Straight and bare, Hatt Road runs southwest from Mparntwe-Alice Springs before it suddenly swings north through a narrow gap in the MacDonnell Ranges. It is what lies beyond that draws protesters here time and time again. Hatt Road—unremarkable save for the fierce signs insisting “No Photography From This Point On” and demanding drivers “Turn Around Now”—is the main road into Pine Gap, the highly secretive joint Australian–United States satellite communications and signals intelligence surveillance base.
Twenty hectares and heavily guarded, “the base”—as it’s known locally—sits in a secluded, narrow valley, flanked by the sparse hills of the ranges. Little is officially confirmed about its operations, but through leaked documents and whistleblower disclosures, its criticality to American global-intelligence gathering is uncontested. Ostensibly, the “joint defence facility” established by the CIA in 1966 is controlled by both Australia and the US. But Pine Gap has been described as America’s most valuable intelligence site outside US soil.
Protests and Allegations
On 9 October, two activists from Mparntwe for Falastin locked themselves to a concrete-filled barrel, blocking Hatt Road for nine hours and preventing Pine Gap workers from accessing the base. Flanking their protest were two boats, representing the aid flotilla then approaching the occupied territory of Gaza from the Mediterranean. The action, protester Jorgen Doyle argued, was legally justified because they were preventing Pine Gap workers from participating in the commission of genocide on the other side of the world.
“We’re here because Pine Gap is sharing surveillance data, including geolocation information from mobile phones, with the genocidal Israeli regime, who are targeting journalists and their families, children, teachers, doctors, patients and the entire population of Palestine,” Doyle claimed. He later told Guardian Australia: “Pine Gap looms large in the national imagination, but people are not aware of the violence that the base perpetrates internationally: we want more people to understand Australia’s role in the commission of genocide.”
Rising Resistance to Pine Gap
A United Nations commission of inquiry reported last month that the Israeli government and military had committed genocide in Gaza: Israeli leaders had evinced “direct evidence of genocidal intent”, the commission found, and were responsible for military operations that killed unprecedented numbers of civilians and sought to “destroy the Palestinians in Gaza”. In response, Israel’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying it “categorically rejects this distorted and false report and calls for the immediate abolition of this commission of inquiry”.
But the 9 October protest over Australia’s claimed complicity in international crimes was only the latest in a re-emergent campaign seeking not simply to disrupt defence workers and contractors accessing Pine Gap, but to contest the base’s very presence on Australian soil. The Arrernte people—on whose country Pine Gap was imposed without consultation—never ceded their land for the base. They have remained implacably opposed to its existence ever since, an antagonism brought into further relief by the conflict in Gaza.
“Who gave America the right to put their military base on our sacred land and use our country to kill innocent women, men, children and old people overseas?” Arrernte elder Felicity Hayes told a protest last year. “We are so sorry this is happening, this shouldn’t be happening, we support the people of Palestine.”
Historical Context and Legal Challenges
Over decades, opposition to Pine Gap’s presence on Australian soil has ebbed and flowed, demonstrators say. The 80s were a peak, before more muted disquiet during the “war on terror” dominated early years of this century. But resistance, they say, is flourishing again. Since 4 July—US Independence Day—protesters have gathered each fortnight near the gates of the base, bearing placards and banners. Miniature replica radomes are ceremonially destroyed at the end of the protest.
“US global hegemony is on the wane,” says Doyle. “The opposition in central Australia to the base is stronger than it has been in a long time … and scepticism about the US alliance has never been so mainstream.”
In September, after nearly two years before the Northern Territory’s courts, Carmen Escobar Robinson and co-accused, Tommy Walker, were found guilty of “failing to cease to loiter” (charges of obstructing a public road and causing a traffic hazard were dropped) over a 2023 protest that blocked Hatt Road. The pair received no conviction, but had a good behaviour bond and $150 victims’ levy imposed.
Expert Opinions and Court Rulings
Dr Richard Tanter, honorary professor of international relations at the University of Melbourne and a senior research associate at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, was called as an expert witness in Robinson’s case. He detailed before the court Pine Gap’s direct role in providing intelligence to the Israel Defense Forces via the United States’ National Security Agency.
Pine Gap is a critical part of surveillance for operations which supplies intelligence to the United States and, we now know, to Israel. Palestinian civilians are part of their surveillance targeting maps.
While a series of objections were made in the court hearing to restrict the breadth of Tanter’s testimony, his evidence was neither contested nor contradicted. In the NT local court, Judge John McBride ultimately excluded Tanter’s evidence as irrelevant to the offence before him. The judge ruled that for Robinson and Walker’s actions to be justified, they needed to demonstrate “an application of force” in preventing a crime, which their protest had not done.
John Lawrence SC, acting for both Robinson and Walker, argued that the protest’s rationale was to stop the commission of genocide—an international crime—on the other side of the world. “One of several defences to an offence in Australian law is the prevention of the commission of another offence, and that’s precisely what they did by blocking access to Pine Gap for six hours and for 100 personnel: they were stepping in to stop the ‘crime of crimes’, genocide.”
Future Implications and Continuing Protests
Asked in Senate estimates this month if Pine Gap provided surveillance data or signals intelligence that assisted Israeli strikes on Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital or the Nuseirat refugee camp, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, Abigail Bradshaw, said: “Consistent with the practice of successive governments, we do not comment on the operational activities of Pine Gap.”
Following this month’s protest (Doyle and a fellow protester have been charged with “fail to cease to loiter” and will face court next month), NT police southern commander James Gray-Spence said police respected the right to protest. “However, we do not support protest activities involving [alleged] unlawful conduct including intentionally obstructing public roads that deprives the Alice Springs community of multiple police and fire crews who should be combatting domestic violence, property crime and other emergencies.” The pair will face court on 13 November.
A fragile ceasefire holds—just—in Gaza. There is violence still (more than 100 Palestinians have died since it was brokered) and access to healthcare and aid remains limited. Doyle is resolute in defending his protest. “The biggest crimes being committed on Arrernte country right now are the war crimes that the Pine Gap base is participating in.”
