Doug Cameron says Labor’s left ‘defanged’ and co-opted into supporting US aggression

Former Labor senator Doug Cameron has accused the Albanese government, and its left faction in particular, of deserting principle and abandoning Australian sovereignty to the United States.

Cameron, a New South Wales senator from 2008 to 2019, when he was a firebrand and factional leader of the left, excoriated the government over its support for AUKUS.

Delivering the Carmichael Lecture in Melbourne on Wednesday night, Cameron declared the parliamentary left had “allowed themselves to be defanged and co-opted into supporting US military aggression”.

Condemning the passivity of today’s caucus left, he contrasted the faction’s assertiveness in the 1980s when it pushed back successfully against the Hawke government over proposed US missile testing near Australia.

While the parliamentary Labor Party remains almost totally factionalised, the backbench under the Albanese government hardly ever challenges the executive. The dramatic exception was Western Australian senator Fatima Payman who last term left the party over Palestine.

Cameron said AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement (which covers the US’s military presence in Australia) reduced Australia’s sovereignty and boosted the likelihood Australia would be dragged into a war with China over Taiwan.

“I never thought the party of Chifley, Evatt, Whitlam, Keating, Crean, Uren, Cairns, Murphy and Evans would abandon our sovereignty to the United States.”

Cameron said he was “bewildered” that Labor, with its massive majority, “would resort to word games about having undertaken a serious review of AUKUS and why so many of my former colleagues have been mute, intimidated and acquiescent”.

“Why have the ministers who once marched shoulder to shoulder with Tom Uren at Palm Sunday peace marches abandoned their principles?” Cameron asked. (The late Tom Uren, venerated in the left, was Albanese’s closest mentor.)

“Why has the left caucus failed to uphold its historic role for peace; why are they missing in action on AUKUS, Palestine and US support for Netanyahu?

"Why has the left caucus failed to support [former prime minister] Keating, [former foreign minister] Carr, [former foreign minister] Evans and even [former Liberal prime minister] Malcolm Turnbull in their opposition to AUKUS?”

Cameron accused the left of being deaf to the “ever-increasing evidence” that AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement weren’t in Australia’s interest, and increased the potential for nuclear war.

He said caucus solidarity “must never come before opposition to war, genocide and starvation of innocent civilians in Gaza”.

The left’s parliamentary caucus once reflected the progressive rank and file’s views, and acted as the party’s conscience, Cameron said. “Those days seem to be long gone.”

Highlighting the gulf between the views of the parliamentary executive and Labor’s rank and file, Cameron said this disconnect “will continue to grow as the leadership concedes our sovereignty by deeper integration into the US war machine”.

“The Australian government should stop claiming to be a middle power trying to uphold a rules-based international order; we are acting as a sub-imperial power upholding a US-led imperial order.

"A sub-imperial power is a relationship, formal or informal, in which one state effectively controls the political sovereignty of others. Australia is an active, eager participant in the US-led order.”

Cameron said the government should “take urgent steps to identify alternatives to AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement”, and give the US and Britain notice of Australia’s intention to leave these.

The government should also “publicly declare that it is not in Australia’s national interest to engage in a war with China over Taiwan”.

Cameron also said there should be action to ensure “genuine parliamentary oversight” of defence and the security and intelligence services. He lambasted the parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security as “toothless”, lacking “capacity for oversight of its activities, as in comparable democracies”. The powers of the committee “must be urgently and significantly enhanced”, he said.