This article is shared from John Menadue's website Pearl's and Irritations and published on 29 August 2019

by Brian Toohey

Labor governments surrendered Australian sovereignty in other ways by agreeing in 2008 to renew the lease on North West Cape without any conditions on how US nuclear attack submarines could use the base[i]. This could include undermining China’s ability to deter a nuclear war.[ii] Labor subsequently agreed to let the US install long-range ground sensors at NWC to help conduct space warfare against Russia and China in violation of Australia’s support for a treaty outlawing the militarisation of space.[iii] The public were not told about the significance of these developments, nor about similar changes at the Pine Gap satellite base near Alice Springs.

The US National Security Agency essentially runs Pine Gap’s role in intercepting a wide range of electronic signals providing real-time targeting information for battlefield use by US forces. It also helps detect data on heat emissions from missiles, jet engines and ground explosions that feed into military operations, including space warfare, regardless of whether Australia opposes a particular US war. [iv]

Read more: Is Pine Gap for Arms Control or the US fighting machine?

by Dr. Binoy Kampmark, July 19 2019

Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken as the tendency. The political culture of Australia remains shaped by penal paranoia and an indifference to transparency. The citizen is not to be trusted; rather, the subject is to be policed and regulated into apathetic submission. 

The statute books of the federal parliament are larded with provisions of secrecy that make doing credible journalism in the country nigh impossible. Journalists are left to their own devices, inventive as these might be, assisted by the odd prized leak. 

The Australian Federal Police raids executed last month on the home of a News Corp journalist and the Sydney headquarters of the ABC had, for the clandestine community operating in the capitals of Australia, a surprise. A usually divided fraternity came together in one voice, attempting to challenge the warrants and seek reform on matters related to press freedoms. 

Media organisations would like to see parliament perform its functions, namely in the field of passing legislation that would enhance Freedom of Information provisions, arm press outlets with the means to contest warrants aimed at journalists, furnish whistleblowers with credible protections, and tilt the balance away from the national security grand inquisitor that seems to prevail in Canberra. 

Read more: National Security and Press Freedoms in Australia