Interview with Attorney General George Brandis about Australia’s Special Defence Undertakings.
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Hectoria: Please introduce yourself.
Brandis: My name is George Brandis and I am the Attorney General.
H: Why did you sign the charges that led the Northern Territory Supreme Court to jail protesters at Pine Gap?
Brandis: The protestors were a threat to the defence of Australia. However it wasn’t me who jailed them. It was Judge John Reeves who did that after a jury found them guilty. It is called separation of powers.
H: How so?
Brandis: Do you mean why were they a threat? They were drawing attention to a secure high visible target for incoming missile strikes from places like North Korea. As for separation of powers, I’m part of executive government and judge John Reeves is part of the judiciary.
H: Wasn’t judge John Reeves the last political appointment to the court by the Howard government? Previously he had been elected in the Hawke Labor government in 1983 as member for the Northern Territory.
Brandis: A bit before my time but I believe so.
H: Jail for singing a lament inside a spy base?
Brandis: It is … it is a joint defence facility with the Americans.
H: Have you spoken to the Americans about the peace activists going onto the base.
Brandis: Yes.
H: What did they say?
Brandis: They didn’t like it in 2007 and they don’t like it in 2016.
H: Have you been to the base?
Brandis: No.
H: Why not?
Brandis: Pine Gap is not part of my portfolio, that belongs to Defence Minister.
H: How did six people manage to get into a high secure area?
Brandis: They did not pose a threat, the functions of the base were never compromised.
H: What are the functions of the place?
Brandis: I can’t say.
H: Why not?
Brandis: To be quite honest, I don’t want to upset the Americans.
H: Have you received any briefings from the Americans?
Brandis: Only from the US Consul.
H: Who was that?
Brandis: Consul-General Valerie Fowler.
H: Isn’t Ms Fowler a graduate of Standford and the National War College.
Brandis: That sounds right.
H: What did consul Fowler say to you?
Brandis: She said that she had served in Kabul in Afghanistan during some pretty tricky situations, embassy bombings and the like, and that we could ill afford to have any disruption to satellite surveillance in this third of the planet.
H: Attorney General, what did you understand Ms Fowler to mean?
Brandis: Apparently her husband is a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy. She tells me they launch missiles from their ships and the missiles are guided by Pine Gap.
H: What sort of information does Pine Gap provide the US military?
Brandis: The precise location of mobile phones of insurgents.
H: Is that how they got Bin Laden?
Brandis: I met the Consul-general and her husband at a Canberra cocktail party so I didn’t ask … I don’t know.
H: … and they buried him at sea.
Brandis: Apparently.
H: Mr Brandis, didn’t the US military use Pine Gap signals to pin-point Iraqi generals in Bagdad during ‘shock and awe’ in 2003?
Brandis: So I’m informed.
H: Yet many of the missiles fell on innocent families.
Brandis: I don’t know.
H: Before he was a judge wasn’t John Reeves himself arrested for protesting at Pine Gap.
Brandis: No … John Reeves had a minor involvement in the 1970s but when he became a Queens Counsel he wrote the former Country Liberal Party’s government policy regarding aboriginal land councils...
[Thanks to Hectoria for her acting of the role of reporter. These roles were written by Ian Curr. This is not a work of fiction. Any names or characters, businesses or places, events or incidents, are real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is intended.]
