The UN Human Rights Council voted UN Permanent Representative of Indonesia Sidharto Reza Suryodipuro to serve as president of the UNHRC for the 2026 one year term on 8 January.

But West Papuan provisional government president Benny Wenda has cried foul on the appointment, questioning how Jakarta can lead on rights while occupying West Papua and genociding its people.

The disconnect in having the Asian nation of Indonesia heading the UNHRC, as it actively occupies the Melanesian territory of the West Papuan people, was heightened in October 2024, when Prabowo Subianto was voted in as president, as the notorious Suharto-era general was blacklisted from Australia and the US at the turn of the century, due to his deplorable human rights record.

Prabowo, however, is just one man, while the nation of Indonesia has been dubiously occupying West Papua since 1963, after the UN gifted it temporary administration, and ever since the 1969 UN-brokered vote on West Papuan self-determination resulted in a decision to remain with Indonesia, due to Jakarta’s standover tactics, the occupation of West Papua has been straight out illegitimate.

The UNHRC has a rotating membership, so a new president is elected every year for a year, and appointment to the role does not reflect an assessment of a nation’s human rights record. However, the body is the main authority on human rights globally and its decisions hold weight, so having a representative from a nation perpetrating a slow genocide is necessarily corrosive.

The further point to be made about the situation is that over the past five years the West Papuan nation has established a provisional government both in exile and on the ground in the Melanesian region, whilst it’s further handed a petition to the United Nations, calling for a fresh vote on self-determination. So, the West Papuan nation is more than ready to depart Indonesia.

“Indonesia should be a global pariah”

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when they are hiding from the world their 60 year occupation of West Papua, with five hundred thousand men, women and children dead?” asked West Papuan provisional president Benny Wenda.

“How can Indonesia lead on human rights, when their president is a war criminal who is complicit in genocide in East Timor and West Papua?”

“Prabowo personally tortured East Timorese men and presided over indiscriminate massacres of Indigenous people from Kraras to Mapenduma,” continued Wenda, who’s lived in exile in Oxford in the UK for the past two decades. “He has never apologised or been held accountable for his crimes.”

Wenda added that even with the UNHRC presidency being a rotating position not predicated on a nation’s record, it makes a mockery of the United Nations claim that it upholds international law, when Indonesia has been appointed regardless of its sketchy rights record, which includes the fact that 105,000 West Papuans are currently displaced due to recent Indonesian military operations.

Under Prabowo, the Indonesian human rights minister is Natalius Pigai, who is a West Papuan man. Pigia has publicly stated that in this UN role, Jakarta plans to counter breaches of international law, such as the kidnapping of the Venezuelan president by the US. But Wenda questions why Pigai is talking about rights violations elsewhere, when the state he works for is occupying his own people.

“Every single day for the past 63 years, West Papuans have suffered breaches of international law,” Wenda underscored. “There is no democracy in West Papua. We have no rights as Indigenous people, as Black people, as Christians.”

The Act of No Choice

As colonisers the Netherlands were set to vacate West Papua, the 1962 New York Agreement was struck. It involved the United Nations briefly administrating the Melanesian country, prior to Jakarta taking control on 1 May 1963, and this was predicated on the West Papuan people eventually having a referendum on whether to remain with Indonesian rule or to become an independent nation.

The UN-brokered Act of Free Choice was held in 1969. The so-called national referendum involved the Indonesian military rounding up 1,026 West Papuan men and by gunpoint, having them all vote that their nation remain under Indonesian rule. The West Papuans refer to this as the Act of No Choice.

Jakarta has since split the West Papuan region into two provinces not recognised by the local people, and more recently this has been upped to five separate provinces. A transmigration program was established in the 1970s, which has left West Papuans making up less than 50 percent of the people in the region. This program has recently been revamped under Prabowo.

The number of displaced people in West Papua has been rising since 2018, when the then Jokowi government began attacking villages in the highlands, with the initial assaults in the Nduga regency. The displaced people are the people from villages fleeing aerial attacks. The ongoing attacks were first sparked by disagreement over the construction of the Trans-Papua Highway.

There are grievances about the Trans-Papua Highway being rolled out through pristine Melanesian forest, but the destruction of the environment doesn’t stop there. Under Prabowo, one of the world’s largest deforestation projects is underway in the Merauke district of South Papua province. Eventually, 2 million hectares will be destroyed to make way for sugarcane.

An independent West Papua

As chair of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP), Wenda presented then UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet with the West Papuan People’s Petition in January 2019. This calls for the holding of a legitimate referendum on self-determination, and it contains more than 1.8 million West Papuan signatures, or 70 percent of the Indigenous populace.

The compiling of the signatures had to be done clandestinely under the oppressive and overbearing militarised rule of Indonesia in occupied West Papua.

Wenda announced the formation of the provisional government in January 2021, and by May that year, it had established itself on the ground, with 12 government departments, with the environmental department charged with progressing the West Papuan policy to establish the planet’s first green state.

The West Papuan Legislative Council had its inaugural meeting in Jayapura on 5 July 2025, which was hailed as the “rebirth of the West Papuan state”.

“Every single day for the past 63 years, West Papuans have suffered breaches of international law,” Wenda continued, in the wake of the announcement of Indonesia heading the UNHRC. “Every time Indonesia launches a new plantation or mine on occupied territory, the human rights of nearly 2 million Indigenous Papuans are violated.”

“Until the world intervenes to stop such egregious hypocrisy, until West Papua is recognised as a place of ongoing occupation, apartheid and genocide, there will be no peace or justice in the Pacific,” the West Papuan independence leader said in ending.

“The ULMWP continues to demand that Indonesia opens West Papua to journalists and allows a UN visit to the territory.”

The first phase of US president Donald Trump’s 20-point Gaza peace plan has been implemented and talk has shifted to the deployment of an international peacekeeping force. Yet, with ongoing Israeli breaches to the pause on genocide, a key advocacy group is calling on the United Nations Security Council to take further steps to ensure that the end to the killing holds.

Washington-based group DAWN (Democracy in the Arab World Now) has called on the UN Security Council to incorporate into a resolution currently being negotiated on the International Stabilisation Force (ISF) to be deployed to Gaza, that an immediate arms embargo be placed on Israel, that Gaza’s borders are put under international control and that the ISF operation should involve fact-finding.

Following the Israeli Defence Forces having withdrawn across a demarcation line in Gaza and a hostage exchange having taken place, US secretary of state Mark Rubio was in Israel on Friday, 24 October 2025, discussing countries willing to participate in the ISF, while DAWN insists that if Israel remains in control of the borders, the ISF’s mission will fail, as it needs to control the supply lines.

DAWN has been calling for international peacekeepers to be deployed to Gaza since March 2024, based on the consideration that no amount of negotiations were going to end Israel’s mass commission of atrocities against the Palestinians of Gaza, and the group advocating for peace in the Middle East maintains that an arms embargo is necessitated to stop the IDF’s mass slaughter.

