Cathy Eatock gave the following speech to the International Day of Peace rally on September 20 on Gadigal Country, organised by Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition and Stop the War on Palestine.
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AUKUS ties us irrevocably to the United States war machine.
Australia has previously blindly followed the US into the war on terror which led to the deaths of an estimated 4.7 million people in Iraq, Syria and Libya.
Now the Anthony Albanese government has, astoundingly, followed Scott Morrison into AUKUS, without question or public discussion. The obscene cost of $368 billion over 30 years means hospitals, aged care homes, housing, education, the National Disability Support Scheme, dental and mental health services, and Aboriginal communities won’t receive the funding we need.
With each submarine having its own nuclear reactor, its radioactive waste will need to be stored here.
But Aboriginal people have repeatedly rejected even low-grade medical uranium waste being stored on their lands. The Aboriginal communities of Maralinga, Emu plain and Montebello Islands have already borne the brunt of nuclear testing.
Pacific peoples in the Marshall Islands, Christmas Island, French Polynesia and Kiribati have endured 315 nuclear weapons tests. It is the Pacific and Aboriginal communities that continues to suffer that legacy.
As well as the initial deaths, blindness, radiation sickness, there are continuing high rates of cancers, miscarriages and birth defects. These tests have made the lands uninhabitable, and they continue to poison the food and water sources these communities rely on.
The government has recognised the obvious danger of nuclear-powered submarines, requiring Perth’s hospitals to stock iodine tablets in case of an emergency.
AUKUS is a clear breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga, which establishes the South Pacific as a Nuclear Free Zone, and which Australia helped develop under a previous Labor government.
The chance of the US going to war with China is only increasing. Roughly 60% of the US public believes a major military conflict with China is “possible”; 26% view it as “likely”; and 11% consider it “inevitable”.
Tying Australia to the US industrial-military complex directly threatens Australia. Does anybody really think we will have sovereignty of where those submarines go and what they do? It’s insanity!
The Albanese government has continued to place the US and Israel’s interests ahead of its own citizens. Australia has been shamed by its lack of action against the horrific genocide and decimation of Gaza, and the violent illegal settlements in the West Bank.
The failure to respond has meant that bombings and the blocking of medical aid, food, water and building materials continue. This lack of response has only fed Israeli and US impunity and led to the invasion of Lebanon and war on Iran.
Australia has welcomed the president of the genocidal Israeli state that, according to Francesca Albanese, has slaughtered more than 680,000 people in Gaza.
The Israeli Occupation Force has left newborn babies to die in their hospital cribs; it has targeted the shooting of babes in arms and children in the head and groin.
We’ve seen 335 shots fired into the car where a five-year-old was waiting for help, only for the targeted murder of paramedics seeking to save her.
Australia has failed to act when the Australian aid worker, Zomi Frankcom, was murdered, along with six other aid workers from World Central Kitchen, which had previous approval for its travel route.
We’ve then seen Israeli Defense Forces soldiers who have participated in this genocide be welcomed to Australia for a running race.
The murders continue, condoned by a lack of action to stop the genocide.
Yet, it was Gareth Evans, a former Labor MP, who developed the UN’s Responsibility to Protect. Adopted by the United Nations in 2005, it obliges states to intervene and prevent mass atrocities, including genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Australia has a responsibility to respond to such atrocities and work with other middle powers to intervene and ensure states abide by international law.
Yet Australia has failed to join 11 other nations to sanction Israel’s illegal settlements, even though that is mostly a symbolic gesture.
Australians do not condone this slaughter of children and unarmed people. The Australian government must meets its international obligations and not drag us into a major regional war.
We have seen Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia repeatedly bombed by Iran for hosting US bases. Australia would not be immune if war breaks out with China and we are all well within its missile range.
There is no neutrality in a genocide; you either take action against it or you side with the perpetrators. And there is no way you can blend the nuclear reactors of submarines with a nuclear free Pacific. We need to hold the Australia government to account, to reflect the views of the Australian people, not states that are undertaking a genocide.
As Paul Keating surmised, Australia doesn’t need to be a pair of boots hanging out the backside of the US.
[Cathy Eatock is the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Peoples’ Organisation-Australia.]