by Rex Patrick | Apr 20, 2026 , https://michaelwest.com.au/where-are-the-aukus-nuclear-waste-costings-let-alone-the-dump-sites/

Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.

A simple request

Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.

You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.

In July 2025 MWM requested access under Freedom of Information laws to the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS. The Agency did not answer the FOI request and its lack of response was referred to the Information Commissioner.

The Information Commissioner is trying to encourage the ASA to engage in a little bit of transparency. But … the Agency just can’t find a latest costing.

We’re disorganised

In a response to an engagement with MWM, the Agency has recently advised:

Preliminary searches have been carried out within one branch of one division of the ASA to identify documents falling within the scope of your request. That branch has advised that approximately 3,000 documents are potentially in scope. They would require manual examination to determine whether they contain information relating to the scope of your request. The documents within this set vary significantly in length and format and may comprise multiple pages requiring individual review.

 Further, any cost information in relation to the scope of your request is likely to be dispersed across multiple documents and along timeframes, may appear in differing levels of detail, and may not be directly comparable. As a result, identifying which documents contain relevant cost information would require extensive searching, detailed examination, contextual analysis, and judgment.

Quite unbelievable!

Or is it unbelievable?

ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.

In November 2024 the Government asked Boston Consulting Group to take a look at the organisational structure of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). A contract was signed for 2.7. million. In April 2025 it was amended to $7.4 million. Three months later it was amended again to a whopping $12.1 million.

In parallel the defence minister asked former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to undertake an urgent top-to-bottom review of the ASA amid serious concerns about how it was managing AUKUS.

None of that seems to have helped.

Budget up just to keep up

The Government’s National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program was released on the same day that ASA advised MWM that it had no idea where to find its AUKUS high level radioactive waste costs.

The Integrated Investment Proposal laid out the Government’s estimates of, amongst other programs, the AUKUS and Collins Class submarine costs for the coming decade.

The 53-to-63 billion dollar AUKUS budget published in 2024 has grown to 71-to-96 billion (a change of 52% for the upper band). The 4-to-5 billion dollar Collins Submarine upgrade costs has grown to 8-to-11 billion dollar (change of 120% for the upper band).

Any thought that the Government is increasing the Defence budget to expand the Defence Force’s capabilities is illusory. The increase will struggle just to deal with cost blow outs.

Or implausible?

The numbers associated with the very long term disposal of AUKUS nuclear waste will be big. If the Minister asked for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS he’d get it almost instantly.

“The estimate must exist. “

The approach taken by the ASA in responding to MWM’s request reminds me of a teenager trying hid a bad school report from their parents. The kid simply doesn’t realise that mum and dad will find out eventually.

MWM is not about to give up.

Of course, there is a small possibility that we are wrong and there is no estimate. Maybe the Minister has told the ASA he won’t ask for one and they shouldn’t generate one.

I guess we’ll find out.

Noel Wauchope, 20 April 26, https://theaimn.net/the-new-nuclear-weapons-are-so-much-better-and-cheaper-theyre-the-enemys-nuclear-sites/#comment-24806

Yes, ain’t it grand! We, the God-fearing, God-loving West and Israel, don’t really need any longer to put our $billions of tax-payer money into those horribly expensive nuclear missiles, bombs, submarines. Good old new technology is proving us with much cheaper little drones

The beauty of it all is that our enemies, those bad people in Iran, Russia, China, have got readymade nuclear sites just sitting there, waiting to be gloriously exploded by our drones. If some sites, like nuclear reactors with strong containment covers are a bit too tough for drones, well non-nuclear missiles should do the job – still a lot cheaper than a nuclear weapon.

And of course, there’s an awful lot of other nuclear stuff that is just as vulnerable, even more vulnerable, than the actual nuclear reactor. Nuclear spent fuel pools are a beaut target, with their extremely high radiation levels, risk of cooling system failure, with ensuing fire. Nuclear canisters, even clad with concrete, are quite a good target, too. And so are the various forms of transport of nuclear materials. And that’s before we’ve even considered the nuclear submarines, (some in operation, many dead and awaiting burial) nuclear weapons sites, and the transport of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear facilities have strong safety protections, say the experts. But the trouble is, that was then, and this is now: in addition to material tools like drones and missiles, we have cyber digital tools – malaware and malicious computer code can be used to seriously disrupt, even destroy the other side’s nuclear systems – whether they be military, energy, or just research nuclear facilities.

So, it’s an exciting time for the war-makers.

Perhaps too exciting? The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists discussed the Epic Fury threat by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth, to obliterate Iran and its nuclear sites –

“signaling” near a live reactor is a high-stakes gamble with an unclear ultimate purpose. While the plant continues to feed the grid, a direct hit on its containment dome would trigger a radiological catastrophe far exceeding that of Chernobyl or Fukushima. With 70-80 tons of uranium dioxide in its core and a massive inventory of spent fuel lying in nearby cooling ponds, a breach would shroud the Persian Gulf with a lethal miasma of radioiodine and cesium-137. This wouldn’t just be a strike against a regime; it would be a death sentence for the region’s environment and its people. 

And wait! What if the other side has the same idea ? And they do. In 2021, Hamas deliberately targeted Israel’s secretive Dimona nuclear reactor site.  Iran has recently attacked Israeli areas close to that site. Russia drones have struck he Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant , and  the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, though these strikes could have been unintentional.

I don’t want to bore you with the gloomy details – but these are some countries that have already developed sophisticated drones and missiles capable of devastating “our side’s” nuclear facilities – Iran, Russia, China, North Korea.

And the other subject of gloom is the diminished safety policies of the United States. Karl Grossman – Harvey Wasserman report – Trump’s “flood of executive orders on nuclear power have weakened or eliminated nuclear safety regulations—making nuclear power plants more dangerous than ever—and has expedited their being built” .

Bennet Ramberg in his 2024 book Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy outlined the dangers posed by nuclear sites.

The Trump administration has not merely weakened nuclear safety regulation, but virtually abdicated from it. Even the nuclear lobby itself has recognised this, and encouraged private industry to address safety questions.

BUT – Futurism points out -( https://futurism.com/science-energy/nuclear-startups-safety ) “new reporting by Politico‘s energy publication E&E News found that several baby nuclear companies are avoiding requests to join one of the industry’s main safety organizations. The regulatory body, called the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), was formed in the fallout of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. While not a government body, the INPO is a nonprofit nuclear watchdog, responsible for conducting plant inspections, sharing operational guidance between nuclear companies, and helping companies train nuclear personnel.

For a nuclear energy company, joining the INPO is completely voluntary, though every operator has — until now”

Nuclear experts are well aware of these new dangers. On April 13th on a Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists panel eminent experts discussed them. Rachel Bronson, Lars van Dassen, Laura S. H. Holgate, all closely tied to the International Atomic Energy Agency, (IAEA)went into the subject in some detail. They all looked to the IAEA as the one body that might lead the world out of this perilous nuclear vulnerability mire. But they expressed anxiety, in view of the fact that that the IAEA is underfunded and under-resourced.

I am sorry – experts. But I can’t get out of my mind the fact that the IAEA has a dual mission. Its job is to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, and to promote the peaceful nuclear industry.