Cold turkey

“If the purpose of the International Stabilisation Force is to protect Palestinians from further violence, it must have the authority to control all borders into Gaza and allow the unhindered delivery of aid to the besieged territory,” insisted DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson in a 23 October 2025 statement.

“Deploying peacekeepers to Gaza without curbing weapons to Israel will do nothing to curb its capacity to resume its atrocities,” the US lawyer underscored.

The National reports that the ISF is expected to be a force of at least 4,000 security officers from Egypt, Azerbaijan, Türkiye and Indonesia. This force won’t be heavily armed but will rely on light weapons and armoured vehicles. These troops are expected to be deployed to the Palestinian territory from which the IDF has withdrawn. So, the heavily armed IDF will be stationed close by.

Based on the livestreamed genocide perpetrated by apartheid Israel over the last 24 months, the clear issue with this arrangement is that at some point the IDF will attack the peacekeepers, likely sooner than later, and this is why the DC advocacy group is calling on the UNSC to implement a global arms embargo on Israel, because the genocidal Netanyahu government cannot be trusted.

Neither can others, mind you. Declassified Australia recently revealed that this country has directly couriered 70-odd shipments of F-35 parts to Israel over the course of the genocide via commercial flights. These jets have been vital for Israel in its mass slaughter. The F-35s burn through parts and Australia’s Rosebank Engineering is the only producer of the device that opens its weapons bay doors.

The latest local revelation comprises the Australian Defence Department having entered into a $19.8 million contract with Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. The deal was cut two weeks before the UN declared that Israel is perpetrating a genocide in Gaza. Australia has entered into $48.8 million worth of contracts with key genocide contributor Elbit Systems since 7 October 2023.

The arms embargo on Israel was recommended by the International Court of Justice, as part of its 2024 advisory opinion on Tel Aviv’s operations in the Palestinian territory, which further ordered Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip “as rapidly as possible”.

DAWN makes clear that “only such an arms embargo will curb Israel’s ability to resume its atrocities in Gaza”. The organisation further pointed to this action having precedent, as the UNSC has imposed numerous arms embargos on states, including of late, the Central African Republic in 2013, the nation of Yemen in 2015, while in 2018, the Security Council stopped arms imports into South Sudan.

Blue sky thinking

US president Donald Trump unveiled his 20-point peace plan at a 29 September 2025 press conference alongside the wanted war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Hamas agreed to the ceasefire and the return of Israeli hostages and the remains of those who have died on 3 October, in exchange for Palestinian detainees and the remains of the deceased.

The withdrawal of Israeli troops behind the line occurred, as did the hostage exchange. Yet, Hamas couldn’t locate all remains under the rumble, within the 72-hour time frame. There are thousands of murdered Palestinians beneath the region’s flattened infrastructure. The Gaza Health Ministry’s death count is now around 70,000, while a recent study estimates the count being more like 680,000.

Hamas hasn’t agreed to the entire plan, as its later parts involve self-determination and that’s up to the entire Palestinian people. However, what the plan at its later stages envisions is quite bizarre. A committee of apolitical Palestinian technocrats with provide provisional governance, under the oversight of a ‘Board of Peace’, which will be chaired by Trump and other global figures.

The only person other than the mad king from Mar-a-Lago to have been named as one of the potential overlords on this colonial board is former UK PM Tony Blair, whom it’s suggested should rather be tried for war crimes over his part in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was based on lies and saw hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed during the takeover and subsequent occupation.

While Trump, Blair and the other yet-to-be-named international figures making up the Board of Peace will be charged with organising the redevelopment of Gaza and trusted to conduct this in an aboveboard manner, this stage of the peace plan will then be followed by the handing over of power to a returned Palestinian Authority, after it’s undergone a rehabilitation program.

Egyptian foreign minister Badr Abdelatty is now calling for the ISF to be deployed as soon as possible, and he’s also suggested that it’s not acceptable for the Board of Peace to be running Gaza, as Palestinians must be in control of their own affairs. The minister added that the plan now stipulates that the board be charged with liaising with Israel and organising the flow of donor funding.

Reflecting basic humanity in the plan

Despite his having smiled along during Trump’s late September White House announcement of the 20-point peace plan, Netanyahu has cast doubt over it. The Israeli PM has asserted that Israel would continue to provide security in the Gaza Strip for the foreseeable future, and he’s suggested that the Palestinian Authority, which provides governance in the West Bank, may not be suitable for Gaza.

Permanent members of the UN Security Council France, Britain and the USA are currently negotiating the resolution to facilitate the ISF, and DAWN is calling for its parameters to be broadened, so that the supply of weapons to Israel is ended, and that the ISF can ensure the strip’s borders remain open, in order to permanently end Tel Aviv’s program of mass starvation of Gaza’s population.

The final extension to the currently negotiated resolution would be that the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (IOC), which was established by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021, would have access over the interim to investigate ongoing rights violations. The IOC is the UN body that determined genocide is taking place in Gaza.

DAWN’s advocacy director Raed Jarrar has stipulated that the UNSC should ensure the IOC is resourced with “forensic specialists in pathology, anthropology, odontology and explosives analysis”, as well as “DNA laboratories and geospatial analysis capabilities”. The investigators should have free range to document Israeli crimes and establish sites at mass casualty scenes and destroyed facilities.

“Gaza is an active crime scene where the UNSC has an opportunity to ensure that evidence of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity is preserved before it is destroyed forever,” explained Jarrar. “Accountability for Israeli crimes will bolster the credibility of international law as a viable tool for justice.”

The Arab American political advocate further insists that the plans to have participants from the US, Egypt, Qatar, Türkiye and the Red Cross conducting investigations to locate the remains of Israelis at the site of the genocide must be extended to include the remains of the Palestinians of Gaza, especially as there are thousands of them hidden under the debris that now covers the region.

“Palestinians are human beings too, and our families deserve the same dignity, the same urgency and the same international support to recover and identify our loved ones as Israeli families receive,” Jarrar said in concluding.

“There are over 10,000 dead Palestinians under the rubble in Gaza, yet the remains recovery mechanism has focused exclusively on Israeli victims, while Palestinian families continue searching for loved ones without adequate equipment or international support.”

Image: United Nations Headquarters - Security Council chamber by Jdforrester licenced under CC BY 4.0

A 13 January 2025 clip featuring Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Jillian Segal being interviewed by US network C-SPAN has been doing the rounds of social media, as it has the nonelected official charged with stamping out Jewish prejudice in a manner that has been the subject of much scrutiny, explaining that overseas Israel lobby pressure led to her appointment.

Segal outlines that the US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism – yes, there are more of them – Deborah Lipstadt and her deputy envoy for the same type of prejudice, Aaron Keyak, had been out in this neck of the woods to put a bit of pressure on PM Anthony Albanese and his Labor ministers in respect of toeing the Israel lobby line or face the consequences.

