Marles, you pathetic lackey - No more US military in Australia!

Written by: Nick G. on 4 September 2026

 

Meeting with US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, the pathetic chief lackey of US imperialism in Australia, Richard Marles, has further sold out our sovereignty by welcoming a greater US military presence in our country.

“…since we've come to government, you can see a through-line of growing American force in Australia, and we think that's really important,” Marles said.

Marles has agreed to increase the American military presence in Australia by "accelerat force posture initiatives at Australian bases". 

“American force posture in Australia is growing. That’s across all the domains,” Marles told reporters. The “domains” are five in number: land, sea, air, cyber and space.

The Force Posture Agreement of 2014 permits the US to prepare for, launch and control its own military operations from Australian territory: “United States Forces and United States Contractors shall have unimpeded access to and use of Agreed Facilities and Areas for activities undertaken in connection with this Agreement.”

Addressing Hegseth, or “Pete” as he called him, Marles remarked that they were meeting on the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty, which he said “emanates from the Second World War, during which a million American service personnel used Australia as a base to project north…”

“And it's an example in the past of America's use of the Australian continent, which feels very pertinent today,” said Marles. 

“America’s use of the Australian continent”?  Who agreed to this today? We, the people, certainly did not. 

According to media reports, Mr Marles also met with a number of the world's leading tech companies, headed by billionaires collectively labelled the “Nerd Reich” by author Gil Duran, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google while visiting San Francisco.

The federal government has been pushing to build stronger links with top AI companies in the hope of attracting US investment into Australian-based data centres.

Treasury estimates suggest the construction of data centres in Australia to be worth about $150 billion by 2030. To whom are they worth such sums?  Not to people unable to afford homes or food.

Data centres are attracting strong opposition from the American people and campaigns against them are growing here too. 

But the sycophant in Marles can only welcome such developments.

It’s time to clear the Empire loyalists out of their positions of power.

No more US military in Australia!

For genuine anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Break the hold of the US on the Australian state

Written by: John G. on 2 September 2026

 

Australia is a capitalist country. It has developed to a point where capitalism in Australia is characterised by each sector of industry and commerce being dominated by a few big monopoly companies. There are 4 big retail banks, 2 major supermarket chains, 3 phone networks (Telstra, Optus, Vodaphone), 5 Big Tech monopolies (Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft), a handful of retail oil companies, 1 dominant hardware chain, 2 corporate management Software monopolies (Oracle, SAP), a handful of legacy media companies, 2 steel producers, 4 iron ore mining companies, a handful of big oil and gas production companies, and it goes on and on.

It is a society rent with increasing cost-of-living burdens and difficulties for working people, professionals and small and medium business people. Meeting basic needs like housing for all, decent health care and bright futures for ordinary people become mirages disappearing as peoples’ hopes fade while big monopoly capitalists make super-profits, often without paying tax, and of such a quantity that it is hard to believe. 

The Australian state is a product of the process by which this came about while it has also facilitated and overseen the path to this society.

Capitalism in Australia is the system of a group of monopoly capitalists exploiting and oppressing workers, and subordinating small and medium capitalists, subcontractors, and professionals (self-employed and salaried) to their system, pumping greater accumulations of capital to their massive holdings.    

The Australia state is the state of the group of monopoly capitalists at Australia’s economic system’s heart, the political, administrative, legal and military arm of Australia’s capitalist economic system.

These capitalists use the machinery of the state (its laws, its courts, its police, its senior bureaucrats and politicians) to strive to restrain workers’ struggles for economic benefits and reforms that improve workers’ bargaining position.  They try to restrict our struggle to improve our economic and political position, and to restrict it within the system of exploitation. Their effort to narrow workers’ struggles from taking up all cases of capitalist oppression and exploitation, to stand against their state, police abuses, hardships and difficulties imposed on people from every section of society, to lead the struggle against monopoly capitalists, is constant and many faceted.

Established in pre-Federation times and centralised and strengthened thereafter, the state first served British colonial and imperialist interests. It imposed and abetted the force and violence by which the invasion of the lands of the First Peoples was carried out. From a prison settlement, to expanded settler colonialist development of Australian capitalism onto the agricultural, mining and industrial development of the mid-late 19th Century, the state in Australia, consisting of branches of the British state under British Governors, facilitated British investment and according to Brian Fitzpatrick, returns to Britain from the 3m people in the Australasian colonies of 10.5m pounds per annum, more than doubled the return of 5m pounds from the 4.5m people of the Dominion of Canada and comparable to the 13m pounds exploited from the 250 million people of their Indian, Sri Lankan and Malayan colonies

During the 1930s Depression, the fight between NSW Premier Lang and the controllers of British finance capital exposed the role of the Australian state machine to be facilitating British capitalists’ accumulation of capital in Australia and, in the conditions of British crisis, facilitating the export of capital to prop up those British bank capitalists under pressure in the Depression, whatever the cost to Australian working people and small business.

