Alison Broinowski
Dr Alison Broinowski AM is a former Australian diplomat and a member of Australians fr War Powers Reform
Alison's recent articles
7 April 2025
Australia should inform itself as to who the real terrorists are
Australians may smirk at the embarrassment of Donald Trump’s neophyte administration over Signalgate. Particularly those old enough to remember how our allies punished Canberra for past intelligence scandals and pushed us to set up ASIO.
27 March 2025
Hurry up and wait
One principle of American military affairs has been said since the 1940s to be hurry up and wait. That certainly applies to AUKUS, an agreement so urgent that in September 2021 Prime Minister Scott Morrison gave Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese only 24 hours to agree to it.
12 February 2025
An open letter to ABC chairman Kim Williams
Dear Mr Williams, In June 2024, on assuming the chair of the ABC, you expressed a desire to see the organisation develop a clearer sense of purpose aligned with its charter and, having gained clarity about its purpose, it should seek to understand how that purpose can be embodied in its offerings.
25 January 2025
Who feels unsafe and why?
When Parliament returns, the government will be pressed to enact a law making it a criminal offence to threaten violence against people or groups on racial or religious grounds, or to threaten them about gender identity or sexual orientation. Before February, we need to know more about what caused a recent spate of nasty incidents in Sydney.
21 January 2025
Netanyahu intends to attack Gaza as soon as hostages are released
Expressions of delight at the ceasefire – which was preceded by an 11th hour Israeli onslaught in Gaza, killing at least 80 – are premature. Netanyahu has repeatedly said attacks against Hamas will resume after Israel gets some hostages back.
16 January 2025
The US war on terror strikes home
Americans were shocked by two fatal events in the United States on New Year’s day 2025, and one was quickly called ‘Islamist terrorism’. Yet the US supports Muslim terrorist groups in Syria.
17 December 2024
Are we the terrorists?
It’s ten years since the Lindt Café siege by a member of Islamic State who, despite multiple warnings, was not of concern to ASIO or the police. Yet Man Haron Monis’ attack had all the commonly accepted characteristics of terrorism.
5 December 2024
If you want peace, don't prepare for war
In a series of baby but not blindfolded steps, our Government is making Australia ready for war. The latest of these appeared in the small print of a memorandum on 27 November.
5 November 2024
The Forever War won’t end until we face the State terrorists
At the Imperial War Museum in London, there’s a moving display about Nazis and the Holocaust, the ‘ultimate human evil’. Seeing it in May this year, I wondered if eventually there will be an exhibition of the Palestinian genocide.
29 October 2024
Ending Apartheid: Think local, act global
Boycotts, divestments and sanctions are back. Students are urging universities to reveal their investments and connections with Israel, and to end them. Local councils in Victoria and New South Wales have been quick to do the same.
19 October 2024
Make aid reach Gaza, but not until children starve to death for another 30 days, says US
For years, the Israeli authorities have restricted food, fuel and essential supplies to the Palestinians in Gaza, turning the deliveries on and off at will. This contributed to the desperate Hamas outbreak on 7 October 2023. Since the beginning of this month, Israel has stopped almost all the deliveries.
27 September 2024
Julian Assange gets a positive hearing at last
Appearing in public for the first time since he returned in June to Australia from Britain’s Belmarsh Prison, Julian Assange will give his first official testimony since 2019 on 1 October.
13 September 2024
Why we're still at war with terror
The talented comic song-writer Tom Lehrer, from a family of secular Jewish New Yorkers, complained during the Vietnam war that nothing was funny any more. He would agree now about the war in Gaza.
20 August 2024
What will our US alliance get us into from November?
A Trump administration, and even a Harris one, will pose new challenges for Australia: sycophancy or independence? Non-alignment or more complicity in US wars?
13 August 2024
Australia’s to-do list: stop supporting war, avoid becoming US satrap
Gathering in New York in September 2024, the world’s nations will be challenged to ‘end the scourge of war’, before it’s too late. All of them know that a nuclear cataclysm has never been so close.
26 July 2024
Will the Republicans end deep state wars of imperial aggression? Don't bet on it...
