PETER:

I think one of the first times Pine Gap came to public prominence, an activist I know who lives in Darwin, decided to go and take a look. Crept into the location, took a photograph, and it had five disks. That caused a bit of a controversy with the government back in the 70s because they were saying there was only two. So it's very interesting how secretive the place has been right from the get go.

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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

Once upon a time, Australians were told Pine Gap was a space base, then a weather station, but now of course we know the installation deep in the Northern Territory outback is a US spy base. Which isn’t to say that it’s any less secretive - we still don’t know a huge amount about what goes on there.

We do know that it’s likely America’s biggest offshore spy base, that it gathers critical intelligence about current conflicts and now we know that it’s undergone a rapid expansion.

Today, editor of Declassified Australia and contributor to The Saturday Paper Peter Cronau, on how he discovered the base’s new technology and what it means for Australia’s safety.

That’s coming up after the break.

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ASHLYNNE:

Peter, before we get into what you've uncovered, let's talk about Pine Gap itself. Why is there a US intelligence base in the middle of the Australian outback? Where does the story start?

PETER:

Pine Gap is a satellite signal receiving station. It's jointly run, at the moment, by the United States and Australia.

Audio Excerpt – 1960’s Newsreader:

“Mr. Holt speaks to the American vice president, Mr. Humphrey, via the Space Trek Network, and then tells the crowd that Australia was benefiting in many ways because it was linked with America in space research.”

PETER:

So, Pine Gap was, I think, proposed in ‘66, 1966...

Audio Excerpt –1960’s Newsreader:

“A network of complex machinery to track American satellites in the effort to conquer space.”

PETER:

It's located about 15km in a direct line from Alice Springs in central Australia. And Australia gets access to some of the information that comes into the satellite dishes there, but it is essentially a US base. They basically fund it and it's for their purposes.

Audio Excerpt – 1960’s Newsreader:

“Today’s globe spins within an invisible network, built and maintained by the United States of America. It is our Defence Communications System, DCS”

PETER:

By 1970, it was being used to scoop up North Vietnamese communications in Cambodia and in Vietnam, trying to locate their supply lines.

Audio Excerpt – War Pilot:

“Tango papa, I’ve got your smoke. Where you do want the fire brought?”

PETER:

After that it was used, for example, for the Yom Kippur War, but that was done without telling the Australian government at the time. And it leaked out through, would you believe, a journalist. So, you know, the Prime Minister Whitlam eventually found out and went ballistic. And so it's been a controversial, and secretive, spying location.

Audio Excerpt – Protestors:

“US bases out now! US bases out now!”

PETER:

There was quite a few protests in the 80s. In 1983, the women's camp was held out there with indigenous women and women from all around Australia.

Audio Excerpt – Lead Protestor:

“We, the undersigned Australian people, demand the removal of the CIA NSA Pine Gap base, and all other foreign military installations on our soil.”

PETER:

And that was really one of the biggest and earliest public revelations, really, of what, what Pine Gap was up to. And just in my sort of life, that's when I first really heard more about it. So I've been interested and I followed it, and the numbers and purposes of the satellite dishes there have just increased over the years.

ASHLYNNE:

So Peter, tell me, what did you discover about what's happening out there at the moment?

PETER:

Well, as a nosy journalist, I, you know, take a look at things like, Google Earth images of various locations such as Pine Gap and I'd noticed there'd been a bit of land clearing going on. That was back in 2021 when I first took a look and I thought, well, maybe it's bushfires. Maybe they're building a new power station, could be a swimming pool, but I kept an eye on it. And what I found is that on the western boundary, they cleared 14 hectares, so it's not a small spot. And they put three big dots, you know, from space that looks like a dot on the Google Earth image, but the three large concrete pads and I thought, they’re building something, I'd better keep a look at this. And over the months, you know, it turned out that they were indeed putting up some new dishes, and there's three 20 metre wide, big golf ball structures, they look like golf balls, but they're massive. They're called radomes, they're covered in like a composite fibreglass plastic material to keep out the sun in the dust, and also prying eyes of protesters peering through binoculars. So I spoke to all the right people, you know, and discovered yeah, they were building this at the same time as there was an expansion of the ability to do infrared detection. So those three satellites are believed, by Professor Richard Tanter, who's the top Australian expert on this sort of research, to be involved in what's called… it's a new system called OPIR, and OPIR stands for Overhead Persistent Infrared. And what they do is they detect missile launches, the heat signal coming from the burning of the fuel, from missiles, from rockets going into space. But also, things like jet engines and planes, they are very sophisticated. And from that data, they can work out from the signature of the heat and the time of burn and so forth, they can work out what sort of missile it is, what its range is, its warhead, its likely target. And it's an incredibly sophisticated way of getting very early warning of these missiles or rockets being fired.