The PM sprung the antisemitism envoy on the nation on 9 July 2024. This was around the time that Australian officials were raising concerns about a spike in antisemitic incidents, but this was prior to the spate of supposedly antisemitic property damage crimes that swept across Gadigal and Dharug land in Greater Sydney last summer, as well as some related incidents in Naarm-Melbourne.

Since her appointment, the unelected official has produced the Plan to Combat Antisemitism. Delivered on 10 July 2025, the plan, if adopted, would serve to insert the IHRA definition of antisemitism into the foundations of Australian institutions, which it serves to block criticism of Israel’s atrocities, deeming such critiques as hatred towards Jews. This plan is evidently being considered by Labor.

Indeed, a key reason why Segal’s appointment as envoy has been so controversial is that while there has been an outpouring of anti-Israel sentiment locally in response to the industrial scale genocide it’s been perpetrating on the Palestinians of Gaza, there had been no major outpouring of antisemitism at time of the announcement, so the need for the envoy appeared concocted.

Delusions of grandeur

“That is not to say that the current government is not doing things,” said Segal, during the C-SPAN interview regarding Labor government efforts to deal with a suggested spike in antisemitism. “So, the first thing they did was actually establish my office. I think I have to thank ambassador Lipstadt and Aaron for actually travelling to Australia and asking the government to do something.”

“It was only six months ago, just before the gathering in Buenos Aires that my office was established,” said the immediate past president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), which is a local Zionist organisation. “So, Australia was definitely a laggard,” she added.

Albanese said during a 9 July 2024 doorstop on Gadigal land in Sydney that the nation had seen a “significant rise” in antisemitism since 7 October 2023 and that was why the decision had been made to install an envoy to engage with him and the immigration minister on antisemitism. The PM said he was shocked by the dearth in expertise on antisemitism and that it was lucky Segal agreed to the role.

But quite frankly she would have been a fool not to, as The Klaxon recently revealed, the envoy is a $1,000-a-day position, with dual offices in Sydney and Naarm-Melbourne and six staffers to assist in ratting out antisemitism in the public sphere. Journalist Anthony Klan also uncovered that the Segal family trust is the second biggest donor to far-right antiimmigration lobbying group Advance.

The envoy’s combat antisemitism plan is far reaching and multipronged. The main recommendation is that a definition that serves to deflect criticism of Israel be adopted by all local institutions, as well as that Segal monitor the media for antisemitism and censor it, while she should also review universities’ educational content for such bias and revoke funding if found to be offending.

Segal further told C-SPAN that the reason Australia did not have an envoy prior to her own rising to the call was that this country was obviously deluded and basking “in the vision of a happy multicultural country far away from the conflicts in Europe, and it didn’t need such a position, but all of a sudden, as we see these things happen slowly but then suddenly, there was a huge uptick”.

Combating antisemitism is trending

During the July 2024 envoy announcement, Segal told reporters that she was about to fly to Argentina the following week to take part in the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA) conference. SECCA was established in 2019, with other participating entities being Canada, the European Union, Greece, Israel, Romania and the United Kingdom.

Segal said she would be catching up with US special envoy Deborah Lipstadt and her deputy at the Argentinian meet, which was serving to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, but was also more broadly a conversation about what each country was doing to combat antisemitism, along with discussion of strategising ideas.

“I look forward to meeting them all, learning from them and bringing back thoughts and ideas, Australianising them as I think we need to”, and talking with the Australian PM and immigration minister, Segal further told reporters in mid-2024. The envoy added that there had been a 700 percent spike in antisemitic incidents immediately following 7 October 2023.

The US Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was established in 2004, and it appears to be why Segal considers us a laggard. But for much of civil society, her appointment had been beyond them because there was no crisis in antisemitism. Indeed, by last July the major incident comprised of former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s May 2024 documentary Never Again.

A series of so-called antisemitic arson and graffiti attacks on Jewish-owned property did occur from October 2024 to February 2025 in Sydney, which heightened the moral panic around antisemitism. Yet, the Australian federal police and the NSW police confirmed in March that these crimes were staged by organised criminals to convey a crisis, so they had a bargaining chip with police.

Anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism

The key recommendation that Segal’s plan to combat antisemitism seeks to progress is that “state and federal governments… require the IHRA working definition of antisemitism to be used across all levels of government and public institutions to inform their practical understanding of antisemitism”.

The IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism is problematic as it defines antisemitism as consisting of “hatred towards Jews”, but then it produces eleven accompanying examples of antisemitism, seven of which comprise of criticism of Israel. The Israel lobby has been campaigning for governments to adopt this definition since early last decade.

The conflation of political criticism of Israel with prejudice towards Jews rests on Israel being a Jewish state. However, it does not logically follow that criticism of Israel, for example, over its perpetration of a recognised genocide in the Gaza Strip, then constitutes acts of antisemitism. Indeed, critiques of the Gaza genocide and apartheid Israel are political and have nothing to do with religion.

The Israel lobby is often referred to as the Zionist lobby, as it basically blocks criticism of Israel as it progresses the late 1880s-established doctrine of Zionism, which seeks to establish a Jewish state in historical Palestine, and today that is the state of Israel. So, not all Jews espouse Zionism and are neither concerned with deflecting criticism of Israel under the charge of prejudice towards them.

Segal’s suggestion that all public institutions adopt the IHRA working definition on antisemitism is not aimed at preventing hatred towards Jewish people at all, but it is rather focused on deflecting political criticism of Israel, and the reason our nation now has an envoy officially trying to see this actioned is because of the need to silence significant public outcry over the mass bloodshed in Gaza.

This reasoning lends itself to the fact that after prominent mobilisations of neo-Nazis on Gadigal land in Sydney and in Naarm-Melbourne at the end of August, the envoy did not speak out about the rise in those espousing Nazism, which is the doctrine that led to the genociding of over 6 million European Jews during World War II, even though the presence of Nazis conveys anti-Jewish prejudice.

Rather, the Australian antisemitism envoy appears to be more interested in weaponising the IHRA definition to silence all criticism of Israel and its human rights abuses, just as one of the original drafters of the IHRA definition, author Kenneth Stern, warned in a 2019 article that “right-wing Jews”, or Zionists, have been wielding the definition in this manner globally since 2010.

A group of pro-Palestinian antigenocide actionists descended upon the Thales Underwater Systems facility located on Dharug land in the western Sydney suburb of Rydalmere early morning on Monday, 6 October 2025, and they caused significant property damage to the facility’s main receiving dock and offices.

Footage posted to social media shows figures dressed in black spraying painting the Thales facility, which included the messaging, “Payback for Gaza”. The actionists further smashed office windows with hammers and doused computer hardware and the dock in red paint. Those mobilising in response to the Gaza genocide further warned on a wall in spray paint that they’d “be back”.

