COMMENTARY: By Peter Murphy

I acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation as the Traditional Owners of the Land on which we are gathered and pay respect to their Elders past and present. I also acknowledge the Pitjantjatjara and other peoples of the APY lands who suffered the direct impact of nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and nearby in the 1950s and early 1960s.

I am standing in here for Michael Wright, the national secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, who was unable to take up our invitation to be here today.

The Electrical Trades Union (ETU) has a very solid record for opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, and really campaigned hard on this issue against Peter Dutton and the Coalition in the May federal elections.

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The ETU campaigned in Dutton’s seat of Dickson and he lost his seat to Labor’s Ali France. You have to conclude that among the many reasons that Australian voters deserted the Coalition and Dutton, the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy was a big one.

Since the election, the Coalition has continued to entertain the idea of a nuclear-powered Australia, showing that they just refuse to listen to the Australian people. But they are only too happy to listen to and take the money of the fossil fuel corporations and the nuclear power companies like Westinghouse, who are the ones who benefit from government policies to foster nuclear power.

They are determined to delay the transition to renewable energy as long as possible, whatever the cost to all of us in runaway climate disasters.

The ETU’s official policy against the nuclear industry dates back to the 1950s, resulting from the shared experiences of ETU members who returned from Japan after the Second World War. In the decades since, the ETU has regularly revisited this policy to learn more about the nuclear fuel cycle, changes and advances to technologies, technical interaction with the network and economic viability.

Opposed nuclear industry
Let’s honour those long-gone ETU members who recognised the crimes that took place at Nagasaki and Hiroshima 80 years ago by vigorously opposing the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons today. And let’s remember some other Australians who were there then — Tom Uren saw the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki from the copper mine where he was working as a prisoner of war; and Wilfred Burchett, the journalist, who first told the world from Hiroshima about radiation sickness.

Nuclear power stations generate radioactive waste such as spent reactor fuel, reprocessing effluents, and contaminated tools and work clothing. These materials can remain radioactive and hazardous to human health for tens of thousands of years.

And this is the kind of waste that comes from nuclear-powered submarines, during regular maintenance, and at the end of their life — 30 years we have been told for the AUKUS submarine nuclear reactors.

This waste will need to be trucked across the country on public roads to be disposed of in a nuclear waste facility.

But, Australia does not have a dedicated national radioactive waste facility. And the Albanese government is refusing to say where they plan to put that waste.

The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and those at the nuclear tests sites in Nevada, the Marianas, French Polynesia, Algeria, Kazakhstan, and the Monte Bello Islands, Emu Fields, Maralinga in Australia have been living with these nuclear wastes in their environment for up to 80 years.

We don’t want this to go any further in Australia or anywhere else in the world.

Democratic failure over AUKUS
How dare the Albanese government commit future generations to somehow keep that deadly nuclear waste safe for tens of thousands of years.

The ETU stood up at the August 2023 ALP National Conference and opposed the AUKUS project, spelling out these concerns and also the democratic failure of Labor to consult the public and the Parliament before committing to the AUKUS deal.

The Albanese leadership tried very hard to make sure that AUKUS was not debated at that ALP National Conference. So it was a victory first of all to have the debate and openly discuss the big problems with AUKUS.

The pro-AUKUS case was so weak that the Defence Industry Minister at the time, Pat Conroy, defended it by accusing the critics of being like the appeasers of the Nazis in the 1930s. In doing so he was saying that China is a fascist state and it is the enemy we have to fight with these hopeless submarines.

The grotesque comparison of us and of China to Nazis is ironically more appropriate for Trump and the USA, who are right now purging people of colour from the streets and workplaces of the United States and supporting a genocide in Gaza.

AUKUS is one building block in the US plan to wage war on China to remove its capacity to challenge US primacy in this region and world-wide. A conga line of US military commanders and cabinet secretaries have made this clear.

It is imperial madness writ large.

The deeper reason
And this is the deeper reason why we must oppose AUKUS, because we have to stop this deadly drive for a war between nuclear-armed superpowers. Such a war would almost certainly go nuclear, the world would go into nuclear winter, there would be no winners and huge huge casualties.

Japan, the Philippines, and Australia would be very early targets in such a war.

We remember that 200,000 people, almost all civilians, men women and children of all ages, were killed by those two nuclear bombs 80 years ago, and endless suffering has continued down to this day.

So we recommit to opposing nuclear weapons and the nuclear industry which produces them. We commit to getting Australia’s signature on the Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons.

We commit to stopping AUKUS. We commit to stopping the active US and Australian plan for a war with China.

This is edited from Peter Murphy’s speech at the 80th anniversary Horoshima Day rally for the Sydney Peace and Justice Coalition and Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition on 3 August 2025.

New Zealand’s opposition Green Party has called on the government to condemn the United States for its illegal bombing of Iran and inflaming tensions across the Middle East.

“The actions of the United States pose a fundamental threat to world peace,” said Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson in a statement.

“The rest of the world — including New Zealand– must take a stand and make it clear that this dangerous escalation is unacceptable.

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“We are calling on the New Zealand government to condemn the United States for its attack on Iran. This attack is a blatant breach of international law and yet another unjustified assault on the Middle East from the US.”

Davidson said the country had seen this with the US war on Iraq in 2003, and it was happening again with Sunday’s attack on Iran.

“We are at risk of a violent history repeating itself,” she said.

“[Prime Minister] Christopher Luxon needs to condemn this escalation from the US and rule out any participation in this conflict, or any of the elements of the AUKUS pact.

Independent foreign policy
“New Zealand must maintain its independent foreign policy position and keep its distance from countries that are actively fanning the flames of war.”

Davidson said New Zealand had a long and proud history of standing up for human rights on the world stage.

“When we stand strong and with other countries in calling for peace, we can make a difference. We cannot afford to be a bystander to the atrocities unfolding in front of our eyes.”

It was time for the New Zealand government to step up.

“It has failed to sanction Israel for its illegal and violent occupation of Palestine, and we risk burning all international credibility by failing to speak out against what the United States has just done.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Luxon said New Zealand wanted to see a peaceful stable and secure Middle East, but more military action was not the answer, reports RNZ News.

The UN Security Council met in emergency session today to discuss the US attack on the three key nuclear facilities.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the US bombing marked a “perilous turn” in a region already reeling.

Iran called on the 15-member body to condemn what it called a “blatant and unlawful act of aggression”.

Australia is caught in a jam, between an assertive American ally and a bold Chinese trading partner. America is accelerating its pivot to the Indo-Pacific, building up its fighting forces and expanding its military bases.

As Australia tries to navigate a pathway between America’s and Australia’s national interests, sometimes Australia’s national interest seems to submerge out of view.

Admiral David Johnston, the Chief of the Australia’s Defence Force, is steering this ship as China flexes its muscle sending a small warship flotilla south to circumnavigate the continent.

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He has admitted that the first the Defence Force heard of a live-fire exercise by the three Chinese Navy ships sailing in the South Pacific east of Australia on February 21, was a phone call from the civilian Airservices Australia.

“The absence of any advance notice to Australian authorities was a concern, notably, that the limited notice provided by the PLA could have unnecessarily increased the risk to aircraft and vessels in the area,” Johnston told Senate Estimates .

Johnston was pressed to clarify how Defence first came to know of the live-fire drill: “Is it the case that Defence was only notified, via Virgin and Airservices Australia, 28 minutes [sic] after the firing window commenced?”

To this, Admiral Johnston replied: “Yes.”

If it happened as stated by the Admiral — that a live-fire exercise by the Chinese ships was undertaken and a warning notice was transmitted from the Chinese ships, all without being detected by Australian defence and surveillance assets — this is a defence failure of considerable significance.

Sources with knowledge of Defence spoken to by Declassified Australia say that this is either a failure of surveillance, or a failure of communication, or even more far-reaching, a failure of US alliance cooperation.

And from the very start the official facts became slippery.

Our latest investigation –

AUSTRALIA’S DEFENCE: NAVIGATING US-CHINA TENSIONS

We investigate a significant intelligence failure to detect live-firing by Chinese warships near Australia, has exposed Defence weaknesses, and the fact that when it counts, we are all alone.

… pic.twitter.com/GxbSxrtXyc

— Declassified Australia (@DeclassifiedAus) March 7, 2025

What did they know and when did they know it
The first information passed on to Defence by Airservices Australia came from the pilot of a Virgin passenger jet passing overhead the flotilla in the Tasman Sea that had picked up the Chinese Navy VHF radio notification of an impending live-fire exercise.

The radio transmission had advised the window for the live-fire drill commenced at 9.30am and would conclude at 3pm.

We know this from testimony given to Senate Estimates by the head of Airservices Australia. He said Airservices was notified at 9.58am by an aviation control tower informed by the Virgin pilot. Two minutes later Airservices issued a “hazard alert” to commercial airlines in the area.

The Headquarters of the Defence Force’s Joint Operations Command (HJOC), at Bungendore 30km east of Canberra, was then notified about the drill by Airservices at 10.08am, 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.

When questioned a few days later, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appeared to try to cover for Defence’s apparent failure to detect the live-fire drill or the advisory transmission.

“At around the same time, there were two areas of notification. One was from the New Zealand vessels that were tailing . ..  the [Chinese] vessels in the area by both sea and air,” Albanese stated. “So that occurred and at the same time through the channels that occur when something like this is occurring, Airservices got notified as well.”

But the New Zealand Defence Force had not notified Defence “at the same time”. In fact it was not until 11.01am that an alert was received by Defence from the New Zealand Defence Force — 53 minutes after Defence HQ was told by Airservices and an hour and a half after the drill window had begun.

Defence Minister Richard Marles later in a round-about way admitted on ABC Radio that it wasn’t the New Zealanders who informed Australia first: “Well, to be clear, we weren’t notified by China. I mean, we became aware of this during the course of the day.

“What China did was put out a notification that it was intending to engage in live firing. By that I mean a broadcast that was picked up by airlines or literally planes that were commercial planes that were flying across the Tasman.”

Later the Chinese Ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, told ABC that two live-fire training drills were carried out at sea on February 21 and 22, in accordance with international law and “after repeatedly issuing safety notices in advance”.

Eyes and ears on ‘every move’
It was expected the Chinese-navy flotilla would end its three week voyage around Australia on March 7, after a circumnavigation of the continent. That is not before finally passing at some distance the newly acquired US-UK nuclear submarine base at HMAS Stirling near Perth and the powerful US communications and surveillance base at North West Cape.

Just as Australia spies on China to develop intelligence and targeting for a potential US war, China responds in kind, collecting data on US military and intelligence bases and facilities in Australia, as future targets should hostilities commence.

The presence of the Chinese Navy ships that headed into the northern and eastern seas around Australia attracted the attention of the Defence Department ever since they first set off south through the Mindoro Strait in the Philippines and through the Indonesian archipelago from the South China Sea on February 3.

“We are keeping a close watch on them and we will be making sure that we watch every move,” Marles stated in the week before the live-fire incident.

“Just as they have a right to be in international waters . . .  we have a right to be prudent and to make sure that we are surveilling them, which is what we are doing.”

Around 3500 km to the north, a week into the Chinese ships’ voyage, a spy flight by an RAAF P-8A Poseidon surveillance plane on February 11, in a disputed area of the South China Sea south of China’s Hainan Island, was warned off by a Chinese J-16 fighter jet.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Australian protests claiming the Australian aircraft “deliberately intruded” into China’s claimed territorial airspace around the Paracel Islands without China’s permission, thereby “infringing on China’s sovereignty and endangering China’s national security”.

Australia criticised the Chinese manoeuvre, defending the Australian flight saying it was “exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace”.

Two days after the incident, the three Chinese ships on their way to Australian waters were taking different routes in beginning their own “right to freedom of navigation” in international waters off the Australian coast. The three ships formed up their mini flotilla in the Coral Sea as they turned south paralleling the Australian eastern coastline outside of territorial waters, and sometimes within Australia’s 200-nautical-mile (370 km) Exclusive Economic Zone.

“Defence always monitors foreign military activity in proximity to Australia. This includes the Peoples Liberation Army-Navy (PLA-N) Task Group.” Admiral Johnston told Senate Estimates.

“We have been monitoring the movement of the Task Group through its transit through Southeast Asia and we have observed the Task Group as it has come south through that region.”

The Task Group was made up of a modern stealth guided missile destroyer Zunyi, the frigate Hengyang, and the Weishanhu, a 20,500 tonne supply ship carrying fuel, fresh water, cargo and ammunition. The Hengyang moved eastwards through the Torres Strait, while the Zunyi and Weishanhu passed south near Bougainville and Solomon Islands, meeting in the Coral Sea.

As the Chinese ships moved near northern Australia and through the Coral Sea heading further south, the Defence Department deployed Navy and Air Force assets to watch over the ships. These included various RAN warships including the frigate HMAS Arunta and a RAAF P-8A Poseidon intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance plane.

With unconfirmed reports a Chinese nuclear submarine may also be accompanying the surface ships, the monitoring may have also included one of the RAN’s Collins-class submarines, with their active range of sonar, radar and radio monitoring – however it is uncertain whether one was able to be made available from the fleet.

“From the point of time the first of the vessels entered into our more immediate region, we have been conducting active surveillance of their activities,” the Defence chief confirmed.