Today, the controlling imperialist power in Australia is the US.  It controls our economy, and it has us enmeshed in a web of political, cultural, diplomatic, military and “intelligence” subordination. 

The era of finance capital in the hands of tiny groups of capitalists linked together in big monopoly corporations sees them dominate the economic life of countries under their control. Those groups of capitalists form national state groups for the subordination of small and weak countries and to struggle with rival national state groups of financiers over division of the world: domination over other countries, sources of raw materials, markets and sources of labour. 

A handful of the richest and most powerful nations strive for domination as an aspect of exploiting large numbers of small or weak nations, as Lenin noted. 
State action to subordinate small and weak countries is action for particular groups of monopoly capitalists. It is vital to understand who are those monopoly capitalists whose interests are served by the actions of the Australian state, in order to identify if the state is a proxy for the imperialist superpower state of foreign capitalists, or an independent state of a local group of monopoly capitalists.  

The core group of monopoly capitalists gaining advantages from the actions of the Australian state internationally and locally are foreign capitalists, mainly US capitalists. In 2003 an international controversy flared up as to whether Australia was deputy sheriff to the US in the Pacific. It went as far as questions to then US President George W Bush. It resonated through news output for weeks because it put the position fairly clearly.  Time has only made this clearer.

The Australian state is a state of a tiny group of monopoly capitalists overseas. It protects their exploitation and oppression of the people, increasing workers’ burdens and exploitation of the country’s resources, destroying the environment and further dispossessing and oppressing First Peoples. They amass immense profits at the people’s and country’s expense. They have some collaborators here but really relatively few. 

There are millions of us and we stand up to look after ourselves, the people and the country as a whole, 

We will break the hold of US imperialism on the Australia state.

 

Oppose the extraterratoriality of NATO personnel in Australia.

Written by: Nick G. on 31 July 2026

 

A proposed new Agreement governing the deployment of NATO personnel to Australia to facilitate the procurement of NATO goods and services is setting a dangerous new precedent for the surrender of Australian sovereignty.

Specifically, it proposes extending near-extraterritorial status to all civilian and military NATO personnel operating in Australia. Extraterritoriality was notoriously imposed on Qing Dynasty China by Western powers whose citizens in China could not be tried for crimes in Chinese courts, and large sections of Shanghai were denied to Chinese police and military.

 

Australia has several agreements governing the status of visiting foreign military personnel. They are the Defence (Visiting Forces) Act (1963), the Australia–United States Status of Forces arrangements (1963), and the Australia–United States Force Posture Agreement (2014) governing the rotational deployment of US Marines, Air Force personnel and other forces in Australia.

 

None of these provide complete exemption from Australian law, although they do provide for jurisdictional allocation where Australia can agree to provide waivers from prosecution under Australian law, and allow the prosecution of those charged by the military authorities of the foreign state concerned. This is particularly the case where conduct constitutes an offence under both Australian law and the sending country's military law, and both countries may potentially have jurisdiction.

 

US-Australia Force Posture Agreement

 

The most significant waiving of Australian immunity to date applies to US military personnel under the Force Posture Agreement which confirms that US personnel remain subject to US military law while also recognising Australian criminal jurisdiction in appropriate cases. 

 

The FPA does not relinquish legal Australian sovereignty to the US for its bases in Australia, but does so in practice. Within Australian bases, certain areas may be designated for the exclusive use or control of US forces for agreed purposes. Operational control of designated areas may rest with the US during agreed activities. This concept did not exist in the same developed form under the Visiting Forces Act. 

 

Article VII of the PFA states:

 

“United States Forces and its contractors shall have unimpeded access to Agreed Facilities and Areas for all matters relating to the pre-positioning and storage of defence equipment and supplies including delivery, management, inspection, use, maintenance and removal of such pre-positioned material. As mutually determined by the Parties, aircraft, vehicles and vessels operated by or for United States Forces shall have access to aerial ports and sea ports of Australia and other locations, for the delivery to, storage and maintenance in, and removal from, the territory of Australia of United States Forces’ pre-positioned material.” 

