Australia to Be a Frontline in US War on China, Warns Australian Greens Leader David Shoebridge

Australian Greens leader David Shoebridge addressed the recent anti-AUKUS peace rally that took place on Gadigal land before Sydney Town Hall. And as he did, he mentioned that a US general had recently suggested that the key aspect to AUKUS – the military pact involving the US, UK and Australia – is that it turns this continent into an effective “beachhead” for the United States military.

In military parlance, a beachhead is a forward frontline that a defence force establishes somewhere other than its domestic territory, as what it does is focus fighting on foreign soil, and therefore, the military force that has taken this option remains intact in its homeland. So, in this scenario, any retributive strikes from Beijing towards Washington would target this country and its people.

The idea that the United States might have designs on northern Australia being a frontline in a coming war on China is nothing new. But what has changed is the openness about this coming from US officials, and further, that the rogue US Trump administration has revealed itself to be a force concerned with progressing and maintaining its global hegemony by any means.

Former Australian Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison foisted the AUKUS pact upon this country with the promise of eight home-owned nuclear-powered submarines in September 2021. However, five years down the track, the AUKUS deal now appears to be more about establishing US submarine bases on either side of this continent in preparedness for a war against Beijing.

On taking office, current PM Anthony Albanese ran with the AUKUS deal with utmost enthusiasm. And this has left the Australian populace with the idea that there are no alternatives besides the ongoing swallowing up of the Australian military by the US military-industrial complex.

Albeit that was the case right up until last week, when the Australian Greens elected David Shoebridge as its leader, and he’s since placed an alternate vision for a peaceful and independent Australia on the table, which would no longer see us shackled to the US.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Australian Greens leader David Shoebridge about US plans to have this country put its people and territory on the line to shore up US hegemony against a rising China, the growing concerns that Australian young people will be required to face off against Chinese Communist Party cadre, along with the Greens vision for ending our US alliance.

David, you spoke at the Cancel AUKUS, End the US Alliance peace rally on Gadigal land at Sydney Town Hall on 20 September 2026.

At the time you divulged some rather disturbing information around proposals that the US military has for its war against China to “happen here”, as the US military wants “the frontline of their next war, not to be over there, but to literally be over here”.

So, can you outline again what you’ve discovered in terms of US military aspirations on how a war on China should be fought?

The US isn’t making a secret of this: the US generals, US thinktanks or their broader military.

The US has conducted wargames based on their existing set of bases in the West Pacific – running all the way done from South Korea, through Japan in Okinawa and into the Philippines – and they’ve realised that those bases and all the people that live on them are going to be wiped out within the first 24 hours of a conflict.

In light of that strategic weakness, they have decided to move the frontline of their war with China to right across our country.

I can understand why the US might want to do this. They want to locate their B-52 bombers in Australia. They want to locate their nuclear submarines in Australia and their marines and their military depots.

I can understand why the US would want to do that.

But why on Earth are our political leaders doing this? Literally inviting the frontline of a war between the US and China to be right across our country.

It is an extraordinarily deep betrayal.

So, Anthony Albanese is aware of all this?

There is no doubt that Richard Marles, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong are all well aware of this.

In fact, last year, when Richard Marles thought he was in a comfortable, self-congratulatory space at a News Corp conference on war, he made it very clear that if the US goes to war with China, that we would inevitably be involved because of the sheer number of bases and the sheer scale of the so-called interoperability between our military and the US military.

Whether it is Pine Gap, in the heart of the country, or it is the new submarine base that we are building for the United States in Fremantle, or there is North West Cape that is critical for US communications with its submerged submarine fleet.

There is the B-52 base in Tindall. There are the US marines based in Darwin, and there are any one of the caches of munitions that the US has put here.

This makes us a target in any future US war, and for what? It has previously been said that we have these bases to make us secure.

But does anyone seriously think in the state of the world now that US bases make us secure. They make us a target.

The proposal that Australians become frontline cannon fodder in a US war against China is inextricably linked to this country’s participation in AUKUS.

The AUKUS proposal has come a long way from when then PM Morrison spruiked home owned nuclear-powered submarines with Biden in late 2021, and it now seems to be much more about US submarine bases being established on this continent, again with China in their eyes.

So, how would you describe where we are at with AUKUS? And what would you say AUKUS is about at this point in time?