As the Chinese ships moved into the southern Tasman Sea, New Zealand navy ships joined in the monitoring alongside Australia’s Navy and Air Force.

The range of signals intelligence (SIGINT) that theoretically can be intercepted emanating from a naval ship at sea includes encrypted data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, aerial drone data and communications, as well as data of radar, gunnery, and weapon launches.

There are a number of surveillance facilities in Australia that would have been able to be directed at the Chinese ships.

Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Shoal Bay Receiving Station outside of Darwin, picks up transmissions and data emanating from radio signals and satellite communications from Australia’s near north region. ASD’s Cocos Islands receiving station in the mid-Indian ocean would have been available too.

The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) over-the-horizon radar network, spread across northern Australia, is an early warning system that monitors aircraft and ship movements across Australia’s north-western, northern, and north-eastern ocean areas — but its range off the eastern coast is not thought to presently reach further south than the sea off Mackay on the Queensland coast.

Of land-based surveillance facilities, it is the American Pine Gap base that is believed to have the best capability of intercepting the ship’s radio communications in the Tasman Sea.

Enter, Pine Gap and the Americans
The US satellite surveillance base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is a US and Australian jointly-run satellite ground station. It is regarded as the most important such American satellite base outside of the USA.

The role of ASD in supporting the extensive US surveillance mission against China is increasingly valued by Australia’s large Five Eyes alliance partner.

A Top Secret ‘Information Paper’, titled “NSA Intelligence Relationship with Australia”, leaked from the National Security Agency (NSA) by Edward Snowden and published by ABC’s Background Briefing, spells out the “close collaboration” between the NSA and ASD, in particular on China:

“Increased emphasis on China will not only help ensure the security of Australia, but also synergize with the U.S. in its renewed emphasis on Asia and the Pacific . . .   Australia’s overall intelligence effort on China, as a target, is already significant and will increase.”

The Pine Gap base, as further revealed in 2023 by Declassified Australia, is being used to collect signals intelligence and other data from the Israeli battlefield of Gaza, and also Ukraine and other global hotspots within view of the US spy satellites.

It’s recently had a significant expansion (reported by this author in The Saturday Paper) which has seen its total of satellite dishes and radomes rapidly increase in just a few years from 35 to 45 to accommodate new heightened-capability surveillance satellites.

Pine Gap base collects an enormous range and quantity of intelligence and data from thermal imaging satellites, photographic reconnaissance satellites, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites, as expert researchers Des Ball, Bill Robinson and Richard Tanter of the Nautilus Institute have detailed.

These SIGINT satellites intercept electronic communications and signals from ground-based sources, such as radio communications, telemetry, radar signals, satellite communications, microwave emissions, mobile phone signals, and geolocation data.

Alliance priorities
The US’s SIGINT satellites have a capability to detect and receive signals from VHF radio transmissions on or near the earth’s surface, but they need to be tasked to do so and appropriately targeted on the source of the transmission.

For the Pine Gap base to intercept VHF radio signals from the Chinese Navy ships, the base would have needed to specifically realign one of those SIGINT satellites to provide coverage of the VHF signals in the Tasman Sea at the time of the Chinese ships’ passage. It is not known publicly if they did this, but they certainly have that capability.

However, it is not only the VHF radio transmission that would have carried information about the live-firing exercise.

Pine Gap would be able to monitor a range of other SIGINT transmissions from the Chinese ships. Details of the planning and preparations for the live-firing exercise would almost certainly have been transmitted over data and voice satellite communications, ship-to-ship communications, and even in the data of radar and gunnery operations.

But it is here that there is another possibility for the failure.

The Pine Gap base was built and exists to serve the national interests of the United States. The tasking of the surveillance satellites in range of Pine Gap base is generally not set by Australia, but is directed by United States’ agencies, the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) together with the US Defense Department, the National Security Agency (NSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Australia has learnt over time that US priorities may not be the same as Australia’s.

Australian defence and intelligence services can request surveillance tasks to be added to the schedule, and would have been expected to have done so in order to target the southern leg of the Chinese Navy ships’ voyage, when the ships were out of the range of the JORN network.

The military demands for satellite time can be excessive in times of heightened global conflict, as is the case now.

Whether the Pine Gap base was devoting sufficient surveillance resources to monitoring the Chinese Navy ships, due to United States’ priorities in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, Africa, North Korea, and to our north in the South China Sea, is a relevant question.

It can only be answered now by a formal government inquiry into what went on — preferably held in public by a parliamentary committee or separately commissioned inquiry. The sovereign defence of Australia failed in this incident and lessons need to be learned.

Who knew and when did they know
If the Pine Gap base had been monitoring the VHF radio band and heard the Chinese Navy live-fire alert, or had been monitoring other SIGINT transmissions to discover the live-fire drill, the normal procedure would be for the active surveillance team to inform a number of levels of senior officers, a former Defence official familiar with the process told Declassified Australia.

Expected to be included in the information chain are the Australian Deputy-Chief of Facility at the US base, NSA liaison staff at the base, the Australian Signals Directorate head office at the Defence complex at Russell Hill in Canberra, the Defence Force’s Headquarters Joint Operations Command, in Bungendore, and the Chief of the Defence Force. From there the Defence Minister’s office would need to have been informed.

As has been reported in media interviews and in testimony to the Senate Estimates hearings, it has been stated that Defence was not informed of the Chinese ships’ live-firing alert until a full 38 minutes after the drill window had commenced.

The former Defence official told Declassified Australia it is vital the reason for the failure to detect the live-firing in a timely fashion is ascertained.

Either the Australian Defence Force and US Pine Gap base were not effectively actively monitoring the Chinese flotilla at this time — and the reasons for that need to be examined — or they were, but the information gathered was somewhere stalled and not passed on to correct channels.

If the evidence so far tendered by the Defence chief and the Minister is true, and it was not informed of the drill by any of its intelligence or surveillance assets before that phone call from Airservices Australia, the implications need to be seriously addressed.

A final word
In just a couple of weeks the whole Defence environment for Australia has changed, for the worse.

The US military announces a drawdown in Europe and a new pivot to the Indo-Pacific. China shows Australia it can do tit-for-tat “navigational freedom” voyages close to the Australian coast. US intelligence support is withdrawn from Ukraine during the war. Australia discovers the AUKUS submarines’ arrival looks even more remote. The prime minister confuses the limited cover provided by the ANZUS treaty.

Meanwhile, the US militarisation of Australia’s north continues at pace. At the same time a senior Pentagon official pressures Australia to massively increase defence spending. And now, the country’s defence intelligence system has experienced an unexplained major failure.

Australia, it seems, is adrift in a sea of unpredictable global events and changing alliance priorities.

Peter Cronau is an award-winning, investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentary, The Base: Pine Gap’s Role in US Warfighting, was broadcast on Australian ABC Radio National and featured on ABC News. He produced and directed the documentary film Drawing the Line, revealing details of Australian spying in East Timor, on ABC TV’s premier investigative programme Four Corners. He won the Gold Walkley Award in 2007 for a report he produced on an outbreak of political violence in East Timor. This article was first published by Declassified Australia and is republished here with the author’s permission.

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.

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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. 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.

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.

In September, China launched an intercontinental ballistic test missile in the Pacific for first time in 44 years, landing near French Polynesian waters.

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.

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.

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.

INTERVIEW: John Menadue talks with Michael Lester

Michael Lester: Hello again listeners to Community Radio Northern Beaches Community Voices and also the Pearls and Irritations podcast. I’m Michael Lester.

Our guest today is the publisher and founder of the Pearls and Irritations Public Policy online journal, the celebrated John Menadue, with whom we’ll be so pleased to have a discussion today. John has a long and high profile experience in both the public service, for which he’s been awarded the Order of Australia and also in business.

As a public servant, he was secretary of a number of departments over the years, prime minister and cabinet under a couple of different prime ministers, immigration and ethnic affairs, special minister of state and the Department of Trade and also Ambassador to Japan.

• READ MORE: Other Pearls and Irritations articles

And in his private sector career, he was a general manager at News Corp and the chief executive of Qantas. These are just among many of his considerable activities.

These days, as I say, he’s a publisher, public commentator, writer, and we’re absolutely delighted to welcome you here to Radio Northern Beaches and the P&I podcast, John.

John Menadue: Thank you, Michael. Thanks for the welcome and for what you’ve had to say about Pearls and Irritations. My wife says that she’s the Pearl and I’m the Irritation.

ML: You launched, I think, P&I, what, 2013 or 2011; anyway, you’ve been going a long while. And I noticed the other day you observed that you’d published some 20,000 items on Pearls and Irritations to do with public policy. That’s an amazing achievement itself as an independent media outlet in Australia, isn’t it?

JM: I’m quite pleased with it and so is Susie, my wife. We started 13 years ago and we did everything. I used to write all the stories and Susie handled the technical, admin, financial matters, but it’s grown dramatically since then. We now contract some of the work to people that can help us in editorial, in production and IT. It’s achieving quite a lot of influence among ministers, politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders in the community.

We’re looking now at what the future holds. I’m 89 and Susie, my wife, is not in good health. So we’re looking at new governance arrangements, a public company with outside directors so that we can continue Pearls and Irritations well into the future.

This is one of your themes and motivations with Pearls and Irritations as a public policy journal, isn’t it? That our mainstream media perhaps don’t do the job they might do in covering significant issues of public policy?

JM: That’s our hope and intention, but I’m afraid some of them are just incorrigible. They in fact act as stenographers to powerful interests.

It’s quite a shame what mainstream media is serving up today, propaganda for the United States, so focused on America.Occasionally we get nonsense about the British royal family or some irrelevant feature like that.

But we’re very badly served. Our media shows very little interest in our own region. It is ignorant and prejudiced against China. It is not concerned about our relations with Indonesia, with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam.

It’s all focused on the United States.We’re seeing it on an enormous scale now with the US elections. Even the ABC has a Planet America programme.

It’s so much focused on America as if we’re an island parked off New York. We are being Americanised in so many areas and particularly in our media.

ML: What has led to this state of affairs in the way that mainstream media treats major public policy issues these days? It hasn’t always been like that or has it?

JM: We’ve been a country that’s been frightened of our region, the countries where we have to make our future. And we’ve turned first to the United Kingdom as a protector. That ended in tears in Singapore.

And now we turn to the United States to look after us in this dangerous world, rather than making our own way as an independent country in our own region. That fear of our region, racism, white Australia, yellow peril all feature in Australia and in our media.

But when we had good, strong leaders, for example, Malcolm Fraser on refugees, he gave leadership and our role in the region.

Gough Whitlam did it also. If we have strong leadership, we can break from our focus on the United States at the expense of our own region. In the end, we’ve got to decide that as we live in this region, we’ve got to prosper in this region.

Security in our region, not from our region. We can do it, but I’m afraid that we’ve been retreating from Asia dreadfully over the last two or three decades. I thought when we had a Labor government, things would be different, but they’re not.

We are still frightened of our own region and embracing at every opportunity, the United States.

ML: Another theme of the many years of publishing Pearls and Irritations is that you are concerned to rebuild some degree of public confidence and trust that has been lost in the political system and that you seek to provide a platform for good policy discussion with the emphasis being on public policy. How has the public policy process been undermined or become so narrow minded if that’s one way of describing it?

JM: Contracting out work to private contractors, the big four accounting firms, getting advice, and not trusting the public service has meant that the quality of our public service has declined considerably. That has to be rebuilt so we get better policy development.

Ministers have been responsible, particularly Scott Morrison, for downgrading the public service and believing somehow or other that better advice can be obtained in the private sector.

Another factor has been the enormous growth in the power of lobbyists for corporate Australia and for foreign companies as well. Ministers have become beholden to pressure from powerful lobby groups.

One particular example, with which I’m quite familiar is in the health field. We are never likely to have real improvements in Medicare, for example, unless the government is prepared to take on the power of lobbyists — the providers, the doctors, the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies in Australia.

But it’s not just in health where lobbyists are causing so much damage. The power of lobbyists has discredited the role of governments that are seduced by powerful interests rather than serving the community.

The media have just entrenched this problem. Governments are criticised at every opportunity. Australia can be served by the media taking a more positive view about the importance of good policy development and not getting sidetracked all the time about some trivial personal political issue.

The media publish the handouts of the lobbyists, whether it’s the health industry or whether it’s in the fossil fuel industries. These are the main factors that have contributed to the lack of confidence and the lack of trust in good government in Australia.

ML: A particular editorial focus that’s evident in Pearls and Irritations is promoting, I think in your words, a peaceful dialogue and engagement with China. Why is this required and why do you put it forward as a particularly important part of what you see as the mission of your Pearls and Irritations public policy journal?

JM; China, is our largest market and will continue to be so. There is a very jaundiced view, particularly from the United States, which we then copy, that China is a great threat. It’s not a threat to Australia and it’s not a threat to the United States homeland.

But it is to a degree a threat, a competitive threat to the United States in economy and trade. America didn’t worry about China when it was poor, but now that it’s strong militarily, economically and in technology, America is very concerned and feels that its future, its own leadership, its hegemony in the world is being contested.

Unfortunately, Australia has allowed itself to be drawn into the American contest with China.  It’s one provocation after another. If it’s not within China itself, it’s on Taiwan, human rights in Hong Kong. Every opportunity is found by the United States to provoke China, if possible, and lead it into war.

