Andrew Hastie calls for 'transparency' about US military's growing presence in Australia

Australia Broadcast Center

23-06-2025

Coalition frontbencher Andrew Hastie has called for "greater transparency" about the US military's growing presence in Australia, saying the government needs to explain how it's protecting national sovereignty while deepening defence ties with Washington.
The former soldier has also called for the government to explain what role Australia might play backing US combat operations launched from this country, saying it is critical to build public understanding and support for the alliance.
The government has consistently brushed off questions over whether the highly sensitive military facilities at Pine Gap or North West Cape provided intelligence to the US for its bombing raids against Iran's nuclear facilities on the weekend.
But the Trump administration's decision to strike Iran has stoked fresh debate on the military alliance, particularly as the United States continues to ramp up its presence in the north of Australia.
Mr Hastie is a strong supporter of both the alliance and the Iran strikes, but told journalists the government should not shy away from talking more openly about military cooperation with Washington.
"When America conducts combat operations, we want to know what our level of involvement will be," he said.
Since 2011 the US has maintained a rotational force of marines in Darwin and worked with the government to expand Northern Territory airfields for a growing number of visiting US military aircraft.
Australia will also host rotations of US nuclear-powered submarines at HMAS Stirling near Perth from 2027.
Mr Hastie said the Trump administration had been explicit that it is building closer ties with allies like Australia and Japan to push back against China, but there had not been enough public debate about exactly what role Australia would play in the event of conflict, or what action US forces here can take.
"As our alliance grows and strengthens, we need to know, what freedom of action we have within that alliance," he said.
"And we also need to know what limits there are as well.
Mr Hastie said the Coalition now supported establishing a parliamentary Joint Defence Committee — despite opposing it in the last term of government — saying the body could "ask hard questions of the defence establishment and consider some of these governing documents that go to the heart of how our alliance operates."
"I think it's time that we had a mature, parties of government committee dedicated to defence so that we can have these debates," the shadow home affairs minister said.
Greens spokesperson on defence senator David Shoebridge backed the call for more transparency, saying it would expose "Australia's entanglement with the US military".
"This will expose our complicity in unjust US wars and push Australians to take a more critical and independent approach to defence and foreign policy," he said.
But he rejected the Coalition's call for the Joint Defence Committee — which would exclude Greens and crossbench MPs — declaring: "A committee entirely populated by the AUKUS cheer club will hardly provide us with the transparency the public is asking for."
"The last time the Defence Committee was proposed, the major parties wanted a closed shop," he said.
Mr Hastie isn't the first public figure to call for Australia to re-examine the way it structures its military alliance with the United States.
Former Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo, who is also a strong supporter of the alliance, recently argued that the defence minister should make a statement to the House of Representatives on the "rationale for [the] US military build-up in Australia".
"Such a statement would need to address the following issues. Is there any standing, preauthorised agreement for the US to undertake certain types of combat operations from, or through, Australia?" he wrote in Australian Strategic Policy Institute's The Strategist.
"How would our agreement be sought for specific operations? Are we being consulted by the US on its war plans to operate from, or through, Australia?
"Would the government have a right of veto, given that we would be a co-belligerent in the event of war? Are there agreed war plans for the joint defence of Australia in the event that we were to be attacked as a result?"
While the federal government is entitled to have "full knowledge" and must give "concurrence" to US military activities in Australia, this does not give it the right to approve every action taken.
Mr Pezzullo says the current formulation — which has been used by the US and Australia since the Whitlam and Hawke governments — only gives Australia a limited say over US military activities here.
He argues that ANZUS should be transformed to a "standing Australia-US war-fighting alliance, with the requisite political-military structures that one would expect to see in such an alliance."
"As occurs in NATO, this would allow for policy mechanisms, strategic planning process, command arrangements and operational planning structures to be put in place, where these issues could be addressed and managed under the political leadership of the two governments," he wrote.
Last night Mr Pezzullo told the ABC's 730 program that under such an agreement, Australia should have a "decisive" and "active" say on the activities of US forces in Australia.
The federal government has not yet commented on Mr Hastie's remarks.
Euan Graham from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told the ABC that Australia was an "oddity among US allies" because "unlike the UK, Germany or Japan, Australia has not had to host US combat forces since WWII".
"Now that is changing, as Washington is once again interested in Australia as a strategic reinforcement [and] dispersal location in its priority theatre; not too close to China to be too vulnerable, nor too far away to be relevant," he said.
"For the first time since Australia's American alliance was forged, we are once again a Goldilocks basing location."
He said while that shift was "fundamentally in Australia's security interest" it was politically difficult for the government to "admit that Australia's defence and security depends increasingly on hosting foreign [US] forces, at least until the ADF acquires more potent, sovereign deterrent capabilities of its own — still a decade off or more."
"Not simply to update Canberra's 'full knowledge and concurrence' about the growing US military footprint, but because we are lacking an honest appreciation of our true defence spending requirements."