working as fast as it could to get refugees to New Zealand under the AUS/NZ deal which aims to settle up to 150 refugees each year for three years.
Year one ends this month, on June 30.
Hamid hopes to be one of those included in this year’s intake.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two banners and candles at the gates of a refugee detention centre during a candlelight vigil in Brisbane. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Anadolu Agency/AFP/RNZ Pacific
Jonathan Sriranganathan reflects on his time in a wide ranging interview with Alex Banbridgejust before stepping down as Gabba Ward councillor in the Brisbane City Council.
Sarah Hathway said residents are mounting a big campaign to save their libraries, and stop the cuts, but are concerned that the city’s councillors will let them down again. Sue Bull reports.
Wiradjuri person and resident Carolyn Ienna wants the NSW government to add more buildings to the Wentworth Park housing estate and quicky, but not to pull t down. Kerry Smith reports.
Green Left journalist Isaac Nellist and refugee rights activist Chloe DS go through the latest news from Australia and around the world. Music and editing by LittleArcherBeats.
Declining levels of public housing, non-existent rent controls and annual investor tax concessions are some reasons for the spiralling cost of housing, argues Andrew Chuter.
Unions want Labor to change the law to stop bosses from misusing labour hire clauses to reduce pay rates, and have launched a campaign to get it done. Jim McIlroy reports.
He is one of the least empathetic of beings, a cold fish, bothered and irritated. Captured by the cradle of numbers (he is an economist); obsessed by the spreadsheet of projections that may never result, there is not much to recommend the chief of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Philip Lowe. Come to think of it, there is not much to recommend any of them, these high priests and priestesses, all of the same, pontificating cathedral.
What stands out regarding Lowe is his almost heroic lack of tact. He will forever be saddled with those remarks that encouraged many Australians to rush to the banks to take out loans. When asked at the National Press Club in February 2021 about his “pledge” not to raise the cash rate for at least three years, Lowe was defiant: “I haven’t pledged anything”; 2024 was merely a “best guess”.
The bank’s own internal review, published in 2022, noted that the RBA board had indicated in late 2020 and much of 2021 “that the first interest rate increase was not expected for ‘at least three years’, and then not until ‘2024 or later’.”
The confident assertion by Lowe and fellow board members proved to be a spectacular howler. “Given the outlook was highly uncertain, the board could have given more consideration to potential upside scenarios, including scenarios that could warrant raising the case rate earlier than anticipated.”
Of late, Lowe has done himself few favours. The RBA has presided over twelve increases in the cash rate; the current benchmark interest rate lies at 4.1%, with promises of further hikes. It is the highest level since April 2012.
In his cold fish style, Lowe has openly suggested that people could “cut back on spending, or in some cases, find additional hours of work, that would put them back into a positive cash flow position.” While social media is not exactly the ideal barometer at the best of times, a collection of remarks is worth noting. “Regardless of if you are left leaning, centre or right, everyone has a reason to hate this guy,” states a certain Chazwazza. Andrew Hughes (if that be his name) suggests that economists brush up on their “EQ courses in what they teach. Because people are those numbers.”
In short, the Reserve Bank, and other central banks vested with such powers, are often there to make lives miserable on the pretext of improving them. The error never lay with the public: they were told to shut up and shut shop for months, avoiding family, friends and life. All that time, government stimulus – for the fortunate – found their way into bank accounts, much of it unspent. The time for inflation was surely bound to come.
The picture of inflation, however, was always going to be more complex. In that regard, the RBA is curiously unimaginative in reading inflationary pressures, showing a continued fixation with wages and labour costs. While rising wages can tease the inflationary demon, what about other sectors of the economy, such as corporate profits? Not so, say a number of business leaders, adamant that companies are being unfairly singled out for embracing the profit motive.
The Australia Institute has a rather different view on this. Through its Centre for Future Work, it published a report in February arguing that 69% of inflation beyond the RBA’s target band of between 2% and 3% could be put down to burgeoning corporate profits. “Rising unit labour costs account for just 18% of that inflation.”
The post-COVID inflation phase, characterised by a decline in real wages, labour share of GDP, and record corporate profits stood in sharp contrast to the 1970s, when the opposite effects were felt. “This historical comparison confirms that fears of a 1970s-style ‘wage price spiral’ are not justified. Instead, inflation in Australia since the pandemic clearly reflects a profit-price dynamic.”
The report, authored by Jim Stanford, did something Lowe obstinately refuses to do: consider the resources sector, Australia’s single most dominant economic performer, as part of its economic analysis. “For the first time, in 2022,” states Stanford, “mining profits accounted for over half of all corporate operating profits in the entire economy.” But in Lowe’s analysis, revealed in his National Press Club address delivered in April, “the share of profits in national income – excluding the resources sector, where prices are set in global markets – has not changed very much over recent times.”