The prospect of another Trump presidency and a JD Vance vice-presidency is welcomed by some and dreaded by others. A Democrat ‘October surprise’, and a presidency for Kamala Harris are possible. Even Trump in power may get Australia off several hooks. What neither of them is likely to do before election day, however, is commit to doing away with the unachievable AUKUS, the unwelcome Asian NATO, and the unwinnable war over Taiwan, as a RAND report described it in June .
24 July 2024
Australian Leadership to end the war on Gaza: open letter to the Prime Minister
We write to express our extreme concern that Senator Payman has resigned from the Labor Government.
21 July 2024
Australia, complicit in Israel’s horror, has no option but to respect ICJ ruling
Unlike the US and Israel, Australia is a signatory of the Rome Statute. It has no option but to comply with the latest ICJ decision on 19 July that the UN Security Council, the General Assembly and all states have an obligation not to recognise Israel’s occupation as legal and not to give aid or support toward maintaining it, writes Alison Broinowski.
16 July 2024
Envoy Envy: “Sorry Mohammed”
Becoming the latest recruit in a well-organised global program, Australia has joined the 24 nations which have appointed envoys to combat anti-Semitism. We still await an envoy for resisting Islamophobia.
7 July 2024
Labor’s fall: fast forward to disaster
The black and white banners unfurled from the battlements of Parliament House on 4 July made us remember 2003 when ‘No War’ appeared in red paint on the top sail of the Opera House. They lifted the spirits of all who then opposed Australia joining the war in Iraq and all who now want action from Australia to end the war against the Palestinians.
23 June 2024
Unrepentant, independent stirrers in election year
Imminent elections in France, the United States, and the United Kingdom are affected by two long-running concerns: Palestine and the decline of the West. Responses to them will also affect the 2025 elections in Australia.
13 June 2024
A lot of awful things can happen in a week
President Biden has now announced a ‘roadmap’ for Gaza that has been doing the rounds for weeks, and Australia has loyally supported it with a contribution of $A10 million. But much more time, money, and negotiations will be needed if the three-stage plan is to be a success.
7 June 2024
Down-payments on our own destruction
Australians used to be scared off voting Labor by Coalition predictions of debt, deficit, and disaster. Labor used to shame Liberals and Nationals with promises of spending to end child poverty, close the indigenous gap, and create a clever country. All that was before AUKUS.
27 May 2024
Australian moral failure on Gaza
For Australia, the urgent challenge is when will we act independently and not be associated with war crimes and genocide.
10 May 2024
Faced with an Israeli Pariah, Wong decides on Palestinian statehood
Foreign Minister Penny Wong conveys Australia’s decision on Friday 10 May to the UN General Assembly on whether Palestine should be admitted as a full member. This, after years of conflict over Palestine between Labor and the Coalition, and disagreement within the ALP, is a definitional moment for Australia.
3 May 2024
Do as I say, not as I do
Antony Blinken megaphoned the United States’ complaints about China in advance of his visit this week. They included Beijing’s unfair economic and trade practices, ‘industrial over-capacity’, and ‘genocide and crimes against humanity’ against Uyghurs.
29 April 2024
Australia is a silent partner in atrocity in Gaza and the West Bank
On 27 February, we wrote to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) expressing concern that Australia had failed to fulfil its obligation under the Genocide Convention (1948) to prevent any action that further risks the survival of the Palestinian people. That failure continues.
20 April 2024
Terrorism is what I say it is
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less’. 'The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things’. 'The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all’. - Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass.
19 March 2024
Australias moment of choice: illegal war on show in 2003 Cabinet papers
What has changed since 2003? Nothing, except for the worse. Australian governments continue to accept the US enemies as their own, and shoot whoever the sheriff says.
7 March 2024
George Galloway's time has come
George Galloway is a British MP again, and its the moment hes been waiting for. His victory in a Rochdale by-election, he told Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer, is for Gaza.
27 February 2024
Fractured consensus, fabricated facts, and the truth of Western wars
Why, when the majority of civil society opposes Australia going to war against China, and public confidence in the United States will and capacity to defend Australia is declining, do successive governments pursue AUKUS and a war with China over Taiwan with such enthusiasm?