I think, frankly, China will be more careful than that.

China’s problem is that it’s successful. And that’s what America cannot accept. By comparison, China does not make the military threat to other countries that the United States presents.

America is the most violent, aggressive country in the world. The greatest threat to peace in the world is the United States and we’re seeing that particularly now expressed in Israel and in Gaza.

But there’s a history. America’s almost always at war and has been since its independence in 1776. By contrast, China doesn’t have that sort of record and history. It is certainly concerned about security on its borders, and it has borders with 14 countries.

But it doesn’t project its power like the US. It doesn’t bomb other countries like the United States. It doesn’t have military bases surrounding the United States.

The United States has about 800 bases around the world. It’s not surprising that China feels threatened by what the United States is doing. And until the United States comes to a sensible, realistic view about China and deals with it politically, I think they’re going to make continual problems for us.

We have this dichotomy that China is our major trading partner but it’s seen by many as a strategic threat. I think that is a mistake.

ML: But what about your views about the public policy process underlying Australia’s policy in reaching the positions that we’re taking vis-a-vis China?

JM: There are several reasons for it, but I think the major one is that Australian governments, the previous government and now this one, takes the advice of intelligence agencies rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Our intelligence agencies are part of Five Eyes. Of the international intelligence which comes to Australian agencies, 90 percent comes from the CIA and related US intelligence agencies. So in effect we’ve had the colonisation of our intelligence agencies and they’re the ones that the Australian government listens to.

Very senior people in those agencies have direct access to the Prime Minister. He listens to them rather than to Penny Wong or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. On most public issues involving China, the Department of Foreign Affairs has become a wallflower.

It’s a great tragedy because so much of our future in the region depends on good diplomacy with China, with the ASEAN, with the countries of our region.

Those intelligence agencies in Australia, together with American funded, military funded organisations such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have the ear of governments. They’ve also got the ear of the media.

Stories are leaked to the media all the time from those agencies in order to heighten our fear of the region. The Americanisation of Australia is widespread. But our intelligence agencies have been Americanised as well, and they’re leading us down a very dangerous path.

ML: I’m speaking with our guest today on Reno Northern Beaches Community Voices and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast with the publisher of Pearls and Irritations Public Policy Journal, John Menadue, distinguished Australian public servant and businessman.

John, again, it’s one thing to talk about that, but governments, when they change, and we’ve had a change of government recently, very often, as I’m sure you know from personal experience, have the opportunity and do indeed change their advisors and adopt different policies, and one might have expected this to happen.

Why didn’t we see a change of the guard like we saw a change of government?

JM: I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads of departments.

For example, there was no change made to dismantle the Department of Home Affairs with Michael Pezzullo. That should have happened on day one, but it didn’t happen.

Concerns we’ve had in migration, the role of foreign affairs and intelligence with all those intelligence agencies gathered together in one department has been very bad for Australia.

Very few changes were made in the leadership of our intelligence agencies, the Office of National Assessments, in ASIO. The same advice has been continued. In almost every area you can look at, the government has been timid, unprepared to take on vested interests, lobbyists, and change departments to make them more attuned to what the government wants to do.

But the government doesn’t want to upset anyone. And as a result, we’re having a continuation of badly informed ministers and departments that have really not been effectively changed to meet the requirements and needs of, what I thought was a reforming government.

ML: In that context, AUKUS and the nuclear submarine deal might be perhaps a case in point of the broader issues and points you’re making. How would you characterise the nature of the public policy process and decision behind AUKUS? How were the decisions made and in what manner?

JM: By political appointees and confidants of Morrison. There’s been no public discussion. There’s been no public statement by Morrison or by Albanese about AUKUS — its history, why we’re doing it.

It’s been left to briefings of journalists and others. I think it’s disgraceful what’s happened in that area. It’s time the Australian government spelled out to us what it all means, but it’s not going to do it. Because I believe the case is so threadbare that it’s not game to put it to the public test.

And so we’re continuing in this ludicrous arrangement, this fiscal calamity, which Morrison inflicted on the Albanese government which it hasn’t been game to contest.

My own view is that frankly, AUKUS will never happen. It is so absurd — the delay, the cost, the failure of submarine construction or the delays in the United States, the problems of the submarine construction and maintenance in the United Kingdom.

For all those sorts of reasons, I don’t think it’ll really happen. Unfortunately, we’re going to waste a lot of money and a lot of time. I don’t think the Department of Defence could run any major project, certainly not a project like this.

Defence has been unsuccessful in the frigate and numerous other programmes. Our Department of Defence really is not up to the job and that among other reasons gives me reason to believe, and hope frankly, that AUKUS will collapse under its own stupidity.

But what I think is of more concern is the real estate, which we are freely leasing to the Americans. We had it first with the Marines in Darwin. We have it also coming now with US B-52 aircraft based out of Tindal in the Northern Territory and the submarine base in Perth, Western Australia.

These bases are being made available to the United States with very little control by Australia. The government carries on with nonsense about how our sovereignty will be protected.

In fact, it won’t be protected. If there’s any difficulties, for example, over a war with China over Taiwan, and the Americans are involved, there is no way Americans will consult with us about whether they can use nuclear armed vessels out of Tindal, for example.

The Americans will insist that Pine Gap continues to operate. So we are locked in through ceding so much of our real estate and the sovereignty that goes with it.

Penny Wong has been asked about American aircraft out of Tindal, carrying nuclear weapons and she says to us, sorry but the Americans won’t confirm or deny what they do.

Good heavens, this is our territory. This is our sovereignty. And we won’t even ask the Americans operating out of Tindal, whether they’re carrying nuclear weapons.

Back in the days of Malcolm Fraser, he made a statement to the Parliament insisting that no vessels or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons or ships carrying nuclear weapons could access Australian ports or operate over Australia without the permission of the Australian government.

And now Penny Wong says, we won’t ask. You can do what you like. We know the US won’t confirm or deny.

When it came to the Solomon Islands, a treaty that the Solomons negotiated with China on strategic and defence matters, Penny Wong was very upset about this secret agreement. There should be transparency, she warned.

But that’s small fry, compared with the fact that the Australian government will allow United States aircraft to operate out of Tindal without the Australian government knowing whether they are carrying nuclear weapons. I think that’s outrageous.

ML: Notwithstanding many of the very technical and economic and other discussions around the nuclear submarine’s acquisition, it does seem that politically, at least, and not least from the media presentation of our policy position that we’re very clearly signing up with our US allies against contingency attacks on Taiwan that we would be committed to take a part in and we’re also moving very closely, to well the phrase is interoperability, with the US forces and equipment but also personnel too.

You mentioned earlier, intelligence personnel and I believe there’s a lot of US personnel in the Department of Defence too?

JM: That’s right. It’s just another example of Americanisation which is reflected in our intelligence agencies, Department of Defence, interchangeability of our military forces, the fusion of our military or particularly our Navy with the United States. It’s all becoming one fused enterprise with the United States.

And in any difficulties, we would not be able, as far as I can see, to disengage from what the United States is doing. And we would be particularly vulnerable because of the AUKUS submarines. That’s if they ever come to anything. Because the AUKUS submarines, we are told, would operate off the Chinese coast to attack Chinese submarines or somehow provide intelligence for the Americans and for us.

These submarines will not be nuclear armed, which means that in the event of a conflict, we would have no bargaining or no counter to China. We’d be the weak link in the alliance with the United States.

China will not be prepared to strike the mainland United States for fear of massive retaliation. We are the weak link with Pine Gap and other real estate that I mentioned. We would be making ourselves much more vulnerable by this association with the United States.

Those AUKUS submarines will provide no deterrence for us, but make us more vulnerable if a conflict arises in which we are effectively part of the US military operation.

ML: How would you characterise the mainstream media’s presentation and treatment of these issues?

JM: The mainstream media is very largely a mouthpiece for Washington propaganda. And that American propaganda is pushed out through the legacy media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, the news agencies, Fox News which in turn are influenced by the military/ business complex which Eisenhower warned us about years ago.

The power of those groups with the CIA and the influence that they have, means that they overwhelm our media. That’s reflected particularly in The Australian and News Corporation publications.

I don’t know how some of those journalists can hold their heads. They’ve been on the drip feed of America for so long. They cannot see a world that is not dominated and led by the United States.

I’m hoping that over time, Pearls and Irritations and other independent media will grow and provide a more balanced view about Australia’s role in our region and in our own development.

We need to keep good relations with the United States. They’re an important player, but I think that we are unnecessarily risking our future by throwing our lot almost entirely in with the United States.

Minister for Defence, Richard Marles is leading the Americanisation of our military. I think Penny Wong is to some extent trying to pull him back. But unfortunately so much of the leadership of Australia in defence, in the media, is part and parcel of the mistaken United States view of the world.

ML: What sort of voices are we not hearing in the media or in Australia on this question?

JM: It’s not going to change, Michael. I can’t see it changing with Lachlan Murdoch in charge. I think it’s getting worse, if possible, within News Corporation. It’s a very, very difficult and desperate situation where we’re being served so poorly.

ML: Is there a strong independent media and potential for voices through independent media in Australia?

JM: No, we haven’t got one. The best hope at the side, of course, is the ABC and SBS public broadcasters, but they’ve been seduced as well by all things American.

We’ve seen that particularly in recent months over the conflict in Gaza. The ABC and SBS heavily favour Israel. It is shameful.

They’re still the best hope of the side, but they need more money. They’re getting a little bit more from the government, but I think they are sadly lacking in leadership and proper understanding of what the role of a public broadcaster should be.

I don’t think there’s a quick answer to any of this. And I hope that we can extricate ourselves without too much damage in the future. Our media has a great responsibility and must be held responsible for the damage that it is causing in Australia.

ML: Well, look, thank you very much, John Menadue, for joining us on Radio Northern Beaches and on the Pearls and Irritations podcast. John Menadue, publisher, founder, editor-in-chief of, for the last 13 years, the public policy journal Pearls and Irritations. We’ve been discussing the role of the mainstream media, independent media, in the public policy processes too in Australia, and particularly in the context of international relations and in this case our relationships with the US and China.

Thank you so much John for taking the time and for sharing your thoughts with us here today. Thanks for joining us John.

JM: Thank you. Let’s hope for better days.

John Menadue, founder and publisher of  Pearls and Irritations public policy journal has had a senior professional career in the media, public service and airlines. In 1985, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for public service. In 2009, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide in recognition of his significant and lifelong contribution to Australian society. This transcript of the Pearls and Irritations podcast on 10 August 2024 is republished with permission. 

Australia and New Zealand’s populations must now wake up to the fact that our countries have been drawn into what ForeignPolicy.com called the knitting together of “the United States’ patchwork of different regional security systems into a global security architecture of networked alliances and partnerships”.

Hit pause right there.

Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn’t “NATO” moving into our region – it’s actually far bigger than that.  America is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).

• READ MORE: Other NZ-China and Luxon reports

It explains why, in the midst of committing genocide in Palestine, Israel still managed to send defence personnel to participate in RIMPAC 2024 naval exercises: they’re part of our team.  It is taking the Military Industrial Complex to a global level. Where do you think it will lead us to?

New Zealand is about to sacrifice what it cannot afford to lose for something it doesn’t need: gambling we can keep the strength and security of our trading relationship with China while leaping into the US anti-China military alliance.

The Chinese have noticed. Writing in the South China Morning Post last week, Alex Lo gave an unvarnished Chinese perspective on this. In a piece titled “NATO barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gates of Asia,” he says: “Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in”.

“Has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want NATO militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?”

While in Washington for the recent NATO summit, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told The Financial Times that he viewed China as a strategic competitor in the Indo-Pacific.  In the next breath he said he wanted New Zealand to continue to develop trade with China and double the country’s overall exports over the next 10 years.

Good luck with that if we join a hostile alliance. And since when has New Zealand declared that China was a strategic competitor?  That’s an American position, surely not ours?

New Zealand could “add value” to its security relationships and be a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”, Luxon said while being hosted in Washington.  New Zealand was also “very open” to participating in the second pillar of AUKUS.

Firmly placing New Zealand in the anti-China camp in this way was immediately lambasted by former PM Helen Clark and ex National Party leader Don Brash. What has been abandoned, they argue, without any public consultation, is our relatively independent foreign policy.   They sounded a warning about where real danger lies:

A Pacific regionalism academic has called out New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters for withholding information from the public on AUKUS and says the security deal “raises serious questions for the Pacific region”.

Auckland University of Technology academic Dr Marco de Jong said Pasifika voices must be included in the debate on whether or not Aotearoa should join AUKUS.

New Zealand is considering joining Pillar 2 of the agreement, a non-nuclear option, but critics say this could be seen as Aotearoa rubber-stamping Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

New Zealand is considering joining Pillar 2 of the agreement, a non-nuclear option, but critics say this could be seen as Aotearoa rubber-stamping Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

On Monday, Peters said New Zealand was “a long way” from making a decision about participating in Pillar 2 of AUKUS.

He was interrupted by a silent protester holding an anti-AUKUS sign, during a foreign policy speech at an event at Parliament, where Peters spoke about the multi-national military alliance.

Peters spent more time attacking critics than outlining a case to join AUKUS, de Jong said.

Investigating the deal
Peters told RNZ’s Morning Report the deal was something the government was investigating.

