VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
A new set of policies on Australian exports introduced last November has been designed to make local research and development interoperable with that of our AUKUS “partners”, the US and UK imperialists.
Hugh Jeffrey, Australia’s Deputy Secretary of Strategy, Policy, and Industry made the announcement during a Canberra speech sponsored by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank.
Hugh Jeffrey has had 4 overseas postings, including as Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Australia in Washington DC and to NATO in Afghanistan, where he was Senior Adviser to the International Security Assistance Force Commander and the NATO Ambassador.
Jeffrey said that the changes will mean “a net decrease in regulatory compliance costs, and actually expand the amount of research that can occur internationally without a permit”.
“…with the national exemption for export permits from the US and UK, (the changes will) remove regulation from $5 billion of almost $9 billion in annual Australian defence exports.”
That will please not just the American and British, but also our good friends in the Zionist genocidal army to which we are exporting arms and technology.
But local researchers outside the US loyalists in the Australian military, public service and government, are worried about the implications.
The president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, Chennupati Jagadish, was concerned about the prospect of a brain drain towards the military. “My ability to attract the best and brightest in the world, wherever they are, will diminish,” he said. “It’s timely to ask what Australia is really seeking to secure if we are restricting the development of technologies that are critical for the future of our country?”
Even people in the US close to their military are surprised at the gullibility of their Australian servants.
Bill Greenwalt, who as a staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote many of the US export control rules, said he thought “Australia just gave up its sovereignty and got nothing for it.”
Greenwalt, also a former US deputy undersecretary of Defense for industrial policy, warned that incorporating many of the principles of the International Trafficking in Arms Exports (ITAR) regulations to gain access to US nuclear submarine technology would set Australia back 50 years.
The changes are designed to more closely bind Australia to the United States and Britain in return for access to the technology and intellectual property that comes with the primary goal of the AUKUS agreement — buying and building nuclear-powered attack submarines.
The gullibility extends to a promised gift to the US of A$4.7 million to pump prime their submarine production at a time when there is no guarantee of that happening. A matching contribution of US$3 billion has yet to pass Congress, held up by the same Republicans who are hoping for a Trump return to the Presidency.
Editor of the online Australia Pacific Defence Reporter, Kym Bergmann, commented yesterday: “In the US the return of Donald Trump to the Presidency is suddenly looking more likely – and if he scraps AUKUS it might do us all a favour by bowing to the inevitable.”
Commenting on US-Australia relations, former Senator and submariner Rex Patrick wrote yesterday that “There are no guarantee the US will actually deliver. US national interests will always take precedence.”
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also said yesterday that under AUKUS, Australia has ‘lost all sovereignty, all agency’.
Australia will never have the capacity for independent decision-making in matters of foreign policy so long as our economy is dominated by the US, and our ruling circles are blindly loyal to US imperialism.
Related reading: Client State: Australia the "51st state of the US" for deadly weapons destruction by Farah Abdurahman