ASHLYNNE:

And so you mentioned before some of the conflicts that Pine Gap has been used to gather intelligence for in the past. Do we know currently which conflicts it's gathering intelligence in?

PETER:

Well, Pine Gap’s got a range of different capabilities. One is this infrared system that I've talked about. But it also does SIGINT, which means it has a whole bunch of other satellite dishes which can access signals intelligence collected by satellites, you know, 30,000km above the Earth's surface. They collect things like mobile phones, microwave communications. So it allows a very comprehensive look at all sorts of digital communications going on. And wherever it is in the world that the US is interested in knowing about, it can direct the satellites to target and zone in on those locations or those individuals. At the moment, the Ukraine war and the Gaza war are of particular attention to the US.

But the capability of Pine Gap is enormous, it's probably the most important US satellite base in the world. But at a time when the war on terror has calmed down, suddenly building at Pine Gap suggests that other people are thinking very differently about the future.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, how an expansion at Pine Gap could inflame tensions with China.

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ASHLYNNE:

Peter, we've been talking about how Pine Gap looms large in the Australian imagination and has done for a long time. But what will hosting this site mean for us in the future? How could it be used in the years ahead?

PETER:

Well, Pine Gap's got so many uses, it can be used for good or for evil and, so it largely depends on who has political control and access to it. The importance at the moment in terms of the warfighting ability, is that it's developing that arm of its capability. Those three new satellite dishes that have been built. On one hand, it sounds like good defence for Australia, a good defence for the wider world. However, you can imagine what it does to the adversary. The adversary now thinks that their ability to remain hidden is gone, which means their ability to defend themselves evaporates very quickly. I don't know if you remember Des Ball.

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“And I'm joined today for an interview with Professor Des Ball. Des is a home grown giant, Australia’s pre eminent scholar of so many strategy and defence issues.”

PETER:

He was a professor at ANU, involved in strategic studies, and he really is the godfather of research on Pine Gap.

Audio Excerpt – Des Ball:

“When one of my first books, A suitable piece of real estate, was published, which some people in the intelligence community thought had gone too far in revealing secrets about American installations in Australia. Certainly revealed secrets to them, because most of them were ignorant about the sorts of things they’d allowed to happen in this country.”

PETER:

He died a few years ago, but his memory is strong with many people. He said once, Pine Gap is approaching the situation where China knows that once it fires a rocket in defence of itself, it will be obliterated. So therefore, he suggested to me that it's likely that China, if it fears it's under attack, will fire everything on the first day. Now, the idea of a first round of nuclear exchange slowly building with diplomatic talks, trying to calm things down, he said that the risk is that won't happen, that if China thinks its existence is actually being threatened, it'll fire the lot. People used to think, ‘oh, you know, Australia's a long way from all the world's wars, aren't we lucky?’ . Well, we're a long way away, unless we put our submarines off the Chinese coast, then we're very close. And we're a long way away, unless we have United States bases in Australia fighting a war against China. As a result, Australia is really at the forefront of a battle, of a war, potentially, if it develops. These are terrible risks that Australia has taking on and the risks have been taken on kind of without much discussion going on. There ought to be parliamentary debate. There ought to be public input into the role. But at the moment, we're all shut out. And I’d ask why? Why doesn’t it get mentioned? Why is there no discussion? It's a terrible topic and about the only access we have, the three satellite images of the base. I mean, obviously, I've contacted, in my job, you know, being a journalist on this, I've contacted the Defence Department a couple of times seeking responses, you know, for things like legal culpability of Australian staff at the base, if it gets involved in things that are deemed as war crimes. And I've asked them about the costs of Australia, you know, what dollars we put into the US base. And, you know, the Defence Department won't answer, they won't answer and they won't answer.