 

In short, the Agreement enables the United States not only to station its troops in Darwin but to store on Australian soil, US war supplies including spare parts, fuel, weapons, ammunition and bombs and opens Australia’s seaports to their navy and airports and runways for the use of their air-force.

 

The NATO Agreement

 

The full title of the proposed new Treaty is the Agreement between the Government of Australia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Support and Procurement Organisation (NSPO) on Acquisition and Support Cooperation.

 

It has so far largely slipped under the radar. It was opened for public inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, but as of the closing of the time for submissions, there had only been two, one strongly for the Treaty, and one strongly against. By contrast, the non-Parliamentary Public Inquiry into AUKUS, which is still ongoing, has received nearly 500 public submissions to date, almost every one of which is opposed to the AUKUS arrangements.

 

Under Article 5.3 of the NATO Treaty, the NATO Support and Procurement Organisation (NSPO) “shall have legal personality within Australia…”

 

Under Article 6.3, “NSPO shall enjoy immunity from any jurisdiction including criminal, civil and administrative, in Australia.” Under Article 6.5, those immunities include:

 

a. Immunity from personal arrest or detention, and inviolability of papers and documents;

b. Immunity from suit and from other legal process in respect of words spoken or written and all acts performed by them in the exercise of their official functions within NATO;

c. Exemption from the application of laws relating to immigration and the regulation of aliens;

d. Exemption from currency or exchange restrictions.

 

Article 6.12 says that “The premises and archives of NSPO shall be inviolable. Their property and assets shall be immune from search, requisition, confiscation, expropriation or any other form of interference.”

 

Article 7 on Liability, states “Under no circumstances will this Agreement give rise to any Liability for NSPO. All risks inherent in the performance of support or services provided by NSPO shall be borne by Australia.” Article 7.3 states that in the event of any suit or claim against the NSPO, Australia shall pay for legal counsel chosen by NSPO…”

 

This means that no Australian worker or military employee injured, exploited, abused or defamed in the course of employment to implement this Agreement will have any come back against NATO, and in fact will be blocked in the courts by lawyers paid for out of their own taxes.

 

No previous Treaty or Agreement extends such sweeping immunity from Australian law to the military or civilian personnel of another country. No previous Treaty or Agreement grants extraterritoriality to the citizens of another country in Australia.

 

This is a dangerous precedent to set, particularly now that US forces here are not on temporary visits, but have permanent presence in military, air force and naval facilities.

 

The politicians who are complicit in such arrangements claim to be great patriots, but are in fact part of a traitor class of pro-Empire activists, bureaucrats and military leaders who are surrendering Australian sovereignty to the imperialists.

 

The only answer is a genuinely anti-imperialist Australian independence and socialism. 

Ask the question!

Written by: Nick G. on 27 July 2026

 

(AI generated. Supplied)

One of the arts of leadership is to set an example of behaviours appropriate to one’s policies and objectives.

The recent ALP National Conference had the abysmal triumvirate doing just that.

Not wanting participants to see beyond a tightly AUKUS-trated agenda, to ask questions on matters already decided, or to be prepared to listen to dissenting opinion, Albanese, Wong and Marles have set their own example in relation to the AUKUS arrangements.

These “wise monkeys” have denied their own accountability for these arrangements and refuse to ask questions of their imperial masters on many issues, but two typify their “wisdom”. 

They relate to the expansion of the Tindal Air Base outside Katherine in the NT, and the construction of Submarine Base West at Stirling in WA.

Tindal

The Tindal Air Base is being expanded to host six nuclear-weapons capable US B-52 bombers.

Australia has committed over A$14 billion over the coming decade for northern base upgrades, of which Tindal is one element. The US will contribute to the expansion, but Australia will pay for expansion of aircraft parking aprons suitable for B-52 bombers, fuel systems, accommodation, security and communications.

There has been no public debate about why the US should base B-52 bombers in Australia.

The triumvirate say they will not ask the US whether those B-52 are carrying nuclear bombs. They say they respect the US right to neither confirm nor deny such information. 

Stirling

As part of the AUKUS arrangements, HMAS Stirling, the naval base located on Garden Island, 50 km south of Perth, has become part of Fleet Base (West). It is being upgraded as the site for the Submarine Rotational Forces-West (SRF-W) initiative whereby the US and UK would maintain a permanent rotational presence of nuclear-powered submarines at the base. From 2027, that will include one UK Astute Class submarine and up to four US Virginia-class submarines. All are nuclear-powered and capable of carrying nuclear weaponry.

The Australian Government is paying almost all of the infrastructure costs including construction of new wharves and maintenance facilities, utilities, security and housing. These costs are officially estimated to be $8bn. 

