Anti-war and solidarity groups are protesting across the country, September 12-21, to demand an end to the war alliance with the United States and to scrap AUKUS.
September 15 also marks the 5th anniversary of the Coalition government signing the AUKUS Pillar I and II pact with the United States and Britain. Labor adopted AUKUS as its own and has refused to support a parliamentary inquiry.
New publicly released data shows that the US military and US weapons corporations control, or have unimpeded access, to more than 100 military facilities across Australia. More than half of the military facilities in this country are controlled, or used extensively, by the US military, in preparation for a major war.
AUKUS is supposedly costing upwards of $368 billion over the next 30 years. That means some $35 million a day is being siphoned away from health, education, affordable housing and many urgent social needs to fund wars of aggression and weapons corporations.
As the US and Israel make the world a more dangerous place, Labor continues to give its support to both, including by sending weapons parts to Israel for its F35 fighter jet parts.
Australia also supplies intelligence through the Pine Gap spy base in central Australia, that can be used by Israel to pinpoint targets.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could help stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the ethnic cleansing in the West Bank by ending the two-way arms trade with Israel and scrapping AUKUS.
AUKUS is escalating tensions with China, plunging money into submarines that could be spent on essential services, and threatening communities including First Nations peoples with nuclear waste dumps on their land.
[This International Day of Peace, join a protest near you.]