“Of its many complicities, Thales runs a joint drone venture with the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems,” a spokesperson for the actionists said.

The autonomous individuals escalating for Palestine declared in a 7 October statement that the Rydalmere direct action marked the first in “a series of operations targeting weapons manufacturers and war profiteers across unceded Gadigal and Dharug lands” that continue to aid and abet the “illegitimate Zionist entity” – or the apartheid state of Israel – in its commission of genocide in Gaza.

Property damaging direct actions have been increasing in the local setting since Israel commenced its mass slaughter and starvation program in Gaza in October 2023, so its highly likely the NSW police has paid attention to the future intentions of the group, which made a successful splash at the home of Thales on Dharug land.

Profiteering on genocide

“Thales Underwater Systems also cooperates with reactionary Arab regimes by outfitting sonar, radar and communications systems to their naval warfare systems in attempt to break Yemen’s honourable blockade of the Red Sea,” the actionists further stated on 7 October.

“We act in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who, with their flesh and souls, have created a trench between the global supply chain of genocide and our necks.”

Disclose reported in March that French company Thales had been selling electronic components and communications systems to Israeli companies for use in local drones over the period 2018 to 2023, and these were invariably going to be used upon Palestinians civilians. The report tracks this arrangement via a series of 12 invoices addressed to Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries.

In terms of the Thales Australia Rydalmere facility that was hit on 6 October, it’s the site of an Acoustics Centre of Excellence, which involves defence and naval operations. Amnesty International has been warning that the Australian government ought to abide by the Arms Trade Treaty to ensure that ammunition produced by Thales is not being used in the commission of war crimes.

Amnesty set out in April that the Albanese government should “immediately suspend export permits” related to ammunition produced by Thales, Lockheed Martin and Electro Optic Systems exported to the US, while it makes sure that these products are not being sold to Israel. This was in the wake of an image of an EOS R400 remote weapons system ending up with Israeli Defence Force officers.

Another key weapons export scandal that’s evolved over the course of the Gaza genocide was broken by Declassified Australia, and it involves Australian company Rosebank Engineering being the sole supplier of the device that opens and closes the weapons bay doors on F-35 fighters, which are the jets that are predominately being used in the commission of mass slaughter in the Gaza Strip.

Obliged to take action

The Albanese government has been attempting to deflect from the fact that it has been continuing to trade in weapons with Israel. Defence minister Richard Marles and foreign minister Penny Wong have shifted their approach to this over time, from flat out denials to assuring that the nation only supplies “nonlethal” weapons components, as more and more hidden details have been unveiled.

Declassified’s Peter Cronau has this month revealed that the nation of Australia has directly couriered these components to Israel on a total of 68 times over the course of the extermination campaign in the Gaza Strip and since he broke that news on 1 October, federal Labor has gone and done it again. In fact, defence minister Marles signs off on everything that is being sent to Israel at present.

The second article of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defines the crime as one or more of five actions done with “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The actions comprise of killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, infliction of destructive conditions, forcible child removals and the prevention of births.

Australia ratified the Genocide Convention on 8 July 1949. Article one requires that state parties undertake all that they can to end an active genocide. This nation should have been attempting to stop the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, at least since the World Court ruled in January 2024 that there was a “plausible” genocide taking place in the Strip.

However, the Albanese government has refused to impose robust sanctions that could cause issues for the Israeli state, as it has with Russia over Ukraine, and instead federal Labor has continued the two-way trade in arms with the genocidal Netanyahu government, and it’s further left it up to autonomous individuals, like those at the Thales facility in Rydalmere, to toe the moral line.

Antigenocide activists have again descended upon the road leading into Pine Gap the joint US-Australia spy base, early morning on 9 October 2025, to block some 800 American and Australian contractors from making their way to work that Thursday, which was understood would directly impact intelligence on the Gaza Strip being disseminated and hence, stifle Israeli operations there.

This was the third time Mparntwe for Falastin has staged this action since Israel began perpetrating a genocide in Gaza in October 2023. This action differed from those before it, as it involved two boats laid across Hatt Road to prevent traffic, which served to link to the recent Freedom Flotilla Coalition attempts to breach the blockade of the Gaza Strip in a fleet of boats, via the Mediterranean Sea.

Two activists were also locked onto a concrete barrel. This is a regular feature of these actions that are designed to raise awareness that Australia is supplying the Israelis with information on activities on the ground in Gaza, which is distributed via the United States. So, from 4.30 am through to 2 pm that day, at which time the police extracted them from the barrel, lethal intel to Israel was blocked.

This action took place two weeks after Mparntwe for Falastin activists, Carmen Escobar Robinson and Tommy Walker, appeared before Alice Springs Local Court in respect of summary offences they’d been charged with following a 27 November 2023 Pine Gap blockade action, with the court still out on the outcome of the trial, which involved expert testimony on the base and the genocide.

The validity of the US presence at Pine Gap in the red centre of this continent of many nations, not far from the town of Mparntwe-Alice Springs, has long sparked controversy and even contributed to the downfall of the Whitlam government in 1975. Yet, the viability of the base is becoming all the more untenable as it is being used in the commission of the most heinous crime since World War II.

“In solidarity with Palestinian liberation”

“We are coming at you from the road blocking the Pine Gap genocide base,” said Mparntwe for Falastin spokesperson Hannah Elkin on an Instagram post being filmed on Hatt Road at around 4.30 am NT time on 9 October. “We have blocked the road and blocked the workers from coming to work to commit acts of genocide from this US military base.”

“We are standing in solidarity with the Global Sumud Flotilla and calling on everyone everywhere to escalate for Palestine,” the activist added from Arrernte Country, “in whatever way they can.”

Nautilus Institute Professor Richard Tanter is a key Pine Gap researcher. He gave evidence at the recent trial of Robinson and Walker in respect of the November 2023 Pine Gap blockade. The professor outlined to the court that intel from the US spy base, which has four surveillance satellites, three of which cover Gaza, is being used to target Gazan civilians, as intel is sent via the US to Israel.

The Mparntwe for Falastin activists last Thursday were demanding that the Australian government enact immediate sanctions against Israel, that the Australian attorney general prosecute Pine Gap’s involvement in Gaza and that the Joint Defence Facility is closed down and the land is returned to its sovereign custodians, the Arrernte people.

“We’re here because Pine Gap is sharing surveillance data, including geolocation information from mobile phones with the genocidal Israeli regime, who are targeting journalists and their families, children, teachers, doctors, patients and the entire population of Palestine,” said Mparntwe-Alice Springs journalist Jorgen Doyle, whose left arm was locked onto the concrete barrel last week.

Gaza genocide beyond dispute

Pro-Palestinian antigenocide activists Carmen Escobar Robinson and Tommy Walker appeared in Alice Springs Local Court a fortnight ago, in relation to summary offences laid against their names due to their participation in the six-hour-long November 2023 Pine Gap blockade of Hatt Road, which was estimated to have blocked around 100 Pine Gap employees that morning.