Included in the costs are 550 new homes for US and UK submarine crews to be built by private contractors and leased to Defence Housing Australia.

There has been no public debate about why nuclear submarines from foreign countries should be permanently based in Australia.

The triumvirate say they will not ask the US or UK whether those submarines are carrying nuclear missiles. They say they respect the US and UK right to neither confirm nor deny such information. 

In a remarkable admission to the Public Inquiry into AUKUS, Brigadier the Hon. Linda Reynolds CSC (Retd), Minister for Defence (2019-2012) stated:

If kinetic war was to break out to our north, here in Australia I believe we would be not only subjected to heighten hybrid attacks, but we would also be subjected to precision kinetic attacks. The joint facilities, bases and airfields across our approaches are already targets and a capable adversary would strike them early. A war that looked northern would not stay in the north.

NCND

These expansions of US military facilities on Australian soil that make us targets in a kinetic (real) war are consistent with the Force Posture Agreement (FPA) framework which guarantees the US the right to access Australian facilities when and where it likes.

Article 7 of the FPA states:

“United States Forces and its contractors shall have unimpeded access to Agreed Facilities and Areas for all matters relating to the pre-positioning and storage of defence equipment and supplies including delivery, management, inspection, use, maintenance and removal of such pre-positioned material. As mutually determined by the Parties, aircraft, vehicles and vessels operated by or for United States Forces shall have access to aerial ports and sea ports of Australia and other locations, for the delivery to, storage and maintenance in, and removal from, the territory of Australia of United States Forces’ pre-positioned material.”

Not only can it do what it likes, where it likes, it can deny whatever it likes and conceal whatever it likes.

And that is because the simpering triumvirate of US Empire loyalists have agreed between themselves that they just won’t ask their masters any questions that the masters don’t want to answer, such as “Do US B-52 bombers at Tindal carry nuclear weapons?” and “Do US-UK submarines at Stirling carry nuclear weapons?”

It is sad to think that 40 years ago, New Zealand had the guts to do what the Triumvirate won't. They called the US bluff on “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” (NCND) in relation to nuclear weapons brought into that country. In 1984, the USS Buchanan was meant to visit New Zealand. By the early 1980s, New Zealand had developed one of the world's strongest anti-nuclear movements. It led to a NZ government policy that required visiting militaries to declare whether their ships and planes were carrying nuclear weapons.When the US refused to answer the question, the NZ government banned the Buchanan from entering its waters. The US retaliated by suspending NZ’s involvement in ANZUS. Both the ban and the suspension remain in place and NZ still exists.

It is time for Australia to break free from the US.  
Demand that Albanese, Wong and Marles ask the question.
We have a right to know.

 

Australia’s 2026 Defence Strategy: Last gasp of US empire loyalists?

Written by: Nick G. on 23 April 2026

 

The recently released 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy continues the government’s blind acceptance of the US imperialist stranglehold on Australia at a time when that viewpoint is being increasingly rejected in favour of a more independent and peaceful foreign policy.

It is sometimes said that the erratic and bizarre behaviour of US President Donald Trump means that Australia can no longe rely on protection from its major strategic partner.

But the US-Australia “alliance” has never been about Australia’s protection, but about our being forced to accept the domination of our country by US imperialism.

Even so, the breadth and extent to which the relationship with the US is now being questioned is very welcome, and the Defence Strategy, which seeks to strengthen that relationship, may well be the last time that such an obsequious political and military “strategy” will be able to be foisted on the public.

It is not just that a stronger emerging Left is challenging the Albanese-Marles-Wong triumvirate. Led by Retired Admiral Chris Barrie, the former head of the Australian Defence Force, and Ian Dunlop, a former senior international oil and gas executive and ex-chair of the Australian Coal Association, the Australian Security Leaders Climate Group slammed the Strategy. In an op ed piece in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age, the pair said: “The fragility of fossil fuel supply lines and our reliance on them is now obvious, yet the newly released defence strategy downplays the strategic consequences of Australia’s fossil fuel dependence. The strategy fails to fully recognise how Australia’s expanding coal and gas exports are perpetuating a cycle of fossil fuel addiction, undermining our long-term security and claims to regional leadership.”

On the same day, in the Canberra Times, they said “The document is not a genuine strategy, but a short-term tactical response to current events that flinches from the strategic clarity required in a profoundly altered security environment.”

In fairness to the authors of the Strategy, the words “climate” and “climate change” are mentioned seven times, but with no commitment to any plan of action that would address the concerns raised by Barrie and Dunlop.

