Australia’s government is being condemned by climate action groups for discouraging the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from ruling in favour of a court action brought by Vanuatu to determine legal consequences for states that fail to meet fossil reduction commitments.
In its submission before the ICJ at The Hague yesterday, Australia argued that climate action obligations under any legal framework should not extend beyond the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.
It has prompted a backlash, with Greenpeace accusing Australia’s government of undermining the court case.
“I’m very disappointed,” said Vepaiamele Trief, a Ni-Van Save the Children Next Generation Youth Ambassador, who is present at The Hague.
“To go to the ICJ and completely go against what we are striving for, is very sad to see.
“As a close neighbour of the Pacific Islands, Australia has a duty to support us.”
RNZ Pacific reports Vanuatu’s special envoy to climate change says their case to the ICJ is based on the argument that those harming the climate are breaking international law.
Special Envoy Ralph Regenvanu told RNZ Morning Report they are not just talking about countries breaking climate law.
Republished from ABC Pacific Beat with permission.
Climate @CIJ_ICJ hearings day 1 recap: called for climate justice, self-determination & accountability talks of climate leadership but argues against binding human rights exposed polluters hiding behind the #ParisAgreement to dodge accountability.https://t.co/PB86XFpwzApic.twitter.com/KI1hOKAM0G
— Center for International Environmental Law (@ciel_tweets) December 3, 2024
A landmark case that began in a Pacific classroom and could change the course of future climate talks is about to be heard in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The court will begin hearings involving a record number of countries in The Hague, in the Netherlands, today.
Its 15 judges have been asked, for the first time, to give an opinion about the obligations of nations to prevent climate change — and the consequences for them if they fail.
The court’s findings could bolster the cases of nations taking legal action against big polluters failing to reduce emissions, experts say.
They could also strengthen the hand of Pacific Island nations in future climate change negotiations like COP.
Vanuatu, one of the world’s most natural disaster-prone nations, is leading the charge in the international court.
The road to the ICJ — nicknamed the “World Court” — started five years ago when a group of University of the South Pacific law students studying in Vanuatu began discussing how they could help bring about climate action.
“This case is really another example of Pacific Island countries being global leaders on the climate crisis,” Dr Wesley Morgan, a research associate with UNSW’s Institute for Climate Risk and Response, said.
“It’s an amazing David and Goliath moment.”
Environmental advocates and lawyers from around the world will come to the International Court of Justice for the court case. Image: CC BY-SA 4.0/ Velvet
Meanwhile, experts say the Pacific will be watching Australia’s testimony today closely.
So what is the court case about exactly, and how did it get to this point?
From classroom to World Court Cynthia Houniuhi, from Solomon Islands, remembers clearly the class discussion where it all began.
Students at the University of the South Pacific’s campus in Vanuatu’s capital, Port Vila, turned their minds to the biggest issue faced by their home countries.
While their communities were dealing with sea level rise and intense cyclones, there was an apparent international “deadlock” on climate change action, Houniuhi said.
And each new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a bleak picture of their futures.
“These things are real to us,” Hounhiuhi said. “And we cannot accept that . . . fate in the IPCC report.
“[We’re] not accepting that there’s nothing we can do.”
Their lecturer tasked them with finding a legal avenue for action. He challenged them to be ambitious. And he told them to take it out of their classroom to their national leaders.
So the students settled on an idea: Ask the World Court to issue an advisory opinion on the obligations of states to protect the climate against greenhouse gas emissions.
“That’s what resonated to us,” Houniuhi, now president of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, said.
Students were motivated to take action after seeing how sea level rise had affected communities across the Pacific. Image: Britt Basel/RNZ Pacific
They sent out letters to Pacific Island governments asking for support and Vanuatu’s then-Foreign Minister Ralph Regenvanu agreed to meet with the students.
Vanuatu took up the cause and built a coalition of countries pushing the UN General Assembly to send the matter to its main judicial body, the International Court of Justice, for an advisory opinion.
In March last year, they succeeded when the UN nations unanimously adopted the resolution to refer the case — a historic first for the UN General Assembly.
Speakers at the UN General Assembly hailed the decision to send the case to the International Court of Justice as a milestone in a decades-long struggle for climate justice. Image: X/@UN
It was a decision celebrated with a parade on the streets of Port Vila.
Australian National University professor in international law Dr Donald Rothwell said Pacific nations had already overcome their biggest challenge in building enough support for the case to be heard.
“From the perspective of Vanuatu and the small island and other states who brought these proceedings, this is quite a momentous occasion, if only because these states rarely have appeared before the International Court of Justice,” he said.
“This is the first occasion where they’ve really had the ability to raise these issues in the World Court, and that in itself will attract an enormous amount of global attention and raise awareness.”
Dr Sue Farran, a professor of comparative law at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom, said getting the case before the ICJ was also part of achieving climate justice.
“It’s recognition that certain peoples have suffered more than others as a result of climate change,” she said.
“And justice means addressing wrongs where people have been harmed.”
A game changer on climate? Nearly 100 countries will speak over two weeks of hearings — an unprecedented number, Professor Rothwell said.
Each has only a short, 30-minute slot to make their argument.
The court will decide on two questions: What are the obligations of states under international law to protect the climate and environment from greenhouse gas emissions?
And, what are the legal consequences for states that have caused significant harm to the climate and environment?
Vanuatu will open the hearings with its testimony.
Regenvanu, now Vanuatu’s special envoy on climate change, said the case was timely in light of the last COP meeting, where financial commitments from rich, polluting nations fell short of the mark for Pacific Islands that needed funding to deal with climate change.
Vanuatu’s climate change envoy Ralph Regenvanu said the ICJ case was about climate justice. Image: Hilaire Bule/RNZ Pacific
For a nation hit with three cyclones last year — and where natural disaster-struck schools have spent months teaching primary students in hot UNICEF tents – the stakes are high in climate negotiations.
“We just graduated from being a least-developed country a few years ago,” Regenvanu said.
“We don’t have the financial capacity to build back better, build back quicker, respond and recover quicker.
“We need the resources that other countries were able to attain and become rich through fossil fuel development that caused this crisis we are now facing.
“That’s why we’re appearing before the ICJ. We want justice in terms of allowing us to have the same capacity to respond quickly after catastrophic events.”
He said the advisory opinion would stop unnecessary debates that bog down climate negotiations, by offering legal clarity on the obligations of states on climate change.
Three cyclones struck Vanuatu in 2023, including Tropical Cyclone Lola, which damaged buildings on Ambrym Island. Image: Sam Tasso/RNZ Pacific
It will also help define controversial terms, such as “climate finance” — which developing nations argue should not include loans.
And while the court’s advisory opinion will be non-binding, it also has the potential to influence climate change litigation around the world.
Dr Rothwell said much would depend on how the court answered the case’s second question – on the consequences for states that failed to take climate action.
He said an opinion that favoured small island nations, like in the Pacific Islands, would let them pursue legal action with more certainty.
“That could possibly open up a battleground for major international litigation into the future, subject to how the [International Court of Justice] answers that question,” he said.
Regenvanu said Vanuatu was already looking at options it could take once the court issues its advisory opinion.
“Basically all options are on the table from litigation on one extreme, to much clearer negotiation tactics, based on what the advisory opinion says, at the forthcoming couple of COPs.”
‘This is hope’ Vanuatu brought the case to the ICJ with the support of a core group of 18 countries, including New Zealand, Germany, Bangladesh and Singapore.
Australia, which co-sponsored the UN resolution sending the case to the ICJ, will also speak at today’s hearings.
“Many will be watching closely, but Vanuatu will be watching more closely than anyone, having led this process,” Dr Morgan said.
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson said Australia had engaged consistently with the court proceedings, reflecting its support for the Pacific’s commitment to strengthening global climate action.
Some countries have expressed misgivings about taking the case to the ICJ.
The United States’ representative at the General Assembly last year argued diplomacy was a better way to address climate change.
And over the two weeks of court hearings this month, it’s expected nations contributing most to greenhouse gases will argue for a narrow reading of their responsibilities to address climate change under international law — one that minimises their obligations.
Other nations will argue that human rights laws and other international agreements — like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — give these nations larger obligations to prevent climate change.
Professor Rothwell said it was hard to predict what conclusion the World Court would reach — and he expected the advisory opinion would not arrive until as late as October next year.
“When we’re looking at 15 judges, when we’re looking at a wide range of legal treaties and conventions upon which the court is being asked to address these questions, it’s really difficult to speculate at this point,” he said.
“We’ll very much just have to wait and see what the outcome is.”
There’s the chance the judges will be split, or they will not issue a strong advisory opinion.
But Regenvanu is drawing hope from a recent finding in a similar case at the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, which found countries are obliged to protect the oceans from climate change impacts.
“It’s given us a great deal of validation that what we will get out of the ICJ will be favourable,” he said.
For Houniuhi, the long journey from the Port Vila classroom five years ago is about to lead finally to the Peace Palace in The Hague, where the ICJ will have its hearings.
Houniuhi said the case would let her and her fellow students have their experiences of climate change reflected at the highest level.
But for her, the court case has another important role.
Despite it being illegal in Australia to recruit soldiers for foreign armies, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) recruiters are hard at work enticing young Australians to join Israel’s army. Michael West Media investigates.
INVESTIGATION:By Yaakov Aharon
The Israeli war machine is in hyperdrive, and it needs new bodies to throw into the fire. In July, The Department of Home Affairs stated that there were only four Australians who had booked flights to Israel and whom it suspected of intending to join the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).
The Australian Border Force intervened with three of the four but clarified that they did not “necessarily prevent them from leaving”.
MWM understands a batch of Australian recruits is due to arrive in Israel in January, and this is not the first batch of recruits to receive assistance as IDF soldiers through this Australian programme.
Many countries encourage certain categories of immigrants and discourage others. However, Israel doesn’t just want Palestinians out and Jews in — they want Jews of fighting age, who will be conscripted shortly after arrival.
The IDF’s “Lone Soldiers” are soldiers who do not have parents living in Israel. Usually, this means 18-year-old immigrants with basic Hebrew who may never have spent longer than a school camp away from home.
There are a range of Israeli government programmes, charities, and community centres that support the Lone Soldiers’ integration into society prior to basic training.
The most robust of these programs is Garin Tzabar, where there are only 90 days between hugging mum and dad goodbye at Sydney Airport and the drill sergeant belting orders in a foreign language.
The Garin Tzabar website. Image: MWM
Garin Tzabar
In 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon asked Minister for Aliyah [Immigration] and Integration, Tzipi Livni, to significantly increase the number of people in the Garin Tzabar programme.
The IDF website states that Garin Tzabar “is a unique project, a collaborative venture of the Meitav Unit in the IDF, the Scout movement, the security-social wing of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Immigration and Absorption, which began in 1991”. (Translated from Hebrew via Google Translate.)
The Meitav Unit is divided into many different branches, most of which are responsible for overseeing new recruits.
Powerful and unique journalism by @yaakov_aharon on a story that receives shamefully little coverage in Australia; the recruitment of Australians to serve in the Israeli military: https://t.co/OdNVzzMEbx
However, the pride of the Meitav Unit is the branch dedicated to recruiting all the unique population groups that are not subject to the draft (eg. Ultra-Orthodox Jews). This branch is then divided into three further Departments.
In a 2020 interview, the Head of Meitav’s Tzabar Department, Lieutenant Noam Delgo, referred to herself as someone who “recruits olim chadishim (new immigrants).” She stated:
“Our main job in the army is to help Garin Tzabar members to recruit . . . The best thing about Garin Tzabar is the mashakyot (commanders). Every time you wake up in the morning you have two amazing soldiers — really intelligent — with pretty high skills, just managing your whole life, teaching you Hebrew, helping you with all the bureaucratic systems in Israel, getting profiles, seeing doctors and getting those documents, and finishing the whole process.”
The contact point for Australian recruits is Shoval Magal, the executive director of Garin Tzabar Australia. The registered address is a building shared by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and the Zionist Council of NSW, the community’s peak bodies in the state.
“Until three months ago, Tali [REDACTED], from Sydney, Australia, and Moises [REDACTED], from Mexico City, were ordinary teenagers. But on December 25, they arrived at their new family here in Israel — the “Garin Tzabar” family, and in a moment, they will become soldiers. In a special project, we accompanied them from the day of admission (to the program) until just before the recruitment.“ (Translated from Hebrew via Google Translate).
Michael Manhaim was the executive director of Garin Tzabar Australia from 2018 to 2023. He wrote an article, “Becoming a Lone Soldier”,’ for the 2021 annual newsletter of Betar Australia, a Zionist youth group for children. In the article, Manhaim writes:
“The programme starts with the unique preparation process in Australia.
. . . It only takes one step; you just need to choose which foot will lead the way. We will be there for the rest.”
A criminal activity MWM is not alleging that any of the parties mentioned in this article have broken the law. It is not a crime if a person chooses to join a foreign army.
A person commits an offence if the person recruits, in Australia, another person to serve in any capacity in or with an armed force in a foreign country.
It is a further offence to facilitate or promote recruitment for a foreign army and to publish recruitment materials. This includes advertising information relating to how a person may serve in a foreign army.
The maximum penalty for each offence is 10 years.
Rawan Arraf, executive director of the Australian Centre for International Justice, said:
“Unless there has been a specific declaration stating it is not an offence to recruit for the Israel Defence Force, recruitment to a foreign armed force is a criminal offence under Australian law, and the Australian Federal Police should be investigating anyone allegedly involved in recruitment for a foreign armed force.”
Army needing ‘new flesh’ If the IDF are to keep the war on Gaza going, they need to fill old suits of body armour with new grunts.
Reports indicate the death toll within IDF’s ranks is unprecedented — a suicide epidemic is claiming further lives on the home front, and reservists are refusing in droves to return to active duty.
In October, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid accused Bibi Netanyahu of obscuring the facts of Israel’s casualty rate. Any national security story published in Israel must first be approved by the intelligence unit at the Military Censor.
“11,000 soldiers were injured and 890 others killed,” Lapid said, without warning and live on air. There are limits to how much we accept the alternative facts”.
In November 2023, Shoval Magal shared a photo in which she is posing alongside six young Australians, saying, “The participants are eager to have Aliya (immigrate) to Israel, start the programme and join the army”.