AUKUS is at the heart of this proposal to literally hand over Australia to the US military. Initially, it was sold publicly as us getting this advanced technology in the form of nuclear submarines.

The public aren’t buying that anymore. They can see that the US production capability is not making any spare submarines for Australia.

They can all see the UK submarine capacity in meltdown. They can’t even put one of their own nuclear submarines in the water, let alone have the capacity to build extra for Australia going forward.

That part of the project is in a terminal meltdown. But the part of the project that is pushing ahead is this integration. It is this US takeover of our military.

I have seen it time after time in Senate estimates, when we are challenging why on Earth, we are spending X million dollars here? Why on Earth are we buying this particular US weapons system, and what are we hoping to get out of it?

What is apparent to me is that senior decisionmakers inside the Australian Defence Force, inside the Defence Department and inside the government, can’t distinguish between the national interests of the United States and the national interests of Australia.

They seem to have a belief that they are one and the same.

Well, when we have US generals and we have US members of Congress that are hot to trot on AUKUS, saying that for them, the key thing about AUKUS is making us the beachhead in the next US war, these generals seem to be telling us the hard truth about all of this.

AUKUS makes us the beachhead in the next US war. It makes Australia a beachhead.

Another key concern that your colleague WA Greens MLC Sophie McNeill raised last week when I spoke to her is that she’s concerned about Australian young people being required to fight these wars on behalf of the US.

And in fact, as Germany appears to be contemplating conscription, there are some local parents here now fearing a similar development.

So, have you heard any rumblings of such ideas in Canberra? And should parents be concerned that the government may one day soon require national service of this nation’s young people?

Across the world, we are seeing governments pushing down towards further militarisation. There is an increased push in national rhetoric about building massive armed forces and seeing that as a way of getting peace and security in the world.

While I haven’t seen any concrete or direct plans of the Labor government to contemplate conscription, it is part of what we hear sometimes from One Nation and the Coalition and given how Labor continues to chase their policies off to the right, it is something that we should have on the radar.

I want to be clear, the idea that we would be taking people from productive paths and positive careers to make the world a better place and funnelling them into the military in a compulsive manner is something the Greens would resist.

People have a right to choose the direction of their life and not to be forced down a military path by the government.

And lastly, David, the growing local presence of the US military makes it hard to consider that there is any alternative other than moving forward with it. Labor, the Coalition and now One Nation have certainly been giving no hints of any alternative.

But as you’ve taken the leadership of the Australian Greens, there is now talk about an alternative vision. So, can you tell us about how this country might shift on this key military alliance?

Our defence policy and our foreign policy should be focused on Australia’s national interest. They should be focused on making Australia as safe and secure as we can be and playing a positive part in our region and the world.

If we are going to get to that destination, we first of all have to remove ourselves from this toxic, hostage relationship with Washington?

Australians are asking themselves, why haven’t we been able to act with principle in the Israeli attack on Gaza and the genocide on Gaza?

Why on Earth was Australia one of the first countries in the world to support this illegal and disastrous war that Trump and Netanyahu have initiated against Iran, which is not only hurting the people of Iran and the Middle East but everyone with the energy prices?

Why? Why is this the answer of our political elites? Pretty much the whole of the Labor party, the whole of the Coalition and the whole of One Nation have no ability to see outside of our continuing utter reliance and dependence upon and capture by the US.

The alternative to that is to remove US bases from our soil. To remove that threat that comes from US bases. And to engage in what is called an “Echidna strategy” of defence.

That is we make Australia into a little prickly echidna with a defence force that is designed to effectively and thoroughly defend Australia and our approaches, but we don’t spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars on submarines to project force far from our shore.

We don’t join with the US on the next adventurous war, wherever they choose to have it. And we focus on defending Australia.

We can do that with our industrial bases. We can do that with our resources. And of course, once we restructure the Australian Defence Force away from projecting force and towards a genuine defence, we can then talk to our neighbours about them adopting the same strategy.

If that is adopted at scale in our region, the restructuring of our defence forces from any offensive capacity towards an effective and credible defence, well, that is a massive step towards peace and security, and it is a massive step towards deescalating any arms race.

Images of David Shoebridge at the September 2026 peace rally by Paul Gregoire