This was the second such action, following an initial blockade of Pine Gap in October 2023. The first Mparntwe for Falastin action was repeated after journalist Peter Cronau, writing in Declassified Australia, reported on testimony from an ex-Pine Gap employee, who was certain that the spy base would be gathering intel on Gaza bound for the US prior to being sent on to Israel.

The recent Alice Springs Local Court hearings over the 23rd and 24th of September featured expert testimony from Professor Tranter and Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN) . The line of defence run by the activists was that they committed their crimes in order to prevent the ongoing mass atrocities in Gaza.

The group were represented by John Lawrence SC. That a genocide is taking place in Gaza was affirmed by the defendants, their lawyer, the judge and the prosecution. The participation of the Pine Gap facility in providing information that is being utilised in Gaza was neither disputed. The proceedings took place a week after the United Nations confirmed genocide is taking place in Gaza.

“Respectfully your Honour,” the Crown Prosecutor was heard to say in the lower court, “a blind person can see that since the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and the UN Partition Plan in 1947, there’s been a systematic annihilation of the Palestinian people and it’s only recently that the international stage has labelled that a genocide.”

Robinson and Walker pleaded not guilty to a charge of failure to cease loitering, contrary to section 47A of the Summary Offences Act 1923 (NT), which is a crime that carries up to 6 months prison time and/or a fine of $2,000.

But the pair were not acquitted, as in order for the defence of committing a crime to prevent a much larger crime to get across the line, it must be shown that the defendant used force in order to prevent the larger crime.

NT Judge John McBride noted that both defendants are “exemplary citizens”, and he commended their commitment to social justice and society, and in light of that, he recorded no convictions against their names, and no penalties were imposed.

Pine Gap’s closure inevitable

“We are here because we know the Pine Gap genocide base, which is 5 kilometres down the road, is sharing intelligence daily with the Israeli Occupation Forces,” Doyle continued from the middle of the road last Thursday morning. “We know that intelligence has been used to bomb schools, to bomb hospitals, to target journalists and to destroy every church and mosque in Gaza.”

“This base is one of the key ways that Australia is participating in the genocide as an accomplice and is failing obligations under international law to prevent a genocide, to avoid complicity in a genocide, and there’s the focus on the Global Sumud Flotilla,” he continued. “We shouldn’t have to do this. But we are committed to doing it if the government won’t end its participation.”

Doyle and activist Yul Scarf, who were both locked onto the barrel, were arrested by Northern Territory police after being cut out of the lump of concrete. They, like Robinson and Walker, have been charged with refusing to cease to loiter. The pair have been released on bail, on condition they do not enter Hatt Road. This condition can be challenged when they appear for a mention next month.

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide was ratified by Australia on 8 July 1949. The first article of the agreement requires that all state parties undertake to prevent the international crime of genocide from taking place or continuing, whether it be committed in peace time or in a time of war.

Article 2 of the convention defines genocide as one or more of five acts being perpetrated with the aim of attempting to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. The acts are killing members of the group, causing serious bodily and mental harm to members, deliberately inflicting destructive conditions, preventing births and the forcible removal of children.

“We are here with full power and full conviction. We are on Arrernte Country – sovereign Arrernte Country,” said Scarf, whose left arm was locked into the barrel.

“The solidarity that flows from here to Falastin is tangible at every moment. It is our honour to be able to stand up, to be able to take action like this and to be able to link arms globally.” And the activist added that those participating in the direct action were sure that Pine Gap’s closure is inevitable.

Since late January, the United States has been in authoritarian freefall, as the second coming of the Trump administration has unleashed a semi-coordinated assault on American democracy, and as this has been transpiring, the pace of US encroachments onto this continent of many nations has picked up, even though the idea of our own nuclear powered submarines is drifting off into the distance.

A growing number of constituents are slowly becoming aware that Submarine Rotational Force – West (SRF – West), a joint US-UK rotational submarine force made up of four US nuclear-powered submarines, or SSN, along with one British boat, is being established on Noongar land at the HMAS Stirling naval base on Meandup-Garden Island the year after next.

But many are still unaware that discussions between the federal and NSW governments on the yet-to-be announced Submarine Rotational Force - East are underway to see if it will be stationed on Dharawal land in Port Kembla or Awabakal and Worimi land in Newcastle, and while it was once thought local bases would house locally-owned subs, it’s likely these will be bases for US boats.

Meanwhile, over in the US of A, the mad king of Mar-a-Lago Donald Trump and his secretary of war Pete Hegseth are conducting extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean, as they gear up to war on Venezuela to secure its oil reserves, by pretext of the war on drugs, and while the pair appear somewhat hesitant in respect of China, there’s no stalling on the war they’re waging domestically.

The US has increasingly been refuelling airforce fighter jets on their way to the Middle East in northern Australia, where the US military has now secured force posture in “every domain – land, sea, air, cyber and space” – under PM Anthony Albanese, and while the White House is now commencing a war on its own people, we’re supposed to trust it won’t spill out here.

A sent of sulfur on the breeze

The first US military personnel involved in SRF – West were arriving in WA around now. They’re the first of 700-odd staff to be stationed on Noongar land, likely not too far from Meandup-Garden Island, which is across from a town called Henderson on the mainland, where a defence precinct is being established, with the Albanese government having just pledged $12 billion towards it.

Federal Labor first announced Henderson Defence Precinct, “a consolidated Commonwealth-owned” operation at the pre-existing Henderson shipyard in October 2024. WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill recently paid a visit to it and reported that the US SSN stationed across the way will undergo maintenance at the precinct, and she added that this will be “the fifth US facility of this kind”.

Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick broke the news on 15 September 2025 that discussions between federal and NSW Labor are underway and near completion on where a submarine base should be established in NSW, with a final NSW cabinet position paper about to be advanced. Not only does this mean nuclear subs for NSW, but it’s likely another base for US submarines to be stationed at.

The temperature has turned up in respect of the US presence on this continent ever since Israel commenced genociding the Palestinians of Gaza in October 2023, as its understood that Washington’s second most important spy base, Pine Gap, positioned in the Red Centre of the continent on Arrernte land is providing intel to Israel, which it receives via our sponsor the US.

Since 2012, Marine Rotational Force – Darwin, a presence that has built to 2,500 US Marines has been stationed at the Robertson Barracks in Garramilla-Darwin for six months a year, starting in March to work with local troops. This was part of the Obama administration’s 2011 pivot to Asia, which the Gillard government agreed to and was signed into law by the Abbott government in 2014.

Other force posture initiatives secured by the US include an agreement to increase the interoperability between American and Australian air forces and that the Pentagon has unimpeded access to a list of local areas and bases, which it takes control of when upgrading. At present, RAAF Base Tindall is being overhauled, which will include an area for six US nuclear capable B-52 bombers.

