This is a review of this excellent book: “Charting our own course“, questioning Australia’s involvement in US led wars and the Australian United States Alliance.
A People’s Inquiry – order a copy from Ross Gwyther 0408 782 983
Transcript (apologies for any errors, (done in the early hours of the morning)
Review of IPAN People’s Inquiry
Tue, Apr 04, 2023 1:21AM • 27:39
SPEAKERS
4PR – Voice of the People, Ian Curr
This is a review of this excellent book. Charting our own course, questioning Australia’s involvement in US led wars and the Australian United States Alliance, a people’s inquiry the findings of the Independent and Peaceful Australia network IPAN, exploring the case for an independent and peaceful Australia.
What are the costs and consequences of Australia’s involvement in US led wars? And the Australia US Alliance? What are the alternatives? And we’ll be going through the various chapters and the various writers. But the first thing that you notice about this book are the contributors. The most serious problem with the book is that there is no submission from either Labor, Liberal or Greens parties, as organizations, those major parties chose not to make any submissions on a question of such importance?
If we go through the various organizations represented here, we can see that there are the peace groups like the people for nuclear disarmament. There’s a range of of community organizations and also there are a number of trade unions. The National tertiary education union, a community group, the Australia Cuba, Friendship Society, Women’s International League for peace and freedom, the Australian section, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Australia, the Wage Peace organization, Melbourne, unitary Unitarian Peace Memorial Church, the Arch Diocese of Catholic Sydney, the Peace and Justice office, the ‘international Volunteers for Peace, the Medical Association for the prevention of war Australia, the Australian student Christian movement, the Union of Australian women, the Spirit of Eureka Victoria, just to name some of some of them the Campaign for International cooperation and disarmament, Blue Mountains permaculture Institute peace studies, a section of the University of New England the Electrical Trades Union Queensland and Northern Territory divisions the bring Julian Assange home campaign, Vintage Reds from Canberra, IPAN southwest regional Victoria Quakers and legislation committee religious Society of Friends in Australia and the International Association of people’s lawyers, Australia West Papua Association South Australia, the Australian East Timor Friendship Association, Earth worker cooperative, PAX Christi Australia, there’s just some of them the Australian nursing and midwifery Federation …. Australia I think I’ve named a lot of them … Baltazar Australia, and quite a number of individuals.
Results
So it’s a very widely read and submitted publication. What are the findings of this inquiry? There was a questionnaire issued about the Australia US Alliance and our relationship with Australia over orcas submarine decision, opinion was divided as to whether the United States would come to Australia’s aid if Australia security was threatened, with 34% agreeing and with 35% disagreeing that’s broadly it 85% of the survey, agreed or strongly agreed that Australia’s alliance with the US makes it more likely that Australia could be drawn into a war that is not in its interests, and
only 6% of respondents did not believe Australia could be war drawn into such a war due to the alliance. 75% said that the US Alliance Australia could be drawn into a war with China.
90% agree that both houses of the Australian Parliament should debate and vote on any decision to commit Australian troops and resources to overseas military operations. 81% agree that Australia’s national security has been damaged by its support and participation with the US conflicts in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the Alliance puts US at risk.
78% agreed that Australia’s international reputation has been harmed by its constant support for and participation in US foreign policy.
84% said that Australia’s active adherence to US foreign policy has had a somewhat or significant bleak negative impact on Australia’s deteriorating trade relationship with China over recent years.
Comment: I think there is an over emphasis generally of Australia’s impact on the world. It’s a country which has very little attention given to it by the larger powers in the northern hemisphere.
14% believe that Australia is, is safer as a result of the presence of US military forces and intelligence gathering installations in places such as the joint defence facility at Pine Gap and at Northwest cape.
Comment: I think it’s wrong to call it a joint defence facility. It’s a it’s an installation purely for the purposes of the United States. And that was because of the fact that Whitlam was having a look at Pine Gap as to see just how much involvement Australia had in it. Whitlam once famously said about Indonesia, don’t ask me you have to ask the Americans about what Indonesia is doing. And that was just on the eve of the East Timor invasion by Indonesia, … given the okay by the US president the day before … by Gerald Ford and the infamous Henry Kissinger, who were visiting Jakarta and gave the generals the OK to invade the East Timor resulting in the horrible genocide of 1975-1999.