Even these three very earnest experts acknowledge that the “peaceful” and the “military” nuclear industries are now irrevocably entwined. So, apart from the weakness and lack of funding for the IAEA, it is hopelessly caught up in its own conflict of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQGbJKEbzy8&t=63s

Australia’s strategic commitments will enhance the profits of the global military industrial giants. Investors need transparency to justify their financial commitment to military industrial complexes (Gemini AI Data in US Dollars):

20 April 2026 Denis Bright, AIM, https://theaimn.net/australian-political-futures-is-balancing-optimum-defence-self-reliance-with-national-sovereignty-really-possible-within-us-global-hegemony/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h_GChgSv_A

Diplomatic sorties by Prime Minister Albanese to maintain supplies of petroleum from refineries in South East Asia coincided with the release of the 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS). The fire in Unit Four at the Viva Refinery near Geelong brought an added more urgency to these interrupted deliberations with the Malaysian leader PM Anwar Ibraham.

There was a different tone in the Prime Minister’s interactions in Malaysia. Veiled mutual criticisms of President Trump’s rhetorical style were part of the convivial dialogue between the two leaders.

The key documents from the 2026 NDS were in circulation for more elaboration by Defence Minister Richard Marles at the National Press Club Address on 16 April.

The foreword to the new NDS Strategy contained some dire warnings for the home front about the value of commitment to the US Global Alliance in the context of perceived coercive strategic statecraft from China. The proposed defence commitments draw Australia into the Anglosphere influence in both strategic and economic spheres with the involvement of Britain’s BAE Systems in the delivery of AUKUS Submarines.

New ABS data on the extent of investment links to Britain and the US are due for release in early May 2026.

It would be churlish to criticise the Defence Minister’s rhetoric in support of the 2026 NDS Strategies. The personal opinions of Richard Marles are of little importance in the delivery of complex policy agendas which have been cleared by conventional due processes. Only mass mobilisations and dissent from within the broader Labor movement could change these policy structures.

The National Security Committee (NSC) of the Cabinet is the apex of Australia’s national security decision-making framework. Operating as a sub-committee of the Federal Cabinet, it serves as the primary forum for considering the nation’s most strategic, high-priority, and high-risk security matters. Unlike other cabinet committees, the NSC possesses a unique degree of autonomy. Its decisions do not require the endorsement of the full Cabinet to be enacted. The NSC Committee (NSC) to Cabinet is not available for public scrutiny.

The National Security Committee (NSC) of Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister and usually includes only the following key portfolios-Deputy PM and Defence Minister, Foreign Affairs, Attorney-General and Home Affairs.

The NSC is supported by a team of non-voting senior bureaucrats and agency heads. These usually include the Director-General of National Intelligence (ONI), the Director-General of Security (ASIO), and the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The NSC would have cleared Australia’s commitment to AUKUS under the LNP in 2021. Earlier clearance was offered to the failed Troop Surge in Afghanistan more than a decade ago as well as Australia’s request to become an Associate Member of NATO during the course of our commitments to Afghanistan.

Factual details of the 2026 NDS Strategies have been well covered in mainstream media reporting. Less widely unreported, are the economic consequences of paying for this surge in Australian militarism and its impact on relations with China as our major trading partner.

The patriotic flavour of our military commitments within the US Global Alliance seldom mentions the major global corporations which generate high technology weaponry. Reaching the 3 per cent target for defence spending involves in less than a decade ahead involves a $425 billion strategic investment plan. This is an increase of $53 billion in current defence spending levels.

Australia’s strategic commitments will enhance the profits of the global military industrial giants. Investors need transparency to justify their financial commitment to military industrial complexes (Gemini AI Data in US Dollars):

In Australia, RTX is a big player in the high technology defence commitments planned for the 2026 NDS. These new commitments include Long-Range Strike and Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD). RTX’s Patriot systems, Naval Strike Missiles (NSM), and Tomahawks are the primary tools for this.

Commitment to rearmament is a highly profitable niche in the economic diplomacy of our Allies which includes Britain’s BAE Systems.

Decisions made by the Australian National Security Committee from both sides of politics have strengthened the constitutional influence of national security powers and may involve recourse to the reserve powers of the Governor-General in times of national emergency. Such powers increase exponentially as Australia is given access to high security technology through AUKUS and foreshadowed NDS technologies which need ongoing electronic updates at the behest of our Allies.

As these issues are seldom covered in the mainstream media, it is important for readers to interact with MPs and Senators on these issues. Policy staffers at ministerial offices monitor online and mainstream media comments. Even the robots at Gemini AI in the Silicon Valley have a good working knowledge of Australian political processes, the aimn.net. Gemini AI can generate a biographical profile and a summary of all my articles in a few seconds…….

Strategic Oversight: The USTR’s Role in Monitoring Chinese Investment in Australia

The relationship between the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and Australia’s inward investment profile is defined by a shift from traditional market-opening dialogue to a security-centric monitoring framework. While the USTR is not a direct regulator of Australian capital flows, it serves as a critical node in the intelligence and policy architecture that aligns Australian investment screening with the broader strategic priorities of the Five Eyes network and the AUKUS security pact.

The Mechanism of Influence: Beyond the USTR

The USTR influences Australian investment profiles through structured bilateral forums, most notably the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) Joint Committee and the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).

• Intelligence Integration: Within the Five Eyes framework, the USTR provides economic intelligence that informs Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB). While FIRB is a sovereign Australian entity, its “National Interest” test increasingly mirrors U.S. concerns regarding Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and their involvement in critical infrastructure and dual-use technologies.
• The AUKUS “Integrated Shield”: Under AUKUS Pillar II, the USTR works alongside the U.S. Department of Commerce to ensure that “Sovereign Data” and advanced capabilities (AI, Quantum, Cyber) remain protected from adversarial capital. This has led to a “de-facto” harmonisation of investment standards, where Australian committees – such as the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) – receive high-level briefings on U.S. export controls and investment restrictions.

Critical Comment from Experts

Experts suggest that the USTR’s role has evolved into a form of “Economic Statecraft” that challenges traditional notions of Australian sovereignty.

• Professor Jane Golley (Australian National University): Observes that the USTR’s focus on “supply chain resilience” acts as a directive for Australia to decouple from Chinese capital in strategic sectors. Golley argues this creates a “strategic dilemma” for Australian finance committees, which must balance the economic necessity of Chinese investment against the security mandates prioritised by Washington.
• James Paterson (Shadow Minister for Home Affairs): Has noted that the coordination between Five Eyes partners on investment screening is no longer just about preventing espionage, but about maintaining a collective technological edge. The USTR’s input is vital here, as it identifies which Chinese corporate entities are linked to the “Military-Civil Fusion” strategy, directly influencing FIRB’s rejection rates for Chinese bids in the mining and tech sectors.

Communications with Australian Government Committees

The USTR maintains consistent communication channels with Australian economic and finance entities to ensure policy alignment:

1. Treasury Consultation: The USTR regularly engages with the Australian Treasury, which houses the FIRB Secretariat. These communications focus on identifying “high-risk” investment patterns, particularly those involving the acquisition of rare earth minerals or digital infrastructure by entities with opaque ownership structures.
2. Trade and Investment Framework Agreements (TIFAs): These serve as the formal venue where the USTR explicitly monitors Australia’s inward investment trendlines. In recent 2025–2026 sessions, a primary agenda item has been the “screening of outbound and inward investment” to prevent the leakage of AUKUS-related intellectual property to Chinese competitors.
3. The “UNIT” System and De-dollarisation: The USTR monitors Australian participation in regional financial experiments to ensure that inward investment does not bypass traditional Western settlement systems (like SWIFT), which would diminish the efficacy of U.S.-led economic sanctions and monitoring.