But they were not alone.

Kym Bergmann, editor of the online Asia Pacific Defence Reporter, attended the talk by Richard Marles, the Minister of Defence, at the National Press Club following the launch of the National Defence Strategy.

He described the presentation by Marles as “frankly appalling. Insulting, short-sighted and full of stupid mistakes, and most seriously of all, demonstrated an utter lack of recognition, let alone acceptance, that one of the major causes of global instability is the behaviour of the United States.”

In response to a journalist’s question about the continuing operation of the so-called international rules-based order, Marles said that you only have to fly low over the waters separating Indonesia from Australia to see its operation in the acceptance by Indonesian fishermen of the need to stay on their own side of the “border”.  It was a response that left the audience gasping at Marle’s stupidity: Indonesian fishermen regularly move into Australian waters in search of rapidly depleting fish stocks.  

As for referring to the kidnapping of one nation’s President by the armed forces of another, the sinking of boats and ships in international waters, the provision of arms for Zionism’s genocidal war against Palestinians, threats to take Greenland by force, and demands that Canada cease to exist except as a part of the United States, let alone the bombing of Iran and the threat to destroy it as a civilisation…no, Marles could see none of this.

Under his signature, the Defence Strategy declares, “The United States is our closest ally and principal strategic partner. Our Alliance contributes to the peace and stability of the region… Any effective balance of military power in the Indo-Pacific will require the continued presence and role of the United States… Australia’s force posture cooperation with the United States will continue to be a key pillar of our Alliance. It supports Australia’s ability to deter and respond, strengthens the credibility and resilience of the United States’ force posture in the region and supports collective deterrence efforts.”

Like a flagellant monk begging for more of the lash, Marles wants even greater subservience to his imperialist masters.

But across the nation, there is the growing rumble of stomachs being turned by such a sickening and servile display.

Those rumblings will become louder as the servility deepens.

There is little chance of a change in direction from the major parties. They try to outdo themselves in displays of Empire loyalty.

We are well-positioned to win more of our people to the demand for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

 

Adelaide rally demands “Hands Off Iran!”

Written by: Mike Williss on 6 March 2026

 

(Supplied)

Around 200 people gathered at Parliament House last night to condemn the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.

At least half the crowd were Shia Muslim Iranian-Australians, and the second speaker was Iranian woman Habibah Jaghoori.

Other speakers were CPA (M-L) supporter and Spirit of Eureka member Mike Williss, Australian Friends of Palestine’s Mike Khizam, Independent and Peaceful Australia’s Derek Burke, Socialist Alliance’s Markela Panegyres, and Liam Ellis from the Communist Party of Australia.

The rally endorsed the following demands, put by MC Eileen Darley:

We call on the Australian Govt:

To rescind its backing of the United States and Israeli war on Iran and immediately stop Pine Gaps involvement in the attacks.

Impose sanctions on the Israeli state which includes the supply of weapons’ components  and the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador.

Sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

End the Australian alliance with the US. Scrap AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement and close all US bases on Australian soil.

We reprint the talk by Mike Williss below.

....................

 

Comrades and friends,

Well, the man who demanded the Nobel Peace Prize is at it again.

Perhaps led on by the genocidal bloodlust of Netanyahu, the US has attacked Iran even as negotiations between it and Iran on Iran’s nuclear program were in progress. Pearl Harbour anyone?

Within weeks of declaring again that Iran’s nuclear capacity had been obliterated by his previous bombing of its facilities, Trump tried to justify the current aggression by saying that it was necessary to protect Americans from Iran’s nuclear threat.

Netanyahu also declared that the attack was pre-emptive in nature, and required to remove Iran’s threat to Israel.

However, the only basis for a real international rule of law is the UN Charter. Article 2(4) of the Charter prohibits states from using force against the integrity or political independence of any state. This, in effect, makes pre-emptive strikes illegal.

No wonder the man who is so bored with peace, tried to create an alternative to the UN with his Board of Peace.  It’s Orwellian, isn’t it?

I want to say a few words to our friends in the Iranian diaspora in Australia.

We condemn the assassination of Iran’s leaders, including Ali Khamenei, but acknowledge that many in the diaspora have welcomed it. We remind them of the ancient saying to “beware Greeks bearing gifts”.

The phrase comes from Virgil’s Aenid, and refers to the Trojan horse, presented by the Greeks to their enemy, the Trojans, inside of which were hidden Greek warriors who opened the city gates at night to the Greek army outside, which destroyed Troy.