“There are new exciting things that can help humanity. Our job is to find out what we are talking about before we rush to judgement and make all these silly panicking statements.”

The Minister answers questions following his speech from media, including on the strategic environment, AUKUS Pillar 2, defence spending, leadership in ’s national security system, and bipartisanship in foreign policy. pic.twitter.com/BSSolJLhHQ

— Winston Peters (@NewZealandMFA) May 1, 2024

According to UK’s House of Commons research briefing document explaining AUKUS Pillar 2, Canada, Japan and South Korea are also being considered as “potential partners” alongside New Zealand.

Peters said there had been no official invitation to join yet and claimed he did not know enough information about AUKUS yet.

However, Dr de Jong argues this is not the case.

“According to classified documents New Zealand has been in talks with the United States about this since 2021. If we do not know what it [AUKUS] is right now, I wonder when we will?”

The security pact was first considered under the previous Labour government and those investigations have continued under the new coalition government.

Former Labour leader and prime minister Helen Clark said NZ joining AUKUS would risk its relationship with its largest trading partner China and said Aotearoa must act as a guardian to the South Pacific.

Profiling Pacific perspectives
Cook Islands, Tonga and Samoa weighed in on the issue during NZ’s diplomatic visit of the three nations earlier this year.

At the time, Samoa’s Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa said: “We don’t want the Pacific to be seen as an area that people will take licence of nuclear arrangements.”

The South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga) prohibits signatories — which include Australia and New Zealand — from placing nuclear weapons within the South Pacific.

Fiamē said she did not want the Pacific to become a region affected by more nuclear weapons.

However, other Pacific leaders have not taken as strong a stance as Samoa, instead acknowledging NZ’s “sovereignty” while re-emphasising commitments to the Blue Pacific partnership.

“I do not think that Winston Peters should mistake the quietness of Pacific leaders on AUKUS as necessarily supporting NZ’s position,” de Jong said.

“Most Pacific leaders will instead of calling out NZ, re-emphasis their own commitment to the Blue Pacific ideals and a nuclear-free Pacific.”

Minister Peters, who appears to have a good standing in the Pacific region, has said it is important to treat smaller nations exactly the same as so-called global foreign superpowers, such as the US, India and China.

Pacific ‘felt blindsided’
When the deal was announced, de Jong said “Pacific leaders felt blindsided”.

“Pacific nations will be asking what foreign partners have for the Pacific, how the framing of the region is consistent with theirs and what the defence funding will mean for diplomacy.”

AUKUS is seeking to advance military capabilities and there will be heavy use of AI technology, he said, adding “the types of things being developed are hyper-sonic weapons, cyber technologies, sea-drones.”

“Peters could have spelled out how New Zealand will contribute to the eight different workstreams…there’s plenty of information out there,” de Jong said.

“They are linking surveillance drones to targeting systems and missiles systems. It is creating these human machines, teams of a next generation war-fighitng technology.

The intention behind it is to win the next-generation technology being tested in the war in Ukraine and Gaza, he said.

Dr de Jong said it was crucial New Zealand find out how this was and could impact “instability in the Pacific”.

“Climate Change remains the principle security threat. It is not clear AUKUS does anything to meet climate action or development to the region.

“It could be creating the very instability that it is seeking to address by advancing this military focus,” he added.

Legacies of nuclear testing
Dr de Jong said in the Pacific, nuclear issues were closely tied to aspirations for regional self-determination.

“In a region living with the legacies of nuclear testing in Marshall Islands, Ma’ohi Nui, and Kiribati, there is concern that AUKUS, along with the Fukushima discharge, has ushered in a new nuclearism.”

He said Australia had sought endorsements to offset regional concerns about AUKUS, notably at the 52nd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting and the ANZMIN talks.

“However, it is clear AUKUS has had a chilling effect on Australia’s support for nuclear disarmament, with Anthony Albanese appearing to withdraw Australian support for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and the universalisation of Rarotonga.

“New Zealand, which is a firm supporter of both these agreements, must consider that while Pillar 2 has been described as ‘non-nuclear’, it is unlikely that Pacific people find this distinction meaningful, especially if it means stepping back from such advocacy.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand’s Labour Party is demanding Winston Peters be stood down as Foreign Minister for opening up the government to legal action over his “totally unacceptable” attack on a prominent AUKUS critic.

In an interview on RNZ’s Morning Report today, Peters criticised the former Australian senator Bob Carr’s views on the security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

RNZ has removed the comments from the interview online after Carr, who was Australia’s foreign minister from 2012 to 2013, told RNZ he considered the remarks to be “entirely defamatory” and would commence legal action.

• READ MORE: Helen Clark on why AUKUS isn’t in New Zealand’s national interest
• Other AUKUS reports

A spokesperson for Peters told RNZ the minister would respond if he received formal notification of any such action. The Prime Minister’s Office has been contacted for comment.

Speaking to media in Auckland, opposition Labour leader Chris Hipkins said Peters’ allegations were “totally unacceptable” and “well outside his brief”.

“He’s embarrassed the country. He’s created legal risk to the New Zealand government.”

Hipkins said Prime Minister Christopher Luxon must show some leadership and stand Peters down from the role immediately.

‘Abused his office’
“Winston Peters has abused his office as minister of foreign affairs, and this now becomes a problem for the prime minister,” he said.

“Winston Peters cannot execute his duties as foreign affairs minister while he has this hanging over him.”

Labour leader Chris Hipkins on AUKUS and the legal threat.  Video: RNZ

Peters was being interviewed on Morning Report about a major foreign policy speech he delivered in Wellington last night where he laid out New Zealand’s position on AUKUS.

Hipkins told reporters he was pleased with the “overall thrust” of Peters’ speech compared to recent comments he made while visiting the US.

“I welcome him stepping back a little bit from his previous ‘rush-headlong-into-signing-up-for-AUKUS’,” Hipkins said. “That is a good thing.”

Hipkins said the government needed to be very clear with New Zealanders about what AUKUS Pillar 2 involved.

Luxon praises Peters
Speaking to media in Auckland on Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, when asked about Peters’ comments, said as an experienced politician Carr should understand the “rough and tumble of politics”.

Luxon said he would not make the comments Peters made, and had not spoken to him about them.

Peters was doing an “exceptionally good job” as foreign minister and his comments posed no diplomatic risk, Luxon said.

Last month, Carr travelled to New Zealand to take part in a panel discussion on AUKUS, after Labour’s foreign affairs spokesperson David Parker organised a debate at Parliament.

⁦@radionz⁩ has edited the tape of NZ Foreign Minister interview this morning to remove shocking and unwarranted comments made about former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr: https://t.co/6f1i1M4RSW

— Helen Clark (@HelenClarkNZ) May 1, 2024

Former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark was also on the panel, and has been highly critical of AUKUS and what she believes is the coalition government moving closer to traditional allies, in particular the United States.

Clark told Morning Report today she had contacted Carr after she heard Peters’ comments, which she also described as defamatory.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

New Zealand needs to get tough with Israel. It’s not as if we haven’t done so before.

When NZ authorities busted a Mossad operation in Auckland 20 years ago, the government didn’t say: “Oh well, Israel has the right to defend itself.”

No, it arrested, prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned and deported the Israeli agents, plus made them pay a big sum of damages. And it refused to restore normal diplomatic relations with Israel until Israel apologised to NZ. Which Israel did.

• READ MORE: Israeli agents jailed in NZ over spy case

Today’s government needs to treat Israel the same way it treats other aggressors, like Russia, with the likes of sanctions.

And the government needs to designate Zionism as an inherently racist, terrorist ideology.

Everyone knows that the Gaza War would stop in five minutes if the US stopped arming Israel to the teeth and allowing it to commit genocide with impunity.

Israel is the mass murderer; the US is the enabler of mass murder.

New Zealand is part of the US Empire. The most useful thing we could do is to sever our ties to that empire, something we bravely started in the 1980s with the nuclear-free policy. Also, do these things:

• Develop a genuinely independent foreign policy;
• Get out of US wars, like the one in the Red Sea and Yemen;
• Get out of the Five Eyes spy alliance;
• Close the Waihopai spy base and the GCSB, the NZ agency which runs it;
• Kick out Rocket Lab, NZ’s newest American military base;
• Stop the process of getting entangled with NATO; and
• Stay out of AUKUS, which is simply building an alliance to fight a war with China.

I never thought I’d find myself on the same side of an issue as Don Brash and Richard Prebble but even they have strongly opposed AUKUS.

Zionism is the enemy of the Palestinian people.

US imperialism is the enemy of the Palestinian people and the New Zealand people.

Murray Horton is secretary/organiser of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC) and gave this speech last Saturday to a Palestinian solidarity rally at the Bridge of Remembrance, Christchurch.

When former prime minister Helen Clark spoke out against New Zealand potentially compromising its independent foreign policy by joining pillar two of the AUKUS security pact, Foreign Minister Winston Peters responded bluntly:

On what could she have possibly based that statement? […] And I’m saying to people, including Helen Clark, please don’t mislead New Zealanders with your suspicions without any facts – let us find out what we’re talking about.

Pillar one of AUKUS involves the delivery of nuclear submarines to Australia, making New Zealand membership impossible under its nuclear-free policy.

• READ MORE: Joining AUKUS could boost NZ’s poor research and technology spending – but at what cost?
• Is Japan joining AUKUS? Not formally – its cooperation will remain limited for now
• New Zealand is reviving the ANZAC alliance – joining AUKUS is a logical next step

But pillar two envisages the development of advanced military technology in areas such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and cyber warfare. By some reckonings, New Zealand could benefit from joining at that level.

Peters denies the National-led coalition government has committed to joining pillar two. He says exploratory talks with AUKUS members are “to find out all the facts, all the aspects of what we’re talking about and then as a country to make a decision.”

But while the previous Labour government expressed a willingness to explore pillar two membership, the current government appears to view it as integral to its broader foreign policy objective of aligning New Zealand more closely with “traditional partners”.

Official enthusiasm
During his visit to Washington earlier this month, Peters said New Zealand and the Biden administration had pledged “to work ever more closely together in support of shared values and interests” in a strategic environment “considerably more challenging now than even a decade ago”.

In particular, he and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken agreed there were “powerful reasons” for New Zealand to engage practically with arrangements like AUKUS “as and when all parties deem it appropriate”.

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warns a “profoundly undemocratic” shift in New Zealand’s foreign policy is taking place — warning the coalition Government off a geopolitical shift which Kiwis didn’t vote for. https://t.co/2E2aKOpf2w

— 1News (@1NewsNZ) April 9, 2024

Declassified documents reveal the official enthusiasm behind such statements and the tightly-curated public messaging it has produced.

A series of joint-agency briefings provided to the New Zealand government characterise AUKUS pillar two as a “non-nuclear” technology-sharing partnership that would elevate New Zealand’s longstanding cooperation with traditional partners and bring opportunities for the aerospace and tech sectors.

But any assessment of New Zealand’s strategic interests must be clear-eyed and not clouded by partial truths or wishful thinking.

Beyond great power rivalry
First, the current government inherited strong bilateral relations with traditional security partners Australia, the US and UK, as well as a consistent and cooperative relationship with China.

Second, while the contemporary global security environment poses threats to New Zealand’s interests, these challenges extend beyond great power rivalry between the US and China.

The multilateral system, on which New Zealand relies, is paralysed by the weakening of institutions such as the UN Security Council, Russian expansionism in Ukraine and a growing array of problems which do not respect borders.

Those include climate change, pandemics and wealth inequality — problems that cannot be fixed unilaterally by great powers.

Third, it is evident New Zealand sometimes disagrees with its traditional partners over respect for international law.

In 2003, for example, New Zealand broke ranks with the US (and the UK and Australia) over the invasion of Iraq. More recently, it was the only member of the Five Eyes network to vote in the UN General Assembly for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza.

China’s man in Wellington has a warning for the NZ Govt that joining Pillar II of AUKUS won’t make the region safer, in an exclusive commentary for Newsroom. https://t.co/xgXNwbWRSv

— Newsroom (@NewsroomNZ) April 13, 2024

Role of the US
In a robust speech to the UN General Assembly on April 7, Peters said the world must halt the “utter catastrophe” in Gaza.

He said the use of the veto — which New Zealand had always opposed — prevented the Security Council from fulfilling its primary function of maintaining global peace and security.

However, the government has been unwilling to publicly admit a crucial point: it was a traditional ally — the US — whose Security Council veto and unconditional support of Israel have led to systematic and plausibly genocidal violations of international law in Gaza, and a strategic windfall for rival states China, Russia and Iran.

Rather than being a consistent voice for justice and de-escalation, the New Zealand government has joined the US in countering Houthi rebels, which have been targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

A done deal?
The world has become a more complex and conflicted place for New Zealand. But it would be naive to believe the US has played no part in this and that salvation lies in aligning with AUKUS, which lacks a coherent strategy for addressing multifaceted challenges.

There are alternatives to pillar two of AUKUS more consistent with a principled, independent foreign policy, centred in the Pacific, and which deserve to be seriously considered.

On balance, New Zealand involvement in pillar two of AUKUS would represent a seismic shift in the country’s geopolitical stance. The current government seems bullish about this prospect, which has fuelled concerns membership may be almost a done deal.

If true, it would be the government facing questions about transparency.