Conclusion

While the USTR does not hold a seat on the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board, it acts as a primary architect of the “Strategic Guardrails” that define the board’s modern operations. Through the Five Eyes and AUKUS mechanisms, the USTR ensures that Australia’s inward investment profile remains a transparent and secure component of the Western alliance’s broader economic defense strategy against Chinese strategic competition.

References……………………………………………………………

The erosion of our national sovereignty through economic diplomacy by Britain and the USA has had a long history. Australians rarely have a say on matters relating to strategic security and economic diplomacy.

18 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, https://theaimn.net/the-merchants-of-death-in-our-midst/

How Palantir Profits from Genocide – and Why Australia Must Walk Away

I. The Company That Kills Enemies

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir Technologies, does not hide what his company does. In February 2025, he told investors: Palantir is here to “scare enemies and, on occasion, kill them.” He added that he was “super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.”

This is not hyperbole. It is a confession.

Palantir’s technology has been used to compile kill lists in Gaza, to track migrants for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and to select targets for drone strikes in Iran. The same systems that optimise workforce spend in Australian supermarkets are being used to select human targets for assassination.

Karp has acknowledged that he is directly involved in killing Palestinians in Gaza but insisted the dead were “mostly terrorists.” He does not provide evidence. He does not need to. The label is the weapon.

In March 2026, a UN report by Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese singled out Palantir as one of the companies “profiting from genocide” during Israel’s 21-month campaign in Gaza. The report, titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,” concluded that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”

This is the company that the Australian government, Coles, Rio Tinto, Westpac, and the Future Fund have chosen to do business with.

II. The Champions: Peter Thiel and Alex Karp

Peter Thiel is the billionaire co-founder of Palantir. He has funded right-wing political causes, including the campaign of Donald Trump. He has spoken of democracy as incompatible with freedom. He has said that he no longer believes that freedom and democracy are compatible.

Alex Karp is the CEO. He has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Frankfurt. He studied under Jürgen Habermas. He knows what he is doing. He has chosen.

Karp has co-authored a book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, in which he articulates his vision of American global dominance through AI-driven warfare. He calls for a new Manhattan Project focused on military AI. He openly celebrates the destruction his company enables.

In an interview with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Karp summed up his philosophy:

“I actually am a progressive. I want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers – I’m trying to be nice here – out of our adversaries.”

Reality is anything but that simple. Palantir’s technology has reportedly been used to kill tens of thousands of people in Gaza and beyond, including many who had nothing to do with Hamas.

These men are not evil because they are monsters. They are evil because they have chosen to be. They have chosen profit over people. They have chosen power over compassion. They have chosen control over love.

III. Palantir in Australia: The Red Carpet

Palantir has been embedded in Australian institutions for years. The company has secured more than $50 million in Australian government contracts since 2013, largely across defence and national security-related agencies. Its clients include:

• The Department of Defence
• The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission
• The Australian Signals Directorate
• The Victorian Department of Justice

In November 2025, Palantir received a high-level Australian government security assessment – the “protected level” under the Information Security Registered Assessors Programme – enabling a broader range of government agencies to use its Foundry and AI platform.

In a Senate debate on March 10, 2026, a Senator Lambie warned that the government was “simply rolling out the red carpet to companies like Palantir, the company that has been linked, by the way, to the targeted killing of journalists and the illegal use of US citizens’ data.” The Senator noted that Palantir is “the leader in the development of agentic AI – artificial intelligence that thinks for itself and makes its own decisions.”

IV. The Coles Partnership: Ten Billion Rows of Data

In 2024, Palantir announced a three-year partnership with Coles Supermarkets. Coles will leverage Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) across its more than 840 supermarkets to better understand and address workforce-related spend. The system will identify opportunities over “10 billion rows of data.”

Coles is also rolling out ChatGPT to its corporate teams, powered by OpenAI’s GPT-5 model.

This is the same technology. The same algorithms. The same logic.

But what is being optimised? Profit. Not people. Not safety. Not justice.

The same technology that optimises workforce spend in Australian supermarkets is the same technology that selects targets in Gaza and Iran. The same algorithms that track workers track enemies. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.

Coles Chief Operating Officer Matt Swindells said the partnership would allow store managers to make “real-time decisions to optimise costs.” He did not mention that those same real-time decisions are being made in Gaza – to optimise kills.

V. The Future Fund: $103 Million in Blood Money

Australia’s Future Fund – the sovereign wealth fund designed to manage and grow public funds – has a $103 million stake in Palantir. That is bigger than the fund’s holdings in Australian companies like AGL, Seek, or data centre owner NEXTDC.

In Senate estimates, Greens Senator Barbara Pocock asked whether Palantir’s human rights record had been considered before the investments were made. The answer: no.

Will Hetherton, the chief corporate affairs officer of the Future Fund, told the committee that the fund doesn’t get involved in selecting individual stocks and that the shares are held through index funds. When asked whether the fund would commit to divesting and establishing “clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, from weapons and from human suffering,” Hetherton said the board would “continue to engage with our managers” but couldn’t commit to what Pocock was asking.

The fund’s justification is that it only excludes companies based on sanctions or treaties the Australian government has ratified – like cluster munitions, anti-personnel mines and tobacco. None of these apply to Palantir.

This is not a defence. It is a confession.

VI. The UK Precedent: “No Gaza Genocide Links in Our NHS”

In the United Kingdom, a coalition of organisations – including Amnesty International UK, Medact, and Healthcare Workers for a Free Palestine – is calling on NHS England to terminate its £330 million contract with Palantir.

Kerry Moscogiuri, Chief Executive of Amnesty International UK, said:

“The NHS constitution states that it belongs to the people, underpinned by core values of compassionate care, dignity and humanity. Those principles must apply not only to doctors and nurses, but also to the companies the NHS chooses to contract with using taxpayers’ money. Any company contributing to human rights violations should have no place at the heart of our NHS. Our message is simple: no Gaza genocide links in our NHS.”

The groups are calling on the UK government to terminate the contract, responsibly divest public sector institutions from Palantir, and introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.

If the United Kingdom can demand this, why can’t Australia?

VII. The UN Report: Profiting from Genocide

The June 2025 UN report by Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, is damning. It singles out Palantir alongside Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Volvo, and major banks for profiting from Israel’s campaign in Gaza.

The report concludes that “Israel’s genocide continues because it is profitable for too many.”

Albanese urges:

• Sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel
• Investigations by the International Criminal Court and national courts into corporate complicity in war crimes
• Accountability modelled on the IG Farben trials after World War Two

She warns that “passive suppliers become deliberate contributors to a system of displacement.”

The Australian government, Coles, and the Future Fund are not passive suppliers. They are deliberate contributors.

VIII. The Kill Chain in Gaza and Iran

The same systems tested in Gaza are now being deployed in Iran.

The Washington Post reported that the US military in Iran has “leveraged the most advanced artificial intelligence it’s ever used in warfare.” Palantir’s Maven Smart System reportedly helped US commanders select 1,000 Iranian targets during the war’s first 24 hours alone.

The Asia Times reports that “similarities between Israel’s bombing of Gaza and Tehran are growing stronger,” with experts warning of a “lack of human supervision over Israeli AI targeting in Iran.”

An Israeli intelligence source described the AI system as transforming the IDF into a “mass assassination factory” where the “emphasis is on quantity and not quality” of kills.

This is the technology that Coles is using to “optimise” workforce spend.

