Meeting at Marrickville, Sydney, in February, participants from more than 30 community organisations endorsed the Marrickville Declaration. It is a document that highlights the dangers of the AUKUS agreement and commits the signatories to a campaign for the Australian government to withdraw from the pact.
The participants set themselves the ambitious, yet necessary, goal to galvanise broad social support to oppose AUKUS and the war drive against China being pursued by the United States and blindly followed by the Australian government. Together, they established a committee to Mobilise Against AUKUS and War, which will cooperate with existing labour movement and peace groups, faith groups and broad progressive organisations to build a stronger peace and nuclear disarmament movement.
Download a pdf version of this declaration here
The Marrickville Declaration
Participants at this meeting will work together to keep Australia out of war and stop preparation for war, through campaigning for an end to AUKUS. The huge public spend on nuclear submarines, and the open-ended commitment to foreign military priorities, are to the detriment of addressing urgent community and social needs and priorities for a resilient, safe and peaceful Australian society.
We agree that the AUKUS agreement has grave significance for Australia because:
- it leads the nation away from peace by preparing it for war;
- it creates enemies, where Australia should have none;
- its exorbitant cost takes funds away from much-needed social programs;
- it has opened the way for an arms race in the Asian region;
- much of its detail that should be in the public domain remains secret and unavailable to the public;
- it endangers Australia and jeopardises our security through making us a nuclear target, positioning us as an enemy of countries with which we should be maintaining good working relations, and through the risk of nuclear contamination;
- it makes Australia complicit in the deployment of weapons of mass destruction, both nuclear and conventional, the use of which will be inevitably directed largely at civilian populations and infrastructure;
- it is an affront to Australia’s Pacific neighbours and our commitment to a nuclear free Pacific under the Treaty of Rarotonga (the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty);
- it critically detracts from the need for climate action, global warming being our real security threat, and
- it would impose high level nuclear waste dumping on the lands of First Nations Peoples.
We conclude that AUKUS is entirely contrary to the interests of the Australian nation and its people.
We therefore resolve to:
- oppose AUKUS through all non-violent means available;
- initiate a concerted campaign with the objective of stopping the whole AUKUS agreement;
- open this campaign to all individuals and organisations sharing this objective, and
- promote peace, instead of encouraging preparation for war.
We call on the Australian government to:
- provide to the public full details of the AUKUS agreement, as it stands, including its scope, ramifications, timing and cost, and
- initiate a thorough investigation into appropriate ways for ensuring national security, including through the development of a truly independent foreign and military policy.
Marrickville, 03/02/2024