Marco de Jong, lecturer, Law School, Auckland University of Technology and Robert G. Patman, professor of international relations, University of Otago. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Helen Clark, how I miss you.  The former New Zealand Prime Minister — the safest pair of hands this country has had in living memory — gave a masterclass on the importance of maintaining an independent foreign policy when she spoke at an AUKUS symposium held in Parliament’s old Legislative Chambers yesterday.

AUKUS (Australia, UK, US) is first and foremost a military alliance aimed at our major trading partner China. It is designed to maintain US primacy in the “Indo-Pacific” region and opponents are sceptical of claims that China represents a threat to New Zealand or Australian security.

The recent proposal to bring New Zealand into the alliance under “Pillar II”  would represent a shift in our security and alliance settings that could dismantle our country’s independent foreign policy and potentially undo our nuclear free policy.

• READ MORE: Other AUKUS reports

Clark’s assessment is that the way the government has approached the proposed alliance lacks transparency.  National made no signal of its intentions during the election campaign and yet the move towards AUKUS seems well planned and choreographed.

Voters in the last election “were not sensitised to any changes in the policy settings,” Clark says, “and this raises huge issues of transparency.”

Such a significant shift should first secure a mandate from the electorate.

A key question the speakers addressed at the symposium was: is AUKUS in the best interest of this country and our region?

Highly questionable
“All of these statements made about AUKUS being good for us are highly questionable,” Clark says.  “What is good about joining a ratcheting up of tensions in a region?  Where is the military threat to New Zealand?”

Clark, PM from 1999-2008, has noticed a serious slippage in our independent position.  She contrasted current policy on the Middle East with the decision, under her leadership, of not joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Sceptical of US claims about weapons of mass destruction, New Zealand made clear it wanted no part of it — a stance that has proven correct. Our powerful allies the US, UK and Australia were wrong both on intelligence and the consequences of military action.

In contrast, New Zealand participating in the current bombardment of Yemen because of the Houthis disruption of Red Sea traffic in response to the Israeli war on Gaza is, says Clark, an indication of this change in fundamental policy stance:

“New Zealand should have demanded the root causes for the shipping route disruptions be addressed rather than enthusiastically joining the bombing.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if the drift we see in position continues, we will be positioned in a way we haven’t seen for decades –  as a fully-signed-up partner to US strategies in the region.

“And from that, will flow expectations about what is the appropriate level of defence expenditure for New Zealand and expectations of New Zealand contributing to more and more military activities.”

A hugely important interview with Helen Clark about AUKUS

Here are the highlights:

1- What are the issues here? How much are we prepared to spend? Where is this leading us to? https://t.co/mKVC21XSwQ pic.twitter.com/VHjWt3NboE

— Donna Miles دانا مجاب (@UnPressed) April 14, 2024

Economic security
Clark addressed another element which should add caution to New Zealand joining an American crusade against China: economic security.

China now takes 26 percent of our exports — twice what we send to Australia and 2.5 times what we send to the US.  She questioned the wisdom of taking a hostile stance against our biggest trading partner who continues to pose no security threat to this country.

So what is the alternative to New Zealand siding with the US in its push to contain China and help the US maintain its hegemon status?

“The alternative path is that New Zealand keeps its head while all around are losing theirs — and that we combine with our South Pacific neighbours to advocate for a region which is at peace,” Clark says, echoing sentiments that go right back to the dawn of New Zealand’s nuclear free Pacific, “so that we always pursue dialogue and engagement over confrontation.”

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.

One year since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese went to San Diego to unveil the AUKUS deal the news came that the first of three second-hand Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines supposed to arrive in 2032 may not happen.

Former coalition prime minister Scott Morrison announced AUKUS in September 2021 and Albanese continued to champion the pact between the US, Britain and Australia.

Phase one involves Australia acquiring eight nuclear-powered submarines as tensions in the Indo-Pacific are growing.

• READ MORE: Other AUKUS reports

Concerns about the submarines ever materialising are not new, despite the US passing its National Defence Bill 2024 which facilitates the transfer of the nuclear-powered warships.

However, the Pentagon’s 2025 fiscal year budget only set aside funding to build one Virginia submarine. This affects the AUKUS deal as the US had promised to lift production from around 1.3 submarines a year to 2.3 to meet all requirements.

Australia’s acquisition of the first of three second-hand SSNs were to bridge the submarine gap, as talk about a US-led war on China continues.

US Democratic congressperson Joe Courtney told The Sydney Morning Herald on March 12 the US was struggling with its own shipbuilding capacity, meaning promises to Australia were being deprioritised.

Production downturn
Courtney said that the downturn in production “will remove one more attack submarine from a fleet that is already 17 submarines below the navy’s long-stated requirement of 66”.

The US needs to produce 18 more submarines by 2032 to be able to pass one on to Australia.

After passing laws permitting the transfer of nuclear technology, the deal is running a year at least behind schedule.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge said on X that “When the US passed the law to set up AUKUS they put in kill switches, one of which allowed the US to decide not [to] transfer the submarines if doing so would ‘degrade the US undersea capabilities’”.

Pat Conroy, Labor’s Defence Industry Minister, retorted that the government was confident the submarines would appear.

The White House seems unfazed; it would have been aware of the problems for some time.

Meanwhile the USS Annapolis, a US nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) has docked in Boorloo/Perth.

AUKUS still under way
Regardless of whether Australia acquires any nuclear-powered vessels, the rest of the AUKUS deal, including interoperability with the US, is already underway.

Andrew Hastie, Liberal Party spokesperson, confirmed that construction at HMAS Stirling will start next year for “Submarine Rotational Force-West (SRF-West)”, the permanent US-British nuclear-powered submarine base in WA, which is due to be completed in 2027.

SRF-West includes 700 US army personnel and their families being stationed in WA. If the second-hand nuclear submarines do not materialise, the US submarines will be on hand.

SRF-West may also serve as an alternative to the five British-designed AUKUS SSNs, slated to be built in Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide over coming decades.

Australia respects the Pentagon’s warhead ambiguity policy, meaning that any US military equipment stationed here could be carrying nuclear weapons: we will never know.

Shoebridge said on March 13 he was entering a hearing to decide where the AUKUS powers can dump their nuclear waste. Local waste dumps are being considered, as the US and Britain do not have permanent radioactive waste dumps.

The waste to be dumped is said to have a low-level radioactivity. However, as former Senator Rex Patrick pointed out, SSNs produce high-level radioactive waste at the end of their shelf lives that will need to be stored somewhere, underground, forever.

‘Radioactive waste management’
The Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023, tabled last November, allows for the AUKUS SSNs to be constructed and also provides for “a radioactive waste management facility”.

The Australian public is spending US$3 billion on helping the US submarine industrial base expand capacity. An initial US$2 billion will be spent next year, followed by $100 million annually from 2026 through to 2033.

The Pentagon has budgeted US$4 billion for its submarine industry next year, with an extra US$11 billion over the following five years.

The removal of the Virginia subs, and even the AUKUS submarines from the agreement, would be in keeping with the terms of the 2014 Force Posture Agreement, signed off by then prime minister Tony Abbott.

As part of the Barack Obama administration’s 2011 “pivot to Asia”, the US-Australia Force Posture Agreement allows for 2500 Marines to be stationed in the Northern Territory.

It sets up increasing interoperability between both countries’ air forces and allows the US unimpeded access to dozens of “agreed-to facilities and areas”.

These agreed bases remain classified.

US takes full control
However, as the recent US overhaul of RAAF Base Tindall in the NT reveals, when the US decides to do that it takes full control.

Tindall has been upgraded to allow for six US B-52 bombers that may be carrying nuclear warheads.

US laws that facilitate the transfer of Virginia-class submarines also make clear that as Australia is now classified as a US domestic military source this allows the US privileged access to critical minerals, such as lithium.

Paul Gregoire writes for Sydney Criminal Lawyers where a version of this article was first published. The article has also been published at Green Left magazine and is republished with permission.

Keeping the Pacific nuclear-free, in line with the Rarotonga Treaty, was a recurring theme from the leaders of Tonga, Cook Islands and Samoa to New Zealand last week.

The New Zealand government’s Pacific mission wrapped up on Saturday with the final leg in Samoa.

Over the course of the trip, defence and security in the region was discussed with the leaders of the three Polynesian nations.

In Apia, Samoan Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa addressed regional concerns about AUKUS.

New Zealand is considering joining pillar two of the agreement, a non-nuclear option, but critics have said this could be seen as Aotearoa rubber stamping Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

“We would hope that both administrations will ensure that the provisions under the maritime treaty are taken into consideration with these new arrangements,” Fiamē said.

New Zealand’s previous Labour government was more cautious in its approach to joining AUKUS because it said pillar two had not been clearly defined, but the coalition government is looking to take action.

Nuclear weapons opposed
Prime Minister Fiamē said she did not want the Pacific to become a region affected by more nuclear weapons.

She said the impact of nuclear weapons in the Pacific was still ongoing, especially in the North Pacific with the Marshall Islands, and a semblance of it still in the south with Tahiti.

She said it was crucial to “present that voice in these international arrangements”.

“We don’t want the Pacific to be seen as an area that people will take licence of nuclear arrangements.”

The Treaty of Rarotonga prohibits signatories — which include Australia and New Zealand — from placing nuclear weapons within the South Pacific.

Cook Island’s Prime Minister Mark Brown said Pacific leaders were in agreement over security.

“I think our stance mirrors that of all the Pacific Island countries. We want to keep the Pacific region nuclear weapons free, nuclear free and that hasn’t changed.”

Timely move
Reflecting on discussions during the Pacific Islands Forum in 2023, he said: “A review and revisit of the Rarotonga Treaty should take place with our partners such as New Zealand, Australia and others on these matters.”

“It’s timely that we have them now moving forward,” he said.

Last year, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka proposed a Pacific peace zone which was discussed during the Forum leaders’ meeting in Rarotonga.

This year, Tonga will be hosting the forum and matters of security and defence involving AUKUS are expected to be a key part of the agenda.

Tongan Acting Prime Minister Samiu Vaipulu acknowledged New Zealand’s sovereignty and said dialogue was the way forward.

“We do not interfere with what other countries do as it is their sovereignty. A talanoa process is best,” Vaipulu said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Health and Pacific People Minister Dr Shane Reti reiterated that they cared and had listened to the needs outlined by the Pacific leaders.

They said New Zealand would deliver on funding promises to support improvements in the areas of health, education and security of the region.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

An international relations professor says that if New Zealand joins AUKUS it could impact on its relations with Pacific countries.

AUKUS is a security agreement between Australia, the UK and the US, which will see Australia supplied with nuclear-powered submarines.

That has raised concern in the Pacific, which is under the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Rarotonga.

• READ MORE: Other AUKUS reports

The topic has come up while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited New Zealand.

The visit came after he visited Tonga.

Robert Patman, professor of international relations at the University of Otago, said New Zealand’s views on non-nuclear security are shared by the majority of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members and also the Pacific Island states.

“Even if New Zealand joined AUKUS in a non-nuclear fashion, technically, it may be seen through the eyes of others as diluting our commitment to that norm,” Professor Patman said.

Sharing defence information
Professor Patman explained that “pillar 1” of AUKUS is about providing nuclear-powered submarines to Australia over two or three decades, and “pillar 2” is to do with sharing information on defence technologies.

“We haven’t closed the door on it, but it’s a considerable risk from New Zealand’s point of view, because a lot of our credibility is having an independent foreign policy.”

Asked about New Zealand’s potential membership in AUKUS, Blinken said work on pillar 2 was ongoing.

“The door is very much open for New Zealand and other partners to engage as they see appropriate,” he said.

“New Zealand is a deeply trusted partner, obviously a Five Eyes member.

“We’ve long worked together on the most important national security issues.”

New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the government was exploring pillar 2 of the deal.

Not committed
But she said New Zealand had not committed to anything.

Mahuta said New Zealand had been clear it would not compromise its nuclear-free position, and that was acknowledged by AUKUS members.

Patman said that statement was reassurance for Pacific Island states.

“[New Zealand is] party to the Treaty of Rarotonga,” he said.

“We have to weigh up whether the benefits of being in pillar 2 outweigh possible external perception that we’re eroding our commitment, to being party to an arrangement which is facilitating the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.”

He said New Zealand had also been in talks with NATO about getting access to cutting-edge technology, so it was not dependent on AUKUS for that.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Vanuatu Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau says Pacific security is about the security of the Pacific peoples and their way of life as identified by Forum leaders in the Boe Declaration.

Kalsakau said this reaffirmed climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security.

The PM was speaking at the opening of the Pacific Fusion headquarters in Port Vila on Tuesday, alongside Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

• READ MORE: Other Pacific climate action reports

He said Vanuatu, with the world’s first climate change refugees with the relocation in 2005 of 100 villagers in Torba Province, “will always consider climate change its top priority”.

He said climate change is real, an existential threat, impinging on the security and stability of all nations.

“We do not have to look too far to see how the increased intensity of climate change-induced tropical cyclones wreak havoc on the daily lives and livelihoods of our people and set us back years in our development,” said Kalsakau.

He said Vanuatu’s Pacific brothers also faced human security challenges caused by the nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands (by the US), Mororoa Atoll (France) and Australia (United Kingdom).

‘Our reefs are dying’
“With the effects of global warming and nuclear testing, our ocean is getting warmer, our reefs are dying and fishes are now very scarce.