Australia respects the US policy of ‘warhead ambiguity’, which means Canberra doesn’t ask if US air or water vessels are carrying nuclear warheads. However, it’s likely the Trump administration respects little about the Albanese government. Hegseth’s recent summonsing of Australian deputy PM and defence minister Richard Marles to the US at short notice, only to then snub him, spoke volumes.

No real need for Australian subs

The inroads the US military has been making onto this continent over recent years commenced at a pace under Albanese, after his predecessor PM Scott Morrison unveiled the AUKUS deal in September 2021, with the promise of eight Australian-owned SSN presented to the constituency, leaving the exorbitant price and the addition of SRF – West, to be revealed by Albanese in 2023.

Since the AUKUS Optimal Pathway was announced in March 2023, the soft US colonisation in north Australia and the Pentagon’s influence over our military has escalated. Albanese has agreed for the nation to become a US domestic source for military purposes, which sees Washington favoured for critical minerals exports, and he’s too agreed to start producing guided missiles for Uncle Sam.

Despite the Australian-owned SSN being the key enticement hung before the Australian public in terms of AUKUS, this acquisition has increasingly appeared unviable both in terms of the US supply of three Virginia attack class submarines, as the Pentagon is way behind on production, and the UK-assisting in the building of five AUKUS SSN for this nation has too been in doubt.

A July 2024 report by US thinktank the Congressional Research Service was the first indication that government entities in the States were actively contemplating the viability of not supplying Australia with any Virginia class attack SSN early next decade and considering whether SRF – West might suffice in terms of an SSN presence here, with additional US boats then being sent over.

As noted in theunadulterated last week, Trump has US undersecretary of defence policy Elbridge Colby reviewing the viability of AUKUS, in terms of its supplying SSN to this country. The review outcome will have no impact on SRF – West being established. Colby has stated he’s an AUKUS “agnostic”, and as for ex-PM Morrison, he’s working with former CIA director Mike Pompeo.

Demented US masters

The 2011 Obama pivot to Asia was about turning US military strength towards a rising China, which now has an economy that threatens US hegemony, and that’s why AUKUS was established, in preparation for a coming war that had appeared more imminent when former US president Joe Biden was in office, but with Trump, this appears less certain especially because of Beijing’s might.

But the takeover in the north is continuing at a pace and any teething issues that Hegseth and Trump may have with warring on China has certainly not slowed ongoing moves to station US submarines on either side of the landmass, while it came to light last month that the US Marines will be stationing their Osprey tiltrotors at Toowoomba Airport in Queensland, when not in Darwin.

The issue for this nation now is that it hitched its boat to the US post-World War II, and that’s meant allowing the US a local presence, with this beginning to significantly rise a decade ago, and the last four years of AUKUS have seen the US presence hitting overdrive to the point that Labor elder statesmen Paul Keating and Bob Carr have both warned of our drift towards US territory status.

The issue for PM Albanese in the present is that he threw open the gates to the US in northern Australia at the start of his time in office, yet this relinquishing of authority has let the thuggish MAGA team waft in through the door, and as Trump is currently waging a domestic war on his own people, it would be ill advised that Labor doesn’t consider that he won’t throw the rulebook out with us.

Fifty local Christian leaders, “from archbishops to pastors”, gathered at NSW parliament on 8 August 2025, to launch the Christian Alliance Council of NSW, and to stand “united in Christ alongside the state’s civic leaders”, which included both major party leaders. An accompanying press release is clear that the meeting was in aid of raising the majority religion, so it’s not forgotten.

NSW premier Chris Minns, opposition leader Mark Speakman and former PM Tony Abbott were in attendance. So, it appears the premier has returned to his prior predilection with the Christian faith, after his huge preoccupation with antisemitism, which led to an inquiry into whether he passed new criminal laws based on a spate of crimes that NSW police doubted the legitimacy of.

The crusade to see the influence of the Christian faith reassert its dominance in an increasingly multifaith Australia is usually the pursuit of Coalition MPs of faith, who are referred to as the Christian right. But Minns appears to traverse the political divide in terms of his belief that religion should play a role in what many constituents consider is the rightfully secular sphere of politics.

In the leadup to the March 2023 election, Minns and his predecessor, then NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, were concerned about raising religion up a notch in terms of its political influence in the state of NSW. This then saw NSW Labor create the NSW Faith Affairs Council, which first met in November 2023. However, this faith advisory body fails to include any nonreligious members.

The campaign to reinstate religion into the sphere of politics and further to ensure that Christianity remains the chief faith in this state was not commenced by premier Minns, however, and those politicians and lobbyists involved in this push would like to see Christian morality to once again become the major force shaping public life and politics in NSW.

Making Christianity great again

“In NSW, we rightly celebrate many important religious traditions,” said premier Minns in an 8 August press release. “Yet while most people in our state are Christian, this faith must not be forgotten. Today’s gathering is a wonderful and long overdue celebration of Christian heritage.”

The event was hosted by NSW multicultural minister Steve Kamper. The minister’s portfolio was expanded early on in the current parliamentary term to include religion, and the leaders from the various faiths making up the NSW Faith Affairs Council have a direct line to Kamper.

“The power of faith can move mountains,” Kamper said at the meeting. “Our state is made stronger by Christians.”

Christian Alliance NSW has been around since 2022. The body represents 65 churches and has around 10,000 members. The organisation seeks to build a broader multidenominational community in order to promote events that celebrate cultural diversity, promote unity and serve the common good, explains the organisation’s website.

Writing for the Rationalist Society of Australia, Si Gladman reported that the Christian Alliance’s Facebook page had labelled the event “historic” and that it was “just the beginning”, as the organisation seeks to unite the adherents of various Christian denominations with the ultimate aim of “renewing the relevance of faith across our state”.

“Today marks a historic unity of Christian, political and community leaders,” event coordinator Paul Sedrak said, as he “reflected on the milestone” before a room packed with Christian adherents in NSW parliament, which included the leader of both major parties, and an ex-PM. “In Jesus Christ, what unites us is far greater than what divides us.”

O come all ye faithful

According to Gladman, “political support for the Christian Alliance group is another example of the privilege and access afforded to faith-based community groups in NSW” under Minns. The executive director of the Rationalist Society too raises his organisation’s concern around a special body representing the various belief systems of the public not having a nonreligious representative.

Documents obtained by the Rationalist Society of Australia show that the 19 member Faith Affairs Council has been utilising its direct access to government decisionmakers. This has included council member Better Balanced Futures chief executive Murray Norman attempting to influence education policies, so that religion and scripture are entrenched in school life.

Gladman recalled that Minns and other government members attended the launch of Faith NSW in 2023, which is an interfaith lobby group that, while not directly linked to the Faith Affairs Council was certainly birthed out of the same zeitgeist. Norman is also the chief executive of Faith NSW, and is apparently, a key driver in instilling faith back into NSW political and educational spheres.

