Australia is no longer a colony, but still behaves like one payingtribute to its so-called "allies", writesDrEvan Jones.

AUSTRALIAN ELITES have a problem with the concept of sovereignty. Comfort resides in giving it up, in both the political and economic domains.

White Australia's character was nurtured on the teat of Mother England. Sydney Universitys motto (1857) is Sidere mens eadem mutato the constellation changes, the mind remains the same. Quite. See the Australian flag.

The Australian Constitution was passed by the British Parliament in 1900. Australian troops were at that moment dying in Britains second Boer War and assisting in quenching the Boxer Rebellion in China. Australia went off to War in 1914 under the British flag, much to the disdain of Irish-born residents. The military was for long an arm of the British forces. Australia's foreign policy was essentially a derivative of Britains until an embassy was established in Washington D.C. (the first outside the British Commonwealth) in 1940. The post-World War II Labor Government's attempt to nationalise the commercial banks (which resisted financial regulatory reforms) was decided in the British Privy Council, a judicial lineage not abolished until 1975.

The gap between settler lives and those it colonised is the system working as it was designed to.

After 1945 Australia duly and dually accommodated both British and American imperatives. The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was created in March 1949 under Allied pressure to hunt down leaks flowing to Wartime ally, the Soviet Union, and to inhibit communist subversion. Maos China was not recognised on cue. Australian forces were sent to Malaya (1950-63, 1973), Korea (1950-53), Vietnam (1962-72), and later to Iraq (2003-13) and Afghanistan (2001-14, 2015-21) at the behest of its imperial masters. Lawyer and geopolitical analyst James ONeillelaborates(July 2021). There has been no official reckoning for the merits of or folly of these outings.

There was an increasing tilt towards the U.S. after the anglophile Robert Menzies retirement from the Prime Ministership (1949-66) and increasing US private investment into Australia. In the 1960s, three intelligence bases were placed on Australian soil North West Cape (1963, naval communications station, for submarines and surface fleet), Pine Gap (1966, near Alice Springs, Soviet nuclear capabilities surveillance) and Nurrungar (1969, near Woomera, early warning of Soviet attack; functions transferred to Pine Gap in 1999) of enormous significance for snooping on the Eastern hemisphere and facilitating the US global interventions. All three facilities were, from the beginning, prime nuclear targets.

Bolshie labour leaders were the subject of special attention by U.S.attachs. Key union leaders were invited to attend the Harvard Trade Union Program for purposes of re-education as to what constitutes responsible and effective union leadership. The trial of CIA contractor and message decoder Christopher Boyce in 1977 disclosed evidence of the CIAs interference in Australian labour movement activities to inhibit militancy.

The Whitlam Labor Government, elected in December 1972, looked dangerously independent in spirit. It immediately recognised the Peoples Republic of China. It withdrew the remaining forces in Vietnam. In 1974, the anthem God Save the Queen was replaced by Advance Australia Fair. It abolished the British-derived Honours award system. It made attempts (tragically via deeply flawed means) to bring economic development under greater local control.

The intelligence bases were up for renewal, and Labor in Opposition had previously questioned their operational secrecy. Labor was naturally concerned that it could be brought into a war without its involvement, without power of decision. The Government later discovers that the North West Cape was used by the U.S. in its involvement on Israels side in the October 1973 Yom Kippur war without Australian authorities being informed.

The Americans sent in the enforcer Marshall Green as ambassador, fresh from keeping the lid on subversion in Indonesia. In November 1975, the Whitlam government is overthrown in a US-led coup, via our Monarchs representative (doubling as the CIAs Our Man), Governor-General Sir John Kerr, with Buckingham Palaces evident approval (vide Jenny Hockings expos). The public was outraged, but the Labor Party pulled its head in.