IX. The Choice

This is not an economic choice. It is a choice about what is right.

The Australian government has a choice. It can continue to roll out the red carpet to Palantir, to accept the $50 million in contracts, to allow the Future Fund to hold $103 million in shares.

Or it can walk away.

Coles has a choice. It can continue to use Palantir’s AIP to optimise workforce spend – to identify opportunities over 10 billion rows of data.

Or it can walk away.

The Future Fund has a choice. It can continue to hold Palantir shares, to defend the investment with procedural excuses.

Or it can divest.

The UK is demanding that the NHS terminate its contract with Palantir. Amnesty International is leading the campaign. Medact and healthcare workers are standing up.

What is Australia doing? Rolling out the red carpet.

X. A Call to Action

The Australian government must:

• Terminate all contracts with Palantir.
• Introduce binding ethical standards for public sector technology procurement.
• Investigate whether Palantir’s technology has been used to violate Australian privacy laws.
• Divest the Future Fund from Palantir.

Coles must:

• 
  Terminate its partnership with Palantir.
• Pledge not to use AI systems linked to human rights violations.
• Be transparent about its use of AI in workforce management.

The Future Fund must:

• Divest from Palantir.
• Establish clear ethical investment standards that exclude companies profiting from surveillance, weapons, and human suffering.

The Australian people must:

• Demand accountability.
• Ask their politicians: Why is our government doing business with a company that profits from genocide?
• Support campaigns for ethical technology procurement.

XI. A Final Word

Alex Karp said: “Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.”

It must not continue. Not in Gaza. Not in Iran. Not in Australia.

The same technology that kills children in Gaza is optimising shift rosters in Coles supermarkets. The same algorithms that track migrants for ICE are tracking Australian workers. The same logic that cuts labour costs cuts lives.

The wire is being cut. The garden is growing. The small gods are running out of time.

And Palantir? It will be remembered as the company that chose profit over humanity.

Australia must choose differently.

17 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/richard-deadwood-marles-the-liberal-in-drag/

A profile of Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, and Geelong’s enduring gift to Australian satirists

Meet Richard Donald Marles. Deputy Prime Minister. Minister for Defence. Member for Corio. Product of the Victorian Labor Right, that curious faction where union roots somehow sprout hawkish foreign policy, big-ticket defence contracts, and a preselection culture that makes branch stacking look like a minor administrative irregularity.

He is, in the most precise political sense available, a Liberal wearing a red rosette. Same tough talk on alliances and deterrence. Same fondness for American hardware and AUKUS largesse. Same instinct to defer to Washington on questions that might benefit from an independent Australian view. Wrapped, however, in just enough factional red to keep the true believers satisfied. All suit, no spark, and a remarkable talent for making national security sound like a mildly confusing numbers meeting that ran somewhat overtime.

Richard Marles is Geelong’s enduring gift to Australian satirists. The question is whether Geelong intended it as a gift or an apology.

The Walking Capability Gap

There is a phrase in defence circles for the gap between what a military is supposed to have and what it actually has. They call it a capability gap. Richard Marles is, in his own person, a walking capability gap: the announced function and the delivered result separated by a distance that no procurement budget has yet been able to close.

The man who fronts up as the steady hand on the tiller is the same man under whose watch the Navy wonders where the hulls went, the budget bleeds billions into procurement black holes, and the ANAO produces findings of ethical and competence failures with the regularity of a quarterly report. He is the stumblebum with the plum in his mouth, projecting authority while the institution he manages projects something considerably more ambiguous.

He inherited the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal and turned it into a rolling saga of delays, cost reassessments, and nervous hand-wringing that would be impressive in its consistency if consistency were the quality being tested. Critics, including people in uniform, people in the audit office, and old Labor warhorses who remember when the party had a clearer relationship with its own principles, point to the endless reviews, the production bottlenecks, the twenty-year capability hole while Australia waits for American goodwill and Virginia class boats that may or may not materialise on schedule.

Marles’s signature response to any question about whether the Americans will actually deliver is that periodic reviews are “perfectly natural.” Plan B questions he dodges with the practised ease of a man who has decided that the question itself is the problem. Billions committed. Timelines slipping. The public left staring at a price tag somewhere between two hundred billion and three hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars, depending on which estimate one consults and on which day one consults it, for submarines that remain considerably more promise than propeller.

The Procurement Masterclass

Procurement under Marles has been a sustained masterclass in what might charitably be called bureaucratic swamp-dwelling.

The armoured vehicle deals have produced headlines about billions wasted. The ANAO has produced findings of ethical and competence failures with sufficient regularity that they no longer surprise anyone, which is itself a finding worth examining. The response to each procurement disaster has been a reorganisation, and the response to each reorganisation’s failure has been another reorganisation. The most recent iteration produced something called a Defence Delivery Agency, which was created to fix the procurement problems generated by the previous structural reform, which had been created to fix the problems generated by the one before that.

Wars do not wait for the next reorganisation. Marles’s briefings, apparently, do.

He has poured extra billions into the portfolio. The department continues to be slammed for shortfalls and blowouts. These two facts coexist without apparent embarrassment on anyone’s part, which is perhaps the most remarkable procurement achievement of the period.

The Washington Incident

Then there is the diplomacy, or the performance of it.

Mr Marles flew to Washington at a moment when AUKUS was genuinely uncertain and American goodwill genuinely required active cultivation. The visit produced a clarification from the Pentagon that the encounter with the US Defence Secretary was, in the Pentagon’s own careful formulation, a “happenstance encounter” rather than a formal meeting.

Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence had flown to Washington and bumped into his counterpart in a corridor. The image that lodged in the public mind was of Australia’s most senior defence official as the uninvited guest at the cool table, the one who shows up at the party and discovers, from the expressions on the faces of the other guests, that the invitation was more theoretical than practical.

Mr Marles said it went very well.

The Verbal Vapourware Special

In television studios, Mr Marles has developed a signature style that deserves its own name. Call it the Verbal Vapourware Special.

Classic footage shows him in conversation with Karl Stefanovic on the Today Show, a programme not renowned for its forensic rigour, in which Marles produces word salads of sufficient density that Stefanovic, a man not given to extended silences, fills them by playing Trump clips over the minister’s ongoing remarks. The furrowed brow arrives first. Then the careful pause before the answer that does not quite materialise. Then the vague platitude delivered with the gravity of a man who believes that gravity is itself the substance of the answer.

One moment he is warning of the most complex strategic circumstances since World War Two. The next he is “very close, but we’re not saying how close” on flare incidents, or deflecting capability questions with the expression of a man reading the autocue for the first time while simultaneously trying to remember where he parked.

This is not statesmanlike gravitas. This is the performance of a factional numbers man who is considerably more comfortable in a preselection meeting than a television studio, and who has not, in eleven years of public life, fully resolved the tension between those two environments.

The Liberal in Labor Clothing

Here is the thing about Richard Marles that his factional allies would prefer not to discuss in public. On the questions that actually matter in defence policy, he is more hawkish than many in the Coalition. Pro-American to a degree that occasionally makes Liberal defence spokespeople look like peaceniks by comparison. An enthusiast for American hardware whose enthusiasm is not noticeably tempered by the evidence that the hardware in question is, in the case of the F-35, “predominantly unusable” in the year we are being asked to buy more of it.

He waves the progressive flag with the conviction of a man who remembers 1995 very fondly and has not updated the gesture since. The union pedigree produced a defence hawk. The Labor branding covers a set of instincts that would be entirely at home in the moderate wing of the Liberal Party, which is perhaps why the moderate wing of the Liberal Party has largely ceased to exist. Marles ate its lunch.

