Join Us because…
WHY CONVERGE?:
2026 is the 60th anniversary of the signing of the agreement between the US and Australian governments that led to the construction of the Pine Gap military intelligence facility on Arrernte Country. Arrernte people were not consulted and never gave their consent for the alienation of their land and the construction of the base.
It’s time to reconvene on this stolen land. To come together and network broadly with others fighting for
- First Nation struggles
- a Free Palestine, and
- Divestment from the US Australian alliance
The Australian government is rapidly militarising the continent. The Turnbull government had an ambition to turn Australia into one of the top 10 weapons producers in the world. Our present Labor government wants Australia to become the largest offshore manufacturer of US weapons. Pine Gap is also undergoing its largest-ever expansion to hunt and target Chinese missile silos. Northern Australia has become the top overseas location for US military construction spending. The Northern Territory supports some of the largest war rehearsals in the world, including Exercise Talisman Sabre and Exercise Pitch Black, which begins on July 20 this year.
A key objective of the convergence is to bring together awareness of, and organising against, the weapons factories down south and on the east coast, and the military installations and training grounds across northern Australia. We will also talk about the militarised and racialised surveillance and policing of Aboriginal people in this place, and ongoing struggles for justice and decolonisation from here.
Custodians or Kuyunba, the land on which Pine Gap is built, ask that we help them draw attention to the injustice of the base having secure legal tenure to occupy their lands without their permission, while their families live in the Irrkerlantye/ White Gate community with insecure legal tenure. They ask that we amplify their decades-long struggle to get security of tenure, and to get the basic infrastructural provisions like consistent electricity and running water that most of us take for granted on this continent.
There’s been an incredible anti-militarist, anti-colonial, pro-Palestine mobilisation on this continent over the last few years. To build on this momentum we believe that it’s important to strengthen our networks and deepen our connections with one another.
An objective of the convergence is to build on the strength that has animated previous convergences on Pine Gap, and the broader movements of which they were a part. The Pine Gap actions that took place throughout the 1980s and 1990s were conceived as a contribution to a national and international movement calling for the removal of all military bases from the region, as a step towards complete demilitarisation and decolonisation. A strong anti-colonial, anti-militarist movement that matches or even surpasses the strength and ambition of these movements is urgently needed. We hope the 2026 Close Pine Gap – Sacred Land Back convergence can be a contribution towards rebuilding and reinvigorating such a movement.