As John Pilgernotedsuccinctly in 2014 on the occasion of Whitlams death:

Precisely at this time, Robert J. Hawke, contemporaneously President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and President of the Australian Labor Party (and Australian go-between at the ILO), was secretly informing U.S. officials of internal union and Labor Party affairs. Hawke subsequently becomes Prime Minister, 19841991. Hawke did oversee arrangements for the Australian government to be better informed and to have Australian personnel elevated in situ. The reality is that Australia remained a bystander of U.S. war-making deliberations on Australian soil. Without consultation, the gung-ho Hawke threw Australia into involvement in the first Gulf War in August 1990. During this war, the Nurrungar facility was integrated into the early warning system for Israel (it was from this source that Israel was advised that Iraq had launched Scuds in its direction) again unknown to Australian authorities.

Small beginnings towards a less dependent and Asian-focused foreign and military policy were developing under Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991-96), but this was snuffed out with the election of the Howard Government in 1996. The 1997 White Paper, In the National Interest, provided an immediate pointer to the Coalitions renewed American embrace (hence the lapdog role in Iraq and Afghanistan).

Chinese Reds under the bed

More craven bipartisanry, the Gillard Labor government announced in 2011 the establishment of the Force Posture Agreement, cemented in 2014 under the Abbott Coalition government. This meant 2500 U.S. military boots on the ground in the Northern Territory. Also planned is infrastructure for nuclear-capable B-52s.

The subjugation has been reinforced in the materiel domain. The Howard government purchased 59 Abrams M1A1 tanks in 2004. Tanks? Each weighing 60 tonnes? A friend, international security expert, has filled me in on details. Dodgy to begin with, they were soon mothballed, with a couple used for training. Past their use-by date (no spare parts as the US has long since ceased production), the current Albanese Labor government sent 49 of them to Ukraine to assist in the U.S.-led war against Russia on Ukrainian soil. This "taking out the garbage" (George Miller could have better used them in a Mad Max reprise) was praised in glowing terms in official Australian Defence Departmentpropaganda. Bizarrely (or perhaps not), the Morrison Coalition government ordered replacement Abrams M1A2 tanks (75 at AU$3.5 billion) in early 2022. Equally useless. Do authorities think that a Chinese Rommel is going to invade the Simpson Desert on his way to urban Australia?

Then theres the F-35 aircraft. Disparaged globally for their dysfunctionality (including by the U.S. own Government Accountability Office), Australia was a natural sucker for this expensive rubbish, initiated by the Howard Coalition government in 2006 (the Joint Strike Fighter Program). Howard was mercifully turfed out of office in November 2007, but what do we get? The Rudd Labor Government approved the first purchases of 14 aircraft in 2009, making the affair bipartisan (albeit fulfilment of the order was put in mothballs). The Abbott Coalition government, elected in 2013, made the big purchases in 2014, with final delivery in 2024, making 75 planes for a bill of $13 billion. The Coalition wants to round off the numbers to 100 when it returns to office (thankfully not tomorrow).

Then theresAUKUS. The Turnbull Coalition government signed a deal with the French in September 2016 for 12 conventional submarines (the Future Submarine Program) at an estimated cost of $90 billion. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was rolled by his caucus. The replacement Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, a man without qualities, went behind everybodys back and arranged a submarine deal with the U.S. and the UK, announced in September 2021. This time its nuclear. The AUKUS fact sheet claims:

• Submarines. AUKUS will provide Australia with a conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarine capability at the earliest possible date, while upholding the highest non-proliferation standards.
• Advanced capabilities. AUKUS will develop and provide joint advanced military capabilities to promote security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.

Complete blather. And the $$$? First off, compensating the French comes in at 555 million (AU$835 million). As for the nuclear submarines, its pure boondoggle. No contractual obligations, delivery date uncertain; they may never arrive at all. Nuclear capacity in Australia sums to a small reactor at Lucas Heights outside of Sydney, used for medical and industrial products. And a depository for nuclear waste? What is certain is the billions, hundreds of billions, destined to flow overseas as the price of allegiance. Albo has justsigned upfor the first tranche of a $30 billion submarine shipyard in South Australia of massive proportions, with the usual super-inflated job promises. The whole thing is preposterous. Curiously, the Australian political right and its media counterparts, endlessly haranguing Labor over supposed spending profligacy, have nothing to say about this madness on an industrial scale.

