US NUMBERS TO SWELL AT PERTH AUKUS BASE
Up to 2,300 Americans – many more than Australia had previously said – will be stationed at an AUKUS base in Western Australia, The Australian reports.
“By 2030, we expect 2,300 Americans, to include sailors, civilian employees, contractors and their family members, to be in Western Australia supporting the mission,” US Navy spokesperson Joseph Keiley told the paper.
Australian Submarine Agency chief Jonathan Mead had said in September last year that up to 1,200 US and UK personnel would be posted to Perth to support what’s known as Submarine Rotational Force-West.
According to The Australian, the US Navy has established a base in recent months that it calls Naval Support Activity Stirling, “to provide services to deployed personnel, contractors and their family members, adopting the same terminology it uses to describe some of its most important foreign bases”.
As defence correspondent Ben Packham wrote in an accompanying analysis piece: “If you listen to the Labor Party, the ongoing presence of four operational US submarines and 2,300 Americans in Western Australia does not in any way constitute a US base. It is, the government says, a ‘rotational’ arrangement.”
A US think tank analyst told the paper that in US parlance, a naval support activity was “a shore facility with the full characteristics of a military base”.
As The Sydney Morning Herald and others have reported, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy appeared last week to put an end date to Submarine Rotational Force-West, saying the US presence would “come to an end” when Australia receives its own Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, due in 2032.
However, a day later, Conroy walked the comment back, saying he expected the US to “have an ongoing submarine presence in HMAS Stirling”.
TRUMP’S BOARD OF PEACE MAKES MOVE IN GAZA
Donald Trump’s Board of Peace has issued a construction contract to build a 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops in Gaza, The Guardian revealed overnight.
“The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq,” the outlet reported.
The Board of Peace was created by the US president, who could act as chairman for life, in order to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza after the devastating Israeli war there. At least 80% of Gaza’s buildings were destroyed or damaged in the war. As The New York Times reported, “Trump has moved to broadly expand the scope of the Board of Peace to include other diplomatic efforts led by the Trump administration in what appeared to be an effort to build an alternative to the United Nations that places him in charge.”
The contract with Arkel International was the first issued by the board.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that Israeli prosecutors have charged a settler over the killing of a Palestinian activist last year in the occupied West Bank, the first time since October 7, 2023 that an Israeli has been indicted for killing a Palestinian there.
The charges relate to the death of Awdah Hathaleen, a “prominent community leader who advocated against settler violence in the southern West Bank” and who was involved in the 2025 Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.
Earlier this week, the BBC reported that at least 13 people, including several children, had been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed since a supposed ceasefire began last October to more than 1,100.
Israel has said its troops won’t withdraw from their positions in Gaza until Hamas is disarmed, while the group, listed as a terror organisation by Australia and many other countries, has said it won’t lay down its arms until “all forms of aggression” by Israel have ended.
Trump has claimed in recent days that the Board of Peace has made a deal for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas. But Israel has expressed “serious security concerns” about the plan.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A female pygmy hippo was born at the Toronto Zoo last weekend. The calf was born to 20-year-old mother Kindia, zoo officials said.
“The calf took her first steps within minutes of her birth and was confidently navigating her enclosure within a few hours,” Canadian public broadcaster CBC reported.
Pictures show the tiny, shiny animal in a bed of straw, but that’s as close as onlookers will get for now: the public will not get an in-person look at the calf until she has bonded with her mother.
The baby pygmy hippo is bonding with her mother (Image: The Toronto Zoo via X)
SAY WHAT…?
Fuck, my job is boring.
Mark Parton
The Liberal opposition leader of the Australian Capital Territory admitted sending a text message about being bored with budget estimates while at a parliamentary hearing last Friday, but denied the recipient was a sex worker, The Canberra Times reported on Thursday, a day after it first broke the story of Parton’s multitasking.
CRIKEY RECAP
The US is the biggest beneficiary from $140bn in Australian Defence contracts
Defence Minister Richard Marles, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump (Image: Crikey)
American corporations and the US government have been the biggest beneficiaries of Australia’s major defence spending since 2022, collecting one in three taxpayer dollars spent on major contracts, Defence Department information shows.
Crikey has analysed more than 2,000 Defence contracts worth more than $5 million each since the start of the 2022-23 financial year, as listed on the government website AusTender. Together, they total just over $140 billion in contracts paid out to corporations, other governments, Commonwealth agencies, agencies within Defence itself, banks, government business enterprises and state government bodies.