18 February 2024
It will soon be too late for Gaza
Within two weeks the remaining people of Gaza, herded into Rafah, will all be dead, either from disease, starvation, or murder, an Australian medical specialist told me on Friday. Humans cant survive in these conditions. What is Australia doing? he wanted to know.
29 January 2024
Enough is enough for Gaza and Assange
The International Court of Justice has responded rather toothlessly to South Africas appeal to the Genocide Convention. In less than a month, a similar result can be expected when Britains Royal Courts of Justice hear for Julian Assanges last appeal against extradition to the United States.
25 January 2024
As Australia joins the US war on Yemen, Labor is a house divided
Not since the DLP split in 1955 has Labor been so divided on foreign and defence policy. And always for the same reason.
10 January 2024
Eyeless in Gaza
Our foreign ministers first and hardest overseas task in 2024 is likely to be her visit to Israel. Penny Wong and other foreigners, apart from aid workers, cannot enter Gaza. This will circumscribe what she sees, whom she meets, and what she achieves.
19 December 2023
Yemen is none of our business
US presidents are losing their authority as the worlds policemen. Russia fights to keep Ukraine out of NATO. Israel fights in Gaza to wipe out the Palestinians. China and the Global South advance their national interests without fighting at all. All can and do ignore President Bidens wishes.
15 December 2023
NATO wants Asia
Not content with expanding its membership from the original 12 to 31 nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is making a grab for a presence in the Asia Pacific as well.
19 November 2023
When is genocide ever balanced?
Balance between supporters of Israel and of the Palestinians is what most police and State governments in Australia say they seek. So does the ABC. But whats happening in Gaza isnt balanced: it is asymmetric warfare.
5 November 2023
Have Australian troops secretly deployed to an illegal war?
Australians have been assured by the Albanese government of greater transparency and accountability on defence. So soon after the 2022-23 parliamentary inquiry into how the country goes to war, that has already fallen over.
24 October 2023
The Australian Prime Ministers talking points for Washington
Prime Minister: You may wish to draw on the following in your meetings with President Biden, Vice-President Harris, Secretary of State Blinken, and Secretary of Defence Austin.
22 October 2023
Collective punishment, selective truth, and slow genocide
Facts about the Israel/Palestine conflict have always been hard to come by. Some Israeli leaders are now telling more lies than many of their citizens, and former friends of Israel, can swallow. Yet Western governments still do.
29 September 2023
Australia: High five for government inquiries designed to avoid action
Chat GPT cant tell me which nation now has the most government inquiries running. But it says that common law countries the Five Eyes, basically tend to set up more of them than most. Australia must be high in the five.
31 July 2023
Pearls and Irritations is required reading for all who mistrust the party line.
But it needs your financial support to survive and grow. With the mainstream media handcuffed to the firewall, our governments self-censored by 'freedom' of information, and the national interest ignoring the public interest, Australians need an online opinion site that's free, accessible, informative, uninhibited, and quick to read.
11 July 2023
Why is Australia so scared?
The world has just spent two decades paralysed by fear. Ever since 11 September 2001, the war on terror has changed the lives of most people for the worse. Millions have been killed, either by terrorists or by militarists fighting them. Fearing violence, many people have fled their homelands as refugees. Others have absorbed repeated warnings about Islamist terrorism, and fearfully accepted that the response to it has to be militarism.
3 July 2023
A long war against China?
The recent visit to China by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken seemed promising, until we learned what he really had in mind: a long war with no finish line.
21 June 2023
AUKUS and the division of Labor
Delegates at Labors National Conference in August will have to pay more attention than usual to foreign and defence policy. Dissent on AUKUS is spreading, while Palestine is a promise to keep.
12 June 2023
War crimes? Don't forget Jeju
Admitting guilt for war crimes doesnt come easily to many nations, as Australia knows from our extended investigations of the activities of some ADF soldiers in Afghanistan more than a decade ago.
6 June 2023
Australia catching up with the Asian century at last?
Every word of Anthony Albaneses address to the Shangri-La dialogue on 2 June was chosen with care. It was a balancing act, with the Prime Minister poised between peace and war, defence and diplomacy, the US and China, in a high-wire performance his Coalition predecessors wouldnt have attempted.
5 June 2023
Shirtfronting Australia
Australians are more used to pointing the accusing finger at other countries than having it pointed at us.