ASHLYNNE:

Peter, that picture you paint of what could happen is pretty horrifying to think about.

PETER:

The idea of Australia being a nuclear target is horrifying to anyone. There's been a number of studies as to what the effects could be. There was a GP in Alice Springs who tried to find out about the civil defence, you know, what the local council, local authorities would do to, you know, evacuate people, how they'd go about it. And he found there was nothing planned. So he did his own research. This is in the late 80s, so it's a while ago but nuclear bombs are even better now. And he found that, if the wind was blowing the wrong way, if it was blowing from the southwest, Alice Springs would have an hour to evacuate. And his conclusion as a GP, knowing the effects of that sort of contamination, says that anyone who didn't get out of Alice Springs in an hour would die. And that, then those clouds of dust, thousands and thousands of tons of dust, radioactive dust, would then sprinkle down across the rest of Australia. You know, the prospect is horrific and the base is being run by the United States, which has no longer denying its ability to use nuclear missiles on a first-use basis.

ASHLYNNE:

Is there any evidence either that behind closed doors or in public forums, in Canberra, that there is enough scrutiny or in fact, even a base level of scrutiny of what's going on at Pine Gap, given everyone is in such furious agreement that the relationship with the US is of utmost importance.

PETER:

Probably the best source of information at the moment is through Senate estimates

Audio Excerpt – Scott Ludlam:

“In response to some questions on notice that I put to you, you informed us that all activities at Pine Gap are conducted in compliance with Australian law, and I thank you for that response. Are activities at Pine Gap also conducted in compliance with international human rights and humanitarian law?”

Audio Excerpt – George Brandis:

“Well, senator Ludlam, I am confident that all activities are conducted in accordance with all relevant laws. Beyond that, as with your previous question, I am not prepared to go...”

PETER:

And the questioning by opposition members, teals, Greens, etc. So, the ability to scrutinise Pine Gap is restricted. Maybe if some senior bureaucrats are held in the cells until they are prepared to answer that, we might get some information. But, I mean, really the two main parties, Liberal and Labor... I mean, Liberals set the base up. So the Liberal Party was in government, in power at the time. And, you know, we had the Whitlam government, which was a little more critical of the base, at least publicly, because behind the scenes, Whitlam gave the nod for the base to continue. But, it's really with the Hawke government, I think, that Labor decided that there was no point ruffling the feathers of the United States, because they weren't going to win. They wanted to get on with running Australia, and Hawke decided that “All the way with the USA” was a good policy to adopt again. And I think the current government is pretty much in that vein as well, in that it wants to get on with things, it wants to have peace in the region, but it's not going to stand up to the US. I mean, how can that happen, how can you stand up to the US?

You know, maybe we should just stand up for international law and humanitarian law, and stand up for international legal institutions, and then let everyone else get in line. You know, supporting international law and humanitarian institutions really is about all we've got to keep the world at peace, because relying on powerful countries to do it themselves hasn't really worked.

ASHLYNNE:

Thanks so much for your time, Peter.

PETER:

Thank you very much, Ashlynne.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plan could blow out to $600 billion dollars, but only supply 3.7% of Australia’s energy by 2050, according to research by a peak body for the renewable energy sector.

The Smart Energy Council found that, at its minimum projected cost, the nuclear plan would cost the same as the Albanese government’s renewables investment, but that plan would provide 82% of the energy mix by 2030 and almost 100% by 2050.

And,

The Albanese government appears to have shelved the emergency immigration legislation that it urgently introduced to parliament in March.

The legislation would have made it easier to deport non-citizens, including making it a criminal offence for a person to refuse to engage with embassies and authorities from their country of origin to facilitate a return.

On Sunday, the bill was once again left off the government’s list for Senate debates, meaning it’s unlikely to pass before parliament’s winter break.

I’m Ashlynne Mcghee. This is 7am. Thanks for your company, I'll see you again tomorrow.

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