The headline in the Weekend Australian said it all: NT Bases Key to American War Plans. Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, the Chair of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Australian, after a ten day visit to Australia that our geography offered key advantages to the US “as it sought to deter Chinese aggression”. Indeed, the north would become “the central base of operations in the Indo-Pacific to counter the threat.’ Defence Minister Marles added his voice to the crusade explaining that after AUSMIN talks in the US last week that America’s military was now “operating in Australia across land, sea, air, cyber and space”. This all followed the commitment earlier in the year to spend $18 billion in the coming decade on upgrading defence bases across the north.

Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy declared that the Northern Territory was “critical to the defence of the nation, not just in defending Australia but projecting power out into our region against any potential adversary”.

What is most striking here is the ease with which the American authorities assume proprietorial rights to occupy and employ our territory as a base for future aggression, and the comfortable complicity of the federal ministers. Historical antecedents arise inescapably. They takes us back to the way in which the Menzies Government handed over the Montebello Islands along with Maralinga and Emu Fields in Central Australia to Britain in order to carry out its atomic testing between 1952 and 1963. There was no consultation with the traditional owners in the 1950s and as far as anyone can tell none whatsoever with the First Nations of the........

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