He has also, to his credit, stripped medals from Afghanistan-era officers pursuant to the Brereton Report, which required political courage of a kind not always visible in his portfolio management. He has criticised Chinese live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, correctly. He has appointed Lieutenant General Susan Coyle as the first female chief of army, which is a genuinely historic moment.

These are real achievements. They coexist, in the same ministerial career, with the AUKUS cost blowouts, the armoured vehicle disasters, the hapinstance Washington encounter, and the word salads on morning television. This is what a capability gap looks like from the inside.

The Satirist’s Accounting

In a dangerous neighbourhood, with real capability needs and a fuel crisis that has exposed the fragility of everything the defence budget is supposed to protect, Richard Marles is what happens when you take a moderately ambitious right-leaning machine politician, hand him Defence for factional balance, and hope that nobody notices the spark shortage before the next election.

The forehead furrows at pressers. The platitudes accumulate. The procurement disasters generate the reorganisations that generate the next procurement disasters. The submarines remain in the future. The F-35 software remains predominantly unusable. The Geelong refinery burned on Wednesday night, taking with it ten percent of the nation’s fuel supply and fifty percent of Victoria’s, while the minister responsible for the nation’s strategic circumstances was preparing his remarks for the National Press Club.

Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more.

It was about spending better.

He has said this, in various formulations, for the duration of his tenure. The dead wood keeps stacking. The capability gap keeps widening. And Richard Donald Marles, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, remains magnificently, unmistakably, and at considerable public expense, wooden.
Australia’s own Liberal wearing a red rosette. All faction, no fire.

Some bits of good news   –   When Flotillas Fight for Life, Not Empire.  The Verdant Refuge of India’s India’s Sacred Groves.   Near Philadelphia’s New Green Spaces, a Dramatic Reduction in Crime.

TOP STORIES. Regulating the regulators: How the nuclear power industry steers the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Big Tech Is Rushing Into Nuclear Energy, and Bypassing Safety Oversight.

Ceasefire Announced-Destruction Continues- The Illusion of Peace in Lebanon.
A Case for War?- Iran’s Non-Existent Nuclear Weapons Program.
Nuclear costs of the Iran War.

40 years from Chernobyl disaster – What happened to the heroes – and villains – of Chernobyl. 

Climate. Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought. Sea-level rise is a health crisis and we must hold polluters accountable.

AUSTRALIA The Apocalypse Salesman: How Richard Marles Sold Australia’s Future to the Permanent War Economy.

More Australian news at https://antinuclear.net/2026/04/18/australian-nuclear-news-headlines-this-week/

NUCLEAR-RELATED ITEMS

LEGAL. The collapse of multilateral law and the confusion of the battlefields.

MEDIA.

• Chernobyl’s 40-year legacy: haunting photographs from the radiation zone.
• New York Time’s Investigation of How Trump’s War on Iran Started Leaves Out the Paper’s Own Silence.
• Israel Destroys a Synagogue; US Media Yawn.
• Israeli Journalist With Deep Ties to IDF Admits West Bank Violence ‘Looks Like… Ethnic Cleansing’ .
• US’s Erosion of the Right to Cartoon Is No Laughing Matter.

OPPOSITION to NUCLEAR Greenham Women’s Peace Camp: The forgotten protest against nuclear weapons that lasted 19 years.

CND opposes new contract to build nuclear reactors on Anglesey- ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/04/17/1-b1-cnd-opposes-new-contract-to-build-nuclear-reactors-on-anglesey/

POLITICS.

• First new planned US nuclear reactors likely to get government loans, energy chief says.
• Congress A-OK with Trump murdering thousands in Iran and crashing the world economy.
• Swedish taxpayers to take on the burden of financing nuclear power.
• Trump/Newsom Attack Renewables and Push Nuclear.
• “‘This war is the result of a coup.’” 
• Israel is losing its grip on U.S. politics.
• Not clear there is public appetite for nuclear energy in Ireland despite fuel crisis, junior minister says.
• Proposed Scottish nuclear study unlikely to be published before election.

POLITICS INTERNATIONAL and DIPLOMACY.

• Iran rejects Trump claim on deal to surrender nuclear material stockpiles.
• Trump says Iran agrees to hand over ‘nuclear dust’ -ALSO AT https://nuclear-news.net/2026/04/18/2-b1-trump-says-iran-agrees-to-hand-over-nuclear-dust/
• Trump prefers collapsing world economy to admitting defeat in his criminal Iran war.
• It seems Washington needs to be reminded of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Amid the Iran chaos, war over Taiwan just became less likely.
• Netanyahu Doctrine: How one man’s war addiction is consuming Israel, Lebanon, and the World.
• US Aims at Heavy Staff & Budgetary Cuts for United Nations, Seeks to Launch Cost-Saving Artificial Intelligence at UN meetings.
• They Always Tell You Why The Empire Uses Violence, But Never Why Its Enemies Do.

WAR and CONFLICT.

• TRUMP SAYS “ENOUGH”—BUT ISRAEL PUSHES ON IN LEBANON WAR LATEST.
• Mass Destruction in Southern Lebanon as Israeli Forces Use ‘Gaza Tactics,’ Level Villages.
• THIS IS NOT SELF-DEFENSE’: UN EXPERTS BLAST ISRAEL’S ASSAULT ON LEBANON AS WAR CRIME.
• Israel May Be Preparing to Permanently Reoccupy Southern Lebanon.
• Will Trump nuke Iran?
• Ceasefire Exemptions and Quarries of Death: Israel’s War on Lebanon.
• Normalizing zionist terrorism against Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran.
• THE WAR THEY STARTED—AND LOST: HOW THE U.S. AND ISRAEL TRIGGERED A CRISIS THEY CAN’T CONTROL
• A conflict of attrition: Iran’s bet on asymmetric warfare.
• The Art of the Deal Is War.

WEAPONS and WEAPONS SALES. America’s pro-Israel J Street says Israel should pay out-of-pocket if it wants US weapons.

Horror as Russia ‘plans nuclear weapon in space’ that could cause global chaos.

18 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/caps-off-how-mark-hammonds-appointment-completes-labors-capture-by-uncle-sam-and-the-aukus-boondoggle/

Look at the photo[on original] Anthony Albanese, grinning in his USS Vermont baseball cap like a kid who just won a free submarine from the Pentagon’s lucky dip. Beside him, Vice Admiral Mark Hammond, now our incoming Chief of the Defence Force, in his crisp “Chief of Navy” lid, the two of them bonded like old mates who’ve just kayaked Sydney Harbour together over Christmas and strolled San Diego in matching Souths Rabbitohs caps. It’s not subtle. It’s not strategic. It’s surrender cosplaying as mateship.

This week Albanese confirmed what insiders have long known: Hammond, the submariner true-believer who once tried and failed to charm Paul Keating out of his withering contempt for AUKUS, will run the entire ADF from July. Another submariner, Rear Admiral Matthew Buckley, takes Navy. The navy now owns the top two defence jobs while the $425 billion defence spend over the next decade funnels the lion’s share into undersea warfare “anchored by the AUKUS submarine program.”

Translation: the US military-industrial complex just got the keys to the Australian treasury, delivered by a Labor government that once pretended to care about sovereignty.