These six recruits are the attendees of just one of several seminars that Magal has organised in Melbourne for the summer 2023 cycle, having also organised separate events across cities in Australia.
Magal’s June 2024 newsletter said she was “in the advanced stages of the preparation phase in Australia for the August 2024 Garin”. Most recently, in October 2024, she was “getting ready for Garin Tzabar’s 2024 December cycle.”
Magal’s newsletter for Israeli Scouts in Australia ‘Aliyah Events – November 2024’. Image: MWM
There are five “Aliyah (Immigration) Events” in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. The sponsoring organisations are Garin Tzabar, the Israeli Ministry for Aliyah (Immigration) and Integration, and a who’s who of the Jewish-Australian community.
The star speaker at each event is Alon Katz, an Australian who joined Garin Tzabar in 2018 and is today a reserve IDF soldier. The second speaker, Colonel Golan Vach, was the subject of two Electronic Intifadainvestigations alleging that he had invented the 40 burned babies lie on October 7 to create a motive for Israel’s onslaught in Gaza.
If any Australian signed the papers to become an IDF recruit at these events, is someone liable for the offence of recruiting them to a foreign army?
MWM reached out for comment to Garin Tzabar Australia and the Zionist Federation of Australia to clarify whether the IDF is recruiting in Australia but did not receive a reply.
Yaakov Aharon is a Jewish-Australian journalist living in Wollongong. He enjoys long walks on Wollongong Beach, unimpeded by Port Kembla smoke fumes and AUKUS submarines. First published by Michael West Media and republished with permission.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
The Australian Department of Defence (DoD) has selected Dutch marine company Damen Shipyards Group’s Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST 100) design to address the Australian Army’s littoral operations-focussed Landing Craft Heavy requirement. “The Damen Shipyards Group’s Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST100) will provide a capability which is essential to the restructure and re-posture of the […]
The position of a state broadcaster, one funded directly by taxpayers from a particular country, places it in a delicate position. The risk of alignment with the views of the day, as dictated by one class over another; the danger that one political position will somehow find more air than another, is ever present. The pursuit of objectivity can itself become a distorting dogma.
Like its counterpart in the United Kingdom, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation can count itself lucky to be given a place of such dominance in the media market. None of that gimmickry to boost subscriber numbers. No need for annual, or half-yearly fund drives.
Why, then, did the ABC chairman, Kim Williams, do it? And by doing it, this involved attacking US-based podcaster Joe Rogan in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra, a foolish, bumbling excursion into the realms of broadcasting and podcasting the ABC might do well to learn from.
In the question session, when asked about the influence of Rogan (“the world’s most influential podcaster”, sighs the ABC journalist), Williams shows little interest in analysis. Rather than understanding the scope of his appeal, one that drew Donald Trump to the microphone in a meandering conversational epic of waffle and disclosure lasting three hours, he “personally” found “it deeply repulsive, and to think that someone has such remarkable power in the United States is something that I look at in disbelief.” He further felt a sense of “dismay that this can be a source of public entertainment when it’s really treating the public as plunder for purposes that are really quite malevolent.”
Williams makes a point of juxtaposing the weak, impressionable consumer of news – one who will evidently be set straight by the likes of his network – and those of Rogan and his tribe of entrepreneurial podcasting fantasists who “prey on all the elements that contribute to uncertainty in society”, suggesting that “conspiracy outcomes” are merely “a normal part of social narrative”.
It is worth noting here that Williams is a former chief executive of an organisation that loved (and still loves) preying on anxieties, testing the waters of fear, and pushing absurdly demagogic narratives in boosting readership and subscriptions. That most unscrupulous outfit is a certain News Corp, its imperishable tycoon Rupert Murdoch still clinging to the pulpit with savage commitment.
Once Williams crossed the commercial river to become ABC chair, he had something of a peace-loving conversion, all part of a festival of inclusivity that has proven tedious and meretricious. The public broadcaster, he said in June this year, should become “national campfire” to enable a greater understanding of Australia’s diverse communities.
It did not take long for the Williams show of snark to make its way to Rogan Land and his defenders, notably Elon Musk, who spent time with Rogan in the lead-up to November’s US presidential election spruiking the credentials of Trump. Showing how Williams had exposed his flank, and that of the organisation he leads, the tech oligarch, relevantly the director of X Corp (formerly Twitter), was bound to say something given his ongoing skirmishes with Australian regulators and lawmakers in their efforts to regulate access to social media.
From such infantilising bureaucrats as eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant to the spluttering Williams who bemoans the “Joe Rogan effect”, Musk is being given, rather remarkably, a whitewash of respectability. Their efforts to protect Australians from any prospect of being offended, mentally corrupted, unduly influenced and one might even say being excited, is of such an order as to beggar belief. With little imagination, Musk retorted with boring predictability: “From the head of Australian government-funded media, their Pravda.”
Williams remains truly dumbfounded by this. “You make a comment in response to a legitimate question from a journalist, you answer it concisely and give an honest answer in terms of what your own perception of what [Rogan] is and suddenly I get this huge pile-on from people in the most aggressive way”. Accusations include having “a warped outlook on the world”, being “an embarrassment” and showing signs of being “unhinged”. Ignorance would be the better distillation here.
There is something to be said about Williams being hermetic to media forms that have prevented him from getting to the national campfire he championed. He speaks of communities and users as vague constructions rather than accessible groups. He also ignores, for instance, that Rogan was open to allowing Trump’s opponent, the Democrat contender, Kamala Harris, to come onto his program conducted in his Texas podcast studio during the campaign. This offer was eventually withdrawn given the conditions Harris, ever terrified by unscripted formats and lengthy interviews, demanded Rogan follow. The strategists and handlers had to have their say, and for their role and for Harris’s caution, she paid a price.
For a man with a News Corp pedigree and one no doubt familiar with the Murdoch Empire’s creepy techniques of influence and seduction exercised over the electorates and political processes of other countries – the United States, the UK and Australia immediately come to mind – Williams has shown himself the media iteration of a bamboozled, charmless Colonel Blimp.
Williams might best focus on the problems at his own broadcaster, the organisation the Australians call Auntie. It boasts, constantly, that it is the place where “news” can be found, but more importantly, “news you can trust”. But the current iteration of news remains bland, benign and pitifully regulated. It is clear what the talking points are when it comes to reporting on such areas of the world as the Middle East. Killings by the Israeli Defence Forces, even if they do involve the liquidation of whole buildings and villagers, are never massacres but measures of overzealous self-defence. Hamas and Hezbollah, being Israel’s adversaries, are always prefaced as indulgent terrorists. The list goes on, and, it would seem, the problems Williams is facing.
Despite Australia’s draconian anti-protest laws, the world’s biggest coal port was closed for four hours at the weekend with 170 protesters being charged — but climate demonstrations will continue. Twenty further arrests were made at a protest at the Federal Parliament yesterday.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Wendy Bacon
Newcastle port, the world’s biggest coal port, was closed for four hours on Sunday when hundreds of Rising Tide protesters in kayaks refused to leave its shipping channel.
Over two days of protest at the Australian port, 170 protesters have been charged. Some others who entered the channel were arrested but released without charge. Hundreds more took to the water in support.
Thousands on the beach chanted, danced and created a huge human sign demanding “no new coal and gas” projects.
Rising Tide is campaigning for a 78 percent tax on fossil fuel profits to be used for a “just transition” for workers and communities, including in the Hunter Valley, where the Albanese government has approved three massive new coal mine extensions since 2022.
Protest size triples to 7000 The NSW Labor government made two court attempts to block the protest from going ahead. But the 10-day Rising Tide protest tripled in size from 2023 with 7000 people participating so far and more people arrested in civil disobedience actions than last year.
The “protestival” continued in Newcastle on Monday, and a new wave started in Canberra at the Australian Parliament yesterday with more than 20 arrests. Rising Tide staged an overnight occupation of the lawn outside Parliament House and a demonstration at which they demanded to meet with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
News of the “protestival” has spread around the world, with campaigners in Rotterdam in The Netherlands blocking a coal train in solidarity with this year’s Rising Tide protest.
Of those arrested, 138 have been charged under S214A of the NSW Crimes Act for disrupting a major facility, which carries up to two years in prison and $22,000 maximum fines. This section is part of the NSW government regime of “anti-protest” laws designed to deter movements such as Rising Tide.
The rest of the protesters have been charged under the Marine Safety Act which police used against 109 protesters arrested last year.
Even if found guilty, these people are likely to only receive minor penalties.Those arrested in 2023 mostly received small fines, good behaviour bonds and had no conviction recorded.
On Sunday I was arrested for blockading the world’s largest coal port, and now I am here in Canberra, to voice the anger of my generation.
I wrote to @AlboMP weeks ago inviting him to stand here today, on these lawns, and explain himself to the young people of Australia. pic.twitter.com/QgxjTApS92
Executive gives the bird to judiciary The use of the Crimes Act will focus more attention on the anti-protest laws which the NSW government has been extending and strengthening in recent weeks. The NSW Supreme Court has already found the laws to be partly unconstitutional but despite huge opposition from civil society and human rights organisations, the NSW government has not reformed them.
Two protesters were targeted for special treatment: Naomi Hodgson, a key Rising Tide organiser, and Andrew George, who has previous protest convictions.
George was led into court in handcuffs on Monday morning but was released on bail on condition that he not return to the port area. Hodgson also has a record of peaceful protest. She is one of the Rising Tide leaders who have always stressed the importance of safe and peaceful action.
The police prosecutor argued that she should remain in custody. The magistrate released her with the extraordinary requirement that she report to police daily and not go nearer than 2 km from the port.
Planning for this year’s protest has been underway for 12 months, with groups forming in Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra Sydney and the Northern Rivers, as well as Newcastle. There was an intensive programme of meetings and briefings of potential participants on the motivation for protesting, principles of civil disobedience and the experience of being arrested.
Those who attended last year recruited a whole new cohort of protesters.
Last year, the NSW police authorised a protest involved a 48-hour blockade which protesters extended by two hours. Earlier this year, a similar application was made by Rising Tide.
The first indication that the police would refuse to authorise a protest came earlier this month when the NSW police successfully applied to the NSW Supreme Court for the protest to be declared “an unauthorised protest.”
But Justice Desmond Fagan also made it clear that Rising Tide had a “responsible approach to on-water safety” and that he was not giving a direction that the protest should be terminated. Newcastle Council agreed that Rising Tide could camp at Horseshoe Bay.
People got the power! Eye witnesses say 24 protestors were arrested for protesting at parliament today, demanding the Albanese Government stop new coal. pic.twitter.com/ueNjHogzWZ
Minns’ bid to crush protest The Minns government showed that its goal was to crush the protest altogether when the Minister for Transport Jo Haylen declared a blanket 97-hour exclusion zone making it unlawful to enter the Hunter River mouth and beaches under the Marine Safety Act last week.
On Friday, Rising Tide organiser and 2020 Newcastle Young Citizen of the year, Alexa Stuart took successful action in the Supreme Court to have the exclusion zone declared an invalid use of power.
An hour before the exclusion zone was due to come into effect at 5 pm, the Rising Tide flotilla had been launched off Horseshoe Bay. At 4 pm, Supreme Court Justice Sarah McNaughton quashed the exclusion zone notice, declaring that it was an invalid use of power under the Marine Safety Act because the object of the Act is to facilitate events, not to stop them from happening altogether.
When news of the judge’s decision reached the beach, a big cheer erupted. The drama-packed weekend was off to a good start.
Friday morning began with a First Nations welcome and speeches and a SchoolStrike4Climate protest. Kayakers held their position on the harbour with an overnight vigil on Friday night.
On Saturday, Midnight Oil front singer Peter Garrett, who served as Environment Minister in a previous Labor government, performed in support of Rising Tide protest. He expressed his concern about government overreach in policing protests, especially in the light of all the evidence of the impacts of climate change.
Ships continued to go through the channel, protected by the NSW police. When kayakers entered the channel while it was empty, nine were arrested.
84-year-old great-gran arrested, not charged By late Saturday, three had been charged, and the other six were towed back to the beach. This included June Norman, an 84-year-old great-grandmother from Queensland, who entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience.
The 84-year-old protester Jane Norman . . . entered the shipping channel at least six times over the weekend in peaceful acts of civil disobedience. Image: Wendy Bacon/MWM
She told MWM that she felt a duty to act to protect her own grandchildren and all other children due to a failure by the Albanese and other governments to take action on climate change. The police repeatedly declined to charge her.
On Sunday morning a decision was made for kayakers “to take the channel”. At about 10.15, a coal boat, turned away before entering the port.
Port closed, job done Although the period of stoppage was shorter than last year, civil disobedience had now achieved what the authorised protest achieved last year. The port was officially closed and remained so for four hours.
By now, 60 people had been charged and far more police resources expended than in 2023, including hours of police helicopters and drones.
On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of kayakers again occupied the channel. A ship was due. Now in a massive display of force involving scores of police in black rubber zodiacs, police on jet skis, and a huge police launch, kayakers were either arrested or herded back from the channel.
When the channel was clear, a huge ship then came through the channel, signalling the reopening of the port.
On Monday night, ABC National News reported that protesters were within metres of the ship. MWM closely observed the events. When the ship began to move towards the harbour, all kayaks were inside the buoys marking the channel. Police occupied the area between the protesters and the ship. No kayaker moved forward.
A powerful visual message had been sent that the forces of the NSW state would be used to defend the interests of the big coal companies such as Whitehaven and Glencore rather than the NSW public.
By now police on horses were on the beach and watched as small squads of police marched through the crowd grabbing paddles. A little later this reporter was carrying a paddle through a car park well off the beach when a constable roughly seized it without warning from my hand.
When asked, Constable Pacey explained that I had breached the peace by being on water. I had not entered the water over the weekend.
Kids arrested too, in mass civil disobedience Those charged included 14 people under 18. After being released, they marched chanting back into the camp. A 16-year-old Newcastle student, Niamh Cush, told a crowd of fellow protesters before her arrest that as a young person, she would rather not be arrested but that the betrayal of the Albanese government left her with no choice.
“I’m here to voice the anger of my generation. The Albanese government claims they’re taking climate change seriously but they are completely and utterly failing us by approving polluting new coal and gas mines. See you out on the water today to block the coal ships!”