The US imperialists and genocidal Zionists have presented you with a gift – but please, beware.

The death of Khamenei will be welcomed by all who suffered under his regime. Women, progressive peoples and working class activists in their thousands have all been jailed and killed.  

Others will acknowledge Khamenei as a leader of global resistance seeking to break American hegemony and liquidate the Zionist project.

These are divergent views, and need to be correctly handled, non-antagonistically, as contradictions within the Iranian people. It is for the Iranian people to decide the best way forward in a complicated situation.

They must take charge and exercise leadership over their own liberation. The alternative is to have anti-democratic rulers favoured by the US and Israel impose further disaster on Iran.

But there is more to the US gift of Khamenei’s killing.

A pre-emptive strike against Chinese imperialist rival?

The year began with the US abduction of Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife – another illegal act.

Both Venezuela and Iran are closely connected to US imperialism’s main rival, China.

Iran is a member of BRICS, the intergovernmental organisation created by Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2009. It now has ten member states, comprises more than a quarter of the global economy and nearly half the world's population, and has challenged the US-led financial world through the New Development Bank and proposals for de-dollarisation.

Iranian cooperation with China through the Belt and Road Initiative includes infrastructure, logistics, energy and trade links, reflecting broader Sino-Iranian partnership beyond BRICS itself. 

Much of Iran’s oil export goes to China.

Venezuela is not a member of BRICS, largely as a result of Brazilian opposition. However, it had close ties with China and has expressed support for China’s Belt and Road Initiative and signed Memoranda of Understanding with Beijing on BRI cooperation, especially related to infrastructure, energy, and broader strategic partnership. 

As with Iran, much of Venezuela’s oil exports went to China.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the two countries subjected to illegal US aggression so far this year both had strong ties to China.

So, if Netanyahu’s crime is motivated by his regional expansionism and desire to create a “Greater Israel” – his term – then Trump’s has a more global motivation, and that is, to try and weaken China in the event that the Orange Idiot decides to go to war with the Middle Kingdom.

(Supplied)

And Australia was involved, despite Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s claim that Australia “did not participate in the strikes”. It was involved as a joint participant in the activities of the US war base at Pine Gap which not only intercepts communications, but sends targeting information to the US for the strikes it conducts.

The Australian government rushed to endorse the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.  This is to be expected of a government which itself is enmeshed in an economic, political, military, diplomatic and cultural web of US domination and control, and is incapable of representing Australia as a peaceful and independent country.

We must demand that Pine Gap be closed along with all other US military facilities in Australia, that the AUKUS arrangements be scrapped and the Force Posture Agreement with the US be cancelled. And if our government is going to cheer an illegal pre-emptive strike over an alleged nuclear weapons threat, why hasn’t it signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?

Just as we fight for our own independence and freedom, we hope that the Iranian people can turn current events to their own advantage, unite under a correct anti-imperialist and socialist leadership, and win genuine freedom and independence.

Talk at Eureka Rebellion Anniversary and 50 years since Gough Whitlam's dismissal commemorative meeting

Written by: Shirley Winton on 4 December 2025

 

 

On Saturday 29 November, 2025, Spirit of Eureka (Victoria) held a commemorative meeting for the anniversaries of the Eureka Stockade rebellion and the sacking of the Whitlam government.

The meeting was held at the premises of the Victorian branch of the Maritime Union of Australia. Speakers at the meeting were Gary Foley representing Indigenous Liberation, Sarah Baarini representing Palestine Liberation, Dave Ball from the MUA and Shirley Winton from Spirit of Eureka.  The meeting was MC-ed by former state secretary of the MUA Kevin Bracken.

Shirley has kindly made the contents of her talk available. 3CR community radio recorded the speeches and played them on Wednesday morning, 3rd December, after livestreaming the annual Eureka rebellion recreation in Ballarat at 6 am - eds.

................................

Welcome, and thank you for coming. 

We meet tonight on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. 

Tonight, we are commemorating the anniversaries of the Eureka Rebellion and the dismissal of the Whitlam government – two defining moments symbolising the long struggles of Australia’s working people for justice, democracy and independence - for a fundamental change. 

But the fight for justice and sovereignty in this country did not begin with the Eureka rebellion in 1854. It began sixty-six years earlier, in 1788, with the First People’s resistance to the British colonial invasion, the genocidal occupation, and the theft of their country. Their resistance took many forms, including fierce armed resistance in the Frontier Wars. British colonialism imposed on their country the exploitative, profit-driven class system of capitalism to serve the British ruling class. Their land and country were never ceded, never recognised by Treaties. 