AUKUS payments (add the Abrams tanks, the F-35 aircraft, etc.) are pure tribute to Australias overlords. Shades of the East India Company and British government extraction from India, estimated by Utsa Patnaik at 9.2 trillion for the period 1765 to 1938. Shades of Haitis Independence Debt of 150 million francs imposed by France in 1825. Shades of Bismarks extractions from France after Prussia routed French troops in 1870-71. These financial barbarisms were supposed to be a thing of the past.

An implicit alliance of ASIO, think tanks (vide Australian Strategic Policy Institute) and the mainstream media reinforces the thrust to subjugation. China is seemingly an immediate threat to Australias interests. Theres a (Chinese) Red under every bed. As Australias interests are made to equate with American interests, then naturally, China is the enemy.

Meanwhile, the 26 January 1788 invasion by the First Fleet and the raising of the Union Flag is still being celebrated as Australia Day. The Union Jack still adorns the Australian flag (Canadas equivalent was replaced in 1965, a mere 60 years ago). Replacement of the ludicrous monarchy remains on the backburner.

Albanese toes the line

Anthony Albanese, ex-student radical and long-prominent figure of the Australian Labor Party left wing, became Prime Minister in May 2022 (and was re-elected in May 2025). While pursuing some progressive policies domestically, in almost all of his and his governments foreign policy actions he has merely sought to reinforce Australias colonial cringe.

Mark Carney says the less powerful can choose honesty and independence but on AUKUS and the U.S. alliance, Anthony Albanese appears to be choosing weakness instead.

The day after assuming office, Albanese (and foreign minister Penny Wong) travel to the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue meeting in Tokyo. The entire concept of the Quad was to contain China on the U.S.s terms. A diplomatic difficulty, first day on the job. Albanese and Wong brought forth the usual waffle, but the essential was to reassure the countrys betters:

Albanese then went to the NATO Summit in Madrid, late June 2022 a presence utterly unwarranted (memo: Australia is not in the North Atlantic).

In July 2022, Labors Defense Minister Richard Marles delivered aspeechto the Washington, DC-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in which he flagged the move from interoperability on Australian soil of U.S. and Australian forces and materiel to interchangeability. Effectively, Australias entire defense modus operandi is to be organised within U.S. interests.

According to Marles:

the Alliance has far surpassed its origins. It is now a unique and thriving project: driven not only by our nations geopolitical interests, but also by our profound commitment to democracy, open economies, free and just societies.

Pure blather.

More:

Sure. How this is supposed to work in conjunction with the impossibly unworkable AUKUS project is anybodys guess. Irrepressible blogger Binoy KampmarklabelsMarles a fool of Chaucerian proportions.

Regardless, subordination to U.S. imperatives is what matters. It transpires that an "Australia Chair"was established at CSIS in December 2021, assisted by private funding.

There we read:

More blah.

One of the most craven decisions of Albaneses leadership was to arrest Daniel Duggan, sometime U.S. marine pilot and Australian citizen since 2012, in October 2022 at the U.S. behest. Duggan was claimed to be traitorously consorting with the Chinese devil in giving flight training to Chinese nationals. Duggan has since been incarcerated in intolerable conditions. The mainstream media ignores his plight and the travesty of his arrest. This. after successive Australian governments sat back while the U.S. and a compliant British judiciary incarcerated Australian Julian Assange in intolerable conditions.

This is the first part in a series of three byDrEvan Jones.The second will be published tomorrow, 27 Friday February.

DrEvan Jonesis a political economist and former academic.

Related Articles

• Unsettled business: Was sovereignty transferred by cession or conquest?