10,000 PEOPLE AT NAIDOC CELEBRATIONS IN ADELAIDE

Written by: Ned K. on 11 July 2026

 

(NAIDOC SA Facebook page)

On Friday 10 July, about 10,000 people attended the annual NAIDOC (National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee) festival and street demonstration in Adelaide. The march through the city to steps of Parliament House was led by First Nations people carrying two banners - "Always Was, Always Will Be Kaurna Land" and "Black Lives Matter".

Land Rights Now was a popular chant and all First Nations speakers highlighted the contributions of First Nations people to life in Australia over the fifty years since the first NAIDOC march in Adelaide and the continuation of this trend for the next 50 years. 

Speakers also emphasised that peace loving people from all cultures from all over the world are welcome to the land of the Kaurna people on whose land the British colonial city named Adelaide was established. Their desire to unite with non-Indigenous people living in Australia and respect for diverse cultural backgrounds was a stark contrast to Pauline Hanson's One Nation who demand a monocultural Australia, a euphemism for an Australia of "pure" white Anglo Saxon culture.

The festive atmosphere and diversity of the 10,000 people at the NAIDOC event in Adelaide was an example of people power in action.

Hundreds rally in Mparntwe to demand closure of US Pine Gap base.

Written by: Nick G. on 22 July 2026

 

Led by traditional owners of the land on which the US military base Pine Gap is located, hundreds of anti-war activists have converged on the base and demanded its closure.

In a written statement, traditional owners the Hayes Family welcomed participants in the convergence. They claimed that the family had never given permission for the US to take their land, known as Kuyunba, and that their old people had been lied to and told that it would be a space research facility.
Instead, it is run by the CIA, spies on people’s communications and is used for targeting opponents of the US and Israel for attack by drones and missiles.

“We don’t want to be feeling guilty all the time,” said the Family’s statement, “when bad things are happening overseas to families – women, children, the old people and their homes. We’re not the ones controlling the facility, but we feel guilty that it’s coming from our lands.”

The Family demanded that Pine Gap be “shut down for good,” and that compensation be paid for the seizure of their land “so that we can get houses for White Gate community.”

(Hayes Family members call for the return of their stolen land.)

White Gate community (also known as Irrkerlantye), sits about 5 kilometres from Alice Springs/Mparntwe yet it has to have water trucked in and power is provided by a small set of solar panels. There is no sewerage.

In 2022, far right quisling Jacinta Nampijinpa Price told the National Press Club that colonialism had been positive for First Peoples. “Absolutely. I mean, now we’ve got running water, we’ve got readily available food,” she said.

Yet she would have known that it was her mother, Bess Price, when she was NT Community Services minister in August 2014, who cut off water from the town camp of Ingerreke/ Irrkerlantye/White Gate, leading to protests by town camp residents against Bess price in September 2014.

Greens senator Lidia Thorpe who met with the Hayes family over the weekend, said "This military and intelligence base, which is aiding and abetting the genocide in Gaza, enjoys security of tenure on stolen land, while the Hayes family are still fighting for secure housing, running water and essential services where they now live at Irrkerlantye." 

Around 500 people participated in the convergence, effectively closing the base for four days as protests took place at its gates.
In Sydney, a solidarity rally with the Mparntwe protests was held outside US consulate last Monday.

Further protests will take place later this week outside the ALP National Conference in Adelaide as the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) gathers to hold its own national conference under the theme that it’s “Time to Break Free from the US”.

 

More Invasion Day reports

 Written by: CPA (M-L) on 28 January 2026

 

(Above -the banner says it all, Tarndanya)

We continue our reports on Invasion Day from Boorloo, Naarm and Tarndanya -  eds.

We start with Boorloo (Perth) where a terrorist attempted to detonate a homemade bomb to kill First Peoples.

The Boorloo event started pretty normally with about 5000 in attendance (Pretty big for Perth) but about 45 minutes into the speeches a 31 year old man threw a bomb into the crowd and ran off. Thankfully it only let out a small puff of white smoke instead of exploding as designed. As more details come out, it's becoming obvious it was planned to murder Aboriginals en masse. But interestingly the media hasn't called him a terrorist.

Around 30 minutes later the police decided to clear the area by demanding everyone leave without really explaining what the issue was and that annoyed everyone. So the 5000+ people started to march as planned which upset the police because they hoped everyone would just head home. 