Each of those who chose to get arrested has their own story. They include environmental scientists, engineers, TAFE teachers, students, nurses and doctors, hospitality and retail workers, designers and media workers, activists who have retired, unionists, a mediator and a coal miner.
They came from across Australia — more than 200 came from Adelaide alone — and from many different backgrounds.
Behind those arrested stand volunteer groups of legal observers, arrestee support, lawyers, community care workers and a media team. Beside them stand hundreds of other volunteers who have cleaned portaloos, prepared three meals a day, washed dishes, welcomed and registered participants, organised camping spots and acted as marshals at pedestrian crossings.
Each and every one of them is playing an essential role in this campaign of mass civil disobedience.
Many participants said this huge collaborative effort is what inspired them and gave them hope, as much as did the protest itself.
Threat to democracy Today, the president of NSW Civil Liberties, Tim Roberts, said, “Paddling a kayak in the Port of Newcastle is not an offence, people do it every day safely without hundreds of police officers.
“A decision was made to protect the safe passage of the vessels over the protection of people exercising their democratic rights to protest.
“We are living in extraordinary times. Our democracy will not irrevocably be damaged in one fell swoop — it will be a slow bleed, a death by a thousand tranches of repressive legislation, and by thousands of arrests of people standing up in defence of their civil liberties.”
Australian Institute research shows that most Australians agree with the Council for Civil Liberties — with 71 percent polled, including a majority of all parties, believing that the right to protest should be enshrined in Federal legislation. It also included a majority across all ages and political parties.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is a fear of accelerating mass civil disobedience in the face of a climate crisis that frightens both the Federal and State governments and the police.
As temperatures rise Many of those protesting have already been directly affected by climbing temperatures in sweltering suburbs, raging bushfires and intense smoke, roaring floods and a loss of housing that has not been replaced, devastated forests, polluting coal mines and gas fields or rising seas in the Torres Strait in Northern Australia and Pacific Island countries.
Others have become profoundly concerned as they come to grips with climate science predictions and public health warnings.
In these circumstances, and as long as governments continue to enable the fossil fuel industry by approving more coal and gas projects that will add to the climate crisis, the number of people who decide they are morally obliged to take civil disobedience action will grow.
Rather than being impressed by politicians who cast them as disrupters, they will heed the call of Pacific leaders who this week declared the COP29 talks to be a “catastrophic failure” exposing their people to “escalating risks”.
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a Rising Tide supporter, and is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.
Introduction The Asia-Pacific region presents some of the world’s most diverse and challenging terrains—from Indonesia’s sprawling archipelagos and Southeast Asia’s dense jungles to the Himalayas’ rugged peaks and Australia’s arid deserts. Maintaining reliable and secure communications across such remote landscapes has always been a formidable challenge. Spectra Group’s SlingShot™, a groundbreaking satellite radio communications system, […]
Australian defence budget is at a record high, but how that money will be spent, and on what, still provides challenges. Australia announced its 2024/25 federal budget in mid-May, allocating a record $36.8 billion (A$55.7 billion) to defence. The figure represented a 6.3 percent increase from last year, and included $11 billion (A$16.7 billion) for […]
The Australian government is being run ragged in various quarters. When ragged, such a beast is bound to seek a distraction. And what better than finding a vulnerable group, preferably children, to feel outraged and noble about?
The Albanese government, armed such problematic instruments as South Australia’s Children (Social Media Safety) Bill 2024, which will fine social media companies refusing to exclude children under the age of 14 from using their platforms, and a report by former High Court Chief Justice Robert French on the feasibility of such a move, is confident of restricting the use of social media by children across the country by imposing an age limit.
On November 21, the government boastfully declared in a media release that it had officially “introduced world-leading legislation to enforce a minimum age of 16 years for social media.” The proposed legislation, known as the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024, is supposedly going to “deliver greater protections for young Australians during critical stages of their development.”
The proposed legislation made something of an international splash. NBC News, for instance, called the bill “one of the toughest in the world”, failing to note its absence of muscle. To that end, it remains thin on detail.
These laws constitute yet another effort to concentrate power and responsibilities best held by the citizenry in the hands of a bureaucratic-political class governed by paranoia and procedure. They are also intended to place the onus on social media platforms to place restrictions upon those under 16 years of age from having accounts.
The government openly admits as much, seemingly treating parents as irresponsible and weak (their consent in this is irrelevant), and children as permanently threatened by spoliation. “The law places the onus on social media platforms – not parents or young people – to take reasonable steps to ensure these protections are in place.” If the platforms do not comply, they risk fines of up to A$49.5 million.
As for the contentious matter of privacy, the prime minister and his communications minister are adamant. “It will contain robust privacy provisions, including requiring the platforms to ringfence and destroy any information collected to safeguard the personal information of all Australians.”
The drafters of the bill have also taken liberties on what is deemed appropriate to access. As the media release mentions, Australia’s youth will still “have continued access to messaging and online gaming, as well as access to services which are health and education related, like Headspace, Kids Helpline, and Google Classroom, and YouTube.”
This daft regime is based on the premise it will survive circumvention. Children, through guile and instinctive perseverance, will always find a way to access forbidden fruit. Indeed, as the Digital Industry Group Inc says, this “20th Century response to 21st Century challenges” may well steer children into “dangerous, unregulated parts of the internet”.
In May, documents uncovered under Freedom of Information by Guardian Australia identified that government wonks in the communications department were wondering if such a scheme was even viable. A document casting a sceptical eye over the use of age assurance technology was unequivocal: “No countries have implemented an age verification mandate without issue.”
Legal challenges have been launched in France and Germany against such measures. Circumvention has become a feature in various US states doing the same, using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs).
While this proposed legislation will prove ineffectual in achieving its intended purpose – here, protecting the prelapsarian state of childhood from ruin at the hands of wicked digital platforms – it will also leave the apparatus of hefty regulation. One can hardly take remarks coming from the absurdly named office of the eSafety Commissioner, currently occupied by the authoritarian-minded Julie Inman Grant, seriously in stating that “regulators like eSafety have to be nimble.” Restrictions, prohibitions, bans and censorship regimes are, in their implementation, never nimble.
For all that, even Inman Grant has reservations about some of the government’s assumptions, notably on the alleged link between social media and mental harm. The evidence for such a claim, she told BBC Radio 5 Live, “is not settled at all”. Indeed, certain vulnerable groups – she mentions LGBTQ+ and First Nations cohorts in particular – “feel more themselves online than they do in the real world”. Why not, she suggests, teach children to use online platforms more safely? Children, she analogises, should be taught how to swim, rather than being banned from swimming itself. Instruct the young to swim; don’t ringfence the sea.
Rather appositely, Lucas Lane, at 15 something of an entrepreneur selling boys nail polish via the online business Glossy Boys, told the BBC that the proposed ban “destroys… my friendships and the ability to make people feel seen.”
Already holed without even getting out of port, this bill will serve another, insidious purpose. While easily dismissed as having a stunted moral conscience, Elon Musk, who owns X Corp, is hard to fault in having certain suspicions about these draft rules. “Seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians,” he wrote to a post from Albanese. One, unfortunately, among several.
There is something enormously satisfying about seeing those in the war racket worry that their assumptions on conflict have been upended. There they were, happily funding, planning and preparing to battle against threats imagined or otherwise, and there comes Donald Trump, malice and petulance combined, to pull the rug from under them again.
What is fascinating about the return of Trump to the White House is that critics think his next round of potentially rowdy occupancy is going to encourage, rather than discourage war. Conflict may be the inadvertent consequence of any number of unilateral policies Trump might pursue, but they do not tally with his anti-war platform. Whatever can be said about his adolescent demagogic tendencies, a love of war is curiously absent from the complement. A tendency to predictable unpredictability, however, is.
The whole assessment also utterly misunderstands the premise that the foolishly menacing trilateral alliance of AUKUS is, by its nature, a pact for the making of war. This agreement between Australia, the UK and the US can hardly be dignified as some peaceful, unprovocative enterprise fashioned to preserve security. To that end, President Joe Biden should shoulder a considerable amount of the blame for destabilising the region. But instead, we are getting some rather streaky commentary from the security wonks in Australia. Trump spells, in the pessimistic words of Nick Bisley from La Trobe University, “uncertainty about just what direction the US will go”. His policies might, for instance, “badly destabilise Asia” and imperil the AUKUS, specifically on the provision of nuclear-powered submarines to the Royal Australian Navy. On the last point, we can only hope.
The Australians, being willing and unquestioning satellites of US power, have tried to pretend that a change of the guard in the White House will not doom the pact. Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed a “great deal of confidence” that things would not change under the new administration, seeing as AUKUS enjoyed bipartisan support.
Australia’s ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, is also of the view that AUKUS will survive into the Trump administration as it “strengthens all three countries’ ability to deter threats, and it grows the defence industrial base and creates jobs in all three countries”.
Another former ambassador to Washington, Arthur Sinodinos, who also occupies the role of AUKUS forum co-chair, has pitched the viability of the trilateral pact in such a way as to make it more appealing to Trump. Without any trace of humour, he suggests that tech oligarch Elon Musk oversee matters if needed. “If Musk can deliver AUKUS, we should put Musk in charge of AUKUS, and I’m not joking, if new thinking is needed to get this done,” advises the deluded Sinodinos.
The reasoning offered on this is, to put it mildly, peculiar. As co-head of the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, Musk, it is hoped, will apply “business principles” and “new thinking”. If the Pentagon can “reform supply chains, logistics, procurement rules, in a way that means there’s speed to market, we get minimum viable capability sooner, rather than later”.
These doltish assessments from Sinodinos are blatantly ignorant of the fact the defence industry is never efficient. Nor do they detract from the key premise of the arrangements. Certainly, if an anti-China focus is what you are focusing on – and AUKUS, centrally and evidently, is an anti-China agreement pure and simple – there would be little reason for Trump to tinker with its central tenets. For one, he is hankering for an even deeper trade war with Beijing. Why not also harry the Chinese with a provocative instrument, daft as it is, that entails militarising Australia and garrisoning it for any future conflict that might arise?
Whatever the case, AUKUS has always been contingent on the interests of one power. Congress has long signalled that US defence interests come first, including whether Australia should receive any Virginian class submarines to begin with. Trump would hardly disagree here. “Trump’s decisions at each phase of AUKUS cooperation will be shaped by zero-sum balance sheets of US interest,” suggests Alice Nason of the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre rather tritely.
If Trump be so transactional, he has an excellent example of a country utterly willing to give everything to US security, thereby improving the deal from the side of Washington’s military-industrial complex. If there was one lingering, pathological complaint he had about Washington’s NATO allies, it was always that they were not doing enough to ease the burdens of US defence. They stalled on defence budgets; they quibbled on various targets on recruitment.
This can hardly be said of Canberra. Australia’s government has abandoned all pretence of resistance, measure or judgment, outrageously willing to underwrite the US imperium in any of its needs in countering China, raiding the treasury of taxpayer funds to the tune of a figure that will, eventually, exceed A$368 billion. Rudd openly acknowledges that Australian money is directly “investing into the US submarine industrial base to expand the capacity of their shipyards.” It would be silly to prevent this continuing windfall. It may well be that aspect that ends up convincing Trump that AUKUS is worth keeping. Why get rid of willing servitors of such dim tendency when they are so willing to please you with cash and compliments?
The Australian Ministry of Defense announced that the Army has taken received the first delivery of M1A2 SEPv3 Abrams Main Battle Tanks from General Dynamics Land Systems. The M1A2 SEPv3 is the most recent iteration of the Abrams MBT developed for the US Army. These forty-six tanks are the initial batch of seventy-five that were […]
Spectra Group, the specialist provider of secure voice, data and satellite communications systems is proud to announce the launch of Spectra Group (Australia) at MilCIS 2024 (12-14 Nov) which will be in booth B24 at the National Convention Centre, Canberra. This marks a significant expansion for Spectra Group as it enhances its ability to serve […]
Australia will conduct a series of hypersonic vehicle tests with its AUKUS partners under a new agreement designed to accelerate the development of the dual-use technology. The agreement, announced on Tuesday, will see Australia work with the United State and United Kingdom on as many as six “trilateral flight test campaigns” at a cost of…
An alleged plot involving firearms and threatening the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in Papua this year is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police.
The case involves “advancing a political cause by the separation of West Papua from Indonesia . . . with the intention of coercing by intimidation the governments of New Zealand and Indonesia”.
Named in the AFP search warrant seen by MWM is research scholar Julian King, 63, who has studied and written extensively about West Papuan affairs.
He has told others his home in Coffs Harbour, Queensland, was raided violently earlier this month by police using a stun grenade and smashing a door.
During the search, the police seized phones, computers and documents about alleged contacts with the West Papua rebel group Organisasi Papua Merdeka, OPM (Free Papua Organisation) and a bid to seek weapons and ammunition.
However, no arrests are understood to have been made or charges laid.
King, a former geologist and now a PhD student at Wollongong University, has been studying Papuan reaction to the Indonesian takeover since 1963. He has written in a research paper titled “A soul divided: The UN’s misconduct over West Papua” that West Papuans:
‘live under a military dictatorship described by legal scholars and human rights advocates as systemic terror and alleged genocide.’
Also named in the warrant alongside King is Amatus Dounemee Douw, confirmed by MWM contacts to be Australian citizen Akouboo Amatus Douw, who chairs the West Papua Diplomatic and Foreign Affairs Council, an NGO that states it seeks to settle disputes peacefully.
Risk to Australia-Indonesia relations The allegations threaten to fragment relations between Indonesia and Australia.
It is widely believed that human rights activists and church organisations are helping Papuan dissidents despite Canberra’s regular insistence that it officially backs Jakarta.
Earlier this year, Deputy PM Richard Marles publicly stressed: “We, Australia, fully recognise Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty. We do not endorse any independence movement.”
When seized by armed OPM pro-independence fighters in February last year, Mehrtens was flying a light plane for an Indonesian transport company.
He was released unharmed in September after being held for 593 days by the West Papua National Liberation Army (Tentara Pembebasan Nasional Papua Barat – TPNPB), the military wing of the OPM.
AFP is investigating alleged firearms plot which threatened the life of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens when held hostage in West Papua this year #auspolhttps://t.co/8ZXFIB1fre
Designated ‘terrorist’ group, journalists banned OPM is designated as a terrorist organisation in Indonesia but isn’t on the Australian list of proscribed groups. Jakarta bans foreign journalists from Papua, so little impartial information is reported.