Religious privileging

The proselytising of Minns, however, is more subdued than that of the religious freedoms crusader former PM Scott Morrison. Although, as it turns out, the pair are old travel buddies as both Minns and Morrison both went on a junket to Israel together in the earlier years of this century, when they were a Labor ministerial adviser and Liberal party secretary, respectively .

At the end of 2017, just weeks after same-sex marriage became law, Morrison, then treasurer, vowed to enact religious discrimination laws, as those of faith, and in particular, Christians, were under attack in the public sphere, which was a theme going back to his 2008 maiden speech in parliament, and as top minister, he then spent years attempting to enact religious privileging laws.

Morrison’s Religious Discrimination Bill sought to establish religious protections and liberties. It went through three iterations, with each new bill less extreme, which was to the chagrin of former Liberal Nationals MP George Christensen. Morrison dropped the bill in the end, as he’d agreed to prohibit the expelling of gay students from schools but balked at the same for transgender kids.

The annual Church and State Summit on the Gold Coast attracts conservative MPs and Christian lobbyists, who espouse the Seven Mountains Mandate, which calls on Christians to infiltrate political and cultural institutions and gently sway them in the direction of Christian doctrine. This involves seven spheres: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.

The South Australian Liberals terminated the membership of 150 recently joined members in mid-2021, as they were found to be Pentecostal Christians seeking to influence the party in this manner. At the same time, another 400 recently joined members were asked to show cause as to why they shouldn’t too be dropped from party membership that stood at around 5,000 members all up.

Then NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham ran the NSW state religious freedoms crusade over 2020-21, with a bill that antidiscrimination law experts underscored sought to raise the attribute of religion over all other attributes. This bill went to committee and the majority recommended supporting the laws. But the bill was ultimately rejected in the upper house.

So, while the current push to insert faith back into NSW politics being progressed by senior Minns Labor government ministers appears a lot more subdued, the recent launch of the Christian Alliance Council of NSW at state parliament, does tend to hint at the same end goal as Morrison’s crusade, which is the supremacy of the Christian religion in Australian politics.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese announced that the nation of Australia was formally recognising the state of Palestine during a press conference in New York on Sunday 21 September 2025. But recognising a country that Israel is currently in the midst of genociding a large section of its population seems to much of the planet a shallow gesture at this point in the killing spree.

Albanese was standing before New York’s East River and beside foreign minister Penny Wong as he told the press that Australia recognises “the legitimate and long held aspirations of the people of Palestine of a state of their own”. But as he did, Israel was continuing its ground invasion of Gaza City, amidst its two-year-old heinous perpetration of genocide with likely 680,000 Palestinians murdered.

Wong and the PM determined to recognise the state of Palestine on 11 August, taking their lead from other nations already on their way to doing so, which included the UK, Canada and France. All of these nations then recognised Palestine at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly last week.

The rising chorus in this country is clear, the government must stop trading arms with Israel and sanction Tel Aviv in a similar way to as it has done to Moscow over Ukraine. The extent of the support for the Palestinians was borne out at the Sydney Harbour Bridge march, which saw a significant outpouring of civil society that directly prompted Albanese to recognise Palestine.

Human rights lawyer Kellie Tranter suggests that if Albanese wants to make a real difference, he should consider the steps set out in the 19 July 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice in regard to Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, as it would ensure this country is doing all it can to end the genocide, as per the Genocide Convention.

Ending all ties with Israel

“While it is welcome that the Australian government recognises the independent and sovereign state of Palestine. What is it going to do to back it up?” said Tranter in a 25 September statement. “The steps specified in the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion technically may be nonbinding, but they are steps that Australia can and legally is obliged to take to comply with… the Genocide Convention.”

Article 1 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide maintains that if a genocide is in progress, whether in peace time or as part of a war, state parties must act to prevent the atrocity and punish the perpetrators. Australia ratified the convention on 8 July 1949. Tranter points out, this is binding, and the Albanese government is well aware of this.

“You could not get clearer guidance on appropriate first measures than a checklist provided by the world’s highest court about what all state parties should do,” Tranter added.

The inquiry on Israel in occupied Palestine commenced in late 2022, when the UN General Assembly requested the advisory opinion. The ICJ found mid-last year that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory is illegal, and it should withdraw. In terms of other states, the ICJ is clear that they should not recognise Israel’s occupation as legitimate or deal with the rogue nation in this regard.

Further, state parties must not act in a manner that assists Israel in its occupation and rather they should ensure it is brought to an end. Putting this into action, Tranter assesses, would mean our nation cutting off defence cooperation with Israel, along with suspending political and diplomatic relations and bringing an end to economic and financial interactions with Tel Aviv.

“Both our actions and our inaction have supported the genocide,” the lawyer continued. “Australia has failed to take any positive action to prevent the genocide.”

Australia couriers to kill

Wong has been clear since early on in the now two-year-long slaughter and starvation program that the government has not exported any weapons to Israel for the past five years, despite the fact that Greens Senator David Shoebridge had raised details of export permits that were posted on the DFAT website and suggested otherwise. Wong labelled his assertions as dealings in misinformation.

Also a journalist, Tranter revealed early on in the genocide in Declassified Australia that RUAG Australia is the only producer of the devices that open the weapons bay doors of the F-35 jet fighters that have been dropping bombs on Gazans for two years now, and then in July this year, she revealed that F-35 spare parts are being directly exported to Israel to ensure the killing doesn’t pause.

Declassified’s Peter Cronau further revealed today that 68 shipments of F-35 jet fighter parts have been couriered from Australia directly to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025, and the most recent shipment was just two weeks back. Yet, the PM continued to deny any trade, “full stop”.

Recognising Palestine as Albanese saw to it on 21 September had been something that he and Wong had been planning to do since 2018, and the proposal was listed on the 2021 federal Labor policy platform. However, it was not progressed on taking office in May 2022, and when the genocide broke out in October 2023, the dynamic duo then rather ran the ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ line.

The Israeli military is invading Gaza City again and the only food aid site in the long-term starvation zone is staffed by US mercenaries who shoot down starving Palestinians randomly at will.

The Albanese government appears to be acting in the interests of the Palestinians in recognising their state, but his nation and that of the UK continue to assist Israel militarily, and the prime minister’s words don’t do anything to prevent the bloodshed.

“All of the steps outlined by the International Court of Justice,” Tranter continued last week, “are steps that Australia can take, legally must take and has consistently failed to take.”

“Step up Australia. Give humanity, morality and international law their proper priority over financial interests and geopolitical manoeuvring,” the human rights lawyer concluded.

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At this late stage in the heinous crime that is the Gaza genocide, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese appears to be performing a balancing act, in terms of recognising the state of Palestine on the one hand, whilst continuing the two-way trade in killing machines on the other, and the increasingly dictatorial leader of our closest ally, US president Donald Trump, doesn’t appreciate it.

