A coalition of activist groups gathered at Sydney Town Hall on Saturday to protest against Australia’s involvement in the controversial AUKUS treaty and acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines.
The event organised by the recently established Sydney ANTI-AUKUS Coalition, was one of several, hosted in capitals across the country.
The rally began with speeches at Town Hall in Sydney’s CBD, before marching to Belmore Park.
Dr. Hannah Middleton, who has been a peace activist for almost 60 years, said that it was the prospect of nuclear and military weaponry influence in Australia that had brought her out to protest against AUKUS.
“We cannot allow nuclear armed submarines into Australia. We cannot allow nuclear power or nuclear weapons which may follow on”, Dr. Middleton said.
The AUKUS agreement signed back in September between Australia, the UK, and the US will arm Australia with new long-range strike missiles, increasing NATO’s militarisation in the Asia-Pacific region.
In a recent Washington Post article, Brookings Institution member, Michael O’Hanlon was quoted as saying, “if China were in NATO, we would berate it for inadequate burden-sharing, since its military outlays fall well below NATO’s 2 percent minimum.”
Federal Greens Senator Maheen Faruqi, who attended as one of the speakers for the event, accused the Morrison government of ‘warmongering’ against the emerging Asian superpower.
Warren Smith from the Maritime Union of Australia reiterated the protest’s anti-war stance also blasting the Federal Government’s agreement to acquire nuclear propelled submarines, saying that nuclear poses an environmental threat to the Australian coast bringing up the examples of nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Dennis Doherty has been in the peace movement for decades and attended the rally, which had approximately 360 people indicating interest in attending on Facebook.
He says that he is concerned about the rising tension between Australia, (the US), and China, expressing that he believes whilst the nation has faults, that Western powers have overblown the prospect of military conflict between the two sides.
“The nuclear submarines are an expansion and an increase in tension between ourselves and China, between ourselves in the world and it’s time that we reverse that trend of spending enormously and exorbitantly on military weapons”, Mr. Doherty said.
“I think it’s more sensible for the [the Federal Government] to run a path between the two superpowers [the US and China] rather than have picking one or the other”