After Mehrtens was freed, TPNPB spokesman Sebby Sambom alleged that a local politician had paid a bribe, a charge denied by the NZ government.
However, West Papua Action Aotearoa spokesperson Catherine Delahunty told Radio NZ the bribe was “an internal political situation that has nothing to do with our government’s negotiations.”
Sambom, who has spent time in Indonesian jails for taking part in demonstrations, now operates out of adjacent Papua New Guinea — a separate independent country.
Australia was largely absent from the talks to free Mehrtens that were handled by NZ diplomats and the Indonesian military. The AFP’s current involvement raises the worry that information garnered under the search warrants will show the Indonesian government where the Kiwi was hidden so that locations can be attacked from the air.
At one stage during his captivity, Mehrtens appealed to the Indonesian military not to bomb villages.
It is believed Mehrtens was held in Nduga, a district with the lowest development index in the Republic, a measure of how citizens can access education, health, and income. Yet Papua is the richest province in the archipelago — the Grasberg mine is the world’s biggest deposit of gold and copper.
OPM was founded in December 1963 as a spiritual movement rejecting development while blending traditional and Christian beliefs. It then started working with international human rights agencies for support.
Indigenous Papuans are mainly Christian, while almost 90 percent of Indonesians follow Islam.
Chief independence lobbyist Benny Wenda lives in exile in Oxford. In 2003 he was given political asylum by the UK government after fleeing from an Indonesian jail. He has addressed the UN and European and British Parliaments, but Jakarta has so far resisted international pressure to allow any form of self-determination.
Questions for new President Prabowo Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto is in the UK this week, where Papuans have been drumming up opposition to the official visit. In a statement, Wenda said:
‘Prabowo has also restarted the transmigration settlement programme that has made us a minority in our own land.’
“For West Papuans, the ghost of (second president) Suharto has returned — (his) New Order regime still exists, it has just changed its clothes.”
Pleas for recognition of Papuan’s concerns get minimal backing in Indonesia; fears of balkanisation and Western nations taking over a splintered country are well entrenched in the 17,000-island archipelago of 1300 ethnic groups where “unity” is considered the Republic’s foundation stone.
Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia. He has been an occasional contributor to Asia Pacific Report and this article was first published by Michael West Media.
Two more United Nations committee resolutions. Both concerning the conduct of Israel past and current. While disease, hunger and death continue to stalk the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank remains under the thick thumb of occupation, deliberations in foreign fora continue to take place about how to address this hideous state of affairs. While these international matters can often seem like insipid gestures marked by ineffectual chatter, they are increasingly bulking a file that is making Israel more isolated than ever. And this is not an isolation of virtue or admiration.
On November 13, the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) of the UN approved two resolutions. The first focused on requesting that Israel assume responsibility for prompt and adequate compensation to Lebanon and any associated countries, including Syria, affected by an oil slick on their shores arising from the destruction of storage tanks near the Lebanese Jiyah electric power plant. The strike took place in July 2006 during Israel’s previous war against Hezbollah, resulting in, to quote the words of Lebanon’s then Environment Ministry director general Berge Hatjian, “a catastrophe of the highest order for a country as small as Lebanon”. According to Lebanon’s UN representative, the damage arising from the oil spill had hampered the country’s efforts to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Israel’s representative gruffly rejected the premise of the resolution, which received 160 votes in its favour, citing the usual argument that it has been unfairly targeted. Other current adversaries – here, the Houthis, who had been attacking ships in international waters – had been left unscrutinised by the committee. The issue of environmental damage had been appropriated “as a political weapon against Israel”.
The second resolution, introduced by the Ugandan representative, was of particular interest to the Palestinians. Entitled “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources”, it expressed pointed concerns about Israel’s continued efforts to exercise, with brute force, control over the territories. There was concern for “the exploitation by Israel, the occupying Power, of the natural resources of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967”. Ditto the “extensive destruction by Israel […] of agricultural land and orchards in the Occupied Territory” and “widespread destruction” inflicted upon “vital infrastructure, including water pipelines, sewage networks and electricity networks” in those territories.
Concerns also abounded about unexploded ordnance, a situation that despoiled the environment while hampering reconstruction, and the “chronic energy shortage in the Gaza Strip and its detrimental impact on the operation of water and sanitation facilities”. The Israeli settlements come in for special mention, given their “detrimental impact on Palestinian and other Arab natural resources, especially as a result of the confiscation of land and the forced diversion of water resources, including the destruction of orchards and crops and the seizure of the water wells by Israeli settlers, and the dire socioeconomic consequences in this regard”.
There are also stern remarks about needing to respect and preserve “the territory unity, contiguity and integrity of all Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”, a situation increasingly compromised by the rampant, unchecked zealotry of thuggish Israeli settlers, emboldened by lawmakers and authorities.
The vote on this occasion – 158 in favour – was unusual for featuring a number of countries that would normally be more guarded in adding their names, notably in the context of Palestinian sovereignty. Their mantra is that backing an initiative openly favouring Palestinian self-determination over any specific subject would do little to advance the broader goals of the peace process in the absence of Israeli participation.
Australia, for instance, backed the resolution, despite opposition from the United States and Canada. It marked the first time the country had favoured a “permanent sovereignty” resolution since being introduced in a resolution. This was done despite disappointment by the Australian delegation that the resolution made no reference to other participants in the conflict such as Hezbollah. A spokesperson for Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong stated that the vote reflected international concerns about Israel’s “ongoing settlement activity, land dispossession, demolitions and settler violence against Palestinians”. Such conduct undermined “stability and prospects for a two-state solution.”
As for Israel’s firmest sponsor in arms, inexplicable good will and dubious legal padding, the words “Palestinian” and “sovereignty” continued to grate. The fiction of equality and parity between Israel and the Palestinians, a device long used to snuff out the independent aspirations of the latter, had to be maintained.
In remarks made by Nicholas Koval of the US Mission to the UN, it was clear that Washington was “disappointed that this body has again taken up this unbalanced resolution that is unfairly critical of Israel, demonstrating a clear and persistent institutional bias directed against one member state.” The resolution, in its “one-sided” way, would not advance peace. “Not when they ignore the facts on the ground.”
While Koval is not wrong that the claimed facts in these resolutions are often matters of conceit, illusion and even omission, the events unfolding since October last year have shown, in their biblical ferocity, that the Palestinians are no longer merely subjects of derision by the Israeli state. They are to be subjugated, preferably by some international authority that will guard against any future claims to autonomy. Their vetted leaders are to be treated as amenable collaborators, happy to yield territory that Israel has no right to.
Eventually, it is hoped by the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, that the Palestinian problem will vanish before forcible annexation, erasure and eviction. At the very least, resolutions such as those passed on November 14 provide some record of resistance, however seemingly remote, against the historical amnesia that governs Israeli Palestinian relations.
Canberra-based Nourish Ingredients has partnered with Chinese fermentation specialist Cabio Biotech to produce and distribute its precision-fermented fat alternative.
Highlighting American fears of falling behind China in the biotech revolution, a new partnership looks to leverage the latter’s manufacturing might to produce future-friendly food ingredients.
Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which makes alternatives to animal fats from precision fermentation, has joined forces with Wuhan-based fermentation and synbio firm Cabio Biotech to make and distribute its flagship Tastilux product for the Asia-Pacific market.
According to industry bodies the Precision Fermentation Alliance and Food Fermentation Europe, precision fermentation combines the process of traditional fermentation with the latest advances in biotechnology to efficiently produce a compound of interest, such as a protein, flavour molecule, vitamin, pigment, or fat.
Nourish Ingredients’s Tastilux is a precision-fermented fat designed to improve the taste, aroma and cooking experience of meat analogues to more closely resemble their conventional counterparts.
Partnership will extend beyond Tastilux
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
A result of three years of work, Tastilux was first exhibited at the South by Southwest conference in Sydney last year, as part of vegan chicken wings with calcium-based edible bones. The “designer fat” relies on naturally occurring lipids scaled through precision fermentation to provide the distinct flavour and cooking properties of meat fats when used in plant-based chicken, beef, pork and other alternatives.
Through the partnership, Cabio Biotech will leverage its state-of-the-art facilities and expertise to manufacture Tastlux in an efficient manner with minimal waste. This will enable global-scale production, helping Nourish Ingredients make its market entry with high product consistency.
Cabio Biotech has been supplying functional ingredients for over two decades, and owns one of the world’s largest factories for long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, with capabilities ranging from bio-fermentation and non-solvent extraction to refining, winterisation and microencapsulation.
While the initial focus is on Tastilux, the two companies hinted at an expansion into categories beyond plant-based meat, including ready meals and prepared dishes, leisure snacks, and spices and condiments.
“This collaboration aligns perfectly with our commitment to advancing biotechnology and delivering cutting-edge products. Together, we’ll set new standards in the alternative protein industry,” said Cabio Biotech VP Jimmy Wang.
James Petrie, CEO of Nourish Ingredients, added: “By leveraging Cabio’s established expertise, we’re not only derisking our supply chain for expansion but also enhancing our ability to deliver high-quality, innovative food solutions at scale.”
China market a key focus for Nourish Ingredients
Courtesy: Nourish Ingredients
Teaming up with Cabio Biotch will open the China door for Nourish Ingredients. The startup points out how China’s annual meat consumption is approaching 100 million tonnes to show that even a 1% replacement with plant-based alternatives by 2026 would create a market of one million tonnes.
China’s government has been encouraging its citizens to eat fewer animal products and more plant proteins, as part of a broader drive to connect public health with socioeconomic development, which began with the Healthy China 2030 policy. Chinese consumers are already eating more protein per capita than Americans now, and most of this comes from animal-free sources.
Cabio Biotech will utilise its local knowledge and networks to spearhead Nourish Ingredients’s distribution and sales within the country’s market, while the latter will lead commercial engagement and sales globally, armed with the Wuhan-based company’s manufacturing support.
Crucially, Cabio Biotech’s extensive experience will help Nourish Ingredients navigate China’s regulatory landscape – since Tastilux is a novel food produced via precision fermentation, it needs to obtain approval from the country’s food safety regulators. The aim is to facilitate rapid market access for Tastilux and additional products both locally and in other Asian countries. Nourish Ingredients is already awaiting regulatory clearance in Singapore.
“This collaboration combines our cutting-edge product development with Cabio’s manufacturing excellence and market insights, positioning us to meet the surging global demand for superior food ingredients,” said Petrie. “Together, we’re set to efficiently produce top-tier products, opening doors to both the dynamic Chinese market and broader international opportunities.”
Nourish Ingredients has so far secured nearly $40M from investors, and has also developed Creamilux, a sister fat alternative for non-dairy applications. The startup has partnered with New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra to create both dairy and plant-based products with the ingredients.
The alt-fat space is seeing a flurry of activity. California’s Yali Bio, New York’s C16 Biosciences and Sweden’s Melt&Marble are others using precision fermentation to produce fats and lipids.
Australia has climbed one place in global digital competitiveness rankings, helped by AI research prowess and its front-footed policy making for the technology, as other indicators stagnate. The latest edition of the World Digital Competitive Ranking by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) puts Australia in 15th position, up from 16th of 67 in 2023. The…
The NSW Supreme Court has issued orders prohibiting a major climate protest that would blockade ships entering the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle for 30 hours. Despite the court ruling, Wendy Bacon reports that the protest will still go ahead next week.
SPECIAL REPORT:By Wendy Bacon
In a decision delivered last Thursday, Justice Desmond Fagan in the NSW Supreme Court ruled in favour of state police who applied to have the Rising Tide ‘Protestival’ planned from November 22 to 24 declared an “unauthorised assembly”.
Rising Tide has vowed to continue its protest. The grassroots movement is calling for an end to new coal and gas approvals and imposing a 78 percent tax on coal and gas export profits to fund and support Australian workers during the energy transition.
The group had submitted what is known as a “Form 1” to the police for approval for a 30-hour blockade of the port and a four-day camp on the foreshore.
If approved, the protest could go ahead without police being able to use powers of arrest for offences such as “failure to move on” during the protest.
Rising Tide organisers expect thousands to attend of whom hundreds would enter the water in kayaks and other vessels to block the harbour.
Last year, a similar 24-hour blockade protest was conducted safely and in cooperation with police, after which 109 people refused to leave the water in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. They were then arrested without incident. Most were later given good behaviour bonds with no conviction recorded.
Following the judgment, Rising Tide organiser Zack Schofield said that although the group was disappointed, “the protestival will go ahead within our rights to peaceful assembly on land and water, which is legal in NSW with or without a Form 1.”
Main issue ‘climate pollution’
“The main public safety issue here is the climate pollution caused by the continued expansion of the coal and gas industries. That’s why we are protesting in our own backyard — the Newcastle coal port, scene of Australia’s single biggest contribution to climate change.”
In his judgment, Justice Desmond Fagan affirmed that protesting without a permit is lawful.
In refusing the application, he described the planned action as “excessive”.
“A 30-hour interruption to the operations of a busy port is an imposition on the lawful activities of others that goes far beyond what the people affected should be expected to tolerate in order to facilitate public expression of protest and opinion on the important issues with which the organisers are concerned,” he said.
During the case, Rising Tide’s barrister Neal Funnell argued that in weighing the impacts, the court should take into account “a vast body of evidence as to the cost of the economic impact of global warming and particularly the role the fossil fuel industry plays in that.“
But while agreeing that coal is “extremely detrimental to the atmosphere and biosphere and our future, Justice Fagan indicated that his decision would only take into account the immediate impacts of the protest, not “the economic effect of the activity of burning coal in power plants in whatever countries this coal is freighted to from the port of Newcastle”.
Protest organisers outside NSW Court last week. Image: Michael West Media
NSW Police argued that the risks to safety outweighed the right to protest.
Rising Tide barrister Neal Funnell told the court that the group did not deny that there were inherent risks in protests on water but pointed to evidence that showed police logs revealed no safety concerns or incidents during the 2023 protest.
Although he accepted the police argument about safety risks, Justice Fagan acknowledged that the “organisers of Rising Tide have taken a responsible approach to on-water safety by preparing very thorough plans and protocols, by engaging members of supportive organisations to attend with outboard motor driven rescue craft and by enlisting the assistance of trained lifeguards”.