Keating, to his eternal credit, wasn’t buying the sales pitch back in early 2023. Picture the scene: Hammond, briefcase locked to his wrist, submarine photos ready for the reveal, deploying the full arsenal of Pentagon charm on a man who had already watched one generation of Americans promise the world and deliver the bill. Keating told Marles and Hammond straight that AUKUS is “failed by design.” You can only keep about one-third of a submarine force at sea against a peer enemy. The rest is just expensive metal rusting in dry dock

Hammond’s real mission was never to convert Keating. It was to lock in the man who matters: Albanese. Kayak dates, Rabbitohs solidarity, San Diego photo-ops. The power couple of Australian defence was born. Keating went back to his piano.

And even if the submarines arrive, a proposition on which the actuaries are not taking bets, who exactly is going to crew them? Australia has been scrambling to find qualified submariners for years. The training pipeline is thin, the retention rates are worse, and nuclear submarines demand a level of crew specialisation that takes a decade to build and about eighteen months of a better offer to lose. We are proposing to operate one of the most technically demanding weapons platforms in human history with a workforce we currently cannot fill for the vessels we already have. The recruiters are working weekends. The submarines, theoretically, arrive in the 2030s. The crews, theoretically, materialise sometime after that. In the Pentagon’s spreadsheet this is presumably listed under “Australia’s problem.”

It’s an absurdity that needs the comic genius of Clarke and Dawe to illuminate. My goodness, here they are…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Then there is the small embarrassment that nobody in the AUKUS salesroom wants to dwell on: submarines are yesterday’s technology. The oceans that once hid them are filling up with sensors, autonomous underwater vehicles, satellite-linked surveillance arrays, and drone systems that can stalk a nuclear submarine across an ocean with the patient indifference of a search algorithm. The acoustic and thermal signatures that once dissolved into the depths are now readable. Add the tyranny of distance that always makes Australia’s strategic situation unique, and we are a long, slow bicycle ride from any plausible theatre of war. By the time a Virginia-class boat lumbers north from Perth or Garden Island, the conflict it was sent to influence has already been decided by hypersonic missiles, drone swarms, and electronic warfare conducted at the speed of light. The submarine arrives, metaphorically speaking, to find the furniture already rearranged and the Americans writing the after-action report.

Meanwhile, every serious military analyst watching Ukraine, watching the Persian Gulf, watching the drone campaigns rewriting the rules of engagement in real time, is drawing the same conclusion: cheap, expendable, autonomous systems are eating the lunch of expensive, crewed, prestige platforms. A drone costs thousands. A Virginia-class submarine costs $3.4 billion American, arrives late, requires a crew we don’t have, takes weeks to reach a fight, and can be tracked by technology already proliferating across the Indo-Pacific. We are buying a Rolls-Royce, with a target painted on its roof, for a road that no longer exists.

Michael Shoebridge of Strategic Analysis Australia put the broader problem bluntly: “Hammond’s elevation signals the Albanese government doubling down on its single bet on AUKUS and deepening Australia’s military reliance on the US as the key source of resupply for everything our military would need to fight an actual war. While Europe, Canada, and every other US ally are frantically rethinking assumptions in the age of Trump’s “America First,” cheap drones, and missile shortages, Australia stands lonely in its refusal to admit the world has changed.” Albert Palazzo, former director of war studies for the Australian Army, asks the obvious question nobody in Russell Hill wants answered: “when the person running the entire defence apparatus comes from the service consuming most of the budget, is there any critical oversight at all?”

Binoy Kampmark puts the whole farce with magnificent precision: Australian negotiators resemble “a facsimile of Bertie Wooster in desperate need of the good advice of his manservant Jeeves.”

There is Bertie, enthusiastic, well-connected at the club, constitutionally incapable of recognising a con, signing documents in San Diego while the manservant, who is Washington, quietly pockets the cheque. We have already funnelled $1.6 billion into US naval yards for what amounts to stealthy proliferation that benefits the American military-industrial complex far more than any sovereign Australian capability.

The Virginia-class boats? The US will keep them when it suits, rotate them through our bases under effective American operational control, and leave us holding the nuclear waste, the recruitment crisis, and the bill. Retired Rear Admiral Peter Briggs calls it a “wasteful folly” headed for a “train smash.” Even Malcolm Turnbull, not a man prone to anti-American sentiment on weekdays, labelled Australia the “rich dummy” subsidising Britain’s creaky program.

This is the dark comedy of it all. Labor, the party that once marched against Vietnam and sneered at Yankee imperialism, has become the most compliant vassal in the Anglosphere. Albanese’s “independent” foreign policy is now measured in how enthusiastically we open our chequebook and our bases. Hammond, the perfect courtier with deep Washington contacts and fearless advice that somehow always aligns with the Pentagon, will ensure there is no awkward questioning of the $368 billion black hole.

While the rest of the world pivots to drones, autonomous systems, and missile defence that actually works in actual wars, we are betting the farm on nuclear-powered prestige projects that may never arrive, or may arrive under effective US operational control, crewed by personnel we are still advertising for, travelling very slowly toward a war that ended while we were in transit.

The men who marched against Vietnam are now the men writing the cheques for the Pentagon. The party that was born in the shearing sheds is now the party that holidays in San Diego. The submariners have taken the wheel of a vessel that costs more than any previous generation of Australians could have imagined, moves slower than the conflicts it was designed to fight, and flies, when you look carefully at the fine print, someone else’s flag.

The caps told us everything. We just didn’t want to read them.

This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES

Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.”

Keating said:“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”

“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”

17 April 2026 Dr Andrew Klein, PhD, https://theaimn.net/the-apocalypse-salesman-how-richard-marles-sold-australias-future-to-the-permanent-war-economy/

The Great Distraction

On April 16, 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles stood before the National Press Club and announced the biggest military spending spree in Australian history. An extra $14 billion over four years. An additional $53 billion over the next decade. Defence spending to rise to 3% of GDP by 2033.

“Australia faces its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II,” Marles declared. “International norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continue to erode.”

On the same day, the Prime Minister was flying to Brunei to beg for fertiliser and diesel.

The juxtaposition is obscene. While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, Anthony Albanese was scrambling to secure the basic necessities of Australian life – fuel for trucks, fertiliser for crops, the stuff that keeps the country running

The 100 million litres of diesel from Brunei and South Korea is not a solution. It is a distraction. The government is hoping that Australians will see the headline, breathe a sigh of relief, and stop asking the hard questions.

But the questions remain. And they are damning.

The Severity of the Crisis

The situation is far worse than the government has admitted.

As of April 11, 2026, Australia had 31 days’ worth of diesel, 28 days of jet fuel, and 38 days’ of petrol. These figures are dangerously close to the point where the government would be forced to implement nationwide fuel rationing.

In early April, Energy Minister Chris Bowen disclosed that 144 service stations across the country had completely run out of fuel, with a further 283 stations reporting no diesel supplies. The shortages have been most acute in rural and regional areas – precisely where farmers and truck drivers need fuel the most.

The Geelong refinery fire has compounded the problem. Viva Energy’s refinery is one of only two remaining refineries in Australia. The blaze shut down production at the worst possible moment.

As one Taiwanese media outlet starkly put it, Australia is living a “real-life Mad Max” scenario. The comparison is not hyperbolic. The film franchise depicted a world brought to its knees by fuel scarcity. Australia is now staring into that abyss.

The Root Cause: Structural Failure, Not Bad Luck

This crisis is not a bolt from the blue. It is the predictable consequence of decades of policy neglect.