We marched through the city and blocked the roads for around 2 hours while music played and rappers sang. A bus driver who was stuck in traffic decided to get out and dance with the rest of us for a while. 

We marched as planned to the Stirling gardens out the front of the Supreme Court building and yarning circles formed for some more speeches. 

There was originally a music festival planned to be there with stages and Indigenous performances but the City of Perth pulled funding last week and gave it to Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting event, which started later that day. 

On the other side of the City, the March for Australia folks managed to get around 250 - 300 to attend their rally. One Nation and former Nazi Party speakers spoke about 'white replacement' and mass deportation. (The Nazi Party, or NSN, says it has disbanded because of Albanese’s hate speech legislation, but its members were prominent in March for Australia events around the country).
.....................
The Naarm/Melbourne rally was big as usual.  Organisers estimated anywhere between 80,000 - 100,00, although perhaps 50,000 - 60,000 might be a more realistic estimate, but it was huge and 90% were young people.  

Mainstream media (MSM) claimed 17,000 at the Invasion Day and 2,000 anti-Immigration.   They underestimated the first and overestimated second.   MSM said neo-Nazis infiltrated the leadership of the Australia Day march and led it.  Not a peep from Zionist leadership on presence of Nazis and their hate speeches!

There were many good speakers.  Gary Foley called for unity between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous.  He reminded people there were no Australia Day celebrations and public holidays until 1988 when Bob Hawke declared 26 January to be a national day of celebrations - Gary called it right wing nationalism.  He warned of the Mussolini in Mar-a-Lago. At the end of his talk, he said he wanted to finish by quoting the greatest Indigenous philosopher Mao Zedong - "educate yourself and educate the people".  He received rousing cheers and applause. 

Another Indigenous speaker called for an independent, sovereign republic.
.....................

About 2,000 people rallied and marched in Tarndanya (Adelaide) today on Invasion Day. 

Despite a temperature of 44.7 degrees, people’s spirits were high.

They marched down the Main Street of the city and returned to Tarntanyangga (the central city square) where there was shaded area and water fountains for many children to cool off in.

The march was led by organiser Natasha Wanganeen’s daughter Tjarrah under the banner Always Was, Always Will Be - Aboriginal Land.

A feature of the rally and march was the large number of young Indigenous people. As Natasha Wanganeen later posted on Facebook, “The Next Gen Is Here!! & They Are Proud & Loud!! & Ready to Go!!” 

There were no mainstream politicians at the rally but that did not seem to worry anyone.

SA Unions provided a sausage sizzle stall and given the very hot day, the sausages were really sizzling!

The main banner focusing on the fact the city of Adelaide and surrounds is on Aboriginal Land is a timely reminder to the SA Government that all its corporate events like Liv Golf take place on Aboriginal Land

 

Invasion Day in Sydney: ‘We are stronger than their lies, Stronger than their prisons’

 Written by: Louisa L. on 28 January 2026

 

Auntie Lizzie Jarrett waits for the march to begin

La Perouse near the northern headland of Gamay Botany Bay, is Bidjigal and Gadigal land. The British invaders’ First Fleet set anchor nearby, before moving to the deeper waters of Warrane Sydney Cove. 

Pemulwuy who led the first systematic armed resistance was Bidjigal. For 30 years it flamed from the wetlands and flanking rocky ridges, then west and north along the Hawkesbury River with Darug and Gundungurra alliances, to temporarily drive the British from Parramatta.  

What became the ‘La Pa’ community drew Yuin (who had always traded and done ceremony) north. La Pa helped hold this resistance story that now inspires us. 

The La Pa mob always resisted invasion, winning the fight to stay on their land. Even as a mission, its Peoples took part in the 1938 Day of Mourning on January 26. La Perouse was a spearhead in the huge 1988 Survival Day gathering from across the continent.

1988’s spirit continued in the yearly Survival Concert until it moved as Yabun (‘music to a beat’, a reference to the importance of culture in survival) to Victoria Park at the western end of Sydney CBD bordering Redfern, that other, but later, great centre of resistance.   

In their juggernaut to divide first peoples, the Business Council of Australia targeted both La Perouse and Redfern, just as they targeted communities whose lands held other rich resources, Called Jawun, the BCA launched it in 2000, the year of that other huge – but connected – march across Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

A bloodline of warriors

At Sydney’s Invasion Day a young La Pa speaker first honoured ‘our ancestors for their bravery’. 