The obvious logic of the Australia Institute irritated the RBA as being a touch cute in its methodological assumptions. Stanford’s paper duly made the rounds in internal discussions. A briefing note from the RBA’s domestic activities and trade section claimed that, “Profits and inflation do not have a direct accounting relationship. To examine the profit-inflation relationship properly, one requires a model and a measure of markups.” Another RBA report, examining web data gathered from 58 firms and 25 million unique items, concluded that “rising prices tend to be associated with lower margins”.
In what could only be seen to be a campaign launched on behalf of big business and its followers, calls for repudiation and recanting followed. Economics academic Richard Holden demanded that the Australia Institute “admit their mistake and retract their so-called analysis.”
There was just one problem with the criticism of Stanford and company. Far from being methodologically unsound, other notable bodies had embraced it. As part of its 2023 Economic Outlook, the OECD, on decomposing the GDP of 15 nations, found “a significant part of the unit profits contribution has stemmed from profits in the energy and agriculture sectors, well above their share of the overall economy, but there have also been increases in profit contributions and manufacturing services.” It also found that “a large part of the higher unit profits contribution originates from mining and utilities, even in commodity-importing economies”
Earlier this month, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, also focused attention on the role played by galloping corporate profits in pushing up inflation. The data on corporate profits, she rued, was simply not as good as it was on wages.
On this score, the economic managers in Australia have revealed themselves as callous and conservative. Bedazzled by the extraction industries and unable to pursue a productive agenda, they continue to wage war on those irritating wage earners who demand absurdly modest increases to keep pace with inflation. As long as Lowe and the RBA are allowed to do it, more harm is in the offing.
While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese talks up the AUKUS deal, opposition is growing among unionists and retired defence officials. Pip Hinman reports.
In the heritage of Indigenous Australians a GOONDEEN is ‘ a father figure; a very wise, smart and respected person, a clever fella who shares his life with others and cares for all. Let me tell you a story that began in 2016 when I accepted with humility an invitation to become GOONDEEN EVERALD. A …
Beneath the outrage around PricewaterhouseCoopers conflict-of-interest allegations lies a decades-old, bitter truth: once government accountability was privatised, it was only ever going to end one way. Suzanne James reports.
Green Left speaks to Clifton D’Rozario, a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation about the rise of the Narendra Modi government in India.
Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest are still at the top the Rich List, their fortunes growing because the mining boom and tax rules favouring the 1%. Joshua Adams reports.
Wiradjuri person Carolyn Ienna is one of just two remaining public housing tenants in a public housing block in Glebe, and she doesn’t want to be forced out. Activists are fighting for her to be able to remain. Jim McIlroy reports.
Boeing signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ST Engineering to outline potential areas of collaboration in systems integration, training, local parts distribution, support and sustainment work for the P-8A Poseidon. Boeing and ST Engineering have identified opportunities to collaborate in a number of areas and will explore these in more detail, including jointly developing […]
Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says Pacific security is about the security of the Pacific peoples and their way of life as identified by Forum Leaders in the Boe Declaration.
Kalsakau said this reaffirmed climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security.
The PM was speaking at the opening of the Pacific Fusion headquarters in Port Vila on Tuesday, alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.
He said Vanuatu, with the world’s first climate change refugees with the relocation in 2005 of 100 villagers in Torba Province, “will always consider climate change its top priority”.
He said climate change is real, an existential threat, impinging on the security and stability of all nations.
“We do not have to look too far to see how the increased intensity of climate change-induced tropical cyclones wreak havoc on the daily lives and livelihoods of our people and set us back years in our development,” said Kalsakau.
He said Vanuatu’s Pacific brothers also faced human security challenges caused by the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (by the US), Mororoa Atoll (France) and Australia (United Kingdom).
‘Our reefs are dying’
“With the effects of global warming and nuclear testing, our ocean is getting warmer, our reefs are dying and fishes are now very scarce.
“Our children and grandchildren are bound to never experience what we’ve enjoyed in our childhood.
“The maintenance and sustenance of our marine resources must be the top priority of our Pacific Leaders.”
Kalsakau said there were other pressing issues such as the Fukushima nuclear waste water discharge and AUKUS.
“I say again that Pacific security is about the security of our Pacific peoples and way of life.
“This is why Vanuatu stood alongside our Pacific brothers and sisters to produce the Rarotonga Treaty. Which brings me to today’s very special occasion.
“The Pacific Fusion Centre is guided by the regional security priorities identified by the Boe Declaration and supports regional decision-making on these shared security priorities,” he said.
The centre, which is funded by Australia and to be run in collaboration with Pacific Forum member states, will aim to provide training and analysis on regional security issues.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
In seeking to justify its decision to enter the AUKUS alliance, the federal government has referred to values shared by the United States and Britain. But are they the values most Australians share, asks Tony Smith?
