Seeing Red: AUKUS - a central issue in the Fremantle mayoral elections

SEEING RED is an irregular column on Fremantle Shipping News by Barry Healy*. In this piece, Barry argues AUKUS should be a central issue at the forthcoming local government elections in Fremantle.

There is a myriad of large and small issues that will be ventilated leading up to the October council and mayoral elections. But above them all stands the matter of the AUKUS pact between Australia, the USA and the UK.

AUKUS is a federal matter to which Fremantle is not a signatory. But like it or not, Fremantle is a nexus point in what the Australian Parliamentary Library website says is “the febrile geopolitical climate in the Indo-Pacific region.”

In effect, Fremantle residents are at the receiving end of a “trickle down” of federal and state government war-mongering policies that have been developed in secret. At the Council elections we can express an opinion and start the public debate on the militarised future that is unfolding before us.

AUKUS: secretive and dangerous

AUKUS was sprung on the Australian people by then-PM Scott Morrison in September, 2021. The announcement was totally undemocratic. There had been no public or parliamentary discussion or approval beforehand. Far from decrying the deal, the ALP fell into line behind it and has deepened Australia’s involvement while in government.

There were many ALP voters who hoped that AnthonyAlbanese would follow in John Howard’s famous footsteps and declare AUKUS a “non-core” election promise and simply dump it. But the bitter cup of AUKUS is still before us.

As is well known, AUKUS commits Australia to spend tens of millions of dollars per day for 30 years to obtain attack submarines to operate off the coast of China. These submarines (if they ever appear, which is another stupidity in the mix) will be used to contain China, not to protect Australia.

Via AUKUS, our federal government has signed onto the USwar drive against China, for no good reason. The US is lashing out at China because the Chinese economy is superseding its economy. The claim is made, without evidence that if China rises to a similar hegemonic world status as the US has currently then it will behave in the same violent and oppressive manner that the US does today.

The USA is a failing empire, fatally decaying internally before our eyes. Australia should be disengaging from it, establishing an independent foreign policy and seek to undo the damage done around the world by the US “rules based order.”

China has never been a threat to Australia. However, Australians, at least white Australians have been induced to hate and fear China since around the 1850s.

That led to the White Australia Policy and Australian troops being sent to Vietnam. Over 500 Australians died in Vietnam. Australian soldiers killed an unknown number of Vietnamese independence fighters because of that manufactured racist fear. And yet here we are again.

Fremantle and the forced growth of war industries

It is little known in our community that the foolish nuclear submarine deal is only one part of the AUKUS arrangements, known as Pillar 1. Possibly even more insidious is Pillar 2.

Pillar 2, we are told by an article on the federal Parliamentary Library website, is “an open-ended, multilateral arrangement involving military industrial integration and multi-nation force interoperability.”

That is: Australia’s armed forces and our industrial capacity is to be “interoperable” with the US military. The WA government has fallen into line behind Pillar 2.

Paul Papalia as Minister for Defence Industries has charge of the “vision” of a “coordinated effort, robust community engagement, and productive relationships with the Australian Government and other stakeholders” to achieve a “world-class defence industry that diversifies the State’s economy” with “tangible benefits for the local community.”

The WA Labor government is hell-bent on developing war industries as WA’s second-biggest employer, eclipsing agriculture. The “vision” is for the state’s largest employers to be first mining, then death, then food.

Companies implicated in war systems technologies are already operating their blood-stained business out of offices in Fremantle.

The irony of China being our biggest trading partner for minerals exports and potentially a massive buyer of our agricultural produce but at the same time being the target for our war industries does not seem to have occurred to anyone in power.

These policies mean that Australia’s largest naval base, HMAS Stirling, just south of Fremantle, is being expanded to accommodate US and UK nuclear powered submarines on rotation as of 2027 and is envisaged as the home port for Australia’s future nuclear powered submarine fleet under AUKUS.

As yet only in water maintenance will be undertaken at Stirling and the licence granted by federal authorities is only to manage and temporarily store low level waste. However, there is open discussion of the facility expanding to include dry dock maintenance, which means radioactive waste being stored on land in Henderson.

Mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge’s US tour

This is the overall context for Mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge’s September 2024 tour of the USA as part of a delegation of mayors and councillors organised by the Perth South West Metropolitan Alliance of councils, chaperoned by minders from the Australian Submarine Agency, the lead agency for the AUKUS submarine project.

She should never have participated in it.

In the report given to Council in January this year it was said that the visit was to see how US war industries build “a social license with their communities.” It is precisely that “social licence” that must be contested in this local election.

“The economic impact of defence in the US is significant and as such they are a significant part of their local communities and local government relationships,” Fremantle Councillors were told by Council officers at their January 2025 meeting.

Of course, defence industries are enormously important at a local level in the USA. All levels of US social service and infrastructure have been starved of funding for over a generation. According to the Australian Parliamentary Library, in 2024 the US was the world’s biggest spender on its military, wasting just a shade under $1 trillion on it.

US communities have no alternative to making themselves beholden to what Bob Dylan described as “the Masters of War.”

Bizarrely, the justification for the Mayor’s visit was stated as aligning with Fremantle’s Liviable City strategic plan, which speaks of making “the city centre a safe and desirable place to live.”

Fremantle Council’s Our Plan for the Future Strategic Community Plan 2024-2034 is full of beautiful pictures of happy families, many illustrating our city’s multicultural nature. There are no photos of mushroom clouds or dead Chinese people, but where else are we headed?

In fact, it looks like Fremantle’s planned future is to have our prevailing southerly winds wafting over us from a nuclear facility to our south and the only employment opportunities for our youth to be with death-dealing.

The Thriving City was another of the strategic plan items used as justification for the mayoral tour. But how would it be if Fremantle elevated international peace and development as its “attraction and retention plan” for our Thriving City?

Nuclear free Fremantle policy

Fremantle’s Nuclear free Fremantle policy can be easily found on the internet. It was adopted in 1980, renewed 25 years ago and is to be reconsidered after August 25 this year.It only refers to areas within the control of the Council, but it is rigorous. It is to ensure that the “whole municipality of Fremantle is a nuclear free zone.”

Given that the HMAS Stirling base is to maintain US nuclear submarines, meaning that radioactive waste is to be stored there, one section of Fremantle’s policy is particularly pertinent, because it has wider implications:

“Council opposes the development of a nuclear waste facility in Western Australia, in particular it opposes any attempt to ship nuclear waste or products related to the construction of such a facility through Fremantle.” [Emphases added]

As was seen in the Desperate Measures exhibition at the Fremantle Arts Centre earlier this year Fremantle has a marvellous history as a centre for the peace movement. The Nuclear free Fremantle policy was a product of that courageous movement. And that raucous campaign was significant in Jo Vallentine’s 1985 election as Nuclear Disarmament Party senator.

Our community can speak truth to power and make a difference. When Fremantle took a stand on the celebration of January 26 it had national influence. Paul Papalia says that he wants “robust community engagement.” Let’s give it to him!

We should not be afraid of standing against war. In the coming Council and mayoral elections every candidate must be called to task on AUKUS. Anything less than total opposition is insufficient.

By Barry Healy

* Barry Healy is a life-long Marxist who first came to Perth in the 1970s to establish the Resistance young socialist group. He was a founder of the Green Left and currently edits the Culture section of the Red Spark website.

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