“Our children and grandchildren are bound to never experience what we’ve enjoyed in our childhood.

“The maintenance and sustenance of our marine resources must be the top priority of our Pacific leaders.”

Kalsakau said there were other pressing issues such as the Fukushima nuclear waste water discharge and AUKUS.

“I say again that Pacific security is about the security of our Pacific peoples and way of life.

“This is why Vanuatu stood alongside our Pacific brothers and sisters to produce the Rarotonga Treaty. Which brings me to today’s very special occasion.

“The Pacific Fusion Centre is guided by the regional security priorities identified by the Boe Declaration and supports regional decision-making on these shared security priorities,” he said.

The centre, which is funded by Australia and to be run in collaboration with Pacific Forum member states, will aim to provide training and analysis on regional security issues.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

A group of former leaders of Pacific island nations have condemned the AUKUS security pact saying it is “bringing war much closer to home” and goes against the Blue Pacific narrative.

The deal between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom will see Canberra forking out billions of dollars over the next three decades to acquire a fleet of nuclear submarines.

In a swinging criticism of the agreement, the Pacific Elders’ Voice, which includes former leaders of Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, said Australia was deliberately exploiting a loophole in the Pacific’s nuclear-free agreement — the Rarotonga Treaty — which permits the transit of nuclear-powered craft such as submarines.

• READ MORE: AUKUS ‘going against’ Pacific nuclear free treaty – Cook Islands leader
• Other Pacific Elders’ Voice reports

“AUKUS signals greater militarisation by joining Australia to the networks of the US military bases in the northern Pacific and it is triggering an arms race, by bringing war much closer to home,” the Pacific elders said in a statement.

“Not only does this go against the spirit of the Blue Pacific narrative, agreed to all [Pacific Islands] Forum member countries last year, it also demonstrates a complete lack of recognition of the climate change security threat that has been embodied in the Boe and other declarations by Pacific leaders.”

The group stated that the “staggering” amount of money committed to AUKUS “flies in the face of Pacific islands countries, which have been crying out for climate change support”.

“The fact that not even a significant fraction of this figure is available for the region to deal with the greatest security threat shows a complete lack of sensitivity to this key Pacific priority in Canberra, London, Paris and Washington,” they wrote.

They also raised concerns about New Zealand’s ambitions to join the trilateral security deal, saying the forum should discourage Aotearoa from joining the “military alliance”.

“We are urging the Pacific Island Leaders to take a decisive and ethical stand on this important matter and not to be subsumed by the AUKUS nations. This does not only put our region at greater risk of a nuclear war but the real environmental impacts arising out of any incidents will be huge,” they said.

Pacific security threatened by ‘climate change’ — not China
One of the spokespeople for the Pacific Elders’ Voice, former Kiribati president Anote Tong told RNZ Pacific it was disappointing that Australia — as a founding forum member — was ready to commit more than $3 billion for military expansionism.

Australia is also a signatory to the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific, which is the strategy that underscores the climate crisis as the region’s single greatest security threat.

“In the Pacific, we have always been saying loud and clear that the greatest challenge to our security has been climate change. It has always always been at the top of the agenda,” Tong said.

“We understand that the security priorities of the AUKUS partners is different from our priority, but at least we also have the existing arrangements in the region with respect to nuclear.”

Australia, Tonga said, was more concerned about the geopolitics when it came to concerns about security.

But for Pacific islands “security is what is the threat that we see challenging our future existence and it is climate change,” he said.

“It is not China or what is happening on the other side of the world.”

The recent attempts by the Australian government to reassure regional leaders that AUKUS would not breach the Rarotonga agreement demonstrated the lack of consultation on Canberra’s part, according to the former Kiribati leader.

“The consultations are taking place [now], but if that had taken place before all of this had happened it would have removed all of these concerns. If we all understood what it involves [and] I am sure if Pacific leaders were happy with it and the region feels that here is no threat to the existing [security] arrangement then we would have no opposition to what is going on.”

‘Australia’s got to step up’
Tong said Australia needed to “step up as a part of the Pacific family”.

He said anytime that a major decision, like AUKUS, was made all Pacific nations must be consulted.

“We have known what has happened in the past when some countries have felt left out so we could have fragmentation,” he said, referencing the Solomon Islands security pact with China which was condemned by other Pacific countries for the lack of consultation on Honiara’s part.

“We do not want to repeat it. We all have an interest in what goes on in our Blue Pacific. It has to be an every-way process, not just a one-way process.”

But while the former leaders group, the forum, and several regional leaders have expressed strong opposition, a few have publicly supported Australia’s plans — including Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Palau’s President Saurengal Whipps Jr.

President Whipps told RNZ Pacific in an interview that as part of peace and security “you also have to have the capability of deterrence”.

“We support what Australia has done because we believe that it is important that Australia is ready and is prepared to defend the Pacific,” he said.

He said Oceania’s largest economy was the first to assist its smaller neighbours with illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and maritime security.

“Australia is doing its part in making sure that we protect freedom and democracy and peace, provide peace and security in the region is important.”

President Whipps said Palau had held seven referendums to amend its constitution to allow the US to transmit nuclear submarines or vessels through its waters because it was about peace and security.

“Now, should they be testing nuclear? Or dumping nuclear waste in our waters? No, we do not agree to that,” he said.

“But we also understand that nuclear energy is something that you need. It powers aircraft carriers or powers, submarines, it powers power plants, and it’s clean energy.

“We need to continue to discuss and put everything into context as to where we are and how we can all do our part and make any increase in peace and security in the region.”

‘We will not acquire nuclear weapons’ – Australia
Last week, Vanuatu’s Climate Change Minister Ralph Regenvanu appealed in a tweet for Australia to assure its island neighbours that the nuclear submarines under the AUKUS agreement would not carry nuclear weapons.

Australia has signed up to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a UN agreement that includes an unequivocal obligation for non-nuclear States Parties such as Australia to never acquire nuclear weapons.

“The Australian government has confirmed unequivocally that we do not seek, and will not acquire nuclear weapons,” a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson told RNZ Pacific.

“This reflects Australia’s existing international legal obligations under the TPNW and the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (SPNFZ), both of which we ratified decades ago.”

The spokesperson said the Australian government had reaffirmed that it would continue to meet in full its obligations under the TPNW and the SPNFZ Treaty.

“Australia has underscored the above position with Pacific governments, particularly during consultative engagements on AUKUS over the past 18 months.

“The Australian government shares the ambition of TPNW States Parties of a world without nuclear weapons.

“It is committed to engaging constructively to identify possible pathways towards nuclear disarmament and to an ambitious agenda to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament,” the DFAT spokesperson added.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

RNZ Pacific

The Pacific Islands Forum chairman has been assured by the United States that the AUKUS agreement will honour the Treaty of Rarotonga after initially saying he felt it would go against it.

The Treaty of Rarotonga formalises a nuclear-weapon-free-zone in the South Pacific. It was signed by several Pacific nations, including Australia and New Zealand in 1985.

In a media statement, forum chairman and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown said he was “reassured to receive from US counterparts last week assurances that AUKUS would uphold the Rarotonga Treaty”.

• READ MORE:  Aukus ‘going against’ Pacific nuclear free treaty – Cook Islands leader
• Other AUKUS security reports

Brown initially raised concerns with the Cook Islands News about the agreement.

“The whole intention of the Treaty of Rarotonga was to try to de-escalate what were at the time Cold War tensions between the major superpowers. This AUKUS arrangement seems to be going against it,” Brown told the newspaper in March.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown. Photo: Sprep/Cook Islands Government

Brown told Cook Islands News at the time the situation “is what it is” but was not happy about how the arrangement had already lead to an escalation in tension within the region.

Last month, the leaders of the United States, the UK and Australia — Joe Biden, Rishi Sunak and Anthony Albanese respectively — formally announced the deal in San Diego.

It will see the Australian government spending nearly US$250 billion over the next three decades to acquire a fleet of US nuclear submarines with UK tech components — the majority of which will be built in Adelaide — as part of the defence and security pact.

Its implementation will make Australia one of only seven countries in the world to have nuclear-powered submarines alongside China, India, Russia, the UK, the US and France.

‘Assurance’ by Australia
New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta told RNZ Pacific she had been given “assurance” by Australia that the treaty would be upheld.

Mahuta said as members of the Pacific, there was an expectation that nations were briefed on bilateral decisions that impact the stability of the region.

“What I can say from a New Zealand perspective, is that we need to work hard together as a Pacific family to ensure greater stability and there is no militarisation of our region,” she said.

“We want to maintain a nuclear-free Pacific, we want to work with Pacific neighbours around any security related issues.”

Mahuta visited China last month and said the non-militarisation of the Pacific was discussed in her meetings along with other issues, like climate change.

Geopolitical analyst Geoffrey Miller said the AUKUS deal was probably “complaint by the letter of the law” but not “by the spirit”.

“It does set a bad precedent … if you want to get hold of nuclear technology in the future just get it in a submarine because that seems to be acceptable,” Miller said.

‘Submarine loophole’
“It has been called a submarine loophole.”

He said concerns have been expressed by outside experts, including China, but they should be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, Vanuatu Minister, Ralph Regenvanu has called for Australia to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Regenvanu said in a tweet it was the “only way to assure us that the subs WON’T carry nuclear weapons” and it was a request from Vanuatu to sign.

The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is a legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapon. The treaty entered into force in 2021.

However, when approached by RNZ Pacific, Regenvanu said he did not want to comment on his tweet and Australia’s Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy was visiting the Pacific nation later this week.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The only way to assure us that the subs WON’T carry nuclear weapons, and that AUKUS will therefore NOT breach the Rarotonga Treaty, is for Australia to become a party to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Vanuatu is requesting that. https://t.co/eFSdRwTzTV

— Ralph Regenvanu (@RRegenvanu) April 5, 2023

A Pacific elder and former secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum says Pacific leaders need to sit up and pay closer attention to AUKUS and the Indo-Pacific strategy and China’s response to them.

Speaking from Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Dame Meg Taylor said Pacific leaders were being sidelined in major geopolitical decisions affecting their region and they need to start raising their voices for the sake of their citizens.

“The issue here is that we should have paid much more attention to the Indo-Pacific strategy as it emerged,” she said.

• LISTEN TO RNZ PACIFIC WAVES: Dame Meg Taylor on AUKUS

“And we were not ever consulted by the countries that are party to that, including some of our own members of the Pacific Island Forum. Then the emergence of AUKUS — Pacific countries were never consulted on this either,” she said.

Last week in San Diego, the leaders of the United States, the UK and Australia — President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese respectively — formally announced the AUKUS deal.

It will see the Australian government spending nearly $US250 billion over the next three decades to acquire a fleet of US nuclear submarines with UK tech components — the majority of which will be built in Adelaide — as part of the defence and security pact.

Its implementation will make Australia one of only seven countries in the world to have nuclear-powered submarines alongside China, France, India, Russia, the UK, and the US.

“We believe in a world that protects freedom and respects human rights, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states, and the rules-based international order,” the leaders said in a joint statement.

“The steps we are announcing today will help us to advance these mutually beneficial objectives in the decades to come,” they said.

Following the announcement, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wengbin said by going ahead with the pact the US, UK and Australia disregarded the concerns of the international community and have gone further down “the wrong path”.

“We’ve repeatedly said that the establishment of the so-called AUKUS security partnership between the US, the UK and Australia to promote cooperation on nuclear submarines and other cutting-edge military technologies, is a typical Cold War mentality,” Wang said.

“It will only exacerbate the arms race, undermine the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, and hurt regional peace and stability,” he said.

The 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy is the United States’ programme to ” advance our common vision for an Indo-Pacific region that is free and open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.”

The Rarotonga Treaty
On his return from San Diego, Australia’s Albanese stopped over in Suva where he met his Fijian counterpart Sitiveni Rabuka.

After the meeting, Rabuka told reporters he supported AUKUS and that Albanese had assured him the nuclear submarine deal would not undermine the Treaty of Rarotonga — to which Australia is a party — that declares the South Pacific a nuclear weapon free zone.

But an Australian academic said Pacific countries cannot take Canberra at face value when it comes to AUKUS and its committment to the Rarotonga Treaty.

Dr Matthew Fitzpatrick, a professor in international history at Flinders University in South Australia, said Pacific leaders need to hold Australia accountable to the treaty.

“Australia and New Zealand have always differed on what that treaty extends to in the sense that for New Zealand, that means more or less that you haven’t had US vessels with nuclear arms [or nuclear powered] permitted into the ports of New Zealand, whereas in Australia, those vessels more or less have been welcomed,” he said.

Professor Fitzpatrick said Australia had declared that it did not breach it, or it did not breach any of those treaty commitments, but the proof of the pudding would be in the eating.

“I think it’s something that certainly nations around the Pacific should be very careful and very cautious in taking at face value, what Australia says on those treaty requirements and should ensure that they’re rigorously enforced,” Professor Fitzpatrick said.

Parties to the Rarotonga Treaty include Australia, Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.

Notably absent are three north Pacific countries who have compacts of free association with the United States — Palau, Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Dame Meg Taylor said Sitiveni Rabuka’s signal of support for AUKUS by no means reflected the positions of other leaders in the region.

“I think the concern for us is that we in the Pacific, particularly those of us who are signatories to the Treaty of Rarotonga, have always been committed to the fact that we wanted a place to live where there was no proliferation of nuclear weapons.