The Court’s reasons are not to be understood as a direction to terminate the protest.
NSW government opposition
Overshadowing the case were statements by NSW Premier Chris Minns, who recently threatened to make costs of policing a reason why permits to protest could be refused.
Last week, Minns said the protest was opposed because it was dangerous and would impact the economy, suggesting further government action could follow to protect coal infrastructure.
“I think the government’s going to have to make some decisions in the next few weeks about protecting that coal line and ensuring the economy doesn’t close down as a result of this protest activity,” he said.
Greens MP and spokesperson for climate change and justice Sue Higginson, who attended last year’s Rising Tide protest, said, “ It’s the second time in the past few weeks that police have sought to use the court to prohibit a public protest event with the full support of the Premier of this State . . . ”
Higginson hit back at Premier Chris Minns: “Under the laws of NSW, it’s not the job of the Premier or the Police to say where, when and how people can protest. It is the job of the Police and the Premier to serve the people and work with organisers to facilitate a safe and effective event.
“Today, the Premier and the Police have thrown this obligation back in our faces. What we have seen are the tactics of authoritarian politics attempting to silence the people.
“It is telling that the NSW Government would rather seek to silence the community and protect their profits from exporting the climate crisis straight through the Port of Newcastle rather than support our grassroots communities, embrace the right to protest, take firm action to end coal exports and transition our economy.”
Limits of police authorised protests Hundreds of protests take place in NSW each year using Form 1s. Many other assemblies happen without a Form 1 application. But the process places the power over protests in the hands of police and the courts.
In a situation in which NSW has no charter of human rights that protects the right to protest, Justice Fagan’s decision exposes the limits of the Form 1 approach to protests.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties is one of more than 20 organisations that supported the Rising Tide case.
In response to the prohibition order, its Vice-President Lidia Shelly said, “Rising Tide submitted a Form 1 application so that NSW Police could work with the organisers to ensure the safety of the public.
“The organisers did everything right in accordance with the law. It’s responsible and peaceful protesting. Instead, the police dragged the organisers to Court and furthered the public’s perception that they’re acting under political pressure to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry.”
Shelly said, “In denying the Form 1, NSW Police have created a perfect environment for mass arrests of peaceful protestors to occur . . .
“The right to peaceful assembly is a core human right protected under international law. NSW desperately needs a state-based charter of human rights that protects the right to protest.
“The current Form 1 regime in New South Wales is designed to repress the public from exercising their democratic rights to protest. We reiterate our call to the NSW Government to repeal the draconian anti-protest laws, abolish the Form 1 regime, protect independent legal observers, and introduce a Human Rights Act that enshrines the right to protest.”
Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was professor of journalism at University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism. She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS movement and the Greens. Republished with the permission of the author.
Shipbuilder Austal Australia has delivered the eighth Evolved Cape-class Patrol Boat to Royal Australian Navy (RAN), the company announced on 1 November. The vessel, ADV Cape Schanck (313), is the eighth of ten Evolved Cape-class Patrol Boats ordered by the RAN to be constructed at Austal’s Henderson, Western Australia shipyard in four and half years. […]
Ōriwa Tahupōtiki Haddon (Ngāti Ruanui), Reconstruction of the Signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, c. 1940.
For the past few weeks I have been on the road in Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia at the invitation of groups such as Te Kuaka, Red Ant, and the Communist Party of Australia. Both countries were shaped by British colonialism, marked by the violent displacement of native communities and theft of their lands. Today, as they become part of the US-led militarisation of the Pacific, their native populations have fought to defend their lands and way of life.
On 6 February 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the Treaty of Waitangi) was signed by representatives of the British Crown and the Māori groups of Aotearoa. The treaty (which has no point of comparison in Australia) claimed that it would ‘actively protect Māori in the use of their lands, fisheries, forests, and other treasured possessions’ and ‘ensure that both parties to [the treaty] would live together peacefully and develop New Zealand together in partnership’. While I was in Aotearoa, I learned that the new coalition government seeks to ‘reinterpret’ the Treaty of Waitangi in order to roll back protections for Māori families. This includes shrinking initiatives such as the Māori Health Authority (Te Aka Whai Ora) and programmes that promote the use of the Māori language (Te Reo Maori) in public institutions. The fight against these cutbacks has galvanised not only the Māori communities, but large sections of the population who do not want to live in a society that violates its treaties. When Aboriginal Australian Senator Lidia Thorpe disrupted the British monarch Charles’s visit to the country’s parliament last month, she echoed a sentiment that spreads across the Pacific, yelling, as she was dragged out by security: ‘You committed genocide against our people. Give us our land back! Give us what you stole from us – our bones, our skulls, our babies, our people. … We want a treaty in this country. … You are not my king. You are not our king’.
Walangkura Napanangka (Pintupi), Johnny Yungut’s Wife, Tjintjintjin, 2007.
With or without a treaty, both Aotearoa and Australia have seen a groundswell of sentiment for increased sovereignty across the islands of the Pacific, building on a centuries-long legacy. This wave of sovereignty has now begun to turn towards the shores of the massive US military build-up in the Pacific Ocean, which has its sights set on an illusionary threat from China. US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, speaking at a September 2024 Air & Space Forces Association convention on China and the Indo-Pacific, represented this position well when he said ‘China is not a future threat. China is a threat today’. The evidence for this, Kendall said, is that China is building up its operational capacities to prevent the United States from projecting its power into the western Pacific Ocean region. For Kendall, the problem is not that China was a threat to other countries in East Asia and the South Pacific, but that it is preventing the US from playing a leading role in the region and surrounding waters – including those just outside of China’s territorial limits, where the US has conducted joint ‘freedom of navigation’ exercises with its allies. ‘I am not saying war in the Pacific is imminent or inevitable’, Kendall continued. ‘It is not. But I am saying that the likelihood is increasing and will continue to do so’.
George Parata Kiwara (Ngāti Porou and Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki), Jacinda’s Plan, 2021.
In 1951, in the midst of the Chinese Revolution (1949) and the US war on Korea (1950–1953), senior US foreign policy advisor and later Secretary of State John Foster Dulles helped formulate several key treaties, such as the 1951 Australia, New Zealand, and United States Security (ANZUS) Treaty, which brought Australia and New Zealand firmly out of British influence and into the US’s war plans, and the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the formal US occupation of Japan. These deals – part of the US’s aggressive strategy in the region – came alongside the US occupation of several island nations in the Pacific where the US had already established military facilities, including ports and airfields: Hawaii (since 1898), Guam (since 1898), and Samoa (since 1900). Out of this reality, which swept from Japan to Aotearoa, Dulles developed the ‘island chain strategy’, a so-called containment strategy that would establish a military presence on three ‘island chains’ extending outward from China to act as an aggressive perimeter and prevent any power other than the US from commanding the Pacific Ocean.
Over time, these three island chains became hardened strongholds for the projection of US power, with about four hundred bases in the region established to maintain US military assets from Alaska to southern Australia. Despite signing various treaties to demilitarise the region (such as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga in 1986), the US has moved lethal military assets, including nuclear weapons, through the region for threat projection against China, North Korea, Russia, and Vietnam (at different times and with different intensity). This ‘island chain strategy’ includes military installations in French colonial outposts such as Wallis and Futuna, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia. The US also has military arrangements with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau.
While some of these Pacific Island nations are used as bases for US and French power projection against China, others have been used as nuclear test sites. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted sixty-seven nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands. One of them, conducted in Bikini Atoll, detonated a thermonuclear weapon a thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Darlene Keju Johnson, who was only three years old at the time of the Bikini Atoll detonation and was one of the first Marshallese women to speak publicly about the nuclear testing in the islands, encapsulated the sentiment of the islanders in one of her speeches: ‘We don’t want our islands to be used to kill people. The bottom line is we want to live in peace’.
Jef Cablog (Cordillera), Stern II, 2021.
Yet, despite the resistance of people like Keju Johnson (who went on to become a director in the Marshall Islands Ministry of Health), the US has been ramping up its military activity in the Pacific over the past fifteen years, such as by refusing to close bases, opening new ones, and expanding others to increase their military capacity. In Australia – without any real public debate – the government decided to supplement US funding to expand the runway on Tindal Air Base in Darwin so that it could house US B-52 and B-1 bombers with nuclear capacity. It also decided to expand submarine facilities from Garden Island to Rockingham and build a new high-tech radar facility for deep-space communications in Exmouth. These expansions came on the heels of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) partnership in 2021, which has allowed the US and the UK to fully coordinate their strategies. The partnership also sidelined the French manufacturers that until then had supplied Australia with diesel-powered submarines and ensured that it would instead buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and US. Eventually, Australia will provide its own submarines for the missions the US and UK are conducting in the waters around China.
Over the past few years, the US has also sought to draw Canada, France, and Germany into the US Pacific project through the US Pacific Partnership Strategy for the Pacific Islands (2022) and the Partnership for the Blue Pacific (2022). In 2021, at the France-Oceania Summit, there was a commitment to reengage with the Pacific, with France bringing new military assets into New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The US and France have also opened a dialogue about coordinating their military activities against China in the Pacific.
Yvette Bouquet (Kanak), Profil art, 1996.
Yet these partnerships are only part of the US ambitions in the region. The US is also opening new bases in the northern islands of the Philippines – the first such expansion in the country since the early 1990s – while intensifying its arm sales with Taiwan, to whom it is providing lethal military technology (including missile defence and tank systems intended to deter a Chinese military assault). Meanwhile the US has improved its coordination with Japan’s military by deciding to establish joint force headquarters, which means that the command structure for US troops in Japan and South Korea will be autonomously controlled by the US command structure in these two Asian countries (not by orders from Washington).
However, the US-European war project is not going as smoothly as anticipated. Protest movements in the Solomon Islands (2021) and New Caledonia (2024), led by communities who are no longer willing to be subjected to neocolonialism, have come as a shock to the US and its allies. It will not be easy for them to build their island chain in the Pacific.
As the US election unfolds, American territories such as the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, and Guam, along with the broader Pacific region, will be watching the developments.
As the question hangs in the balance of whether the White House remains blue with Kamala Harris or turns red under Donald Trump, academics, New Zealand’s US ambassador, and Guam’s Congressman have weighed in on what the election means for the Pacific.
Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies senior lecturer Dr Anna Powles said it would no doubt have an impact on small island nations facing climate change and intensified geopolitics, including the rapid expansion of military presence on its territory Guam, following the launch of an interballistic missile by China.
Pacific leaders lament the very real security threat of climate-induced natural disasters has been overshadowed by the tug-of-war between China and the US in what academics say is “control and influence” for the contested region.
Dr Powles said it came as “no surprise” that countries such as New Zealand and Australia had increasingly aligned with the US, as the Biden administration had been leveraging strategic partnerships with Australia, New Zealand, and Japan since 2018.
Despite China being New Zealand’s largest trading partner, New Zealand is in the US camp and must pay attention, she said.
“We are not seeing enough in the public domain or discussion by government with the New Zealand public about what this means for New Zealand going forward.”
Pacific leaders welcome US engagement but are concerned about geopolitical rivalry.
Earlier this month, Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa attended the South Pacific Defence Ministers meeting in Auckland.
He said it was important that “peace and stability in the region” was “prioritised”.
Referencing the arms race between China and the US, he said, “The geopolitics occurring in our region is not welcomed by any of us in the Pacific Islands Forum.”
While a Pacific Zone of Peace has been a talking point by Fiji and the PIF leadership to reinforce the region’s “nuclear-free stance”, the US is working with Australia on obtaining nuclear-submarines through the AUKUS security pact.
Dr Powles said the potential for increased tensions “could happen under either president in areas such as Taiwan, East China Sea — irrespective of who is in Washington”.
South Pacific defence ministers told RNZ Pacific the best way to respond to threats of conflict and the potential threat of a nuclear attack in the region is to focus on defence and building stronger ties with its allies.
New Zealand’s Defence Minister said NZ was “very good friends with the United States”, with that friendship looking more friendly under the Biden Administration. But will this strengthening of ties and partnerships continue if Trump becomes President?
US President Joe Biden (center) stands for a group photo with Pacific Islands Forum leaders following the Pacific Islands Forum Summit at the South Portico of the White House in Washington on September 25, 2023. Image: Jim Watson/RNZ
US President Joe Biden, center, stands for a group photo with Pacific Islands Forum leaders following the Pacific Islands Forum Summit, at the South Portico of the White House in Washington on September 25, 2023. Photo: Jim Watson
US wants a slice of Pacific Regardless of who is elected, US Ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall said history showed the past three presidents “have pushed to re-engage with the Pacific”.
While both Trump and Harris may differ on critical issues for the Pacific such as the climate crisis and multilateralism, both see China as the primary external threat to US interests.
The US has made a concerted effort to step up its engagement with the Pacific in light of Chinese interest, including by reopening its embassies in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Tonga.
On 12 July 2022, the Biden administration showed just how keen it was to have a seat at the table by US Vice-President Kamala Harris dialing in to the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Fiji at the invitation of the then chair former prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama. The US was the only PIF “dialogue partner” allowed to speak at this Forum.
However, most of the promises made to the Pacific have been “forward-looking” and leaders have told RNZ Pacific they want to see less talk and more real action.
Defence diplomacy has been booming since the 2022 Solomon Islands-China security deal. It tripled the amount of money requested from Congress for economic development and ocean resilience — up to US$60 million a year for 10 years — as well as a return of Peace Corps volunteers to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu.
Health security was another critical area highlighted in 2024 the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Declaration.
The Democratic Party’s commitment to the World Health Organisation (WHO) bodes well, in contrast to the previous Trump administration’s withdrawal from the WHO during the covid-19 pandemic.
It continued a long-running programme called ‘The Academy for Women Entrepreneurs’ which gives enterprising women from more than 100 countries with the knowledge, networks and access they need to launch and scale successful businesses.
While both Trump and Harris may differ on critical issues for the Pacific such as the climate crisis and multilateralism, both see China as the primary external threat to US interests. Image: 123RF/RNZ
Guam’s take Known as the tip of the spear for the United States, Guam is the first strike community under constant threat of a nuclear missile attack.
