The Pacific Peace Conference was held in Brisbane on 2 August 2025.

Australians at meetings like this often ask “What can we do?” I want to offer you a list of opportunities Australia has to achieve independence and peace in our region.

The year’s Talisman Sabre, the largest ever of these war games, involves 19 nations and 30,000 military people, and costs $100 million. What Australian land, sea and air space are being used for is a rehearsal for war against China. We are actually practising to attack our largest trading partner, something which would destroy our economy. We are doing that because our main ally wants Australia to support its global dominance.

And yet Australia has the capacity to prevent the US going to war against China, if we choose to do so. That’s Opportunity#1.

China has risen technologically, economically and politically while the US is falling behind in everything but its military power and its empire of 877 bases around the world. China has six. Australia has two. WorldBEYONDWar has an amazing global map showing where they are. The US has 19 military bases in Australia, and they have been multiplying ever since Julia Gillard, as prime minister, agreed with President Obama in 2011 on the US pivot to Asia. Her theory, and that of Kim Beazley, was that if the US wouldn’t defend Australia against China, it would defend American bases.

Getting rid of them is Opportunity #2.

With the Force Posture Agreement in 2014, Australia guaranteed the US military unimpeded access to our air and sea ports, including for nuclear submarines and nuclear-capable B-52 bombers under US operational control, and for 2500 US Marines per year based in the Northern Territory. The Defence Co-operation Agreement gives the US its own command centres in Darwin and embedded staff in Defence in Canberra. At Pine Gap, the US military accesses strategic satellite surveillance information, which it passes to others, including to Israel’s military for use against Palestinians in Gaza.

Taking back control of our defence and intelligence is Opportunity #3.

In July, our prime minister credited the Australian labour movement with never having “followed the flags of other lands or patterned itself on the movements which originated in other places”. He said that under his forebear, John Curtin, Australians had “the confidence and determination to think and act for ourselves” and “to follow our own course and shape our own future”. In 2023, Foreign Minister Penny Wong made the case to the National Press Club for a “region that operates by rules, standards and norms” and isn’t dominated by a “single major power to suit its own interests”.

Not doing that and thinking for ourselves instead is Opportunity #4.

Yet Australia allows the US to dominate and shape our future, which many of our regional neighbours do not. Australia’s support for the recent US bombing of Iran, and ministers’ repeated reference to our undying friendship with the US and Israel, represent appeasement of the Trump administration and its predecessors. Albanese has  repeatedly refused to condemn Israel for the expulsion of UNWRA or for the plan by the US and Israel to force Palestinians from Gaza into what amounts to a concentration camp. Australia continues to send weapons and parts of weapons, as well as military intelligence, to Israel.

Stopping our support of Israel and demanding the US do so too is Opportunity #5.

Australia strayed slightly from the US orthodoxy when it sanctioned two Israeli ministers, but not the whole government, as the International Court of Justice requires. Australia has now joined 27 other states in calling for an end to atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, and 13 others who want a ceasefire and Palestinian statehood as a step towards to a two-state solution (Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July 2025: 1, 6, 7). But Albanese says he will not be rushed into recognising Palestine. He doesn’t explain how you can have a two-state solution with only one state.

Getting in ahead of 48 others and recognising Palestine is Opportunity #6.

Albanese won’t be rushed on Palestine, but he was rushed into agreeing to AUKUS at 24 hours’ notice. He is now trying to secure the AUKUS agreement at huge cost and no reward, locking Australia further into support of US aggression. Taiwan is always expected to provide the excuse for war, even though both the US and Australia recognise it as part of China’s territory. Yet, in September last year, Elbridge Colby, a China hawk who is now inquiring into AUKUS, wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Taiwan “isn’t itself of existential importance to America”. If the US provokes a war, it will want Japan and Australia to join its coalition.

Telling Washington Australia recognises Taiwan as a province of China and is not interested in going to war over it is Opportunity #7.

Albanese resists the US demand that Australia spend 3.5% of GDP on the military, even while the cost of AUKUS is expected to blow out exponentially, and with no guarantee of delivery or success. He also resists committing Australia to war in advance, as US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth wants. But the US will control the submarines, which is why former foreign minister Gareth Evans warned last year that AUKUS would greatly diminish Australia’s “sovereign agency” in deciding what to do with them. Former US deputy secretary of state Kurt Campbell admitted that AUKUS will “ lock Australia” into US foreign policy, including in a war over Taiwan.

Stating that AUKUS will no longer include Australia is Opportunity #8.

“Sovereignty” was one of Richard Marles’ favourite words last year even as he pressed ahead with AUKUS, which betrays what remains of our sovereignty. But as Bob Carr optimistically predicts, “If any leader takes us to a war decided on by Trump, this country will see the biggest anti-war movement in its history. @bobjcarr”.

Joining that anti-war movement internationally is Opportunity #9.

Australia’s ASEAN and Pacific neighbours, who are not settler colonists and who are bonded by their regional resistance to interference by colonisers and great powers, understand sovereignty differently from Marles. For them, it means independence, non-alignment, and neutrality. Australia has declined a series of opportunities to join them. Malaysia’s ASEAN Community Vision 2045 aims to guide the region’s growth and prosperity over the next two decades. Importantly, it does not involve military solutions. China offers zero tariffs to the global south and endorses ASEAN’s political independence and economic security. World Beyond War counts 39 countries that don’t have military forces. Their people survive peacefully and benefit economically. In growing numbers, such nations are applying to join BRICS, which focusses on economic development and non-alignment. Australia could do the same.

Promoting independence, non-alignment and neutrality for Australia is Opportunity #10.

Recently, the ICJ ruled unanimously that states have an obligation to cut greenhouse gas emissions and not doing so may violate international law and require reparation awards. Military operations are huge emitters, so not only do wars of aggression violate international law, they may expose leaders, including Australia’s, who wage such wars to criminal charges.

Comparing war and climate change and deciding which to pursue is Opportunity #11.

In conclusion:

The logic of our survival as a sovereign state leads to the obvious conclusion: get rid of alliances and adopt neutrality and non-alignment, armed or unarmed. That means no foreign bases in Australia. Remembering what Malcolm Fraser wrote in 2014 about that. I quote the immortal words of IPAN’s Bevan Ramsden: “Clearly neutrality is not an option until our continent is cleared of foreign military installations. This is the message to the Australian people. Only a massive, broad-based united public effort can clear the ground for the adoption of a political solution which will keep us safe and out of foreign wars, namely non-nuclear, armed neutrality.”

And Nick Deane, who when people say “If you want peace prepare for war”, replies “If you prepare for war, war is what you are likely to get.” Australians who want peace are demanding in growing numbers that our leaders prepare for peace. Thanks to IPAN for its persistent efforts in doing so.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.