That total $140 billion figure doesn’t cover all Defence spending in that period. The number of Defence contracts worth less than $5 million each runs into the many tens of thousands, though their total spend is significantly less than the larger contracts examined by Crikey. Smaller contracts skew more toward day-to-day Defence management, while larger contracts reflect major materiel procurement, sustainment contracts and services agreements.
Ten years later, anti-corruption report solves the Dan Andrews mysteries of 2016
It’s been 10 years since the events of 2016 that led Victoria’s anti-corruption agency IBAC to start looking into the Andrews government’s deal with the firefighters’ union.
The long-awaited release of IBAC’s “Operation Richmond” report yesterday revealed how “the premier, ministers, senior government MPs and top bureaucrats ran secret backroom operations, misled cabinet, purged public boards and capitulated — over and over again — to relentless pressure from the long-serving head of the firefighters’ union,” in the words of The Age. The report also delivered belated answers to questions journalists were scratching their heads over a decade ago.
Back on June 6, 2016, an article in The Age declared “it remains unexplained why [Daniel Andrews] joined the bogged-down negotiations” on a Country Fire Authority (CFA) enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA). The story noted that the premier had backed his emergency services minister Jane Garrett up until a meeting Andrews had with United Firefighters Union boss Peter Marshall.
In the upside down with Alan Joyce
It may shock readers of Crikey — or, actually, most publications in Australia — but the audience questions that concluded Alan Joyce’s interview with ABC’s Raf Epstein on Tuesday were uniformly positive.
It helped answer one of the main questions I had when entering The Wheeler Centre that evening: what kind of person would brave the miserable weather to attend the former Qantas head’s attempted redemption tour as he promotes his book Riding the Jet Stream?
Apart from the mature, visibly upper-middle-class crew always at events of this sort, the crowd was surprisingly young and multicultural (and some, apparently, aviation students), as well as quite formally dressed for a literary event.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Robodebt fears as Labor fires up welfare tech (The Australian) ($)
ACT Opposition Leader Mark Parton admits to texting ‘f*** my job is boring’ during estimates hearing (ABC News)
‘$100k for preselection’: Nassif offered money to one of the Perrottet brothers (SMH) ($)
Sons of jailed Pakistani leader Imran Khan fear for his health (CNN)
Empty five-star room: Hanson paid for $900-a-night hotel with party funds (SMH) ($)
Coles lands Accenture deal to send hundreds of office jobs to India (AFR) ($)
Labor faces growing internal pressure to strengthen gambling reforms (ABC News)
Ukraine hits two oil refineries deep in Russian territory (BBC)
Faced with a teleprompter glitch, Canada’s Carney mocks Trump (Reuters)
THE COMMENTARIAT
After Takaichi denigration, PM should give undervalued Japan some love — Philip Coorey
(AFR): Anthony Albanese has visited Japan three times since becoming prime minister, but all were whistle-stop trips. The first was hours after he was sworn in, in May 2022, to attend the Quad summit; the second to attend the funeral of assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe; and the third to attend the G7 summit.
It’s not the first time the Japanese have felt unloved. When Kevin Rudd came to power in 2007, his decision to ignore Japan on his first major overseas trip did not ruin the relationship, but it put noses out of joint, and he went there soon after.
These days the stakes are higher and, after the melons incident, it’s the least Albanese could do.
Eight-episode seasons are ruining TV. Bring back the 22-episode binge — Gyan Yankovich (SMH): In the twenty-something years since Seth and Summer blessed our screens, I’ve watched plenty of good – arguably even “better” – TV shows. But despite my love for Succession, The White Lotus, Industry and Beef, they all have one huge problem: each show has 10 episodes or fewer a season. And, quite frankly, I’m over it.
In such a short amount of time it’s impossible for me to form the kind of deep connection – with characters, relationships or fictional places – that I can after spending 20-plus episodes with them.
It wasn’t until season two, episode 15 that TV’s best kiss, between Nick and Jess on New Girl, happened. It took 88 episodes of Gilmore Girls for Luke and Lorelai to finally make out, in a scene that comes a close second. And Fran Fine didn’t go on her first official date with Mr Sheffield until season five of The Nanny.