He said, ‘All the rights we have now were fought for by our Elders. We have to keep that same fire burning.’

On the horrific human incarceration statistics, he said, ‘It’s up to us to stop that!’

Aunty Lynda June Coe said, ‘We keep turning up every year … a bloodline of warriors’, her Wiradjuri People, ‘standing in solidarity with the Peoples along the coastline.’

‘Our young people are powerful,’ she said, ‘despite the chokehold around our necks.’  

She honoured her warrior uncle Paul Coe who died in 2025. He took a leading role in every major struggle from the early 1970s, including the founding of the Aboriginal Medical Service and the Aboriginal Legal Service. 

Against an undeclared war she said, ‘We are driven by love and respect.’

Aunty Lynda June continued, ‘We have strategies to mobilise. A coalition is growing. We plant the seeds today. We water them. A hundred years on, our young people will benefit from it.’

A figure in chains

Bundjalung Gumbaynggirr Dunghutti woman Aunty Lizzie Jarrett introduced her Dunghutti nephew, Paul Silver. Years of collective resistance has made him a formidable leader. As a grief-stricken young teen he cried out and ran from the Sydney Coroners Court as video of the murder by suffocation of his uncle, David Dungay Jnr, played on screen. 

Aunty Lizzie praised his leadership against police threats to stop the protest. Permission or not, backed by the knowledge people would defy the police order, he fronted police to force a backdown.  

Paul Silva spoke poetry of power. ‘We were here before the ships’ and the invader’s ‘chains described as law’.  

And now, ‘stealing our heart while making profit. 

‘Yet still we stand on sacred land, stronger than their lies. Stronger than their prisons.

‘We are still rising. They try to erase us.

‘But still we rise, in a country that always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.’ 

At La Pa a figure of a convict in chains is carved into the rocks. First Peoples cried as flesh was gouged from convicts whipped in Sydney Town. They sometimes sheltered runaways. 

The coalition Lynda June Coe spoke of was born then. It has only grown stronger.

On January 26 we celebrate resistance, mourn losses and speak truth.

Written by: CPA (M-L) on 25 January 2026

 

On 26 January 2026, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) greets First Peoples on the front line against invasion for 238 years.

Together we celebrate resistance, mourn losses and speak truth.

Truth first

US imperialism long ago displaced British colonialism and imperialism as ruler here. Like Britain, the US benefits from colonial relics to enforce its domination – a constitution and parliaments which embed foreign allegiance not independence, states and territories based on original colonies to divide and conquer us, and a violent capitalist state apparatus that criminalises and kills First Peoples for their lands and waters. 

US corporations demand unfettered right to profit from every key sector of our economy – from resources industries to real estate – on First Peoples’ country. 
US imperialism’s drive to war against its Chinese rival dominates the world, and this country. Its attempts to export US economic crisis is marked by systematic division and lies. 

US bases on First Peoples’ lands bring thousands of US troops to Garramilla Darwin. Its military housing projects steal and destroy Larrakia land, while Long Grass Peoples are harassed by private security contractors.

Pine Gap on stolen Arrernte land chooses human targets to guide bombs and drones to kill Palestinians, Lebanese, Yemenis, Iranians.

The new NT Administrator says the truth out loud. He described First Peoples as criminals. Darwin’s mayor says, ‘We are the city that serves the oil and gas industry.” Not the people?  

Federal parliament convenes early for laws that aim to outlaw hatred of imperialism and Zionism. First Peoples face hate and state violence on a daily basis. Nowhere worse than in custody. Yet still they fight to get even the easiest Royal Commission recommendation implemented, the removal of hanging points from cells. 

The national deaths in custody report by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) released in December 2025 showed 33 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people died in custody in 2024-2025 – the highest yearly death toll since the AIC began keeping records. There have been 617 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991.

It’s the same murderous song across the country.

More truth

There’s always money for imperialist war. 

Exhausted grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles struggle to hold families, communities, languages together unpaid or begging for grants that disappear just as they begin to work, to save their people especially their children. 

First Peoples know what they need. They know what their young people need, because young people have told them. 

We say, redirect the billion dollars spent each year to imprison children ($1.12 million per child!) to support their families, communities, their, culture, health and education. 

We say, stop spending $30 million a day on AUKUS subs, which is just the tip of Australia’s subservience to US imperialism. 

We mourn

There is no need to lacerate First Peoples with tales of their suffering. 

First Peoples know their land is destroyed for corporate profits, often government-subsidised. 

