Today, the Liberals and Labor party joined together to create a new secret Defence committee that will hold closed-door hearings that will deliberately exclude any critical voices from the Greens and other crossbenchers.
The Defence Amendment (Parliamentary Joint Committee on Defence) Bill 2025, establishes a new committee that gives the Prime Minister an effective veto over who sits on it, and will only allocate spots for the Liberal and Labor parties.
This new committee will be based on the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security (PJCIS), which only has the pro-Trump, pro-Aukus and pro-war Liberal and Labor parties represented and which never challenges Government policy.
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Defence, said:
"This Bill has been in the works for years, but if you want a better example of why Australia's defence and foreign policy should not be made behind closed doors between the war parties, look at Albanese backing in the US and Israeli illegal war on Iran. The decision to follow Donald Trump into the next US forever war will be decided in this committee full of only the war parties."
"We know this Bill was a backroom deal between Liberals and Labor who are scared of the blow torch being turned on the dangerous AUKUS deal. This is business as usual from these pro-war parties that have united on spending hundreds of billions on US nuclear submarines and following Trump into every war he wants.
"This committee will be filled with Liberal and Labor insiders furiously agreeing on tying ourselves to the US and reinforcing their groupthink. It's not good for public accountability, transparency or Australia's independence.
"Whether it is AUKUS or signing Australia up to the US's forever wars, now more than ever we need to have critical voices in the room when looking at Australia's defence policy.
"Committees should reflect the makeup of Parliament and the community. The Liberal and Labor unity ticket is not reflective of the community, which is increasingly moving away from these two parties.
"Over the next decade, three-quarters of a trillion dollars in public funds will be poured into Defence. The major parties want that to be a black box, so you cannot see where that money is going, that's what this secret committee is all about.
"The Greens remain committed to open public scrutiny of Australia's Defence policy, to stem the flow of public funds to US arms dealers and their billionaire owners, all while setting up cushy jobs for tired old politicians."
