BY EVA CHENG
Australia was singled out for praise by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld twice on May 7. That his praise came five days after US President George W. Bush's declaration of support for the National Missile Defence scheme was no accident.
If Canberra objected to NMD, and withdrew permission for the US to run its extensive network of 30 spy bases in Australia, the whole NMD scheme could be rendered unworkable.
The giant Pine Gap base in central Australia is particularly crucial to US intelligence-gathering operations. While visiting Australia in May 1992, then US defence secretary Dick Cheney, now Bush's vice-president, confirmed that Pine Gap had been used in the Gulf War and had "played an invaluable role in detecting launches of Iraqi Scud missiles aimed at US forces in Saudi Arabia".
Without Pine Gap and the other US bases in Australia, there would be a huge hole in missile defences.
But, despite most of the world objecting to NMD and despite a June 29 vote against it in the federal Senate, Prime Minister John Howard's government has signalled its support and "understanding" for the "Son of Star Wars" scheme.
The operations of Pine Gap are shrouded in secrecy. There are even doubts about whether the Australian government has the power to stop the US using the base for NMD purposes if it chose to.
Not even a high-level parliamentary committee — the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties — set up three years ago for the sole purpose of scrutinising the extension of the treaty governing Pine Gap can tell whether Australia has a say on what the spy base is precisely used for.
The Department of Defence pushed away all JSCT demands for information, providing little more than unsubstantiated assurances that Australia's national interests are met and that Australians are "fully involved in the management and operation" of Pine Gap.
Even a committee request to inspect the spy base was rejected — even though US parliamentarians were able to do so and were provided classified briefings which the Australian committee was denied.