51% said Australia would be better off if it was to end its alliance with the United States, while …
10% believe that there will be no change and
20% believe Australia would be worse off.
So there we have it. That’s pretty much what came out of the inquiry questionnaire.
And then we have a number of submissions by people in the early chapters of the book, a foreword, written by the IPAN, Chairperson, Annette Brownie, in which she acknowledges the submissions made by people and gives background to the IPAN people’s inquiry into exploring the case for an independent and peaceful Australia,
Chapters one to eight. They’ve got several eminent people to make submissions.
The first is by Terry Mason, which is on the impact on First Nations people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective.
Dr. Vince Scappatura talks about military and defence.
Dr. Allison Bronowski talks about foreign policy.
Greg Barnes talks about political including democratic rights.
The Associate Professor Jenny Rea talks about unions a
nd workers rights.
Ian Lowe talks about environment and climate change.
The Very Reverend Peter Catt talks about social and community and
Dr. Chad Saterlaee talks about economic issues,
Recommendations made
The first one was that assaults by overseas military force members on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, there should be data collected. There should be protection put in place from Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders being sexually assaulted or physically assaulted by overseas military forces, and they should be dealing with the alleged offenders from overseas under Australian law,
Health and Environment Protection, the Australian Government should ensure no exemption from health protocols for members of overseas military forces in order to protect the public from risk of disease and other health risks. And there should be an establishment of the National Register of military pollution and an allocation of inadequate budget to remediate polluted environments and compensated affected communities.
On the health impacts. There should be consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to practice adequate, appropriate and meaningful consultation with legitimate stakeholders and custodians in all consultations and negotiations, the use of lands waters in accordance with the UN concept of free prior and informed consent, there should be a place of greater priority on the legitimate interests of the Australian, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the use of improper maintenance of their lands where there is a conflict between stakeholders. There’s a position of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people should be dominant, not subservient, as is currently the case under the Native Title and military arrangements. They should be an amendment to the Western Australian Aboriginal heritage act to ensure that the provisional continuing appropriate regard for consultation and exercise of custodianship over lands and waters.
There should be an engagement in meaningful All modern treaties with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Regarding military and defence, there should be, the Australian Government should redefine what it understands by Defence and Security to include wider concepts of human security and common security. There should be a prioritization as a matter of urgency, that of the existential threats of climate change and nuclear war, including joining the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. And there should be urgent attention given to the prevention of a new Cold War between US and China. Regarding the United Nations, the Australian Government should promote the role and purposes of the United Nations in maintaining international peace and security. Diplomacy the Australian Government should shift its focus away from what it recognizes as national defence to a more comprehensive diplomacy to better ensure Australia’s national security.
A new defence policy for Australia, the Australian Government should engage in extensive community consultations to develop new defence policy for Australia and uphold the fundamental objective of protecting Australia’s territorial air and maritime approaches without foreign assistance. Under the War Powers Act, the Australian Government should undertake necessary action to ensure that the authority to commit Australian military forces overseas rests with the Australian Parliament. Regarding the ANZUS Treaty, the Australian Government should review and renegotiate answers, in line with what is most appropriate for Australia’s national security. For regarding overseas military presence in Australia, the Australian Government should eliminate all overseas military presence from military bases in Australia. Under the War Powers Act, the shining Parliament should legislate to ensure the decision to go to war lies with the Federal Parliament. Regarding diplomacy, the Australian Government should strive to achieve diplomatic and military diplomatic, not military resolution of conflict and differences. At the international level, they should invest additional resources to improve relations with Australia’s neighbors.
Regarding nuclear weapons the Australian Government should explicitly reject all use of nuclear weapons in pursuing Australia’s national security and sign and ratify the UN treaty on prohibition of nuclear weapons. by partisanship the Australian Labor Party should abandon bipartisanship and pursue a new pathway forward on foreign and defence policy and lead public consultations towards an independent national security strategy. Regarding political and democratic rights, there needs to be a republic referendum shown you must become a republic. To exercise an independent foreign policy, the Australian Government should give the Australian people the opportunity to vote in a referendum on the Republic. Pardon me, war powers Australian Parliament should pass a law that the decision to go to war must be voted on by the parliament. There’s an whistle-blowers, the Australian Government should introduce a strong protection under law for whistle-blowers and also citizens civil liberties. There should be an introduction are they public and transparent national anti-corruption body.