“The debate, I think that will emerge within the Pacific is ‘are nuclear submarines weapons’?”

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Meanwhile, a geopolitical analyst, Geoffrey Miller who writes for political website Democracy Project, said the deal could become a “self-fulfilling prophecy” for conflict.

“Indo-Pacific countries all around the region are re-arming and spending more on their militaries,” Miller said.

Japan approved its biggest military buildup since the Second World War last year and Dr Miller said New Zealand was reviewing its defence policy which would likely lead to more spending.

“I worry that the AUKUS deal will only make things worse,” he said.

“The more of these kinds of power projections, and the less dialogue we have, the more likely it is that we are ultimately going to bring about this conflict that we’re all trying to avoid.

“I think we do need to think about de-escalation even more and let’s not talk ourselves into World War III.”

Miller said tensions had grown since Russia invaded Ukraine and analysts had changed their view on how likely China was to invade Taiwain.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Nuclear-armed submarines are not welcome in Fiji waters.

Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said this as he stressed he did not support any nuclear development that went against the Rarotonga Treaty and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons which Fiji is a signatory to.

“So people should not be worried about an escalation of nuclear weapons,” he said.

• READ MORE: As Australia signs up for nuclear subs, NZ faces hard decisions over the AUKUS alliance

However, he confirmed that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had informed him during his visit this week that global superpower United States, Australia and the United Kingdom were working on a AUKUS agreement to build a nuclear powered submarine.

“They are building a nuclear-powered submarine and it’s a AUKUS programme between Australia, UK and the US and it will not affect the Rarotonga Treaty nor the Non Proliferation (of Nuclear Weapons) Treaty,” he said.

“These ones will not be armed with nuclear weapons.”

He said a number of treaties ensured that non-nuclear power producing nations were not allowed to produce warheads.

Non-Proliferation Treaty
“The Non-Proliferation Treaty is on nuclear arms,” he said.

“It was on the Strategic Arms Limitation talks series and had series one, two and three and it’s about the non-proliferation or non-growth of a number of nuclear warheads.

“Also the Lateral Proliferation which states that those that do not have nuclear capabilities, particularly warheads, should not develop them, but it does happen.”

He added that Fiji could benefit from the treaty through employment.

Australia, United Kingdom and the United States signed the AUKUS pact in 2021 and as part of the deal, Australia will acquire three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US.

Australia also plans to begin building a new fleet of nuclear-powered subs under a 30-year programme which could cost up to A$368 billion (F$546 billion).

The deal could see the nuclear-powered subs in operation around Australian waters from as early as 2027.

In a media briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin accused AUKUS partners of breaking international rules on the spread of nuclear weapons.

Repeka Nasiko is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with permission.

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating’s recent strident criticism of the A$368 billion nuclear-powered submarine deal announced under the AUKUS security pact
will have little effect on Australian policy.

Canberra’s deepening level of security cooperation is underpinned by a deep political consensus.

But the clarity of Australian policy stands in stark contrast with New Zealand’s position on AUKUS, the trilateral technology-sharing agreement between Australia, the UK and US. In fact, New Zealand’s AUKUS policy can be summed up in one word — ambiguity.

• READ MORE: Paul Keating lashes Albanese government over AUKUS, calling it Labor’s biggest failure since WW1
• AUKUS submarine plan will be the biggest defence scheme in Australian history. So how will it work?
• Nukes, allies, weapons and cost: 4 big questions NZ’s defence review must address
• Other China and the Pacific reports

The establishment of AUKUS in September 2021 was met with an equivocal endorsement by New Zealand. On the one hand, the prime minister at the time, Jacinda Ardern, was “pleased to see” the initiative, declaring she “welcome[d] the increased engagement of the UK and the US in our region”.

On the other hand, Ardern noted the country’s longstanding nuclear-free policy meant any nuclear-propelled submarines developed by our Australian ally would be prohibited from New Zealand waters.

After Tuesday’s joint AUKUS leaders’ statement in San Diego by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, it is time to start counting the opportunity cost to New Zealand of maintaining this ambiguous policy posture.

‘Worst deal in all history’: Former Labor PM Paul Keating savages AUKUS submarine deal https://t.co/wp5VXqEAdx

— ABC News (@abcnews) March 15, 2023

Bets both ways
It may be surprising to hear, but Wellington’s AUKUS policy is ambiguous by design, reflecting a broader policy of “hedging”. This deliberately seeks to maximise the economic gains from trade with China, while supporting a US-constructed international order that aligns with New Zealand’s interests and values.

Unfortunately for New Zealand, the geopolitical environment that underpinned this policy has been torpedoed by the deterioration in US-China relations. It began during the Obama administration and has escalated during the Trump and Biden administrations.

The creation of AUKUS is a reflection of this broader strategic environment. And it has a direct effect on New Zealand’s security in two respects.

First, New Zealand’s leading trade partner, China, views AUKUS as contributing negatively to regional security dynamics. And Beijing cannot be expected to placidly accept this démarche.

China responded to the formation of AUKUS with the China-Solomon Islands security agreement in April 2022. What will its response be this time?

It is likely to involve some attempt to reduce Australian security, such as a Solomon Islands-style partnership with any number of states in the Pacific Islands Forum. This will have knock-on effects for New Zealand’s own security.

Regional instability
The possible scenarios are limited only by China’s capabilities and level of resolve to respond to AUKUS. As it stands, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, reacted critically to the AUKUS leaders’ statement. According to Wang:

The latest joint statement from the US, UK and Australia demonstrates that the three countries, for the sake of their own geopolitical interests, completely disregard the concerns of the international communities and are walking further and further down the path of error and danger.

To put it mildly, such criticism is misplaced. Truth be told, while there is clearly an interactive dynamic at work, AUKUS is much more an effect of a deteriorating security environment than a cause of it.

Like all countries, China has legitimate security concerns and interests. And it is clearly misleading, as many hawks in the US are doing, to paint China as an unvarnished threat to regional stability in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

But it is equally misleading to overlook China’s role in the increased regional instability over the past decade or more, which has led to the creation of AUKUS and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) involving Australia, India, Japan and the US.

Historic turning point
Second, the latest AUKUS developments have clear implications for New Zealand’s alliance with Australia, which is at a historic turning point. The principle at play here is clear — investment signals commitment, while lack of investment signals lack of commitment.

What is New Zealand’s level of commitment to the alliance? We will soon find out.

The New Zealand Ministry of Defence is conducting a major review that will release its report after the 2023 general election.

It is a fair bet Canberra is open to a serious discussion with Wellington on investing in a retooled ANZAC alliance. This would secure both countries’ national interests, not least their maritime, cyber and regional security.

Australia has chosen to invest in AUKUS. As Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles stated at a press conference in Canberra timed to occur immediately after Albanese’s joint ceremony with Biden and Sunak:

This is an investment in our nation’s security. It is an investment in our economy. And it is an investment that we cannot afford not to make.

AUKUS is both a catalyst and a mirror reflecting a swiftly changing strategic environment. New Zealand now needs to make some considered decisions on how to respond.

Dr Nicholas Khoo, Associate Professor of International Politics, University of Otago. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

The last 10 days has seen the entire media focus (aside from the ubiquitous concern for the All Black prospects in a rugby test and then the fate of coach Ian Foster) has been on allegations of bullying by new opposition National MP Sam Uffindell and bullying of first term Labour government MP Gaurav Sharma.

Sam Uffindell’s future is still up in the air while Dr Sharma’s political career has resembled a meteorite — a brief, bright burn.

Meanwhile, over this time we were visited by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was on a whirlwind visit through the Pacific which the US has just rediscovered after finding China has been courting our Pacific neighbours.

• READ MORE: US would have conversations with New Zealand if time comes for others to join AUKUS — top diplomat
• Other John Minto articles

Sherman was here to remind us the US fought in the Pacific 75 years ago, that it is ready to fight here again (on the side of “democracy” and “freedom” of course) and probably assessing when best for the US to launch a destabilising campaign against Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who has had the audacity, from the US point of view, to sign a development agreement with China.

There is a host of good, hard questions that should have been put to Sherman by our journalists but alas there is nothing of substance anywhere.

Here for example is RNZ’s Morning Report interview with Sherman.

Calling it a “soft” interview doesn’t describe it well — “cringing embarrassment” would be better.

Full of talking points
Sherman was full of US talking points such as the importance of the “[US] rules-based international order developed after World War II” and “no country should decide the political future of another country or bend that country to their political will”.

Just read that last Sherman quote again. She is aiming at China but probably three quarters of humanity have experienced precisely that interference at the hands, guns, banks and bombs of the US since World War II — democracies included.

RNZ let it all go unchallenged. The US is already on the record as saying they will “not sit by” and allow China to get a foothold in the Solomon Islands or the Pacific.

Why wasn’t Sherman interrogated on this? Why weren’t hard questions asked? The danger signs for our corner of the world are everywhere — but invisible to RNZ.

Instead the hard questions were saved for the hapless thug Uffindell and those responsible for Dr Sharma’s meteoric career.

Aotearoa New Zealand got closest to an independent foreign policy in the mid-1980s but there seems no journalistic memory. Instead of asking about US intentions in the Pacific and suggesting that New Zealanders don’t want to see superpower rivalry on our doorstep, RNZ simply asks what are the prospects of New Zealand joining the AUKUS alliance (Australia, the UK and the US who are joining forces to arm Australia with nuclear submarines to counter China)

Meanwhile, Aotearoa New Zealand moves insidiously closer to the US military.

Here in Christchurch, protests will accompany the Rocket Lab presence at the 2022 Aerospace Summit.

In case anyone hasn’t caught up with developments, Rocket Lab is now majority owned by the US military and has launched numerous rockets for direct military purposes.

The protest will have some hard questions for Peter Beck — don’t expect them from the news media.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

Australia needs to be put on notice by Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders over abandoning its commitments under the South Pacific’s nuclear free accord — the Treaty of Rarotonga — by signing up to the controversial security pact, AUKUS, says the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG).

The deal by the Australian, the United Kingdom, and the United States governments is “highly problematic” and “heightens risks for nuclear proliferation” in the region, PANG coordinator Maureen Penjueli said.

“Security and defence pacts today are about the Pacific Ocean — which is our home — but it has never been with Pacific people, let alone our governments,” she said.

• READ MORE: AUKUS pact strikes at heart of Pacific nuclear-free regionalism
• Other AUKUS pact reports

AUKUS is promoted as a trilateral partnership between the three allies to enable Australia to boost its military capacity by acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for its navy.

However, Australia, was a key part of PIF and also a party to the Rarotonga Treaty, the region’s principal nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament agreement, Penjueli said.

The accord legally binds member states “not to manufacture, possess, acquire or have control of nuclear weapons (Article 3)”, as well as “to prevent nuclear testing in their territories (Article 6)”. The treaty further places an emphasis on keeping the region free from radioactive wastes.

Penjueli said that Pacific people had had first-hand experience of the threats of nuclear weapons testing, and continued to live with the sideeffects of historical nuclear catastrophes to this day.

Long list of nuclear threats
“We see AUKUS as just one in a long list of nuclear threats and issues that the region as a whole has been confronted with,” she said.

“We see Australia playing a key, often unilateral role, taking decisions around peace and security which is not aligned with Pacific peoples’ immediate priorities around security, in particular human security.

“AUKUS raises serious concerns over Australia’s intentions for its island neighbours.”

Pacific Island governments and civil society had been at the forefront in advocating for a nuclear free and independent Pacific.

They have expressed strong opposition to AUKUS since it was announced in September, which experts say undermines regional solidarity on the issue of a nuclear free Pacific.

Australuan foreign policy analyst Dr Greg Fry said that the more immediate threat to the South Pacific nuclear-free zone lay not in the nuclear submarines, which were not due until 2040 and beyond, “but in the fundamental shift in Australian-US defence arrangements which were announced alongside AUKUS”.

According to Dr Fry, these arrangements included the possible home-basing of American submarines, surface vessels, and bombers, in Australia, as well stockpiling of munitions.

Home basing threat
“Home basing would require the presence of nuclear weapons in Australia. This raises questions for article 5 of the Rarotonga Treaty which bans the stationing of nuclear weapons in the treaty zone.

“It would, therefore, require Australia to notify the Secretary-General of the PIFS under article 9 of the treaty.”

Dr Fry said Australia’s assurances that the nuclear reactors powering the submarines would not be in danger of accidently releasing radioactive material into the Pacific Ocean needed to be examined against the history of accidents involving nuclear submarines.

“There has already been a serious accident in the Pacific. In 2005, the US nuclear attack submarine USS San Francisco ran into a sea mount near the Caroline Islands in the Federated States of Micronesia.

“Although the nuclear reactor was undamaged, it was reported as ‘remarkable’ that it was not given the extensive damage to the submarine,” he said.

“Aside from the obvious nuclear concerns, the partnership is also widely noted to be an effort by the Australia-UK-US governments to counter the growing influence of China in the Pacific.

“It [AUKUS] also means Australia is even more fully integrated with US forces in a new cold war with China right now,” said Dr Fry.

Major policy shift
He added that “this is a major shift in policy from one where we pretended we were friends to both China and US”.

Penjueli said that several Pacific countries have had long diplomatic relations with China and the Asian superpower was not considered a problem.