They know the toll of Sorry Business, sometimes eight funerals in a month or two. Suicide is a part of every family. Some are children.

They know child removals are at the highest rate ever, with children left alone in motel rooms instead of with their families, of ten-year-olds jailed in every state and territory except the ACT where the age is 14, but which has the second highest rate of child removals and lowest rate of returns to family in the country. 
First peoples live with genocide. We mourn with them.

We mourn division and lateral violence. We mourn those hoodwinked with lies to join the US ruling class ‘sovereign citizens.’ 

We mourn those First Peoples who have been convinced by immense ruling class power to wield the invaders’ weapons. 

But First Peoples themselves will deal with their people who profit from collaboration.

Resistance

Armed resistance spread like wildfire from Sydney, the first point of invasion, across the continent. Brilliance in guerrilla warfare, mastery of strategy and tactics. 

Holding colonisation back between 10 to 30 years in each new area till 1931, when Arnhem Land was pronounced Aboriginal land because the invaders saw its terrain and climate, the determination of opposition, but didn’t yet know of its massive mineral wealth. 

Decades of intolerable hardship. Yet First Peoples survived. They whispered language, organised quietly and sometimes loudly, till, as workers knowing their own collective worth and dignity through numerous struggles (some as communists, many led by them) they birthed the land rights movement. They created unity across this continent and its islands. They told their truth. They gathered immense support.

In 1988, united, they thundered, ‘We have survived!’ In 2000 a million Australians marched in support.

The ruling class fights back

Capitalism regrouped. Reorganised new ways to break resistance, to thieve more.

The Business Council of Australia’s 38-year quest to divide and conquer First Peoples has prised open lands for exploitation. Its member corporations are overwhelmingly foreign owned. Their most frequent ‘significant shareholders’ are three US finance houses – State Street, Vanguard Group and BlackRock. 

Like its US member corporations, now the BCA demands hard tactics.

It works with Zionism, to win over some First Peoples. 

Parliaments bow before US domination.  Minns won favour with NSW police-state-powers.

On November 1 in Sydney a State Street sign towered above a Deaths in Custody protest. 55 police, six on horses, outnumbered protesters. Yet less than a handful of police were at Bondi, despite their own warnings and rants about the rise of antisemitism. They show exactly who their enemy is. They show who they serve. 

Police tried and failed to stop Black Lives Matter and Invasion Day protests in early Covid times. They failed. Despite new laws and the NSW Police Commissioner’s bluster, he knew they would fail again. So, they equate Invasion Day in Sydney with March for Dividing Australia. 

If violence occurs on Invasion Day, its 500 NSW police will cause it. 

Justice for all

Protests and Survival Day celebrations will take place around the country.

First Peoples are on the sharpest end of imperialist attacks here, because alongside the labour of workers, their lands and waters are the source of capitalist

wealth. 
We must rebuild the unity of 1988 and 2000. 

We have the same enemies. 

Justice will only come – for all of us – when we kick out the real criminals, US imperialism and its Australian collaborators.

We say to First Peoples, the peoples of this continent and its islands learn from your resistance as they learn from their own experiences in struggle.

Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.

Indigenous people's leading role in Northern Australia

Written by: Ned K. on 25 January 2026

 

Australian historian Henry Reynolds latest book, "Looking from the North - Australian History from the Top Down" is a well-researched and eye-opening account of the struggles and working lives of Indigenous Australians in Northern Australia from the 1700s to the present day.

"Northern Australia" is described as the land mass above the Tropic of Capricorn.

Reynolds reveals that since the British invasion of Australia, there has been uneven development.  What became known as the "Southern States" of NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia were developed along capitalist lines by the British Crown and their colonial states' governments which formed between May 1856 and April 1857.

By contrast, the first colonial outpost in Northern Australia was at Bowen on 10 April 1861.

Reynolds points out that even in 1901 when the first Australian Government was formed, the Attorney General Deakin admitted that the new government had no effective control of the north of Australia.

The uneven development of Australia did not mean that Indigenous people of Northern Australia avoided the attempts by colonial settlers to take over their land. The Indigenous people of Northern Australia also conducted guerrilla warfare against the colonial settlers. Reynold's book details the strategies and tactics used by Indigenous people in defence of their lands in Northern Australia right up until the 1930s.

