AUKUS just keeps getting better for Christopher Pyne, with news emerging that Australia’s former defence minister has partnered with a major league Washington law firm, Baker Donelson, in an expansion of Pyne & Partners’ defence lobbying interests.
The Australian first reported the development at the weekend, noting the Liberal Party “scion” was set to meet US President Joe Biden’s highly influential Indo-Pacific adviser Kurt Campbell, among others, during a swing through New York and Washington, DC. Campbell, for reasons explained later, is very much the man to know when it comes to AUKUS.
Pyne’s further step up the lobbying ladder puts him alongside former treasurer “Ambassador” Joe Hockey as the most visible and successful of former Australian politicians in the exclusive AUKUS club. As Crikey noted last week, Hockey and his Bondi Partners are thrusting ever onwards on the AUKUS money-go-round.
Mr Ambassador’s wife, Melissa Babbage, is also at the centre of an Australian power and influence network entrenching itself in the US. Babbage, who has had an extensive career in senior banking roles, is both a Bondi Partners C-suite executive and a board member of the blue-chip business networking organisation, the American Australian Association. Hockey is on the advisory council of the association.
So what does the AUKUS club look like? All roads lead to (and out of) think tanks and networking groups backed by Australian billionaires and millionaires, chief among them Rupert Murdoch, Anthony Pratt and Frank Lowy.
Center for Strategic and International Studies
Most prominent is the powerful Washington policy research group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Melbourne packaging billionaire Anthony Pratt, whose US companies employ about 10,000 Americans, is a key financial backer. Pratt Industries endowed the inaugural Australia chair, a move that came to fruition at the end of 2021, shortly after then-prime minister Scott Morrison announced AUKUS.
The launch attracted a who’s who of US-Australia power brokers, including Campbell. Campbell has long links with Australia (he holds an honorary Order of Australia award) and is widely credited as the central player in bringing the US and its nuclear secrets into the AUKUS agreement.
Pratt has a ubiquitous presence across US and Australia relations. He had the political heft to bring together Morrison and then-president Donald Trump at the opening of a Pratt packaging facility in Ohio in 2019. Pratt has a prominent role in the American Australian Association, which was founded by the Murdochs in New York and continues to be dominated by Murdoch influence.
He is also a fan of Australia’s defence minister, Richard Marles; Marles refers to Pratt as “my good friend”. Pratt introduced Marles at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event in July last year thus: “Deputy Prime Minister Marles is a true friend of the United States and I believe he will be the greatest defence minister Australia has ever had.”
American Australian Association
The association was founded by Sir Keith Murdoch in the late 1940s. Rupert Murdoch and News Corp CEO Robert Thomson sit on its advisory council. Murdoch and son Lachlan recently opened the Murdoch Centre with the association, invoking a “belligerent China” as a reason for the US and Australia to grow their close relationship.
More broadly, it was Rupert Murdoch who moved to resuscitate US-Australia relations after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 led to a drop in support among Australians for the role played by the US in world affairs.
United States Studies Centre
In 2006, at the behest of Rupert Murdoch, then-prime minister John Howard promised $25 million in federal government funds to establish the United States Studies Centre in Sydney. The centre has a branch in Perth. The two think tanks receive funding through the American Australian Association Ltd, a registered charity, as well as direct federal government funding.
A former senior fellow at the centre, Charles Edel, became the inaugural Australia chair at CSIS.
Lowy Institute
The Lowy Institute, the international policy think tank founded by shopping centre billionaire Frank Lowy, has provided a platform for influential US-Australian policymakers such as Campbell. It appointed Campbell as its inaugural distinguished international fellow in 2013. The Campbell-Lowy relationship goes back two decades when Lowy executive director Michael Fullilove first met Campbell at the residence of Australia’s US ambassador when he was in Washington at the behest of Lowy, writing a feasibility study for the Lowy Institute.
When Campbell spoke at a Lowy event following the AUKUS announcement of 2021, Fullilove described him as having had “a greater impact on US policy towards Asia than any other American official in living memory”.
The ‘Red Alert’ series
It is a sign of how small — yet influential — the world of think tanks can be that two of the specialist commentators used in Nine’s controversial “Red Alert” series are drawn from the billionaire-backed think tanks.
Macquarie University academic Lavina Lee is a non-resident fellow of the CSIS in Washington and a senior fellow (non-resident) at the US Studies Centre. Retired Australian Army officer Mick Ryan is an adjunct fellow at the CSIS and a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute in Sydney. And the ringmaster for Nine’s series, senior journalist Peter Hartcher, is also a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute.
The series at least declared the links of its experts, albeit in the fine print. News Corp media outlets do not declare the institutional links and allegiances of its parent company when it comes to its coverage of AUKUS, China and US-Australia defence ties. Imagine if it did.
It might be a big world out there, but it is a small and rarefied club that has influence on US-Australia defence policy. It is looking more and more like a billionaire’s club where political differences are simply irrelevant.
Any more nominations for the AUKUS club? Please contact David Hardaker via his secure email dhardaker@protonmail.com with any information you wish to pass on as we continue our AUKUS investigation.