“Our countries have taken much more nuanced policies with China. It is time that Australia is put on notice at the Forum. It is clearly part of our neighbourhood but it is acting outside of the norms of Pacific Islands Forum.”

She said that while AUKUS had taken the limelight, it was not the only cause for nuclear anxiety for the region.

The revelation by a Japanese utility company about plans to release nuclear waste from the Fukushima nuclear power plant — one of the world’s worst atomic disasters — into the Pacific Ocean had also set the alarm bells ringing.

“Japan is also a partner to the forum and the announcement has infuriated regional governments and activist groups,” Penjueli said.

“Our governments have opposed nuclear testing, they have opposed the movement of nuclear shipments of radioactive waste and they have strongly opposed the announcement by Japan to dump radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean.

“The Pacific Ocean is not a dumping ground for nuclear materials, nor is it a highway for nuclear submarines.”

It perhaps wasn’t a remarkable coincidence that last month Samoa’s former Ambassador to the United Nations called on the United States to ratify a treaty declaring the South Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

Ali’ioaiga Feturi Elisaia, currently Samoa’s High Commissioner to Fiji, made the comments during a Blue Pacific Talanoa series last month to mark the August 29 International Day against Nuclear Tests.

The treaty created by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) was called the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty of Rarotonga of which Samoa is a signatory.

• READ MORE: AUKUS pact strikes at heart of Pacific nuclear-free regionalism
• More articles on the Australian nuclear submarine deal

The virtual conference also featured high profile state actors including Fiji Prime Minister and PIF Chair Josaia Bainimarama, PIF Secretary-General Henry Puna and the secretary-general for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, Ambassador Flavio Roberto Bonzanini.

The lineup of the presenters last month underscored the significance of the issue for the region, which very much remains relevant for Samoa and other Pacific Island nations some 25 years after the last nuclear test explosion by France at the Moruroa and Fangataufa atoll test sites on 27 January 1996.

Lest we forget the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands where the US unleashed 23 nuclear weapons between 1946 and 1958 to displace the Marshallese people for ever.

Discussions today around nuclear testing or the use of nuclear energy as an alternative energy source are likely to be associated with protest marches in the 1960s and 1970s with public opinion shifting due to the calamitous effect of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings towards the backend of World War Two in 1945.

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power disaster in Ukraine (which was at that time part of The Soviet Union) claimed 31 lives, though in 2005 the United Nations reportedly projected that some 4000 people would eventually die due to radiation exposure.

In March 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami, which overran the seawall of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and flooded the nuclear reactor, triggering a failure of the emergency generators to lead to nuclear meltdowns and the leaking of contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean.

Over a decade later the Japan government announced in April this year that it would release 1 million tonnes of contaminated water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant into the Pacific, triggering concerns within the region and leading to calls for an independent assessment.

And it appears we in the Pacific are not out of the woods just yet — as more developed and economically affluent nations dabble with this deadly form of energy in our part of the world — despite being privy to data collected showing how thousands of lives were lost and millions displaced due to the use of nuclear weapons or energy in war as well as peacetime over the past 76 years.

So it is disappointing to see reports emerge over the last couple of days on Australia penning an agreement with the US and the UK to acquire nuclear-powered submarines in a bid to beef up its military arsenal.

Why has Australia become a party to a military pact that could now see conflict return to our peaceful islands some 76 years after the end of World War Two?

We are not interested in your wars and the political ideologies that you continue to flout in your quest for global domination.

Nor are we keen on subscribing to a train of thought promoting oligarchy where all power is centred in an individual.

The Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, when defending his country’s decision to sign the military pact with the US and the UK, is of the view that there will be peace and stability in the region due to the partnership.

“She [Jacinda Ardern] was my first call because of the strength of our relationship and the relationship between our countries,” Morrison said when confirming that he had advised his New Zealand counterpart, reports the Associated Press.

“All in the region will benefit from the peace and the stability and security that this partnership will add to our region.”

So what peace and stability is Mr Morrison referring to in his defence of this agreement?

Barring the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on our fragile and vulnerable economies, we in the Pacific are happy where we are.

Our journeys as sovereign nations haven’t been without their challenges and we know the destinations we want to get to with the assistance of bigger nations as well as development partners.

But signing up to a military pact behind the closet and then declaring we in the region will benefit from the peace and stability it would bring is not how friends treat each other.

It is a relief seeing Prime Minister Ardern continuing to maintain the tradition of her predecessors by promoting a nuclear-free Pacific; probably she is the only true friend of the Pacific Islands.

Having lived with and witnessed the ravages of war for close to a century; brought to our doorstep and into our homes without our consent; we expect global leaders to respect the various sovereign nations and their people who make up this huge expanse of an ocean that is now known as the Pacific.

It would be appropriate for Samoa’s first female Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa bringing this to the attention of the international community, in her first maiden address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Samoa Observer editorial on 21 September 2021. Republished with permission.

Australia’s new security pact with the US and the UK has touched a nerve at the core of Pacific regionalism.

The AUKUS alliance, announced by leaders of the three countries last week, finds them seeking strategic advantage in the Indo-Pacific region with a focus on developing nuclear-powered submarines for the Australian Navy.

Announcing the pact via video link with Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his British counterpart Boris Johnson, US president Joe Biden said it was about enhancing their collective ability to take on the threats of the 21st century.

• READ MORE: France recalls US and Australia envoys over submarine deal
• ANZUS without NZ? Why the new security pact between Australia, the UK and US might not be all it seems
• Other AUKUS reports

France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations, in a “Pacific” backlash over a submarine deal after Canberra cancelled a multibillion-dollar deal for conventional French submarines, reports Al Jazeera.

President Biden declared: “Today we’re taking another historic step, to deepen and formalise co-operation among all three of our nations, because we all recognise the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve.”

Describing this threat as rapidly evolving, Biden said AUKUS was launching consultations on Australia’s acquisition of conventionally armed submarines powered by nuclear reactors. The president emphasised that the subs would not be nuclear-armed.

Serious concern for Pacific
But the general secretary of the Pacific Conference of Churches, Reverend James Bhagwan, said the move towards nuclear submarines was a serious concern for a region still dealing with the fallout from nuclear weapons tests.

“Three weeks ago, the current chair of Pacific Islands Forum, the Prime Minister of Fiji (Voreqe Bainimarama) reiterated that we want a Blue Pacific that is nuclear free. It’s at the heart of Pacific regionalism,” he said.

“From the Sixties, from when the very first tests started in our region, this is something that government, civil society, churches have all been very adamant against, to keep our Pacific nuclear-free. We are still dealing with the fallout from nuclear testing.”

However, Morrison said it was time to take the partnership between the three nations to a “new level”, noting that “our world is becoming more complex, especially here in our region, the Indo-Pacific”, a sign of the alliance’s growing angst over China.

But the move towards nuclear submarines confronts the spirit of a nuclear-free zone that Pacific regional countries signed up to decades ago.

Furthermore, the pact comes as the Pacific Islands Forum continues to protest about Japan’s plans to dump treated nuclear waste water into the ocean from the Fukushima power plant, that was damaged in an earthquake and tsunami 10 years ago.

Taken by surprise
The Federated States of Micronesia, a country with close ties to the US, was diplomatic in conveying how the pact caught it by surprise.

A spokesperson for the FSM government said it had “trust, faith and confidence” in the US and Australia in their promotion, and protection, of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific

“It can safely be assumed that the United States and Australia are making security decisions with the best interests of the Pacific in mind, because our vitality is their vitality. That said, this news is a surprise.

“Micronesia is confident this decision makes our country safer, but Micronesia also looks forward to learning more about how precisely that is the case.”

Rather than loss of business, Pacific Islands are more concerned about existential loss, having first hand experience of nuclear testing by French, American and British.

“The ocean impacts on our life,” Reverend Bhagwan said.

“We are the fish basket of the world. So if one submarine comes in and something goes wrong and the nuclear waste from that submarine gets into our ocean, that’s too much already.”

Pacific interests
Reverend Bhagwan questioned how the pact stacked up with Scott Morrison’s claims that Australia considered Pacific Islands countries as vuvale, or family.

“This is our Pacific way. Sometimes we don’t agree, but we always act in the best interests, we always come and support one another,” he said.

“This is not Australia acting in the best interests of the rest of its Pacific Vuvale.”

China has described the pact as being detrimental to regional peace and stability.

Relations between Beijing and Canberra are at an all-time low, and a spokesman for the Chinese government urged Australia to think carefully whether to treat China as a partner or a threat.

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said the prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in its waters remained unchanged, adding that the pact “in no way changes our security and intelligence ties with these three countries”.

She said New Zealand was first and foremost a nation of the Pacific which viewed foreign policy developments through the lens of what is in the best interest of the region.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

We live, to borrow a phrase, in interesting times. The pandemic aside, relations between the superpowers are tense. The sudden arrival of the new AUKUS security agreement between Australia, the US and UK simply adds to the general sense of unease internationally.

The relationship between America and China had already deteriorated under the presidency of Donald Trump and has not improved under Joe Biden.

New satellite evidence suggests China might be building between 100 and 200 silos for a new generation of nuclear intercontinental missiles.

• READ MORE: Australia to build nuclear submarines in a new partnership with the US and UK
• C’est fini: can the Australia-France relationship be salvaged after scrapping the sub deal?
• Why nuclear submarines are a smart military move for Australia — and could deter China further
• ANZUS at 70: Together for decades, US, Australia, New Zealand now face different challenges from China

At the same time, the US relationship with North Korea continues to smoulder, with both North and South Korea conducting missile tests designed to intimidate.

And, of course, Biden has just presided over the foreign policy disaster of withdrawal from Afghanistan. His administration needs something new with a positive spin.

Enter AUKUS, more or less out of the blue. So far, it is just a statement launched by the member countries’ leaders. It has not yet been released as a formal treaty.

As The Conversation reports, the initiative coincides with the Morrison government deciding it is best for Australia to accelerate the production of a more capable, integrated, nuclear-powered submarine platform — at a vastly higher cost — with the US and the UK.

Australia’s previous A$90 billion deal with the French company DCNS to build up to 12 submarines has been canned.

The Indo-Pacific pivot
The new agreement speaks of “maritime democracies” and “ideals and shared commitment to the international rules-based order” with the objective to “deepen diplomatic, security and defence co-operation in the Indo-Pacific region”.

“Indo-Pacific region” is code for defence against China, with the partnership promising greater sharing and integration of defence technologies, cyber capabilities and “additional undersea capabilities”. Under the agreement, Australia also stands to gain nuclear-powered submarines.

To demonstrate the depth of the relationship, the agreement highlights how “for more than 70 years, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have worked together, along with other important allies and partners”.

At which point New Zealand could have expected a drum roll, too, having only just marked the 70th anniversary of the ANZUS agreement. That didn’t happen, and New Zealand was conspicuously absent from the choreographed announcement hosted by the White House.

Having remained committed to the Five Eyes security agreement and having put boots on the ground in Afghanistan for the duration, “NZ” appears to have been taken out of ANZUS and replaced with “UK”.

Ardern responds to new Australia, UK, US group, says NZ nuclear stance ‘unchanged’ https://t.co/Ot3Ehi0R92

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) September 15, 2021

Don’t mention the nukes
The obvious first question is whether New Zealand was asked to join the new arrangement. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has welcomed the new partnership, she has confirmed: “We weren’t approached, nor would I expect us to be.”

That is perhaps surprising. Despite problematic comments by New Zealand’s trade minister about Australia’s dealings with China, and the foreign minister’s statement that she “felt uncomfortable” with the expanding remit of the Five Eyes, reassurances by Ardern about New Zealand’s commitment should have calmed concerns.

One has to assume, therefore, that even if New Zealand had been asked to join, it might have chosen to opt out anyway. There are three possible explanations for this:

The first involves the probable provision to Australia of nuclear-powered military submarines. Any mention of nuclear matters makes New Zealand nervous. But Australia has been at pains to reiterate its commitment to “leadership on global non-proliferation”.

Similar commitments or work-arounds could probably have been made for New Zealand within the AUKUS agreement, too, but that is now moot.

Ardern on NZ being left out of new AUKUS security pact https://t.co/zmjjWQWIuo pic.twitter.com/DEp13JUGWZ

— nzherald (@nzherald) September 16, 2021

The dragon in the room
The second reason New Zealand may have declined is because the new agreement is perceived as little more than an expensive purchasing agreement for the Australian navy, wrapped up as something else.

This may be partly true. But the rewards of the relationship as stated in the initial announcement go beyond submarines and look enticing. In particular, anything that offers cutting-edge technologies and enhances the interoperability of New Zealand’s defence force with its allies would not be lightly declined.

The third explanation could lie in an assumption that this is not a new security arrangement. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that New Zealand is not the only ally missing from the new arrangement.

Canada, the other Five Eyes member, is also not at the party. Nor are France, Germany, India and Japan. If this really was a quantum shift in strategic alliances, the group would have been wider — and more formal than a new partnership announced at a press conference.

Nonetheless, the fact that New Zealand’s supposedly extra-special relationship with Britain, Australia and America hasn’t made it part of the in-crowd will raise eyebrows.

Especially while no one likes to mention the elephant – or should that be dragon? – in the room: New Zealand’s relationship with China.

Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law at the University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.