Cathy Eatock gave the following speech to the International Day of Peace rally on September 20 on Gadigal Country, organised by Sydney Anti-AUKUS Coalition and Stop the War on Palestine. 

AUKUS ties us irrevocably to the United States war machine.

Australia has previously blindly followed the US into the war on terror which led to the deaths of an estimated 4.7 million people in Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Now the Anthony Albanese government has, astoundingly, followed Scott Morrison into AUKUS, without question or public discussion. The obscene cost of $368 billion over 30 years means hospitals, aged care homes, housing, education, the National Disability Support Scheme, dental and mental health services, and Aboriginal communities won’t receive the funding we need.

With each submarine having its own nuclear reactor, its radioactive waste will need to be stored here.

But Aboriginal people have repeatedly rejected even low-grade medical uranium waste being stored on their lands. The Aboriginal communities of Maralinga, Emu plain and Montebello Islands have already borne the brunt of nuclear testing.

Pacific peoples in the Marshall Islands, Christmas Island, French Polynesia and Kiribati have endured 315 nuclear weapons tests. It is the Pacific and Aboriginal communities that continues to suffer that legacy.

As well as the initial deaths,........

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