Regarding union and workers rights, the Australian Government should redirect national budget priorities from industries that provoke enable and sustain war towards investments in socially and environmentally, just unsustainable jobs and production should embrace alternative ways of creating jobs and increasing national economic independence, including through member owned cooperatives and using money held in superannuation funds. We should disengage from foreign policy alliances that incline Australia into conflicts that justify military production, environment and climate change as the Australian Government should legislate the use of only the use of only warships that use an energy source other than nuclear that joint military exercises should discontinue those with the United for the United States forces such as Talisman Sabre.
As the buyer of AUKUS submarines, security risks of running these military vessels are unacceptable. Regarding nuclear weapons the Australian Government should join the nations that have already adopted the UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons and worked actively for a wider adoption of that treaty. Regarding the environment, the Australian Government should work to ensure the broader societal goal for net zero Greenhouse gas emissions, necessarily including a commitment by military to operate without the release of Greenhouse gases into the atmosphere should formally acknowledged the appalling environmental damage caused by US led wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and strengthened its determination that our nation will never again be involved in such ill-considered and deeply destructive military operations. As regards military expenditure, the Australian Government should reassess and reduce the current commitment to spend 2% of gross national product on defence military expenditure levels in order to increase the expenditure on climate change responses, and increase the budget allocation on foreign aid to meet UN target a point 7% of gross national income.
Regarding social and community issues, the Australian Government should conduct an inquiry into the role of the media plays in promoting US Australian alliances and Australia’s strategic relationship with the US. There should be a investigation to the introduction of a living wage as a means for building social cohesion across Australia. The Australian Government should introduce a plan to work towards establishing a democratic framework for the exercise of war powers, and the Australian Government should recast the defence budget to limit expenditure to only that which is required to effectively defend Australia that the Australian Government should increase funding for veterans support services. And this should be an apology to the military personnel who fought on Australia’s behalf in Iraq and Afghanistan and to their families for putting their lives at physical and mental health at risk for wars joined to support Australia’s alliance with the US regarding child protection, introduce robust policies and procedures safeguards to assess all requests from military representatives for visits to school and educational institutions with young people under the age of 18 should overhaul the Status of Forces Agreement, and its implementation to assure ensure child protection is undertaken responsibly that all alleged sexual offenders are dealt with under Australian law.
And there’ll be a prohibition on military sponsorship of activities relating to and participation in by people under the age of 18.
The defence industry impact
The Australian Government should establish a parliamentary inquiry into the societal impacts of the Australian Defence Industry. The Australian Government should identify and nationalize all strategic sectors of the economy and should build up industries specializing in the manufacture of self-defence technologies, focusing on those best suited to our specific geography. And regarding democracy and integrity, the Australian Government should establish a process through which Australian citizens can have a direct voice in the level of defence spending in the country should establish legislation to ban political donations from defence manufacturers and should legislate for the extensive public transparency of all defence manufacturing contracts. So without going into the meat of each article, and looking at we’ll look at some of the graphics that have been produced in this excellent book, there’s a call there for the need to have a republic referendum.
A Socialist Republic
From my point of view, the republic referendum failed. It failed because we were given only two choices. And that was between an executive run referendum which is really just replacing an overseas monarch with an Australian citizen. And the other one was that we just have a sort of a People’s Republic where the president is elected by the people. But I think we need more than that. I think we need a socialist republic, something where the people who produce the wealth, they have the power to make decisions about Australia’s progress in the world and to highlight the fact that we are not a national identity of people, the working class has no country, we are international … we’re part of a world community.
Whistle-blowers. I think that the Australian Government should insist that the US drop all charges against Julian Assange for his role in exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No Warships
I don’t think that Australia should be using nuclear or fossil fuels to power any ships. Why do we need warships? If you look at Australia’s recent experience what is needed is for the Navy to have ships that can rescue people at sea, not ships that are armed. [According to former Attorney General George Brandis at least 1200 people (including hundreds of children) perished at sea between 2007 and 2015. See file:///Users/iancurr/Downloads/Corro_Brandis_Triggs.pdf
Why have a military industrial complex?