It was seen as a signal of China’s missile capabilities which had the US and South Pacific Defence Ministers on edge and deeply “concerned”.
China’s Defence Ministry said in a statement the launch was part of routine training by the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force, which oversees conventional and nuclear missile operations and was not aimed at any country or target.
The US has invested billions to build a 360-degree missile defence system on Guam with plans for missile tests twice a year over the next decade, as it looks to bolster its weaponry in competition with China.
Despite the arms race and increased military presence and weaponry on Guam, China is known to have fewer missiles than the US.
The US considers Guam a key strategic military base to help it stop any potential attacks. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
However, Guamanians are among the four million disenfranchised Americans living in US territories whose vote does not count due to an anomaly in US law.
“While territorial delegates can introduce bills and advocate for their territory in the US Congress, they have no voice on the floor. While Guam is exempted from paying the US federal income tax, many argue that such a waiver does not make up for what the tiny island brings to the table,” according to a BenarNews report.
US Congressman for Guam James Moylan has spent his time making friends and “educating and informing” other states about Guam’s existence in hopes to get increased funding and support for legislative bills.
Moylan said he would prefer a Trump presidency but noted he has “proved he can also work with Democrats”.
Under Trump, Moylan said Guam would have “stronger security”, raising his concerns over the need to stop Chinese fishing boats from coming onto the island.
Moylan also defended the military expansion: “We are not the aggressor. If we put our guard down, we need to be able to show we can maintain our land.”
Moylan defended the US military expansion, which his predecessor, former US Congressman Robert Underwood, was concerned about, saying the rate of expansion had not been seen since World War II.
“We are the closest there is to the Indo-Pacific threat,” Moylan said.
“We need to make sure our pathways, waterways and economy is growing, and we have a strong defence against our aggressors.”
“All likeminded democracies are concerned about the current leadership of China. We are working together…to work on security issues and prosperity issues,” US Ambassador to New Zealand Tom Udall said.
When asked about the military capabilities of the US and Guam, Moylan said: “We are not going to war; we are prepared to protect the homeland.”
Moylan said that discussions for compensation involving nuclear radiation survivors in Guam would happen regardless of who was elected.
The 23-year battle has been spearheaded by atomic veteran Robert Celestial, who is advocating for recognition for Chamorro and Guamanians under the RECA Act.
Celestial said that the Biden administration had thrown their support behind them, but progress was being stalled in Congress, which is predominantly controlled by the Republican party.
But Moylan insisted that the fight for compensation was not over. He said that discussions would continue after the election irrespective of who was in power.
“It’s been tabled. It’s happening. I had a discussion with Speaker Mike Johnson. We are working to pass this through,” he said.
US Marine Force Base Camp Blaz. Image: RNZ Pacific/Eleisha Foon
If Trump wins Dr Powles said a return to Trump’s leadership could derail ongoing efforts to build security architecture in the Pacific.
There are also views Trump would pull back from the Pacific and focus on internal matters, directly impacting his nation.
For Trump, there is no mention of the climate crisis in his platform or Agenda47.
This is in line with the former president’s past actions, such as withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2019, citing “unfair economic burdens” placed on American workers and businesses.
Trump has maintained his position that the climate crisis is “one of the great scams of all time”.
The America First agenda is clear, with “countering China” at the top of the list. Further, “strengthening alliances,” Trump’s version of multilateralism, reads as what allies can do for the US rather than the other way around.
“There are concerns for Donald Trump’s admiration for more dictatorial leaders in North Korea, Russia, China and what that could mean in a time of crisis,” Dr Powles said.
A Trump administration could mean uncertainty for the Pacific, she added.
While Trump was president in 2017, he warned North Korea “not to mess” with the United States.
“North Korea [is] best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met by fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
North Korea responded deriding his warning as a “load of nonsense”.
Although there is growing concern among academics and some Pacific leaders that Trump would bring “fire and fury” to the Indo-Pacific if re-elected, the former president seemed to turn cold at the thought of conflict.
In 2023, Trump remarked that “Guam isn’t America” in response to warning that the US territory could be vulnerable to a North Korean nuclear strike — a move which seemed to distance the US from conflict.
If Harris wins Dr Powles said that if Harris wins, it was important to move past “announcements” and follow-through on all pledges.
A potential win for Harris could be the fulfilment of the many “promises” made to the Pacific for climate financing, uplifting economies of the Pacific and bolstering defence security, she said.
Pacific leaders want Harris to deliver on the Pacific Partnership Strategy, the outcomes of the two Pacific Islands-US summits in 2022 and 2023, and the many diplomatic visits undertaken during President Biden’s presidency.
The Biden administration recognised Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign and independent states and established diplomatic relationships with them.
Harris has pledged to boost funding to the Green Climate Fund by US$3 billion. She also promised to “tackle the climate crisis with bold action, build a clean energy economy, advance environmental justice, and increase resilience to climate disasters”.
Dr Powles said that delivery needed to be the focus.
“What we need to be focused on is delivery [and that] Pacific Island partners are engaged from the very beginning — from the outset to any programme right through to the final phase of it.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
For decades, the cultural phenomenon known as Americanisation has taken place with diffusing ease. Momentum was gained with the retreat of communism from Europe’s eastern states with the end of the Cold War and the eventual termination of the Soviet Union in 1991. Global brands of Americana from fizzy drinks to Dallas became pervasive cultural presences. Not even children’s programming was exempt.
Converts and devotees would mimic accents, adopt terms of reference, and emulate patterns of behaviour. In terms of children’s programming, Sesame Street, the work of the non-profit organisation Sesame Workshop, has been the global standard bearer. Jenny Perlman Robinson and Daniela Petrova, writing for Brookings in 2015, delved into its significance as an informal educating tool, reaching millions of children across 150 countries. “What had started as an educational television program more than 40 years ago is now a multimedia platform that uses everything from radio, video, and books to the latest in interactive media and technology.”
In 2018, Australia made its own contribution in the field. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation released an animated series that has since become a giddying global phenomenon. The US has not been spared, suggesting that Americanisation, at least in some areas, can also be given hearty doses of its own medicine. The series in question, Bluey, features an Australian dog of the Blue Heeler variety: one Bluey, a six-year-old cattle dog who lives in the Queensland city of Brisbane with sister Bingo, and parents Bandit and Chilli.
By the end of March 2020, the series had won an International Emmy in the children’s preschool category, something no doubt helped by the enforced isolation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. In 2023, Bluey became the second most popular streaming show in the US, logging 731 million hours. In 2024, the series became the most viewed show in the United States.
Such success was due, in no small part, to a distribution deal struck between the BBC and Disney in 2019. “The warmth and authenticity of Bluey’s family dynamic is what first captured our interest in the show,” explained Jane Gould, senior vice president of Disney Channels Worldwide. “Bluey reminds us all of our own families, and it plays out in the small but emotionally epic dramas of day-to-day life in surprising, heartfelt and very funny ways that will engage children and parents alike.”
The fascinating aspect about Bluey is its central premise: neither the viewing parents nor their engaged children are treated like passive imbeciles. Both groups can partake in the themes of the series without feeling infantilised. “It trusts,” wrote David Sim in The Atlantic in August last year, “that its young audience will be able to understand stories that are about the foibles and insecurities of parents too.” The web traffic site, Similarweb.com, yields an interesting statistic: the largest demographic of visitors to the official Bluey website (Bluey.tv) are those between 25-34, coming in at 28.86%.
Fantasy and imagination mingle with testing, even potentially contentious issues. There are questions about premature birth (“Early Baby”); the appearance of friends who proceed to vanish (“Camping”); even questions about the fine line between full blooded banter and unacceptable teasing. In a Father’s Day episode, Bluey’s dad, Bandit, openly wonders about the merits of getting a vasectomy.
Given such a format, it was bound to interest academics keen to tell us the obvious after generating the usual quantitative quarry of data. In a survey of 700 adults – part of a research project called Australian Children’s Television Cultures – we are told that Bluey was most keenly enjoyed by parents wishing to view a series with their children. Those behind the research project were keen to note the words of one of the respondents in describing the series. Bluey was “representative of an idealised Australian ethos – relaxed, curious, and hard-working.”
The influence of Bluey has also been noted in another respect. In 2022, a father in Massachusetts revealed that his child had begun using the term “dunny” instead of “toilet”. This brought much pleasure to ABC Sydney radio presenter, Richard Glover. “Finally,” he chortled in the Washington Post, “we have our revenge.”
According to Glover, US popular culture had ensured that Australians of his generation had “enrolled in a PhD program” on the subject. “We paid the price for our enthusiasm, regularly scolded by our parents for ‘using those terrible American words.’ These included ‘sidewalk’ instead of ‘footpath’ and ‘trash’ instead of ‘rubbish’.” Now, it was time for those in the US, notably children, to learn that breakfast could be called “brekkie”, a chicken a “chook”, and “tradie” a skilled tradesperson.
Little wonder that we can find a Master of Arts thesis dedicated to the adult fandom phenomenon around Bluey, including its appeal to those millennials who show “higher rates of anxiety, a greater distrust in the American government, and disbelief in American excellence than those of previous generations.” Anthropomorphised cattle dogs had become saviours of a sort.
Something else is at play here. If Bluey is naturalistic, touching on the raw end of life in parenting and children’s lives, it functions in a digital world that is less adult, increasingly infantile and increasingly disabling. Children and adults are becoming increasingly estranged from relations through technological parting and an addiction to the screen. Funny that it should fall to a family of animated Australian cattle dogs to tie parents and children in a gentle knot of play and accommodation.
The United Nations and countries across the globe have denounced Israel after its Parliament — the Knesset — overwhelmingly passed two laws that brands the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) as a “terror” group and bans the humanitarian organisation from operating on Israeli soil.
The legislation, approved yesterday, would — if implemented — take effect in three months, preventing UNRWA from providing life-saving support to Palestinians across Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank.
Reaction ranged from “intolerable”, “dangerous precedent”, “outrageous” and appeared to be setting Tel Aviv on a collision course with the United Nations and the foundation 1945 UN Charter itself.
Australia was among states condemning the legislation, calling on Israel “to comply with the binding orders of the [International Court of Justice] to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza”. There was no immediate response from New Zealand.
The condemnation came as an Israeli air strike destroyed a five-storey residential building sheltering displaced families in Gaza’s Beit Lahiya, killing at least 65 Palestinians and wounding dozens.
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, said dozens of wounded people had arrived at the facility and urged all surgeons to return there to treat them.
Many of the wounded may die because of the lack of resources at the hospital, he told Al Jazeera.
World ‘must take action’
“The world must take action and not just watch the genocide in the Gaza Strip,” he added.
“We call on the world to send specialised medical delegations to treat dozens of wounded people in the hospital.”
A Middle East affairs analyst warned that the “significant starvation and death” in northern Gaza was because the the international community had been unable “to put pressure on the Israelis”.
Israel’s latest latest strike on a residential building in Beit Lahiya in Gaza being described as a “massacre”. Image: AJ screenshot
“The Israelis have been left to their own devices and are pursuing this campaign of ethnic cleansing [including] starvation — there’s no clean water, even this building that was bombed right now the medics are not allowed to go and save people . . . this is by design collective punishment,” said Adel Abdel Ghafar, of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
Ghafar told Al Jazeera in an interview that Israeli tactics were also designed to push out the population in northern Gaza and create “some sort of military buffer zone”.
On the UNRWA ban, Ghafar said that to Israel, the UN agency “perpetuates Palestinians staying [in Gaza] because it provides food, education, facilities . . . the Israelis have had UNRWA in their targets from day one”.
39 strikes on Gaza shelters
The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said Israel’s military had attacked shelter centres in the Gaza Strip 39 times so far this month in a bid to “displace Palestinians and empty Gaza”.
The assaults have killed 188 people and wounded hundreds more, it said.
The Geneva-based group said Israel had targeted schools, hospitals, clinics and shelter centres in Gaza 65 times since the beginning of August.
Why is Israel really trying to close a UN agency that feeds Palestinians? (And what even is UNRWA?) pic.twitter.com/69vm6JtLqQ
The Palestinian presidency rejected the move, saying the vote of the Knesset reflected Israel’s transformation into “a fascist state”.
Hamas said it considered the bill a “part of the Zionist war and aggression against our people”.
UN chief Antonio Guterres called UNRWA’s work “indispensable” and said there was “no alternative” to the agency.
Chinese envoy to the UN, Fu Cong, called the Israeli move “outrageous”, adding that his country was “firmly opposed to this decision”.
Russia described Israel’s UNRWA ban as “terrible” and said it worsened the situation in Gaza.
The UK expressed grave concern and said the Israeli legislation “risks making UNRWA’s essential work for Palestinians impossible”.
Jordan said it “strongly condemns” the Israeli move, describing it as a “flagrant violation of international law and the obligations of Israel as the occupying power”.
Ireland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain — all four countries have recognised the Palestinan state — said the move set a “very serious precedent for the work of the UN” and for all organisations in the multilateral system.
Australia said UNRWA does life-saving work and Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in an X posting her government opposed the Israeli decision to “severely restrict” the agency’s operations. She called on Israel “to comply with the binding orders of the [International Court of Justice] to enable the provision of basic services and humanitarian assistance at scale in Gaza”.
Switzerland said it was “concerned about the humanitarian, political and legal implications” of the Israeli laws banning cooperation with UNRWA.
Footage of Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa swaying along to the siva dance as she sat beside Britain’s King Charles III encapsulated a palpable national pride, well deserved on delivering such a high-profile gathering.
Getting down to the business of dissecting the meeting outcomes — in the leaders’ statement and Samoa communiqué — there are several issues that are significant for the Pacific island members of this post-colonial club.
As expected, climate change features prominently in the text, with more than 30 mentions including three that refer to the “climate crisis”. This will resonate highly for Pacific members, as will the support for COP 31 in 2026 to be jointly hosted by Australia and the Pacific.
Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa opening CHOGM 2024. Video: Talamua Media
One of the glaring contradictions of this joint COP bid is illustrated by the lack of any call to end fossil fuel extraction in the final outcomes.
Tuvalu, Fiji and Vanuatu used the CHOGM to launch the latest Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report, with a focus on Australia’s coal and gas mining. This reflects the diversity of Commonwealth membership, which includes some states whose economies remain reliant on fossil fuel extractive industries.
