Tomorrow, when the war began

The expansion of Tindal air base in the Northern Territory to host six nuclear capable B-52 bombers, raises further questions about Labor’s approach to militarism and Australia’s sovereign integrity.

Australia’s military posture has shifted dramatically under the Labor Government and Defence Minister Richard Marles (Source: X)

The recent announcement to expand Tindal air base in the Northern Territory to accommodate six US nuclear capable B-52 bombers, increases the already substantial US military presence in the country, and continues down the path towards rapid militarisation under the Albanese’s Labor government. The deployment is clearly in place so send a message to Beijing, but also to Australians, that war with China is almost an inevitability, and Australia’s role in it is all but certain.

In a term and a bit, along with the decision to base Stratofortresses in the Top End, it has been a modern Labor government that has codified and expanded on AUKUS in the miasma left behind by Scott Morrison. Since 2022, Labor has approved the expansion of US Marine Rotational Force in Darwin, granted US-Australia Force Posture Agreement enhancements, allowed the designation of Australia as a US domestic military technology source, while granting the broader northern base infrastructure upgrades for US operations, which includes quality low cost housing and facilities that everyday Australians can’t imagine.

At the same time that Australia is oddly refusing to ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, at Tindal, among the buzz of activity, the decision may be reflective of the brand-new multi-million dollar bunker that holds all sorts of accoutrements and ordinance to fit out the nuclear capable B-52 bomber. Penny Wong refused to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons stored in bunkers at Tindal, leaving Australians to glean the answers to another crucial public issue from the firmament rather than from her secretive government, and one could only think that if there was a nuclear weapon somewhere in Australia to be denied, there is a good chance it may be stored inside this government approved bunker.

The B-52s in isolation are a concern, but along with the constant hum of the war machine, and the spate of sovereign handovers, foreign bases, and total obedience to Washington, everything stacks up, and the obsessive creep to war sits out awkwardly among a nation that was looking for anti-corruption, housing and climate action, but got a proto-authoritarian foreign and private influenced political entity, fast tracking warlike policies to the contrary.

All these militaristic developments, coupled with unprecedented sovereign compromise, have happened underneath the Albanese government who came into power in 2022 talking about fairness and everyday Australians, promising to be tough on corruption and declaring an end to the climate wars. Yet since taking government, Labor has spent its first term-and-a-bit hiding NACC’s, opening carbon bombs, while talking almost exclusively about defence and security, using vague statements like ‘shared values’ and ‘a prosperous indo-Pacific’ as complex lexicon for getting around the simple fact that the ALP is militarising our nations future.

There was a piece of literature in the 1990s that dominated the Australian young adult fiction genre; John Marsden‘s best selling series ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ was essential reading for all young Australians, and was thrust into the high school curriculum nationwide. The books were set in a fictional version of Australia whereby a not quite distinguished enemy of Asian appearance invades and captures Australia, brushing aside our military, and occupying the country. The main characters were a group of young white Australians, with a couple of ethnic kids in tow, who lived in a fictional rural stretch of Australia called ‘Wirrawee’. Living as fugitives from the occupying power, the protagonists evolve from anxty Aussie teens to hardened paramilitary insurgents over the course of seven installments.

You could be forgiven for thinking this fantastical book could have inspired some of the fanciful views that define our current national trajectory towards militarism and war-readiness. But for over half a decade, the hostile climate for confrontation in Asia with our largest trading partner in Beijing has been set by a media and political class who are telling a fictional story, fraught with contradictions, flying in the face of the contradictory realities that inform the public.

Nine Paper storytellers Peter Hartcher and Matthew Knott were the part of the cohort of co-authors of this aggressive new stanza in the medias graphic war-novel about a militarised Australia. Their nefarious and hyperbolic ‘Red Alert’ series of articles in the Sydney Morning Herald suggested an imminent ‘Tomorrow When the War Began’ style invasion by our largest trading partner, China. The mainstreaming of this invasion narrative was continued in the second most concentrated press market in the world, including at the ABC, where a once broader objective reporting on Asia was replaced by propagandised war-time messaging that speaks in ones and zeros about the inevitability of war with China.

