While the secret signals and surveillance facility at Pine Gap in Northern Australia, officially named the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG) is billed as a joint affair between Australia and the United States, it is nothing of the sort.  Just as offices direct the callow intern to make the coffee, Australian officials remain America’s permanent interns, helpful, certainly, but never powerful or given challenging roles.  The contempt with which Australians are treated is shown by the level of secrecy that continues to enshroud one of the largest signals intelligence centres outside the United States.

It is this secrecy that does, from time to time, make its way into court.  For this, we can thank those plucky protestors who have, over the years, sought to expose the role of the base in aiding US military operations against targets in any number of locations unbeknownst to the Australian parliament, and not even the Australian Prime Minister and Cabinet.  

Two of those protestors, Carmen Escobar Robinson and Tommy Walker, brought attention to the base’s activities when they blocked Hatt Road, the main access route to Pine Gap in October 2023.  On 27 November 2023, a second effort was made that temporarily prevented some 100 Pine Gap employees from entering the facility.  Robinson and Walker were part of a group of 50 activists, an eclectic makeup of health workers, community members, and the Arrernte Traditional Owners, all steered by the social justice outfit Mparntwe for Falastin.  The action had been enlivened by revelations from an ex-Pine Gap employee that intelligence from the base was finding its way to Israeli sources.

The revelations, published in Declassified Australia by Peter Cronau, came from David Rosenberg, a veteran of the US........

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