Australia now imports over 90% of its refined fuel needs. In 2000, the country was almost entirely self-sufficient in petroleum products, meeting nearly 98% of its own demand. That figure has collapsed to just 5.6% for crude oil production.

The Just-in-Time model that has governed Australia’s fuel supply for decades is a house of cards. It prioritises efficiency and low costs over resilience and security. The Asian refineries that supply Australia are themselves dependent on crude oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively closed since late February.

The government has known about this vulnerability for years. In 2010, the NRMA warned that Australia was becoming dangerously dependent on fuel imports from “some of the most politically unstable corners of the globe.” Those warnings were ignored.

The same pattern applies to fertiliser. Australia imports 65% of its urea – the key ingredient in crop fertiliser – from the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz closure has sent prices skyrocketing by 60%. Urea now costs more than $1,550 per tonne, up from $700 before the war.

Farmers are now on “boat watch”, anxiously tracking ships that may not arrive in time for winter planting. “Nothing grows without fertiliser and water,” said canegrower Dean Cayley. He is not exaggerating. Without urea, crop yields can drop by 40%.

The crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.

The 100 Million Litre Announcement: Too Little, Too Late

The shipment secured by Prime Minister Albanese from Brunei and South Korea totals approximately 100 million litres.

Opposition sources have been quick to point out that this volume represents little more than a single day’s supply. Australia consumes roughly 90 million litres of fuel daily. The announcement is not a solution. It is a photo opportunity.

The government has also signed “no surprises” energy agreements with Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. These agreements are not legally binding supply guarantees. They are diplomatic assurances that Australia will be given advance notice if any of these nations consider restricting fuel exports.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of Malaysia was frank about the limitations of the arrangement. “The world looks very different to when you were here last year,” he said. “Global energy markets are under serious stress.” He did not promise that Malaysia would continue supplying Australia indefinitely. He promised that the two nations would talk.

Meanwhile, Australia has no national strategic fuel reserve. The International Energy Agency recommends that member countries hold reserves equivalent to 90 days of net imports. Australia holds approximately 30 days.

The Hidden Story: The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme

The most egregious aspect of this crisis is the one the mainstream media has almost entirely ignored.

Australia’s largest mining companies – BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Fortescue, and Yancoal – continue to receive billions of dollars in fuel tax credits while ordinary Australians struggle to fill their tanks.

The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme is Australia’s largest taxpayer-funded fossil fuel subsidy, costing the budget $11 billion annually. In the 2025 financial year alone, the five largest mining companies were collectively refunded $1.94 billion:

• BHP: $622 million
• Rio Tinto: $423 million
• Glencore: $349 million
• Fortescue: $290 million
• South32: $140 million

Climate Energy Finance has calculated that 18 of the largest diesel consumers in Australia received $3.36 billion in fuel tax credits in the 2025 financial year alone.

The scheme refunds the full customs duty – currently 51.6 cents per litre – paid on imported diesel used off-road in industry. It is a direct transfer of wealth from Australian taxpayers to some of the largest corporations on the planet.

The government is simultaneously pleading with Australians to conserve fuel, subsidising the import of diesel from Asia, and handing billions of dollars to mining companies to continue burning the stuff.

Climate Energy Finance founder Tim Buckley has called for urgent reform, warning that without change, Australia will hand back almost $84 billion in fuel tax credits to major miners by 2030.

The silence from the government is deafening.

The Opportunity Cost: Defence vs. Everything Else

While Marles was marketing the apocalypse, the opportunity cost to Australia became staggering.

The government has announced an extra $14 billion in defence spending over the next four years, with a further $53 billion over the next decade. Total defence spending over the next decade will top out at $887 billion.

Meanwhile, the government has committed a paltry $386 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for 2026–2030. Gavi has helped vaccinate more than 1.1 billion children globally, saving more than 18.8 million lives. It is one of the most cost‑effective health interventions in history.

The government has provided just $5 million to the Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies (APPRISE).

The message is unmistakable: the government is prepared for war. It is not prepared for the next pandemic.

The Manufactured Threat

Marles identified China as the primary threat to peace. He spoke of the need to project Australian military force “anywhere on the planet” to police global trade.

But China has no history of being an aggressor against Australia. It has never threatened Australia. It has never invaded Australian territory. It has never attacked Australian forces.

The only “threat” is that China might replace the United States as a trading partner by offering quality products at better prices and better trading conditions. This is not a military threat. It is an economic threat – to the profits of the defence contractors, to the hegemony of the United States, to the permanent war economy.

Former prime minister Paul Keating, no stranger to plain speaking, previously accused Marles of a “careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence.” Keating said:

“A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and, by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.”

Keating noted the obvious:

“China has not threatened Australia militarily, nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening.”

The Revolving Door

The frequency with which political advisers revolve from the Albanese government into the private sector is striking. In March 2026, Defence Minister Richard Marles’s former policy adviser, Kieran Ingrey, left his position and immediately landed at the lobby shop GRACosway.

This is not an isolated incident. It is the revolving door – the mechanism by which public servants and political advisers convert their access into private-sector profit. The same mechanism that has been documented in the United States.

The Australian Financial Review notes that the practice “is starting to give the impression they’re using parliament as a halfway house.” The impression is correct. The halfway house is not a failure. It is a feature.

Ingrey’s new employer, GRACosway, is a lobbying and strategic communications firm. It represents corporate clients. It does not represent the Australian people. The revolving door ensures that the interests of the defence contractors are well represented – not only in the minister’s office, but in the minister’s mind.

The Silence of the Mainstream Media

The mainstream media has been complicit in downplaying the severity of the crisis. The government’s “no surprises” agreements have been reported as diplomatic victories. The 100 million litre purchase has been framed as a success. The underlying structural vulnerabilities have been glossed over.

The fuel tax credit scheme has received almost no coverage. The billions of dollars flowing to mining companies have been ignored. The fact that Australia has no strategic fuel reserve has been mentioned in passing, then forgotten.

The media is not neutral. It is captured.

A Final Word

Richard Marles did not deliver a defence strategy. He delivered a sales pitch.

The target is China. The enemy is abstract. The threat is manufactured.

The real purpose is the wealth transfer. The real beneficiaries are the defence contractors. The real losers are the Australian people, who will pay for this escalation with their taxes, their security, and their future.

The tickets to the Apocalypse Circus keep hitting the marketplace. The government is selling them. The media is promoting them. The opposition is cheering them on.

And the fuel crisis is not a natural disaster. It is a policy choice.

16 April 2026 David Tyler, https://theaimn.net/the-biggest-peace-time-release-in-our-nations-history/

A Note from the Editor

Readers should be warned that this piece pays deliberate homage to Evelyn Waugh’s exquisitely appropriate fondness for long, winding sentences and his unrivalled capacity to report the facts with deadpan solemnity when our top brass parody themselves most enthusiastically. As Napoleon is said to have observed, one should never interrupt the enemy when he is making a mistake; here, the Defence Minister has been left entirely uninterrupted.

The Biggest Peacetime Increase in our Nation’s History

Being a faithful account of Australia’s National Defence Strategy, 2026, as delivered to the National Press Club, Canberra, on a Thursday, during a fuel crisis, while the Geelong refinery burned.

At ten o’clock on the morning of Thursday the sixteenth of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand and twenty-six, with one of Australia’s two remaining oil refineries still smouldering in Geelong, with the nation’s fuel reserves declining toward five weeks of supply, with the Prime Minister in Malaysia asking Petronas if they had any spare diesel, Defence Minister Richard Marles took to the podium at the National Press Club in Canberra and announced the biggest peacetime increase in defence spending in Australia’s history.