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy stood in defence of his government’s decision to continue to grant a $20 million contract to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit only moments before Israel had been declared a genocidal state by the United Nations, telling Australians to suck it up and making ‘no apology’ for what he saw as the best decision for our troops. Conroy, a career politician and party zealot, who probably spent more time hanging at the Labor Party as a young fella then he did at the local milk bar, has been a part of the squad led by Defence Minister Richard Marles that is trampling over reason, international law, national interest and logic - at odds with the Australian public and party membership – to pursue a dangerous militarisation in line with the US agenda without bothering to consider the consequences.

At the same time Conroy stood before Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Mark Hammond talking about the dangers of Australia’s exposed sea lanes, the Royal Australian Navy was involved in aggressive freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea (SCS)- the cognitive dissidence at such a crucially high-level is staggering - and one action doesn’t seem to do anything logical about solving the other. Under a newly militarised Australia, where we stalk the territorial waters of our largest trading partner, and strange Orwellian ideas like ‘peace through strength’ circulate around the Anglosphere - things don’t add up - including welcoming Israeli weapons manufacturers Rafael and Elbit to a Sydney weapons expo to showcase the same weapons systems that killed Australian Zomi Frankcom in a clearly marked aid vehicle on the coast of Gaza in 2024.

A Spike missile manufactured by Rafael, carried by an Elbit Systems drone, delivered the lethal payload that murdered Australian Aid Worker Zomi Frankcom. In April 2024. IDF reserve Major General Yoav Har-Even, former president and CEO of Rafael Advanced Defence Systems Ltd delivered the compromised investigation into Zomi’s death, Special Adviser Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin’s report for the Albanese government was nothing more than whitewash – and seeing our government this week protecting the rights of the companies that killed Zomi Frankcom, with no action taken in her name, none of this can come as a surprise. Yet it doesn’t make it any less appalling. Nefarious genocidal defence companies and our Labor government sit together at the table, not as strange bedfellows, but as ideologically aligned entities doing business together as per the remit. And we all see it.

While Canberra apes into AUKUS over-extending into an over-complex capability that will probably never eventuate, the ADF is signalling the impacts of budget cuts on the things that it actually has and cannot afford to operate, among alarming internal issues regarding harassment and abuse against servicewomen. It seems like US military hard-wiring on our sovereign shores is a bipartisan policy in Canberra, and an absolute priority, coming at the cost of everything else, even a functioning military. With former PM’s of both persuasions, academics, experts and the popular opinion concerned about the costs of losing sovereign agency - the nation is banging the drum for all of this to slow down at the very least - and a runaway political elite is forging through in contrast with a sovereign fire-sale in lieu of any national responsibility or concern for their elected duty to protect our independent country.

When asked at question time about the poverty that 3.7 million Australians experience every day, Defence Minister Richard Marles pointed to the importance of the billions of dollars being overspent on the military, speaking of the weapons expo he ghoulishly called the weapons on display ‘beautiful, menacing and really cool’. With people like Marles grating against the national and public interest, essentially saying “let them eat submarines”, and all the speed and hurried nature of this sovereign transfer supported at all levels of government and bureaucracy - it sometimes feels like Australia is under a sovereign handover executed by a Vichy style bipartisan political entity that is working directly for a foreign power.

Like any nation that comes to grips with a political situation that sees its sovereignty ceded by a malicious government, freedom becomes a topic that begins to dominate the population. Surrounded by a militaristic political class working counter-intuitive to the best interest of the nation, drumming marginalised Australians into a war sometime tomorrow, Australians are destined to clash with a deluded power in Canberra for something as totally reasonable as the issue of sovereignty. And for a government so concerned about social cohesion, it may be in its interest to ensure it does its bit, by at least appearing to stand for Australia, before it becomes a real obstacle to the right of any nation: the freedom to be independent.