This thread of struggles for justice, democratic rights and independence runs through 237 years of colonial occupation, and today imperialist control by the US. First People have always been at the forefront of resistance. 

In 1854, impoverished migrant miners at Eureka took up the fight for justice, the rights of working people and independence. They rebelled against the oppressive colonial authority of the British ruling class. They called for an independent Australian republic, democratic rights and equality for all – demands that were ahead of their time. Their struggle helped pave the way for future victories for working people, including the world’s first eight-hour day in 1856, and helped lay the foundations for Australia’s militant trade union movement and the culture of working class solidarity. 

Migrants from 21 nationalities participated in the Eureka rebellion under the Eureka flag. They included Afro-American, Jamaican and South Americans.
Seeds of working class solidarity and multiculturalism were planted at the Eureka stockade. 

The British colonial ruling class fuelled and relied heavily on racism and scapegoating to divide and control the miners and settlers. But Eureka leaders rejected those divisions. They condemned the racism promoted by British authority and called for unity of all people under the Eureka flag. In his famous speech Raffaello Carboni, one of the rebel leaders at the Stockade declared, “…Irrespective of nationality, religion, and colour, to salute the ‘Southern Cross’ as the refuge of all oppressed from all countries on earth.”

In the formation of unions in late 19th Century, workers and their unions fought under the Eureka flag for the right to organise in unions and fight for decent wages and conditions. 

The Eureka flag became – and remains - a powerful symbol of militant working class solidarity and struggle for justice, against exploitation and oppression. It excludes Nazis and racists. Attempts to malign, erase or ban the flag, or appropriate it by the nazis and racists, are not new. In 2006, under pressure from big developers and big business, the federal government tried to ban Eureka flags and insignias on building sites. But the widespread resistance by unions and workers forced the ruling class to immediately drop the ban. Workers knew that attacks on Eureka flag and Eureka insignia on building sites were aimed to crush all workers’ and unions’ struggle, not just construction workers.

The struggle for independence from the British colonial empire continued through the mass mobilisation of workers and unions against conscription and the 1914- 1917 World War 1.

After the Second World War, British control of Australia was replaced by the US control - economically, politically and militarily. The struggle for independence continued - in the mass movement against conscription and the Vietnam War, against Australia’s involvement in US imperialist war against the Vietnamese people fighting for their liberation; in the opposition to secretive military intelligence Pine Gap and other US military bases; against continuing oppression and the theft of First People’s land and destruction of their culture; in the movements for Australian progressive working people’s culture; against the plunder of our natural resources and destruction of the environment by mining corporations.

In 1972 Whitlam rode into government on the crest of this powerful people’s movement. His government put the US on notice by threatening to close Pine Gap and other US military bases, and started pivoting Australia towards the Non-Alignment Movement. They began making plans to nationalise natural resources and corporate farms; took first steps in acknowledging the sovereignty of the First People and demanded ASIO breaks connections with the CIA. These were the demands of the people that brought Whitlam to power. The tentative steps Whitlam started making towards independence were threatening the US and British economic and military control of Australia. 

The 1975 Whitlam dismissal was a US/CIA-UK engineered coup, executed by the Governor General John Kerr, Australia’s representative of the British Crown (and supported by the conservatives and reactionaries).

Since then, US imperialist control has deepened with every Australian government servile to the US, clearing the way for greater multinational corporations and finance capital control of this country. 

Today, the most powerful sectors of our economy are controlled by multinational corporations. Our natural resources—gas, oil, minerals, and even water—are largely in the hands of multinational corporations (BHP, Woodside, Chevron, Rio Tinto, Exxon-Mobil, and Santos). The giant global financial assets managers such as US owned BlackRock wield enormous power through their f inancial control of privatised health services, child care, aged care and weapons corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing, and some mining multinationals.

In finance, all four major banks are majority-owned by US financial interests. In culture and media, the Murdoch empire stifles the culture of Australia’s working people. 

Multinational corporations use their economic power over this country through the Mining Council and Business Council of Australia - between them representing the top 100 biggest corporations in the country, mostly foreign owned or dominated. They use their power over governments to reduce or remove barriers to their plunder of natural resources on the lands of the First People, environmental destruction and exploitation of workers. People’s resistance to this plunder and exploitation is met with escalating repression through the state’s anti-protest, anti-democratic, anti-worker and so-called anti-terror laws increasingly used against the people. (eg CFMEU in Administration).