Chris Slee reviews Yuliya Yurchenko’s book, Ukraine and the Empire of Capital. Published in 2018, it traces Ukraine’s evolution since 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved and Ukraine became independent.
Australian concepts of sovereignty have always been qualified. First came the British settlers and invaders in 1788. They are pregnant with the sovereignty of the British Crown, bringing convicts, the sadistic screws, and forced labour to a garrison of penal experiments and brutality. The native populations are treated as nothing more than spares, opportunistic chances, and fluff of the land, a legal nonsense. In a land deemed empty, sovereignty is eviscerated.
Then comes the next stage of Australia’s development. Imperial outpost, dominion, federation, a commonwealth of anxious creation. But through this, there is never a sense of being totally free, aware, cognisant of sovereignty. Eyes remain fastened on Britain. Just as the sovereignty of the First Nations peoples came to be destroyed internally, the concept of Australian sovereignty externally was never realised in any true sense. If it was not stuck in the bosom of the British Empire, then it was focused on the enormity of the United States, its calorific terrors and nuclear protections.
The testament to Australia’s infantile, and contingent sovereignty, is symbolised by the US Pine Gap facility, which is called, for reasons of domestic courtesy, a joint facility. In truth, Australian politicians can never walk onto its premises and have no say as to its running. The public, to this day, can only have guesses, some admittedly well educated, about what it actually does as an intelligence facility.
Australia’s Defence Minister, Richard Marles, whose views should never be taken at face value, insists that the facility ensures that “Australia and our Five-Eyes partners maintain an ‘intelligence advantage’” while being “truly joint in nature, integrating both Australian and US operations under shard command and control by Australian and US personnel – which I have had an opportunity to see firsthand.” Hardly.
Another example is the annual rotation of US Marines in the Northern Territory. To date, there have been twelve such rotations, carefully worded to give the impression that Australia lacks a US military garrison to the country’s north. In March, Marles claimed that such rotations served to “enhance the capabilities, interoperability, and readiness of the ADF and the United States Marine Corps and is a significant part of the United States Force Posture Initiatives, a hallmark of Australia’s Alliance with the US.”
To therefore have an Australian Prime Minister now talk about sovereign capabilities is irksome, even intellectually belittling. Under Anthony Albanese’s stewardship, and before him Scott Morrison’s, the trilateral security pact known as AUKUS has done more to militarise the Australian continent in favour of US defence interests than any other.
The logistical and practical implications should trouble the good citizens Down Under, and not just because Australia is fast becoming a forward base for US-led operations in the Pacific.
Last month, President Joe Biden revealed his desire to press the US Congress on a significant change: adding Australia as a “domestic source” within the meaning of the Defense Production Act, notably pertaining to Title III. The announcement came out in a joint statement from Biden and his Australian counterpart as part of a third-in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit. It also was something of a taster for the G7 Summit held in Hiroshima on May 20.
Title III of the DPA “provides various financial measures, such as loans, loan guarantees, purchases, and purchase commitments, to improve, expand, and maintain domestic production capabilities needed to support national defense and homeland security procurement requirements.” It makes no mention about the independence of foreign entities or states which might enable this to happen.
A May 20 joint statement from Biden and Albanese welcomed “the progress being made to provide Australia with a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability, and on developing advanced capabilities under the trilateral AUKUS partnership to deter aggression and sustain peace and stability across the Pacific.”
To add Australia as a domestic source “would streamline technological and industrial base collaboration, accelerate and strengthen AUKUS implementation, and build new opportunities for United States investment in the production and purchase of Australian critical minerals, critical technologies, and other strategic sectors.”
As a statement of naked, proprietary interest, this does rather well, not least because it will enable the US to access the Australian minerals market. One prized commodity is lithium, seen as essential to such green technology as electric cars. Given that Australia mines 53% of the world’s supply of lithium, most of which is sold to China to be refined, Washington will have a chance to lock out Beijing by encouraging refinement in Australia proper. With Australia designated as a source domestic to the US, this will be an easy affair.
Washington’s imperial heft over its growingly prized Australian real estate will also be felt in the context of space technology. Australia will become the site of a NASA ground station under the Artemis Accords. Much is made of allowing “the controlled transfer of sensitive US launch technology and data while protecting US technology consistent with US non-proliferation policy, the Missile Technology Control Regime and US export controls.” Congress, however, will have to approve, given the limits imposed on the Technology Safeguards Agreement.
Australia, as a recipient of such technology, will ever be able to assert anything amounting to a sovereign capability over it. As Paul Gregoire points out, the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations makes it clear that information shared with a foreign entity becomes US property and is subject to export restrictions, though the White House may permit it.
In addition to the announcement, there are also moves afoot to involve Japan more extensively in “force posture related activities” as part of the Australia-United States Force Posture Cooperation policy. That’s just what Australia needs: another reminder that its already watered down sovereignty can be diluted into oblivion.