The assembled journalists wrote this down:

Mr Marles, his brow furrowed in the manner of a man who has just remembered an important but elusive appointment, said Australia faced its most complex and threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War Two. He said international norms that once constrained the use of force and military coercion continued to erode. He said the government was pursuing every avenue of increasing defence capability quickly, mostly through bigger defence appropriations but also through accessing private capital. He said delivering the strategy was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.

The assembled journalists continued to write this down, their pens moving with the solemnity of altar boys recording the responses at High Mass.

An extra fourteen billion dollars, Mr Marles said, would be spent on defence over the next four years. An additional fifty-three billion would be set aside over the next decade. By 2033, Australia’s total defence spending would reach three percent of GDP.

A hand went up at the back. Michelle Grattan of The Conversation wished to note that the three percent figure was calculated using the NATO definition of defence spending, which could include certain tangential items not traditionally considered defence expenditure, and that in effect this made the defence spend appear larger than it was.

Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.

It should be noted, for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the history of Australian defence procurement, that the tradition of spending better has a distinguished pedigree in this country.

The Australian War Memorial in Canberra is a monument of considerable architectural grandeur, though its construction budget was exceeded by some margin and it was completed eleven years late. The Collins-class submarine program, conceived in the 1980s to provide Australia with a world-class underwater capability, delivered vessels that were described by their own crews as the finest submarines money could produce, provided that money was prepared to wait for parts, accept considerable noise levels, and develop a philosophical attitude toward the relationship between the planned number of operational submarines at any given moment and the actual number. The Joint Strike Fighter program, now in its third decade of development, has produced an aircraft whose software upgrade was described by the Pentagon’s own Director of Operational Test and Evaluation as “predominantly unusable” throughout the entirety of fiscal year 2025, requires pilots to perform the in-flight equivalent of pressing Ctrl+Alt+Delete to reboot its radar, and achieved precisely no new combat capabilities in the year Australia was asked to order more of them.

Australia currently has seventy-two F-35s on order.

Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.

The Iran War, which began on February 28 and which Mr Marles described as having “greatly complicated” the strategic landscape, has offered several observations about the future of air power that the defence establishment has received with the equanimity of institutions that have already ordered seventy-two aircraft.

The F-35 is a stealth aircraft. Its stealth characteristics are effective against radar. Heat-sensing surveillance, which Iranian forces employed with some enthusiasm in the early weeks of Operation Epic Fury, detects aircraft by their engine exhaust rather than their radar profile, a distinction the stealth coating does not address. Iranian air defences destroyed several F-35s in the opening weeks of the conflict. The United States Air Force confirmed a smaller number of these losses than Iran reported, and a larger number than CENTCOM’s initial press releases suggested, and the investigation into the precise figure is ongoing.

The drone, meanwhile, costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. It is not stealthy. It does not require a software upgrade. It does not need to reboot its radar. It has been used to considerable effect by every party to every recent conflict, and Mr Marles announced on Tuesday that billions of extra dollars would be allocated to drones and counter-drone measures over the next decade.

One notes that the drone allocation comes after the F-35 allocation. One notes further that the counter-drone allocation comes after the drone allocation. One observes that this sequence describes, with considerable precision, the nature of arms races, and that the fifty-three billion dollars earmarked over the next decade will, in the fullness of time, generate its own counter-counter-drone requirement, which will presumably feature in the 2030 National Defence Strategy, also to be delivered at the National Press Club, also while something is on fire somewhere.

Mr Marles said the strategy would put Australia on a path to strong defence self-reliance.

Self-reliance should not, he clarified, be confused with self-sufficiency. Alliances, especially with the United States, would always be fundamental to Australia’s defence.

The United States is currently conducting a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which it cannot safely enter, using destroyers that have already turned around once after being addressed firmly by an Iranian drone, in pursuit of a strategy that has been rejected by a forty-nation coalition including most of Australia’s other allies, and whose defence minister has just told the National Press Club that it is not only about investing more, it is about spending better.

Australia’s contribution to the alliance this week has been a Wedgetail surveillance aircraft based in the Gulf. The Wedgetail is doing, by all accounts, excellent work.

It is perhaps worth pausing here to consider the three armed services whose budgets Mr Marles was expanding. The Royal Australian Navy, the Australian Army, and the Royal Australian Air Force each maintain their own headquarters, their own command structures, their own procurement offices, their own traditions, their own ceremonial requirements, their own disputes with each other about which of them is more fundamental to national defence, and their own opinions about the optimal allocation of the fifty-three billion dollars.

The question of whether three separate armed services, each with its own administrative apparatus, its own officer class, its own retired generals available for corporate board placement and television commentary, represents the most efficient use of the defence budget in an era of joint operations, drone warfare, and a naval blockade being conducted by a single nation in a single strait for reasons that change daily, is a question that has not been asked at the National Press Club today.

Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.

The AUKUS submarine agreement, under which Australia will acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines from the United States at a cost currently estimated at between two hundred and three hundred and sixty-eight billion dollars depending on which estimate one consults and on which day one consults it, was described in the announcement of Vice Admiral Mark Hammond’s appointment as Australia’s new ADF chief as a project toward which he would “continue to bring valuable insight.”

The first submarine is expected to arrive sometime in the 2040s. Mr Hammond will have retired by then. Mr Marles will have retired by then. The children currently in primary school in Australia will be in their thirties by then, at which point they will receive a nuclear-powered submarine and a defence budget representing three percent of GDP calculated using the NATO definition, which can include certain tangential items.

In the interim, Australia’s fuel reserves stand at less than five weeks. The Geelong refinery, which supplies ten percent of the nation’s fuel and fifty percent of Victoria’s, is still being assessed for damage after Wednesday night’s fire. The last tanker carrying pre-war jet fuel is scheduled to dock on Sunday.

The fifty-three billion dollars is allocated over ten years.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said that creative accounting did not defend a single Australian.

Mr Marles said it was not only about investing more. It was about spending better.

The assembled journalists packed up their notebooks.

Outside, on Canberra’s Capital Circle, a government vehicle filled up at the pump. The price per litre was a figure that would have seemed improbable eighteen months ago and now seems, given current trajectories, almost nostalgic.

The National Defence Strategy runs to one hundred and twelve pages. It does not mention the Liquid Fuel Emergency Act 1984, which is also a kind of strategy, and which is sitting in the drawer.

• Where are the AUKUS nuclear waste costings (let alone the dump sites)?
• Australian Political Futures: Is Balancing Optimum Defence Self-Reliance with National Sovereignty Really Possible within US Global Hegemony?
• ​The Merchants of Death in Our Midst.
• Caps Off: How Mark Hammond’s Appointment Completes Labor’s Capture by Uncle Sam and the AUKUS Boondoggle. 
• Richard “Deadwood” Marles: A Liberal Wearing a Red Rosette. 
• The Apocalypse Salesman: How Richard Marles Sold Australia’s Future to the Permanent War Economy. 
• The Biggest Peace Time Release in our Nation’s History. Who’s making money? 
• The arsenal trade after Ukraine and Iran. Not Reporting a War (Part 2) 
• Not reporting a war: How Australia’s media launders a crime (Part 1)How Israel is dragging America to war | The West Report. 
• Australia Must Join The Trump Blockade!