Even the few remaining Australian-owned corporations and businesses depend on powerful US capital for their survival in highly competitive cut throat monopoly capitalism. (Gina Rinehart) 

Privatised essential services—child care, aged care, and social services—are increasingly owned by global financial asset managers.

Multinational and local corporations pocket billions in profits from the stolen lands and genocide of First People, and the exploitation of all workers in this country. 
Militarily, Australia has become a major US base and a launching pad for US imperialism as it prepares for a US-led war with China. 
In the military sector, US owned Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and Israel’s Elbit influence and pressure Australian governments to expand the manufacture and export of weapons for their corporations’ profit making and war mongering. Militarising our economy and education system.

Today, the US control of Australia is most visible in the deep integration and interoperability of Australia’s military and defence with US military forces and the military industrial complex. Australia is an extension of the US global military and its war machine. Thousands of US marines in Darwin, the Force Posture Agreement giving US unimpeded access to all of Australia’s defence and civil infrastructure, the AUKUS pact, the US nuclear submarines in our ports and nuclear weapons capable B52 bombers near Darwin. 

More than $400 billion of Australian public money is being poured into the US ailing economy and its military industrial complex – a burden on Australia’s working people. Public money taken away from health, education, housing, environment, and rebuilding Australia’s sovereign manufacturing industries, eg local shipbuilding. Giving away our rare earth and critical minerals, on the lands of the First People, surrenders further to the US the little sovereignty Australia has left.

As long as Australia’s economy is dominated by the US and its military, (or by any other big power for that matter), our foreign policies will always serve the profit needs of the imperialist power, the class that controls the economy. (Foreign policies always serve the class that holds state power.) (eg Palestine, rubber stamping US in UN.) 

But the impacts of this domination on everyday lives of ordinary people and the environment continue to fuel powerful movements for justice, workers’ rights, environment, against imperialist war and for genuine independence – the resistance that began with the 1788 British colonial invasion and occupation, continues today.

The wealth of this country must be placed in the hands of the First People and the working class who create it. This collective wealth must be used for the needs of the people and the environment – not by profiteering corporations and their wars, and the tiny parasitic billionaire class. 

This is what the Eureka rebellion and its flag stood for 171 years ago. It is what the Whitlam Dismissal (CIA coup) exposed 50 years ago.

A broad and united people’s movements of workers, farmers, professionals, communities from all nationalities, cultures and religions makes a powerful force in the continuing struggles for a truly just, democratic and independent Australia. 

To close, I want to quote Karl Marx writing about Eureka in 1855, only a few months after the rebellion. “Eureka was a revolutionary movement. It was a revolution—small in size, but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for a principle, a stand against injustice and oppression.” 

For 171 years the ruling class has tried to erase from history the revolutionary and progressive spirit of the Eureka rebellion and its flag which united the impoverished miners in their struggle against the oppressive British colonial ruling class. This proud legacy of the Eureka Stockade and its flag belong to Australia’s working people and continues to inspire us today in the fight for an anti-imperialist independent and just Australia.

 

 

Book Review: Turbulence

 Written by: Duncan B. on 23 November 2025

 

The author Clinton Fernandes is Professor of International and Political Studies in the Future Operations Research Group at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of several books about Australia’s foreign relations.

In this book Turbulence- Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era, Fernandes tries to make sense of the chaos which Trump has caused in international relations since his election and analyse Trump’s attitude to three important geopolitical regions of the world.

Trump wants to maintain US global primacy over China and seeks economic control over it. Failing that, he wants economic separation from China. As for Europe, Trump wants a Europe that is economically and politically subordinate to the US and militarily dependent on the US so that he can influence Europe’s relations with China.

Trump’s goals in the Middle East are military dominance of the region and control of Middle Eastern oil. Trump protects Israel because Israel’s actions help support this goal. Israel also helps to protect Saudi Arabia and the other pro-US monarchies in the region.

Where does Australia fit into this scenario? Throughout the book Fernandes makes the point that Australia’s policy is to demonstrate our relevance to the US. Ever since Prime Minister John Curtin’s “turn to America” in World War Two, Australia has loyally followed US foreign policy. Older Australians will remember with disgust Prime Minister Harold Holt’s “all the way with LBJ.” 

Australia has joined the US in wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, and has been America’s faithful “deputy sheriff” in our region. Fernandes explains at length how the AUKUS Treaty ties us firmly to the US foreign policy and the US war machine. The ramifications of the AUKUS Treaty extend far beyond the nonsense about “nation building” that its proponents have tried to feed us. Turbulence is required reading for all Australians who want to know more about AUKUS.