A large crowd gathered in Town Hall Square to protest AUKUS and militarisation in the South Pacific on Wednesday.
Originally billed as a protest against the Quad, a strategic alliance between Australia, India, Japan and the United States, the object was broadened following the cancellation of the Quad summit scheduled to be concurrently held in Sydney. The event, organised by the Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition, follows the recent G7 summit in Hiroshima and the 6 May rally in Port Kembla against the submarine base proposed for the area.
Feiyi Zhang of the Sydney Anti-AUKUS Alliance chaired the protest, noting the prior action in Port Kembla. Zhang emphasised the cost of the submarine deal, citing the CSIRO for determining that $500bn — the approximate price tag — could “fully transition” Australia to renewable energy.
James Miranda, Assistant Secretary of Australian Young Labor and National Policy Officer of the Electrical Trades Union, spoke on the brunt of war carried by the young and the working class.
“At the end of the day, it won’t be the hawks at the [Australian Strategic Policy Institute] or the [Institute for Public Affairs], nor their lapdogs in the media or walking the halls of Parliament, that are asked to go out there and die in a war with China. It will be people in my generation, people with no vested interests, who never asked for a policy of military escalation, who are sacrificed for a cause our leaders don’t even seem fully capable of articulating to us,” Miranda said.
Marcus Strom, a journalist, former president of journalists’ union MEAA Media and spokesperson of the recently formed Labor Against War group, addressed the preparations for war in the Asia-Pacific by major powers.
Strom stated that the Quad and G7 “seem to be suffering mission creep”, going from “collaborators on trade and economic development” to “bodies set on containing China and beating the drums of war”.
“AUKUS is a war pact of the Anglosphere and an albatross around Australia’s attempts to build fair trade and peaceful relations in our region.”
Strom called on the government to review the AUKUS pact “with a view to withdrawing,” and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Gem Romuld, Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons Australia and founding member of Wollongong Against War and Nukes, expressed disappointment at the Albanese Government’s continuation of its predecessor’s foreign and defence policies.
“I, like many of you, potentially hoped that the Albanese Labor government would not follow in the footsteps of Scott Morisson. But it did, and this new government is taking us in the opposite direction of what so many of us want — a nuclear-free and an independent foreign and defence policy.”
Joining Strom, Romuld called for the government to ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as Labor has pledged to since 2018.
Romuld noted that the US and UK have “no solution” for disposal of nuclear-power subs and said that waste will be dumped on “remote Aboriginal land”. The UK now has twice as many decommissioned submarines as operational ones and no vessels decommissioned since 1980 have been disposed of.
Acknowledging the recent rally there, Rumold declared, “The submarine base will never be built in Port Kembla.”
Mahesh Radhakrishnan of Hindus for Human Rights-ANZ lamented the use of Hinduism for non-peaceful purposes as Indian PM Narendra Modi visits Sydney on a trip initially intended for the QUAD meeting.
Speaking about AUKUS, Radhakrishnan said it is “deeply concerning that this is a strategic move that is heading towards aggression with China, and we would like to see steps taken to deescalate that”.
“We want a world of cooperation between…all countries, and we want a world where the cooperation is not based on increasing militarisation and increasing conflict, but is based on positive things.”
Radhakrishnan sang a song for peace, with the audience in time clapping along to the rhythm.
A bucket was brought around to raise donations for the Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition before the protest ended with a march along Bathurst St, Pitt St and Park St before returning to Town Hall.