As highlighted ahead of CHOGM, this multilateral gave the 56 members a chance to consider positions to take to COP 29 next month in Baku, Azerbaijan. The communiqué from the leaders highlights the importance of increased ambition when it comes to climate finance at COP 29, and particularly to address the needs of developing countries.
Another drawcard
That speaks to all the Pacific island nations and gives the region’s negotiators another drawcard on the international stage.
Then came the unexpected, Papua New Guinea made a surprise announcement that it will not attend the global conference in Baku next month. Speaking at the Commonwealth Ministerial Meeting on Small States, PNG’s Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko framed this decision as a stand on behalf of small island nations as a protest against “empty promises and inaction.”
As promised, a major output of this meeting was the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future. This is the first oceans-focused declaration by the Commonwealth of Nations, and is somewhat belated given 49 of its 56 member states have ocean borders.
The declaration has positions familiar to Pacific policymakers and activists, including the recognition of national maritime boundaries despite the impacts of climate change and the need to reduce emissions from global shipping. A noticeable omission is any reference to deep-sea mining, which is also a faultline within the Pacific collective.
The text relating to reparations for trans-Atlantic slavery required extensive negotiation among the leaders, Australia’s ABC reported. While this issue has been driven by African and Caribbean states, it is one that touches the Pacific as well.
‘Blackbirding’ reparative justice
South Sea Islander “blackbirding” is one of the colonial practices that will be considered within the context of reparative justice. During the period many tens-of-thousands of Pacific Islanders were indentured to Australia’s cane fields, Fiji’s coconut plantations and elsewhere.
The trade to Queensland and New South Wales lasted from 1847 to 1904, while those destinations were British colonies until 1901. Indeed, the so-called “sugar slaves” were a way of getting cheap labour once Britain officially abolished slavery in 1834.
The next secretary-general of the Commonwealth will be Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey. Questions have been raised about the quality of her predecessor Patricia Scotland’s leadership for some time and the change will hopefully go some way in alleviating concerns.
Notably, the CHOGM has selected another woman to lead its secretariat. This is an important endorsement of female leadership among member countries where women are often dramatically underrepresented at national levels.
While it received little or no fanfare, the Commonwealth has also released its revised Commonwealth Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Role of the Media in Good Governance. This is a welcome contribution, given the threats to media freedom in the Pacific and elsewhere. It reflects a longstanding commitment by the Commonwealth to supporting democratic resilience among its members.
These principles do not come with any enforcement mechanism behind them, and the most that can be done is to encourage or exhort adherence. However, they provide another potential buffer against attempts to curtail their remit for publishers, journalists, and bloggers in Commonwealth countries.
The outcomes reveal both progress and persistent challenges for Pacific island nations. While Apia’s Commonwealth Ocean Declaration emphasises oceanic issues, its lack of provisions on deep-sea mining exposes intra-Commonwealth tensions. The change in leadership offers a pivotal opportunity to prioritise equity and actionable commitments.
Ultimately, the success of this gathering will depend on translating discussions into concrete actions that address the urgent needs of Pacific communities facing an uncertain future.
But as the guests waved farewell, the question of what the Commonwealth really means for its Pacific members remains until leaders meet in two years time in Antigua and Barbuda, a small island state in the Caribbean.
Tess Newton Cain is a principal consultant at Sustineo P/L and adjunct associate professor at the Griffith Asia Institute. She is a former lecturer at the University of the South Pacific and has more than 25 years of experience working in the Pacific Islands region. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.
Tuvalu’s Transport, Energy, and Communications Minister Simon Kofe has expressed doubt about Australia’s reliability in addressing the climate crisis.
Kofe was reacting to the latest report by report by the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which found that Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom are responsible for more than 60 percent of emissions generated from extraction of fossil fuels across Commonwealth countries since 1990.
Kofe told RNZ Pacific that the report proves that Australia has essentially undermined its own climate credibility.
He said that there is a sense of responsibility on Tuvalu, being at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, to continue to advocate for stronger climate action and to talk to its partners.
“When the climate crisis really hits these countries, I think that might really get their attention. But that might actually be too late when countries actually begin to take this issue seriously,” he said.
He noted that Australia approved the extension of three more coal mines last month, which demonstrates that “there’s a lot of work to be done”.
‘Shoots their credibility’
“I think [that] kind of shoots their own credibility in the in the climate space.”
While Pacific leaders have endorsed Australia’s bid to host the United Nations climate change conference, or COP31, in 2026, Kofe said that if Australia really wanted to take leadership on the climate front, then they needed to show it in their actions.
“They are in control of their own policies and decisions. All we can do is continue to talk to them and put pressure on them,” he said.
“We just have to keep pressuring our partner, Australia, to do the right thing.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
It was a heady week for the Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) — celebration of seven years of its Taipei office, presenting a raft of proposals to the Taiwan government, and hosting its Asia-Pacific network of correspondents.
Director general Thibaut Bruttin and the Taipei bureau chief Cedric Alviani primed the Taipei media scene before last week’s RSF initiatives with an op-ed in the Taiwan Times by acknowledging the country’s media freedom advances in the face of Chinese propaganda.
Taiwan rose eight places to 27th in the RSF World Press Freedom Index this year – second only to Timor-Leste in the Asia-Pacific region.
But the co-authors also warned over the credibility damage caused by media “too often neglect[ing] journalistic ethics for political or commercial reasons”.
As a result, only three in 10 Taiwanese said they trusted the news media, according to a Reuters Institute survey conducted in 2022, one of the lowest percentages among democracies.
“This climate of distrust gives disproportionate influence to platforms, in particular Facebook and Line, despite them being a major vector of false or biased information,” Bruttin and Alviani wrote.
“This credibility deficit for traditional media, a real Achilles heel of Taiwanese democracy, puts it at risk of being exploited for malicious purposes, with potentially dramatic consequences.”
RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin speaking at the reception celebrating seven years of Taipei’s Asia Pacific office. Image: Pacific Media Watch
The week also highlighted concerns over the export of the China’s “New World Media Order”, which is making inroads in some parts of the Asia-Pacific region, including the Pacific.
At the opening session of the Asia-Pacific correspondents’ seminar, delegates referenced the Chinese disinformation and assaults on media freedom strategies that have been characterised as the “great leap backwards for journalism” in China.
“Disinformation — the deliberate spreading of false or biased news to manipulate minds — is gaining ground around the world,” Bruttin and Alviani warned in their article.
“As China and Russia sink into authoritarianism and export their methods of censorship and media control, democracies find themselves overwhelmed by an incessant flow of propaganda that threatens the integrity of their institutions.”
Both Bruttin and Alviani spoke of these issues too at the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the Asia-Pacific office in Taipei.
Why Taipei? Hongkong had been an “likely choice, but not safe legally”, admitted Bruttin when they were choosing their location, so the RSF team are happy with the choice of Taiwan.
Hub for human rights activists
“I think we were among the first NGOs to have established a presence here. We kind of made a bet that Taipei would be a hub for human rights activists, and we were right.”
About 200 journalists, media workers and press freedom and human rights advocates attended the birthday bash in the iconic Grand Hotel’s Yuanshan Club. So it wasn’t surprising that there was a lot of media coverage raising the issues.
RSF director-general Thibaut Bruttin (centre) with correspondents Dr David Robie and Dr Joseph Fernandez in Taipei. Image: Pacific Media Watch
In an interview with Voice of America’s Joyce Huang, Bruttin was more specific about the “insane” political propaganda threats from China faced by Taiwan.
However, Taiwan “has demonstrated resilience and has rich experience in resisting cyber information attacks, which can be used as a reference for the world”.
Referencing China as the world’s “biggest jailer of journalists”, Bruttin said: “We’re very worried, obviously.” He added about some specific cases: “We’ve had very troublesome reports about the situation of Zhang Zhan, for example, who was the laureate of the RSF’s [2021 press freedom] awards [in the courage category] and had been just released from jail, now is sent back to jail.
“We know the lack of treatment if you have a medical condition in the Chinese prisons.
“Another example is Jimmy Lai, the Hongkong press freedom mogul, he’s very likely to die in jail if nothing happens. He’s over 70.
“And there is very little reason to believe that, despite his dual citizenship, the British government will be able to get him a safe passage to Europe.”
Problem for Chinese public
Bruttin also expressed concern about the problem for the general public, especially in China where he said a lot of people had been deprived of the right to information “worthy of that name”.
“And we’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And it’s totally scandalous to see how bad information is treated in the People’s Republic of China.”
Seventeen countries in the Asia-Pacific region were represented in the network seminar.
Representatives of Australia, Cambodia, Hongkog, Indonesia, Japan, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, South Korea, Tibet, Thailand and Vietnam were present. However, three correspondents (Malaysia, Singapore and Timor-Leste) were unable to be personally present.
Discussion and workshop topics included the RSF Global Strategy; the Asia-Pacific network and the challenges being faced; best practice as correspondents; “innovative solutions” against disinformation; public advocacy (for authoritarian regimes; emerging democracies, and “leading” democracies); “psychological support” – one of the best sessions; and the RSF Crisis Response.
RSF Oceania colleagues Dr David Robie (left) and Dr Joseph Fernandez . . . mounting challenges. Image: Pacific Media Watch
What about Oceania (including Australia and New Zealand) and its issues? Fortunately, the countries being represented have correspondents who can speak our publicly, unlike some in the region facing authoritarian responses.
“While this puts Australia in the top one quarter globally, it does not reflect well on a country that supposedly espouses democratic values. It ranks behind New Zealand, Taiwan, Timor-Leste and Bhutan,” he says.
“Australia’s press freedom challenges are manifold and include deep-seated factors, including the influence of oligarchs whose own interests often collide with that of citizens.
“While in opposition the current Australian federal government promised reforms that would have improved the conditions for press freedom, but it has failed to deliver while in government.
“Much needs to be done in clawing back the over-reach of national security laws, and in freeing up information flow, for example, through improved whistleblower law, FOI law, source protection law, and defamation law.”
Dr Fernandez criticises the government’s continuing culture of secrecy and says there has been little progress towards improving transparency and accountability.
“The media’s attacks upon itself are not helping either given the constant moves by some media and their backers to undermine the efforts of some journalists and some media organisations, directly or indirectly.”
A proposal for a “journalist register” has also stirred controversy.
Dr Fernandez also says the war on Gaza has “highlighted the near paralysis” of many governments of the so-called established democracies in “bringing the full weight of their influence to end the loss of lives and human suffering”.
“They have also failed to demonstrate strong support for journalists’ ability to tell important stories.”
An English-language version of this tribute to the late RSF director-general Christophe Deloire, who died from cancer on 8 June 2024, was screened at the RSF Taipei reception. He was 53. Video: RSF
Aotearoa New Zealand
In New Zealand (19th in the RSF Index), although journalists work in an environment free from violence and intimidation, they have increasingly faced online harassment. Working conditions became tougher in early 2022 when, during protests against covid-19 vaccinations and restrictions and a month-long “siege” of Parliament, journalists were subjected to violence, insults and death threats, which are otherwise extremely rare in the country.
Research published in December 2023 revealed that high rates of abuse and threats directed at journalists put the country at risk of “mob censorship” – citizen vigilantism seeking to “discipline” journalism. Women journalists bore the brunt of the online abuse with one respondent describing her inbox as a “festering heap of toxicity”.
While New Zealand society is wholeheartedly multicultural, with mutual recognition between the Māori and European populations enshrined in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, this balance is under threat from a draft Treaty Principles Bill.
The nation’s bicultural dimension is not entirely reflected in the media, still dominated by the English-language press. A rebalancing is taking place, as seen in the success of the Māori Television network and many Māori-language programmes in mass media, such as Te Karere, The Hui and Te Ao Māori News.
New Zealand media also play an important role as a regional communications centre for other South Pacific nations, via Tagata Pasifika, Pacific Media Network and others.
Papua New Guinea’s Belinda Kora (left) and RSF colleagues . . . “collaborating in our Pacific efforts in seeking the truth”. Image: Pacific Media Watch
Papua New Guinea
The Papua New Guinea correspondent, Belinda Kora, who is secretary of the revised PNG Media Council and an ABC correspondent in Port Moresby, succeeded former South Pacific Post Ltd chief executive Bob Howarth, the indefatigable media freedom defender of both PNG and Timor-Leste.
“I am excited about what RSF is able and willing to bring to a young Pacific region — full of challenges against the press,” she says.
“But more importantly, I guess, is that the biggest threat in PNG would be itself, if it continues to go down the path of not being able to adhere to simple media ethics and guidelines.
“It must hold itself accountable before it is able to hold others in the same way.
“We have a small number of media houses in PNG but if we are able to stand together as one and speak with one voice against the threats of ownership and influence, we can achieve better things in future for this industry.
“We need to protect our reporters if they are to speak for themselves and their experiences as well. We need to better provide for their everyday needs before we can write the stories that need to be told.
“And this lies with each media house.
The biggest threat for the Pacific as a whole? “I guess the most obvious one would be being able to remain self-regulated BUT not being accountable for breaching our individual code of ethics.
“Building public trust remains vital if we are to move forward. The lack of media awareness also contributes to the lack of ensuring media is given the attention it deserves in performing its role — no matter how big or small our islands are,” Kora says.
“The press should remain free from government influence, which is a huge challenge for many island industries, despite state ownership.
Kora believes that although Pacific countries are “scattered in the region”, they are able to help each other more, to better enhance capacity building and learning from their mistakes with collaboration.
“By collaborating in our efforts in seeking the truth behind many of our big stories that is affecting our people. This I believe will enable us to improve our performance and accountability.”
Example to the region
Meanwhile, back in Taiwan on the day that RSF’s Thibaut Bruttin flew out, he gave a final breakfast interview to China News Agency (CNA) reporter Teng Pei-ju who wrote about the country building up its free press model as an example to the region.
“Taiwan really is one of the test cases for the robustness of journalism in the world,” added Bruttin, reflecting on the country’s transformation from an authoritarian regime that censored information into a vibrant democracy that fights disinformation.
The warning signs of the Australian National Anti-Corruption Commission’s ineffectiveness were there from the start. The enacting legislation that brought it into existence, for instance, limit public hearings to “exceptional circumstances”, a reminder that the authorities are not exactly happy to let that large expanse of riffraff known as the public know how power functions in Australia.
