VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
(Above: The US puppets here are planning to curtail people’s protests against AUKUS. Photo: Matt Hkrak, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0)
A statement issued in a defence report about Defence Force Aid to the Civil Authority has carried all the hallmarks of moves in Canberra to consider military deployments into Australian civil society. (1) While the main heading of the report provided concern about domestic terrorism following the Bondi shootings, reference to 'no-warning exercises involving whole-city terrorism', would tend to convey widespread insurrection, and the move toward military personnel conducting counter-insurgency and counter-intelligence operations in Australian society. (2)
The report follows revelations in January of a new national command within the Australian Federal Police centred on security for the AUKUS nuclear submarine project. The AUKUS Command includes public order management (see: Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US Department of War - Michael West )
The report also refers to 'a potential use of force … envisaged and … containment of a large-area terrorist site', which would tend to indicate areas of Australia being cordoned off with the use of military-style barriers and manned checkpoints to restrict access and egress for the general population. (3)
The plan would appear to also include Defence personnel being integrated into 'planning and operational capabilities for homeland security … alongside … the counter-terrorism relationship that exists between the ADF and different police forces … despite the increased capabilities of police tactical units'. (4)
We have previously reported on Australian soldiers training for Australian civil conflicts (see: Vanguard: Australian soldiers training for civil conflicts ).
More recently, on June 11, the City of Port Adelaide Enfield issued a notice to residents that the Australian Army would be carrying out Exercise Rhino Resolve on the weekend, then two days away, at Osborne, Edinburgh, and Woodside. “The training helps Army personnel to be prepared to respond to a domestic security situation, defend Australia’s territory, and protect citizens during a response.”
The Council notice continued: “During the exercise, you may notice more military activity than usual in the area. This could include military vehicles coming in and out of Defence sites on the peninsula, and soldiers moving around within Defence areas wearing body armour, helmets, and carrying weapons. Civilian “role players” will also be interacting with soldiers as part of the training scenario.
“Some soldiers may carry weapons using blank ammunition for training purposes. There will be no live ammunition used at any time, and no blank ammunition will be fired within the Osborne Naval Shipyard.”
The exercise sets a dangerous precedent for Australia where the military apparatus overrides civilian life. As we said in our article on Australian soldiers training for civil conflicts, we need to remember the military definition of “protection” when we read reports of ADF personnel practicing its implementation.
That is particularly relevant when the Army is carrying out training exercises in the vicinity of the submarine shipyard at Osborne.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise to find the recent Canberra defence report also stated the Australian military 'has much to contribute to security at home … with … intelligence'. (5) Examples from the previous Cold War, however, have provided chilling pictures of wholesale abuse of democratic processes and widespread repression, totally politically unaccountable at the time. The profiling of whole subject populations, by the US, including that of allies and perceived adversaries, has been well recorded in declassified documents. (6)
The recent political scandal in Tasmania where a Hobart City Councillor was suspended following their use of a decades-old ASIO file about the parents of Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds 'in an attempt to cause political harm', is evidence of the practice being used in Cold War Australia. (7) The availability of the supposedly secret file also remains a matter for consideration with uses and abuses of power inside the present-day corridors of power. Reynolds is the daughter of historian Henry Reynolds and former Queensland ALP senator Margaret Reynolds, both well-known for their advocacy of Australian First People's rights to self-determination, and for their opposition to AUKUS.
It should, therefore, also come as no surprise to find the Defence Force report was totally dismissive of the Australian civil liberties lobby. The military had assessed the lobby as having 'raised concerns about the dangers of excessive involvement by our armed forces in domestic security, especially where it involves the use of force, (but) this appears to be an elite debate that does not resonate with the public'. (8)
This is not the Australia our people want to live in.
It demonstrates the extent to which the US and their lap dogs in Australia will go in their futile attempt to maintain US global hegemony. AUKUS is exactly about that - not Australia's defence and security - and the warmongers are taking no chances of it being threatened by the community. This is what they really mean by "a domestic security situation".
1. How ADF could help prevent Bondi 2.0 terror attack, The Defence Report Supplement, Australian, 2 June 2026, column 3.
2. Ibid., column 7.
3. Ibid., column 3.
4. Ibid., Columns 3, 7 and 8.
5. Defence Report, Australian, op.cit., column 5.
6. See: Secret Army's war on the left, The Observer (London), 18 November 1990; and Lost History: Project X., The Consortium Magazine, 31 March 1997; and, Army's Project X had wider audience, The Washington Post, 6 March 1997; and, Counter Insurgency Operations, US Army Report: 19960709 052.
7. See: Councillor barred for ASIO file attack, Australian, 23 April 2026.
8. Defence Report, Australian, op.cit., column 8.