When the colonial settlers and their government armed forces eventually overpowered the Indigenous people's resistance in Northern Australia, these same settlers became reliant on Indigenous labour to ensure the settlers' economic interests were fulfilled. Indigenous people worked on cattle stations, sheep runs, sugar cane and banana plantations.

"On The Sheep's Back"? or By Killings and Labour of Indigenous People?

Northern Australia, like most of Australia, was not initially "developed on the sheep's back" but by a combination of killings of Indigenous people and use of the labour of Indigenous people. Reynolds refers to historians Ray Evans and Robert Orsted-Jenson whose research concluded that between 1859 and 1897, there were nearly as many Indigenous people killed by colonial forces in Northern Australia and other colonies as the total number of Australians killed in ALL overseas wars that Australia has been involved in.

In February 2022 the federal government's Office of Northern Australia met for the first time with its Indigenous Reference Group. At that time the Indigenous population of in Northern Australia was 230,000, 17.4% of the Northern Australia population,

Indigenous property rights and interests under current law in 2022 covered 78% of the Northern Australia land mass. 

Alan Dale professor of tropical regional development described Northern Australia as an "indigenous domain" and that Australian governments "need to ensure that development proceeds with the free, prior and informed consent of traditional owners,"

Reynolds adds that the mainly non-Indigenous 1.4 million population of Northern Australia is highly mobile, while there is a large FIFO population of over 100,000 workers.

On the other hand, the Indigenous population of Northern Australia stay in the north while moving around within their own lands.

From Pastoralist Settler Expansion to US Military Front Line - Indigenous People "In the Gun".

Northern Australia has become an expanding military base for US imperialism.

A dramatic change from the settler pastoralist days of Northern Australia of the 1800s, but no less dangerous for Indigenous people according to Reynolds and to astute observers of Australia from our northern neighbours.

As an example of the latter, Reynolds refers to Kishore Mahbuhani, Singaporean academic who in 2022 declared that Australia's dilemma in the 21st Century was simple: it could choose "To be a bridge between East and the West in the Asiatic Century - or the tip of the spear projecting Western power in Asia".

In May 2024 Defence Industry Minister Conroy at a defence industry conference in Darwin said northern Australia "was critical to the defence of the nation, not just in defending Australia, but projecting power out into our region against any potential adversary"!

He announced that the government planned to spend $18 billion over 10 years on northern defence bases in the NT, WA and Qld.

In August 2024, US Republican Michael McCaul, the chair of the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee spent 10 days in Australia in northern Australia lauding the area as key for the US "as it sought to deter Chinese aggression"!

Defence Minister Richard Marles, according to Reynolds, added that "America's military was now operating in Australia's land, sea, air, cyber and space."

Reynolds argues that this expansion of US military activity and dependence in the north of Australia has proceeded at ever increasing speed without the slightest consultation or prior consent from Indigenous people.

Reynolds points out that Australia becoming "the thrusting spear of Western hostility" is completely contrary to the hundreds of years of peaceful relations and trading of Indigenous Australians and peoples from various parts of Asia, starting long before the aggression of British and then US imperialist agendas in Northern Australia. 

While Marles and his cronies cover this thrusting spear mentality with talk about a US made up "international rules-based order", they say nothing about the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People declared by 150 countries in 2007 and ratified by the Rudd Government of 2007.

On Invasion Day 26 January 2026, white Australians like me are reminded from Reynold's book about the pending latest danger to Indigenous people of Northern Australia. This time it's from US military takeover of their land and the repercussions of that.

 

No Pride in an Ongoing Genocide

Written by: Dawn on 22 January 2026

 

This January 26th, the WA branch of the CPA(M-L) would like to turn to the ongoing and pervasive suffering of koolinga (children) on Noongar Boodja (Country). The ongoing incarceration and death in custody rates of Aboriginal people remains a national shame, 25 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. 

In Western Australia, Aboriginal children are subjected to inhumane, developmentally inappropriate and traumatic punishment at Banksia Hill Detention Centre, and the notorious Unit 18. Banksia Hill Detention holds young ‘offenders’ between the ages of 10-17. Unit 18 is a separate facility within the adult Casuarina Prison where children are moved if their needs or behaviour does not suit BHDC.  

The “Hear Me Out” report released by the Department of Justice in 2024 details the experiences of inmates and staff at BHDC and Unit 18. It describes how many young children at Banksia Hill do not have access to cold water in summer, and that their cells are devoid of air conditioning or even fans. In November last year, 6 young inmates between the ages of 12 and 17 staged a protest atop the roof of Banskia Hill Detention. They were promptly removed, scolded by Corrective Minister Paul Papalia and sent to Unit 18.  

