As the grim milestone of 1000 days of genocide in Gaza ticked over, NSW Labor managed to gag debate on Palestine, AUKUS and protest laws at its July 4–5 state conference.
Premier Chris Minns smeared hundreds of peaceful pro-Palestine protesters outside the conference, saying that it was “not the first to try and disrupt our democratic conference … we’ve seen it all before”.
Inside, two dissenting Labor members who suspended a Palestinian flag from the gallery were manhandled out by NSW Police.
While Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claims he wants Labor’s national conference, July 23–25, to “showcase” Labor “as an inclusive, open, democratic party”, in fact, he is just as committed to avoid discussing AUKUS and Palestine.
There are sharp divisions inside Labor on both issues. But Labor’s leadership is confident that the promise of manufacturing jobs contained in AUKUS Pillar II will silence the blue-collar unions, although some have spoken out against the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.
Defence industry minister Pat Conroy announced “the largest increase in peacetime defence investment ever” at the National Press Club on July 2.
Parroting Albanese’s “progressive patriotism” slogan, Conroy said AUKUS is “the greatest industrial project we have ever undertaken”. “Strong defence of our country — including the need to invest in our defence industry, people and systems — is a critical part of understanding what Australian progressive patriotism looks like today.”
His nationalistic fervour listed “sovereign manufacturing” of the submarines and “training Australians so that we have a sovereign capability for decades to come” as reasons to support AUKUS.
Conroy said the new Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missile factory in Port Wakefield, South Australia, is “testament to our progressive patriotism”. This, the first facility to produce the GMLRS, is another example of Labor’s ambition to increase the production of Australian-made weapons that will be fully compatible with US military requirements.
Australian nuclear-powered submarines, known as SSN-AUKUS, are set to be built in Osborne, South Australia, by the late 2020s.
Labor’s adoption of the Coalition’s policy has been questioned from within the party, as well as from grassroots anti-AUKUS and anti-war groups. The independent Public Inquiry into the AUKUS Security Partnership, which includes former Labor MP Peter Garrett, is organising hearings around the country.
The federal Labor government does not see any problems with Australia becoming a fully-fledged military and naval base for the US as part of AUKUS and the 2014 Force Posture Agreement. As defence minister Richard Marles informed the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, Australians are already being trained in the US on their nuclear-powered submarines.
Meanwhile, a new initiative “Submarine Rotation Force‑West” will start next year. This project means nuclear-powered submarines from Britain and the US will be on rotation at HMAS Stirling naval base in Western Australia.
The AUKUS pact also obliges Australia to take and dispose of nuclear waste — a huge problem that Labor is keen to downplay.
Anti-nuclear campaigner David Noonan has accused Labor of breaking its commitment to come up with “a process for AUKUS waste storage”. He said Labor is “normalising” high-level nuclear waste being stored here, while ignoring the rights of First Nations peoples to have “free, prior and informed consent over AUKUS wastes”.
The AUKUS nuclear submarines are Pillar I, while Pillar II is broader and involves a whole raft of military, surveillance, Artificial Intelligence and drone programs, the development of uncrewed undersea vehicles (UUVs), and the expansion of existing infrastructure, such as shipyards, and the Pine Gap and North West Cape surveillance bases. Overall, Pillar II will consolidate the interoperability of US, British and Australian military personnel and materiel.
Labor boasts that AUKUS will create 20,000 jobs over the next 30 years. But given the cost is $375 billion, this is a hopelessly inefficient job creation program.
Moreover, working-class people will not benefit from AUKUS, which is geared to more war and militarism. Not only will they be the cannon fodder in any future wars, funds are directed away from essential services to the big weapons’ manufacturers, which support Australian and US imperialist interests.
Conroy and Marles claim that the AUKUS war spending is about “deterrence”. This is the same logic that makes Labor a willing accomplice in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the US and Israel’s illegal war on Iran.
In reality, it is about buttressing Australia’s status as a mid-sized imperialist power in the Pacific: suppressing our neighbours and being the willing beachhead for US imperial interests in the region — especially aggression against and containment of China.
The climate emergency is the biggest security threat to Australia and our Pacific neighbours.
Socialist Alliance is committed to working against imperialism, war and occupation; there is no such thing as “progressive patriotism”.
Part of this involves building the forces that will be powerful enough to force Labor to scrap AUKUS, close down the bases and develop a peaceful and just foreign policy, which would include helping our Asia-Pacific neighbours deal with the climate emergency they did not create.
[Markela Panegyres is a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive.]