The determination for Australia to recognise Palestine at the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September 2025, followed the lead of other allies, such as the UK, Canada and France, in doing so. However, the grin-and-bear-it selfie pose that Trump granted Albanese says a lot: the mad king from Mar-a-Lago looks piqued with Albanese over his general political stance.

Those gathered at the weekly pro-Palestine protests on Gadigal land in Sydney and in Naarm-Melbourne are clear that recognition – at a moment when Israel is continuing to perpetrate a two-year-long mass slaughter and starvation program in the Gaza Strip and further, openly seeks to annex the West Bank – is an ineffective alternative to robust sanctions and a halt to the arms trade.

But one only has to switch the channel to Sky News to discover that the local MAGA cheer squad considers Albanese’s politicking on Palestine has amounted to rewarding terrorism, which is the position of president Trump, as well as Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, despite his commission of mass atrocities, has had the ability to lately meddle in this nation’s domestic affairs.

Albanese’s balancing act has assisted in the mass murder of civilians in Gaza, along with the broader attempt to erase Palestinian identity, and it’s failed to appease either side of the political divide domestically or on the international stage. And as he attempts to forge an independent path from his US masters quite late in the day, it would appear that he may simply be digging his own grave.

Extraterritorial politicking

Despite suggestions to the contrary, Albanese was left off Trump’s official meeting schedule last Monday at the United Nations in New York. This was his second snubbing at the hands of the US president, although another attempt is slated for October. So, after 240-plus days of Trump’s presidency, all our PM has had the chance to do is take a quick selfie on the sidelines at the UN.

The snubbing of Albanese by the mad king has continued ever since Trump’s 20 January 2025 inauguration, and it’s transpired as this nation has handed the US two AU$800 million payments, one in January and another in July, to invest in American submarine-building capacity, so the US hopefully honours the AUKUS deal, which is under review, and sells us three attack submarines in the 2030s.

Trump’s 23 September address at the United Nations had a focus on western nations, while ignoring the 85 percent of the planet that is the Global South. The agenda he laid down for the west calls on heads of state to crackdown on “unmitigated migration” and to return to fossil fuel use, as the climate crisis and renewables, the US president suggests, are “the greatest con job ever perpetrated”.

As far as Trump’s recommendation that European nations, which appears to include the antipodean countries, commence cracking down on migrants and move towards a reversal of the global shift to climate abatement, Albanese has already recently passed laws that would facilitate a local asylum-seeker deportation drive, however he’s only just taken an opposite stance on climate.

The Albanese government announced a new carbon emissions reduction target on 18 September, a week prior to Trump’s global “drill baby drill” call, which comprises of reducing this nation’s greenhouse gas by 62 to 70 percent by 2035, with the aim of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, and this is obviously to the chagrin of the climate destroying-focused Trump administration.

And the Albanese-Trump selfie says it all. An overly enthusiastic Albanese captures his brief encounter with the king, who feigns a smile - an evidentiary image to share online - yet our PM should really be shown more respect as a leader of a nation that’s currently letting the US trample its military footprint, or force posture, in north Australia at a pace that calls for appreciation not derision.

“Nothing will save the governor general”

In a June 2020 article titled The Forgotten Coup Against ‘The Most Loyal Ally’ heavyweight journalist John Pilger elaborates upon the infamous November 1975 dismissal of then Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam by then governor general of the nation Sir John Kerr at the time when secret mid-1970s correspondence between Queen Elizabeth II and the then GG Kerr was released.

Whitlam was dismissed by the governor general, who exercised his reserve powers that allow for the sacking of the top minister. Those powers are not in the Constitution but are by convention and rest in the authority of the Crown. The GG is the King’s representative in the constitutional monarchy that is Australia, and as the king is the true head of state, toppling the government is permissible.

The regular understanding as to why the GG terminated the reformist government is the top heavy Coalition Senate repeatedly blocked the passage of a supply bill, or legislation to facilitate government funding, so the coffers were fast running dry and Kerr stepped in. According to Pilger, however, the 11 November 2025 dismissal of the Whitlam government was an “Anglo-American coup”.

The late journalist outlined that the CIA sought to overthrow “a democratically elected ally in a demeaning scandal in which sections of the Australian elite colluded”. Pilger underscored that this version “is largely unmentionable”, and adds that over the 1972-1975 reign of Whitlam, the nation “briefly achieved independence” from US tutelage, and due to its socially progressive reformist drive, the government “became intolerably progressive” for Washington.

Whitlam ordered local troops out of the US-led Vietnam war. He called for an end to French nuclear testing in the Pacific. He supported Palestinians, welcomed refugees from the CIA-led coup in Chile and drafted legislation to enact Aboriginal land rights, which was ultimately never passed.

But most disturbing for the US is Whitlam raised questions about the viability of having the Pentagon operating its second most important surveillance base on the planet, Pine Gap, in the Red Centre of the continent of many nations. Today, the joint US-Australia facility is understood to be passing intel about Gaza onto the US, which ultimately ends up with intelligence in Tel Aviv.

“The CIA referred to the governor general of Australia, Sir John Kerr, as ‘our man Kerr’,” recalled Pilger, and he also set out that Whitlam was aware the CIA, then under director William Colby, was acting against him, and he was in the midst of attempting to rid local intelligence agencies of CIA officers. So, against this backdrop, the US ordered Kerr to sack Whitlam via the House of Windsor.

Trashing Five Eyes democracy

Albanese has hardly been riding a reformist wave in office. In fact, he’s been kowtowing to US masters and embroiling the nation ever deeper into AUKUS, which Donald Trump has called upon US undersecretary of defence policy Elbridge Colby to review with an eye to its viability for the US. Incidentally, Elbridge is the grandson of the CIA director at the time of the dismissal.

The Australian prime minister is continuing to attempt his balancing act, which includes placating the mad king Donald Trump, so it might be considered that there is no reason for the White House to be concerned with his governing over a territory America is increasingly concerned with having unimpeded access over as it militarises the region for a coming war on China.

The second coming of the Trump administration doesn’t just operate in the dark either, as it is openly interfering in the political spheres of its foreign allies, and rather than diplomacy, belligerence is the new foreign policy outlook of the United States, which has been on display since day one with its repeated threats to annex Canada and to cut normal ties with its long-time neighbouring ally.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, not long after he took a chainsaw to US departments on behalf of the Trump administration, recently made a televised appearance before the largest white nationalist rally in the UK for decades, and he openly incited the Anglo-Celtic British public to rise up against the UK government to overthrow it, as he claims it’s destroying the country via mass immigration.

Indeed, the authoritarian US Trump administration is starting to appear as if it considers its domestic crackdown, including its drive to dehumanise and deport immigrants, should be replicated by its allies and as Albanese continues his tightrope act that seeks to appease both sides of the growing political divide, he should be wary that Trump doesn’t tug at the rope to see how he might fall.