Commenting on the incident, suicide prevention researcher Gerry Georgatos said that the protest was a response to conditions in detention. “Each one carries complex trauma histories, neurodevelopmental vulnerabilities and unmet clinical and psychosocial needs. They are children reacting to environments that erode hope, escalate despair, and entrench impulsivity. Not environments that stabilise, nurture or rehabilitate.”  

Conditions and punishments in Unit 18 are more dire. Cleveland Dodd was a 16 year old inmate who died in Unit 18. Evidence presented to the inquest into his death revealed that he had been kept in solitary confinement for more than 22 hours a day, for more than 80% of the 93 days before his death. This was a clear breach of the UN Convention against Torture and the Convention of Rights of the Child. Amnesty International Australia has been calling for BHDC and Unit 18 to be closed entirely, since 2024.  

In The Force of Nonviolence Judith Butler discusses how deaths in custody and inhumane conditions of imprisonment are acts of great violence, how they may be viewed as an unchecked mode of the death penalty, issued silently by the state and its institutions. “…if prison deals death not only through the death penalty, but also through more or less systematic forms of neglecting some lives rather than others, it seems clear that a few obligatory legal protections have not been honored…. prison deals death (slowly and quickly), but also manages life…” 

The government of Western Australia continues to neglect its duty to its Aboriginal youth through the systemic horrors enacted at Banksia Hill Detention Centre, and the ways that the WA Police Force disproportionately and aggressively target Aboriginal people. Sovereignty was never ceded. These violent institutions must be undone. It is the duty of all those living on stolen land to center and amplify Aboriginal voices in their fight.

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.  

 

Southern Launch protest rally speech by Derek Burke

Written by: Derek Burke on Ocrober11, 2025

 

We are grateful to Derek Burke, a member of the Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS, and of Spirit of Eureka and the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network for making available to us the text of his speech at the Adelaide protest rally against missile launches on the lands of the Googatha (Kokatha) people, held yesterday. He was speaking in support of Aunty Sue Haseldine, a Googatha elder who has been leading 6 monthly Rockhole Recovery trips to care for sacred waterholes, part of the Seven Sisters songline.  She outlined the importance of the country and current threats from Southern Launch's rocket testing range - eds.

I acknowledge we are holding this protest rally on stolen Kaurna land, whose sovereignty was never ceded. 

 

Firstly, thank you for inviting me to speak at this critically important protest. I am not only a member of PACOA (the Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS) but I'm also the convener of IPAN-SA (the Independent & Peaceful Australia Network), to which PACOA is affiliated.

 

The missile program that Southern Launch operates—which is backed by the Federal and South Australian governments and seven aerospace companies, mostly overseas corporations—is another example of the dispossession of First Nations in this country by the settler colonial class. In the past, the colonial state used native police to crush Indigenous resistance. Now the colonial "divide and rule" tactic has been modernized, with Southern Launch buying off some Indigenous people in Koonibba to violate sovereign Googatha land.

 

The Australian State has been, and still is, at war with First Nations. The Frontier Wars, Aboriginal reserves, missions, and stations, the Aborigines Protection Boards, the Stolen Generation, Black Deaths in Custody, and the mass incarceration of Aboriginal youth are all appalling atrocities that blot Australia's history. These attacks by the colonial settlers and the Australian state were designed to destroy the Indigenous population, culture, and language, with the ultimate goal of stealing their land. Australia's history from 1788 has been the appalling story of genocide.

 

This war continues today. Whether it is mining—in particular, uranium mining—nuclear waste dumps, or military bases, First Nations' sovereignty is swept away for the purposes of the aggressive capitalist state to rape and despoil this ancient land. When the state was forced to come to terms with the Aboriginal Land Rights campaigns of the 60s through to the 90s, it came up with the Native Title Act, which in effect emasculated land rights. They didn't do First Nations any favours; they just worked out another way to swindle you.

 

 

The missile operations of Southern Launch on Googatha country continue that nefarious tradition of overriding consent and dispossessing sovereignty. I took the opportunity to look into these aerospace firms that use Southern Launch's missile launch pad. They are a pretty opaque bunch, but this is what I found out. However, a couple of the previous speakers have covered what these aerospace corporations are up to with their technology designed for the military.

