Activists from across the continent will converge on the Pine Gap spy base in Central Australia in July for three days of protest and discussion.
Pine Gap is the largest and most important US spy base in Australia and its most important surveillance base outside the US.
Pine Gap controls US spy satellites that monitor one third of the globe including the Middle East, China, North Korea and parts of Russia. It collects and analyses weapons signals, radar signals, communications transmissions including phone, radio, internet and military, and microwave transmissions. The data identifies targets for drone and missile strikes.
Former Pine Gap employee David Rosenberg told Declassified Australia, “Pine Gap is monitoring the Gaza Strip and surrounding areas with all its resources and gathering intelligence assessed to be useful to Israel.” Pine Gap helps Israel commit genocide in Gaza and helps the US and Israel wage war on Lebanon and Iran.
Anthony Albanese likes to claim that his government is “not involved” in the US and Israeli war on Iran or in Gaza.
But Pine Gap’s role makes the Australian government deeply complicit in aiding Israel’s military operations. It must be shut down.
Hilary and Violet, two organisers from Mparntwe for Falastin in Alice Springs, 18 kilometres from Pine Gap, spoke to a forum in Sydney about the plans for the protest convergence.
Hilary explained that the convergence aims to highlight local Indigenous opposition to the base and the injustice where “Pine Gap has a lease in perpetuity, whereas a lot of the traditional owners of Pine Gap live in insecure housing in one of the town camps in abject poverty”.
“We know that Pine Gap is clearly complicit in the horrors of this unchecked genocide in Palestine, and further across West Asia and globally as well. So what we’re wanting to do with this convergence is bring together these intersecting struggles and people involved in these struggles.”
The convergence also marks 60 years since Australia signed the Pine Gap treaty with the US in 1966.
“The first two days are going to be a series of plenaries and workshops and discussions,” Violet explained. “And then the third day we’re doing public protests.
“The first day will be talking about colonialism and imperialism, here and abroad. The second day we’ll be focusing on Pine Gap, AUKUS and how we’re going to break Australia’s US alliance.
“Part of that discussion will be about Pine Gap and its role here. But we’ll also widen it out to Australia’s connection to the US alliance and the overall US military footprint in Australia, in the Asia Pacific region, and globally.”
US bases
There is a wider expansion of US bases going on across Australia. “In terms of the Northern Territory, there’s been the expansion of the Tindal airbase near Katherine to allow for nuclear-capable B52 bombers to operate out of there and the expansion of jet fuel silos in Darwin for those B52s in the case of war”, Violet explained.
“The war here that the US is preparing for and pre-positioning for is the potential war with China.
“There’s also the possibility of the Chandler nuclear waste dump being built in the central desert region, which would potentially store nuclear waste from AUKUS submarines.
“We also want to platform some local stories and issues: the struggles for land rights, the history of Town Camps and the Intervention and the struggle for housing here, as well as the struggle against incarceration of First Nations people in the NT.”
The NT has the second highest rate of imprisonment in the world compared with other countries, with more than 1 per cent of the population incarcerated. More than 80 per cent of prisoners are Indigenous.
“Those rates have skyrocketed since August 2024 with the election of the CLP [Country Liberal Party]. And there have been some really serious changes to the laws around locking people up, denying bail, reducing the age of criminal responsibility back down to 10 years old,” Violet said.
“We want to network among people from all around the continent about how we’re going to break Australia’s ties to the US alliance.”
By Luke Ottavi
