Bases protests will continue

Wednesday, April 21, 1993 - 10:00

Bases protests will continue

Bill Doyle, a Peace Action Committee (PeACe) member and organiser of the Nurrungar protest, spoke to Green Left Weekly's Liam Mitchell about the recent demonstration at Nurrungar and the future plans of the group.

In your opinion, did the protest achieve what it set out to?

I think it did. In 1989, the aim was to put Nurrungar on the map. This time, we wanted to put the issue of US bases into the arena of public debate. It is now widely recognised as and referred to as a US war base, and people are pretty well accepting our estimates of how much it costs.

In that sense, it went quite well, as well as the fact that we got quite a bit of publicity Australia-wide.

So do you think that the issues of the US base and its role in the New World Order were brought out enough?

We tried to bring them out, but the mainstream media didn't want to go along with that and kept diverting it to irrelevant issues like lifestyles and the cost of policing the demonstration.

But for the most part, some of the media did actually cover the issues, particularly on SBS, but also on others, so I think we succeeded, probably as well as we could have hoped.

Do you think that the issues of Australia's role in the Asia Pacific and our own Aboriginal people were sufficiently covered in the media?

No, but not through want of trying. With the noble exception of SBS, nobody really played on that sufficiently. The ABC did give some attention to Moses Havini. But in general, I think that they tended to miss that point.

But with Havini and the Kokatha people present at the camp, I think that those issues were well taken up.

What projections does the Peace Action Committee have for the future?

We will be looking at 1995 at Pine Gap. '95 is the year that we can actually say get rid of the bases when their leases expire in 1998.

We will also be focusing on South Australia's own war fighting industries. We've got the submarine corporation, Smithfield and the Defence, Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) at Salisbury. Pine Gap will be a national focus for the whole Australian movement.