 

In the 1970's I was a member of the Campaign Against Foreign Military Bases. Back then "Yankee Go Home!" and "Kick Out US Bosses And Bases" were popular chants.

 

So, I say to: 

 

• Thales Group, a French multinational aerospace and defence corporation; 

• Varda Space Industries, a privately held American space research company; 

• HyImpulse, a German private space launch enterprise; 

• Reaction Dynamics, a rocket manufacturing company from Canada; 

• The German Aerospace Center with the German initials DLR,  the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research; 

• AtSpace, which also goes by another name, Taiwan Innovative Space Inc. It functions as a space launch company for Taiwan; 

• Perigee Aerospace, a South Korean private developer and manufacturer of orbital and sub-orbital launch vehicles, 

 

get out! and go home! Otherwise, we'll kick you out and send you home.

 

No doubt the Australia Space Agency and ADF ensure that the missile technology that is tested at the Southern Launch facility at Koonibba has military applications. In the 50s and 60s Australia was the test bed for British nuclear bomb testing at Maralinga and rocket launching at Woomera. Southern Launch at Koonibba follows in those reprehensible footsteps. The Australia Space Agency in conjunction with the ADF is playing its part in the current militarisation of Australia.

 

We are all presently witnessing a second Cold War developing between the USA, China and Russia. This time, the United States is preparing Australia as a launch pad to attack China. In addition to Pine Gap and North West Cape military bases, the US has established a marine troop base in Darwin, B-52 nuclear-armed bombers at the RAAF Tindal air force base, and turned the Stirling Naval facility in WA into a base for US and UK nuclear submarines, dubbed the Submarine Rotational Forces - West. Basing US nuclear submarines in Australia is the Trojan Horse outcome of AUKUS. I doubt very much that Australia will ever get the Virginia-class nuclear subs. We may get the British-designed SSN-AUKUS class nuclear subs to be built at Osborne. There was certainly no consent given by the Kaurna People to build nuclear subs in Yerta Bulti! Yerta Bulti is the Kaurna name for the Port/Lefevre Peninsula.

 

Since Federation, the Australian Defence Force has been no more than an extra battalion for the British Empire and now US imperialism. It would be more honest to call the ADF the American Deputy Force. In its present configuration, it has become interoperable and interchangeable with the US military. It will go anywhere and commit any aggression that the US Empire commands. For example, the US Defence Intelligence Agency has merged with Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation in Canberra to form the Combined Intelligence Centre. You know who's in charge, and it is not Australia.

 

Therefore, we must stand with Aunty Sue and the Googatha people to oppose Southern Launch missile tests, which are a violation of First Nations sovereignty. Its operations have military applications and are part of the militarisation of Australia in preparation for the next US-led war of aggression.

 

Oppose the march to war, fight for First Nations sovereignty, and stop the destruction of this ancient land.

 

Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

 

Thank you.

 

Terrorism? Where do we stand?

Written by: Lindy Nolan on 20 July 2025

 

Across occupied Australia, First Peoples have first-hand experience of terrorism. In Yuendumu the NT Intervention’s $100-million-spend on remote police stations saw a $7million police centre built before a single home was upgraded. It was a direct line from that to the slaughter of Kumanjayi Walker.

Before the damning inquest report was released, police assaulted and killed Kumanjayi White in Mparntwe Alice Springs, where the court and police centre tower over all other buildings. 

Yet, despite crushing grief, family leaders Ned Jampijinpa Hargraves and Samara Fernandez-Brown radiate dignity and defiance. 

At one point during the Intervention almost $80 million was spent on surveillance and removal of Aboriginal children compared with only $500,000 to support their families. 

Currently it costs the NT over $3,600 per day to imprison each young person. In 2022-23, 71 young people, as young as ten, were imprisoned. 93%  were on remand, 94% were Indigenous. On any night, between  44 and 59 young people  were in jail. That’s about $67 million per year! Yet, pitifully-funded programs to keep them out of jail largely survive on volunteers. It’s the same across the country. 

Last month public outrage caused the cancellation of a conference of first responders in Parramatta with Walker’s killer, Zachary Rolfe, as guest speaker.  It’s not about one or even many racist cops. It’s about a state apparatus of terror, the iron fist of military, police and jails, behind the velvet glove of deceit and so-called democracy. 