Then came its first major decision on June 6. Pundits were on tenterhooks. What would this body, charged with enhancing the “integrity in the Commonwealth public sector by deterring, detecting and preventing corrupt conduct involving Commonwealth public officials” do about referrals concerning six public officials from the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme? The spiritually crushing automated debt assessment and recovery program, had, after all, been responsible for using, in the words of Commission report, “patently unreliable methodology as income averaging, without other evidence, to determine entitlement to benefit”. From its inception as a pilot program in 2015 till its conclusion in May 2020, a reign of bureaucratic terror was inflicted on vulnerable Australians.
The answer from Australia’s newly minted body was one of stern indifference. While the NACC was aware of the impact of the scheme “on individuals and the public, the seniority of the officials involved, and the need to ensure that any corruption issue is fully investigated” the commission felt that “the conduct of the six public officials in connection with the Robodebt Scheme has already been fully explored by the Robodebt Royal Commission and extensively discussed in its final report.”
In other words, there would be no consequences for the individuals in question, no public exposure of their misdeeds, no sense of satisfaction for victims of the scheme that their harms had been truly redressed. In refusing to act on the referrals, the NACC had, in the words of former NSW Supreme Court Judge Anthony Whealy KC, now chair for the Centre for Public Integrity, “betrayed a core obligation and failed to fulfil its primary duty.”
An absurd spectacle ensued. The inspector of the NACC, Gail Furness, found herself being called upon rather early in her tenure to investigate the very entity that had been created to expose maladministration and corrupt conduct after receiving 900 complaints about the NACC’s own alleged corrupt conduct. In the mess of not pursuing the Robodebt officials, it also transpired that Commissioner Paul Brereton had delegated, rather than recused himself, from the process given a conflict of interest. By merely delegating the role of reaching the final decision to a Deputy Commissioner, however, Brereton had not entirely precluded his part in the drama.
Two recent incidents confirm how the NACC is intended to (mal)function – at least in the eyes of Canberra’s secrecy-drugged political establishment. Far from being effective, the body’s role is intended as impotently symbolic, an annexure of the corruption consensus that rots at the capital’s centre.
The first came in the defeated efforts of Senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie to introduce an amendment directing the NACC Commissioner to hold public hearings if “satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so.” As Pocock explained to the Senate, the committee process into examining the NACC Act revealed “evidence from commissioners from state integrity commissions that … there should be a presumption towards having public hearings.” The current legislation, as shaped by Labor and the Coalition, was designed “in a way that we have no real oversight of what is happening in the NACC.” And that is exactly how that same unholy alliance hoped matters would remain, with both Labor and the Liberal-Nationals voting down the amendment.
In justifying that craven move, Labor Senator and Minister for Employment and Workplace relations Murray Watt held out feebly that the “appropriate balance” between holding public hearings, and considering whether they might “prejudice criminal prosecution, reputations, safety, privacy, wellbeing or confidentiality” had been struck. Any attentive student of secrecy in politics will be mindful that any balance between public interests and exceptional circumstances will always favour the pathway of least transparency. In Australia, public interest tests are almost always read down to favour opacity over openness.
In keeping with the disease of closed power, the second matter concerned revelations by the NACC about certain operational details regarding Operation Bannister. The investigative effort was established to investigate whether a Home Affairs employee’s “familial links” to contracted service provider and Paladin founder Craig Thrupp, had instanced corruption.
Paladin Holdings has handsomely profited from the Australian taxpayer, raking in over half a billion dollars to manage the brutal Manus Island detention centre between 2017 and 2019. The senior executive in question, pseudonymised as Anne Brown, received $194,701.10 from Paladin for “management and consulting services” in 2017. The money was transferred to her home loan account to assist full repayment, though she denied undertaking any work for Paladin or assisting them with the tender to Home Affairs in securing the contract.
Browne’s partner, retired Home Affairs executive pseudonymised as Carl Delaney, directly aided Paladin in securing the lucrative tender. He joined Paladin’s board of directors in 2019 and was remunerated to the sum of $5,000 for his efforts.
Thrupp also purchased another apartment for Brown and Delaney in the same complex worth $920,000, along with accompanying furniture. Two months later, it was rented back to Paladin for $1,000 per week, though eventually sold in 2020, with Brown and Delaney pocketing the proceeds.
The question being investigated was whether the failure by Brown to disclose the aforementioned events (she thought she had no obligation to do so from April 2018 when she was on long-service leave pending retirement) had affected her suitability to hold a security clearance. These included the evolving nature of her relationship with Delaney and the money and property lavished on them from Thrupp. Even Commissioner Brereton acknowledged that “she should have at least known that at least her relationship with Delaney ought to have been reported” though inexplicably thought the non-disclosure “understandable” and not actuated by intent, dishonesty or corruption.
The investigation had initially begun as a joint investigation by the Australian Commission into Law Enforcement Integrity (ACLEI) and the Department of Home Affairs. It then fell to the NACC from July 1, 2023 to finalise matters. On October 9, the report by Commissioner Brereton was released. The allegation that Brown had abused her office as a Home Affairs employee “to dishonestly obtain a benefit for herself or to assist Paladin to secure the garrison services contract is unsubstantiated.” She had not failed to disclose a potential conflict of interest between herself and Thrupp (“a close relative”), and her partner Delaney, in their links to Paladin, “in accordance with Home Affairs procedures”.
The report does not find Brown’s failure to report the “change of her circumstances to Home Affairs and AGSVA [Australian Government Security Vetting Agency]” remarkable, as it “does not appear to have been intentional”. Failure to do so was insufficient to “bring it to the notice of the head of the relevant agency.”
For a body that offered so much promise, the NACC has failed to impress. Instead of restoring trust in the public service and politics, the Commission has shown a lack of appetite to pursue its broader remit, preferring a stymying caution. The status quo remains, distinctly, intact.
The Aussie Plant Based Co has been acquired by Queensland-based Smart Foods, eight days after entering liquidation due to cashflow problems.
It was only three weeks ago that Queensland-based vEEF introduced a new lineup of carbon-neutral meat analogues that were cheaper than conventional meat.
This was the brand’s first new product launch since its parent company Fënn Foods merged with All G Foods’s Love Buds brand in October 2023, forming the Aussie Plant Based Co. “This union combines our strengths, enabling significant growth in both retail (vEEF) and foodservice (Love BUDS) sectors,” Alejandro Cancino, co-founder and CEO of vEEF, told Green Queen last month.
But last week, the Aussie Plant Based Co went into liquidation, after a general meeting of the board resulted in the decision to wind up the business. The company appointed insolvency firm Fort Restructuring’s Kenneth Whittingham and Mark Robinson as liquidators, who confirmed that the closure was an outcome of cashflow problems.
At the same time, they were in discussions with three interested buyers, and today, Gold Coast manufacturer Smart Foods confirmed that it has acquired the Aussie Plant Based Co’s equipment, stock, brand names, and IP, turning over a new leaf for the startup. It means Fënn Foods will now cease operations as an entity.
As part of the deal, Love Buds owned 49% of the new company, and combined production at vEEF’s facility on the Sunshine Coast. Combining their footprints, the Aussie Plant Based Co’s products were now available at over 6,000 locations across retail and foodservice, and it had set its sights on an expansion into Asia and the Middle East.
“Our consolidated resources and shared expertise have positioned us for continued expansion,” Cancino said last month. “We remain committed to delivering top-quality plant-based products across both channels, leveraging our enhanced capabilities to meet growing consumer demand.”
He added: “This strategic alliance strengthens our market presence, allowing us to better serve our customers and drive innovation in the plant-based food industry.”
Now, the sale of its assets would allow half of the Aussie Plant Based Co’s 32 employees to be retained. “While the company has faced recent challenges, I believe in its strong foundation and the dedication of its team,” Raghu Reddy, CEO of Smart Foods, told Food & Drink Business.
He added: “By streamlining operations, fostering key partnerships, and focusing on innovation, we will solidify its position as a leader in the Australian plant-based market.”
Australia’s troubled plant-based meat sector
Courtesy: Food Frontier
While wholesale demand for plant-based meat in Australian foodservice rose by 59% in 2023, retail sales dropped by 1% from the year before. This has been compounded by a high price premium on most meat analogues, a combination of low volume sales and high margins for retailers.
This has left many companies in a bind. Do you keep prices high – which is already the second-largest consumption barrier for meat analogues – or do you risk lower margins? vEEF, for its part, cut its manufacturing costs through raw materials and a streamlined supply chain, while also increasing output through its production process, to offer a cost-competitive line of plant-based meats.
But meat analogues are yet to reach 65% of Australia’s population. And of those who have tried them, only 22% say they’d buy them again, signalling a gap in consumer liking, and an uphill battle for brands in the space.
“The retail sector grew very quickly before the pandemic and has suffered inevitable contractions, readjustments and corrections,” Simon Eassom, CEO of Sydney-based think tank Food Frontier, told Green Queen in May. “Whilst the leading brands have consolidated or grown their market share, other brands have contracted or disappeared, so the overall growth trajectory through the financial difficulties of the past few years has been relatively flat, but there are strong signs of recovery.”
This year alone, ProForm Foods, the company behind the Meet range of plant-based analogues, wound down after entering voluntary administration, while pea protein manufacturer Australian Plant Proteins is facing a similar fate. And in April, New Zealand’s Sunfed Meats also shuttered after nearly a decade in operation.
Regional domestic small arms manufacturers are competing well against their global rivals. With large armies to equip, the Asia-Pacific region offers a major market for both foreign and domestic manufacturers of small arms. The region represents the whole gamut of domestic development and manufacturing, through licensed production to the full importation of weapons such as […]
Two new studies have found that plant-based meat can match or outperform beef on many nutritional fronts, while also making you full faster.
A vegan mince product can have the the same protein quality and digestibility as conventional ground beef, but is more filling and better for gut health, two new studies have found.
Sydney-based vegan startup v2food collaborated with the Australian national science agency, CSIRO, to compare the health benefits of its soy protein beef with its animal-derived counterpart.
The studies entailed detailed analysis of the composition and nutritional attributes of v2food’s mince, and examined the effects of reformulating the product to enhance these health gains even further.
“With health being the top reason Australians choose plant-based meat, this research highlights how v2food mince can support a healthy lifestyle,” said Lisa-Claire Ronquest-Ross, chief science officer of the company.
A recent survey showed that 54% of ‘meat reducers’ in Australia were cutting back on animal proteins for health reasons, a sentiment echoed by 58% of flexitarians – making it by far the most popular dietary driver.
v2food’s plant-based meat aids gut health improvements
Courtesy: v2food
One of the studies analysed the protein quality, amino acid profile, fibre composition, iron absorption, and effects on the gut microbiota.
The total amino acid content was found to be comparable between conventional beef and the four formulations of the v2food mince tested (three of which were supplemented with different nutrients). While animal-derived beef had 26g of amino acids per 100g, the plant-based version had 18.65g, with the reformulated editions going as high as 20g.
The conventional beef had higher amounts of nearly all the individual amino acids, but v2food’s mince has a greater concentration of sulphur-containing acids.
Similarly, there was not much disparity in the protein digestibility scores either. Ground beef had a total rating of 71.7, while v2food’s alternative scored 73.6.
The vegan mince outperformed conventional beef on several factors. Animal products don’t contain any fibre, so the plant-based beef came out on top by default, featuring 6.7% of fibre by wet weight (mostly insoluble). These dietary fibres helped modulate the production of short-chain fatty acids, which brings about a favourable shift in the composition and activity of the gut microbiota, and therefore improved gut health.
Finally, intestinal absorption of iron from the v2food beef was three times lower than that of conventional mince, but the authors note that the former (alongside many other plant-based competitors) is formulated to achieve a total iron content in line with the requirements of Food Standards Australia and New Zealand to have a ‘source of iron’ claim.
Fortified meat analogues also provide a superior source of iron compared to vegan products that don’t have supplemental iron. Moreover, the v2food formulations that contained ferrous sulphate increased iron absorption by the intestine by 50%.
Vegan beef makes you full and satisfied faster
Courtesy: v2food
The second study focused squarely on satiety, measuring the amount of pasta eaten by 24 men on separate visits, containing a Bolognese sauce made either from v2food’s mince or conventional beef.
Both meals had a near-identical calorific value, while the protein made up 45% of the cooked meal’s weight. After the meal, they were given access to a well-stocked buffet to eat as much as they wanted for the next 30 minutes.
“The research also reveals that v2food mince induces feelings of fullness more quickly than traditional beef mince, with participants consuming significantly less pasta Bolognese made with v2food mince compared to beef mince after having a standard breakfast,” revealed Ronquest-Ross.
The participants were found to eat 72g less of the plant-based mince dish, as well as 586 fewer calories. Those who ate the v2food bolognese also consumed lower amounts of fat and starch, and higher amounts of fibre, while the amount of protein was similar between the two options.
But the energy intake at the buffet meal, and the measure of fullness, satiety and satisfaction after the pasta were not found to be different between the two beef dishes. In fact, the plant-based mince was more satiating and did not result in greater energy intakes at the subsequent buffet meal.
“Individuals need to consume lower volumes and amounts of energy to achieve satiety when consuming a meal prepared with plant-based mince, compared to an equivalent meal prepared with beef mince,” the researchers wrote.
This is an important finding at a time when one in five Australians identify themselves as meat reducers. In 2024 alone, a quarter of citizens have cut back on meat, with 12% planning to do so now, while 2% have eliminated it altogether – for these people, health is the main motivator (cited by 61%). It’s a welcome finding for a country with one of the highest per capita meat consumption rates globally.
“These plant-based protein products are complementary to our existing protein sources such as red meat and fish,” said Crispin Howitt, lead of CSIRO’s Future Protein vertical. “It’s important that these products are developed so that they are as healthy as possible and with nutritional claims backed by evidence. We need new protein options to sustain the world’s growing population into the future.”
called for climate justice, self-determination & accountability
talks of climate leadership but argues against binding human rights
exposed polluters hiding behind the #ParisAgreement to dodge accountability.https://t.co/PB86XFpwzA pic.twitter.com/KI1hOKAM0G
Eye witnesses say 24 protestors were arrested for protesting at parliament today, demanding the Albanese Government stop new coal. 
Michael West (@MichaelWestBiz) 