I question the need for warships, I just can’t see how they will really would assist Australia. Australia’s best defence is the fact that it’s in a remote location and on the planet that does not care much about it, there can be other ways of looking at that. I definitely agree we should stop these continual military exercises with the US, we should close down Pine Gap and the other spy agencies around Australia’s continent. I don’t know about an apology to veterans and families. I think that there should be real compensation given to those people that suffered particularly those who were victims of war crimes by Australian troops. Australian military personnel participated in war crimes both in Afghanistan and Iraq. And I think they should be brought to trial. Regarding democratic rights, I think that we definitely have to find alternatives to the making of these war machines or assembling of war machines here in Australia, whether they be electronic, or whether there be something like the Bushmaster armoured personnel carriers that we’re sending over to the Ukraine at the moment, to get blown up by Russian artillery.
Ukraine
I just think that all monies that have been sent in that direction, but particularly by governments, such as the Queensland Labour government, that should be discontinued, and those military manufacturers should be developing an electric vehicle facility in Queensland. As regards the Ukraine war, I think Australia should withdraw all support from that war and should insist that there be an associated settlement between the warring parties, and particularly there should be a referendum of the Ukrainian people as to whether they want to be part of NATO or part of an alliance with Russia, that should be a UN conducted referendum, particularly in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. And also in Crimea. I think that we should also, definitely hone in on this agreement that Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US made about the nuclear submarines, I just can’t see AUKUS as being a viable from any point of view, I doubt very much whether the US can deliver. I’m pretty sure that the United Kingdom can’t deliver because it has its troubles delivering its own submarine systems.
No AUKUS
There should be an immediate break with in e AUKUS agreement, and have a good hard look at what’s best to patrol waters running Australia and not forgetting that many of those waters are owned by first Nations people. I doubt there should be any submarine at all, because of the nature of satellite technology, its surveillance capacity, is a lot greater than having ships at sea. Besides China has the best technology and the most ships and we would not be able to compete should we get into a competition with the Chinese.
I’m opposed to sending people to the South China Sea. That’s ludicrous. There’s been no evidence that China has any interest in attacking Australia. Quite the reverse. It looks like China is very happy to take our iron ore and our coal. I think we should stop sending coal to China. And I think we should definitely continue to send our wheat to China and other grain products. But anything that relates to increasing the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere, I think we should desist from doing that.
There’s been a bit of discussion about foreign policy and the role of the United Nations, the United Nations has been unable to stop wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, in Vietnam. So I think that there needs to be a really serious look at whether a United Nations located in New York is really a viable way to look at world government there should be a greater emphasis placed on the global South, and particularly the undemocratic colonization that continues in these areas. By the richer nations are definitely there should be a break with Israel on all levels.
Palestine
There should be immediate boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) placed on Israel by the Australian Government, and there should be encouragement for other countries to join BDS. That war is a terrible war that’s been going now, since 1948, when Australia’s Foreign Minister Doc Evatt sponsored the two state solution, I don’t think any country should tell Palestinians how to conduct their struggle for political and democratic rights. And they should just back off, I don’t think the two state solution is at all viable. So there’s been some things that have not been mentioned.
There’s a limitation on what can be covered in a document like this.
I think that Australia’s involvement in East Timor, was important and should be addressed. Look at our support for Indonesian colonization of West Papua and military intervention there, I think that we should disengage from the Indonesian military, there should be no, no joint exercises, no selling of war planes or warships or anything to Indonesia. I think that peace is union business. And the union should be supported in their campaigns against war, but this can’t happen unless workers rights are given greater priority in in the Australian environment. situation. The workers are not consulted, they don’t have meaningful participation in there in the decisions made at the workplace level, and union should be supported in their attempts to make that possible. I think that there is a general lack of understanding by Australian Governments of the real impact of the military on Aboriginal people. And I think they should be given a voice in looking at the very bad impact it’s they’ve had on our land, water, where was the country? We, you know, we do know a little bit about what happened in South Australia during the British nuclear testing, but we haven’t looked at things like the frontier wars. I think that there there should be a real acknowledgement that Australia has been comes out of a conflict conflict between the settler and the First Nations people. The book does seem to deal with some of these issues, and that’s my roundup of this excellent book, which I recommend people to read charting our own course of people’s inquiry. This is 4PR voice of the people signing off.
Ian Curr
4PR – Voice of the People
4 April ’23
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