Terror spreads more widely as government complicity with US imperialist-Zionist genocide shakes peoples’ belief in ‘democratic’ lies. As Palestinian children, doctors, teachers and journalists are terrorised and massacred, here, eyes open. Here, resistance also grows against Segal’s fascist proposals, against laws to demonise protest, against the smashing punch to a female legal advisor and the trumped-up trial of journalist Mary Kostakidis, which aims to terrorise other journalists to self-censor or lie. Support Mary Kostakidis here. 

Killing innocent people

The Concise Macquarie Dictionary (named after a British Governor of the NSW colony who used terror against First Peoples) states terror means ‘1. intense, sharp or overpowering fear. 2. feeling, instance or cause of intense fear. 3. a period when a political group uses violence to maintain or achieve supremacy,’ and terrorism means ‘1. the use of terrorising methods. 2. the state of fear and submission so produced. 3. a method of resisting a government or of governing by deliberate acts of armed violence.’ All but the last meaning fits how Australia is ruled against most First Peoples, like a glove.

Language is constantly changing, with old words disappearing and new ones appearing. Meanings change over time. There’s also a difference between the dictionary meaning – the denotation – and what a word has come to mean in social usage – the connotation.

Today the dictionary meaning of terrorism has become secondary to the word’s new connotation. Across most of the world, and definitely in Australia, ‘terrorism’ is almost universally understood to be the killing of innocent people. The key word is ‘innocent’. But there is a secondary connotation – that terror usually comes from a small group of people.

Excitative terror or unstoppable mass movement?

The Red Brigades of Italy, the Baada Meinhof Gang in Germany, the Japanese Red Army called themselves Maoists, as did a section of the Weathermen in the USA. They were small ultra-left terrorist groups in the 1970s, whose members were rightly outraged by the horrors imperialism created across the world. 

Rather than having faith in the masses, these groups believed in what’s called ‘excitative terror’, the belief that ‘red terror’ comes first, that it will unite the oppressed masses and dominate enemy classes. Only then (they believed) the struggle of liberation is possible. They paid a terrible price for this mistake. All were isolated from the masses, were jailed or murdered by the ruling class, or forced into hiding. Their organisations were crushed.

Though they didn’t have the ease of electronic word searches, they knew the word ‘terror’ –appears in some of the hundreds of volumes of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other Marxist-Leninist-Maoist works.

It appears four times Mao’s A Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan from 1927. The Report’s introduction includes these words: “For the present upsurge of the peasant movement is a colossal event. In a very short time, in China's central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they decide. There are three alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail behind them, gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly.” 

The huge, unstoppable mass movement of the peasants, not excitative terror, was key. This thread of reliance on the masses runs through all Mao’s writings, all his actions. He called them ‘our God’ saying with them, the Chinese party could remove the mountains of imperialism and feudalism. (Mao, The foolish old man who removed the mountains).

The highest stage of struggle

Armed struggle is the highest stage of revolutionary action, but it can’t be manufactured from thin air. Little groups, or even big ones – no matter how dedicated – can’t magic it into existence. 

In Where do correct ideas come from? Mao said of struggle, ‘Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man’s struggle with nature. In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect, but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later.’ 

This is the case with First Peoples.

In 1988, First Peoples announced, ‘We have survived’. It was a clarion call of unity and defiance. Like the Palestinians facing genocidal US imperialist and Zionist attacks which aim to terrorise all opposition, to crush resistance worldwide, they will one day triumph. They will remember the brutality inflicted. Their potential allies are growing in number and knowledge from each horrific blow they witness inflicted. But not all are active. Many feel powerless. We must help change that. We must help people understand their own collective strength. 

Lenin stated, “Oppression alone, no matter how great, does not always give rise to a revolutionary situation in a country. In most cases it is not enough for revolution that the lower classes should not want to live in the old way. It is also necessary that the upper classes should be unable to rule and govern in the old way”, that the ruling class must be in deep crisis at every level, and that suffering has reached such intensity that the masses are drawn into action. (Lenin May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat)

Whether it succeeds or not, depends on organisation among and of those masses. 

Our party supports revolutionary violence by the masses in such a situation, to overthrow such a ruling class. We want that ruling class to feel the terror of the masses in action to overthrow their terrorist system.

We disdain to conceal our views and aims

Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party celebrated the intense fear of communism and communists haunting the ruling classes. It opened with these words, ‘A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.’ 

The Manifesto concluded, ‘The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.’

177 years later, after huge struggles, setbacks and changes, we stand by those words. We serve the people.