The latest data on housing prices illustrates the growing social divide in our complex neoliberal economy with its close ties to US investment hubs. Home entertainment through the corporate streaming services is an important safety valve in communities under financial stress where families cannot afford other forms of diversionary entertainment.
Most Australian households with subscriptions extending to 3-4 platforms generated by multinational corporate networks including Netflix, Disney, Amazon Prime, Paramount+ and Stan, Binge and Kayo Sports.
Netflix (NFLX) Inc is a highly profitable global streaming service. NFLX operates in 190 countries. Its profitability sits at 16.4 percent to mid-August 2026 with a global revenue of $63 billion.
Institutional investors such as the Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Fidelity Management, State Street Global Advisers are the largest shareholders in Netflix. These institutional investors are also key backers of firms involved in the military industrial complexes of the US and Britain including Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation (formerly Raytheon) Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and BAE Systems. Involvement in Piller II of AUKUS permits the sharing of strategic artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, hypersonics, and autonomous undersea systems with Australia.
The SBS (16 June 2026) shows the extent of Australia’s integration with the US Strategic Command structures:
The US military is planning a permanent war-ready weapons stockpile for its Marine Corps on Australia’s southeast coast beyond the range of most Chinese missiles, tender documents show and officials confirmed to AFP.
The development of the stockpile, a first for the Marine Corps in Australia, comes as the United States is keen to leverage the continent’s strategic location in the South Pacific to counter China’s rapid military build-up, analysts said.
The US Marine Corps began global prepositioning of military supplies during the Cold War — using floating stores on ships and caves in Norway where weapons, ammunition and vehicles to sustain thousands of troops are kept.
The first land stockpile in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to open this year in the Philippines, close to potential flashpoints in the South China Sea.
Documents published by the US Navy this month show advanced planning for an even larger Australian stockpile, with $30 million allocated to build warehouses and offices in southeastern Victoria state for “critical forward provisioning”.
The Australian stockpile, expected to reach full capacity by 2028, will be kept in Melbourne before being moved to US warehouses to be constructed next year at an Australian military base at Bandiana in rural Victoria, tender documents show.
Australia does not permit foreign military bases on its soil, a sensitive issue in a country that has a security alliance with the United States and is hosting an increasing variety of US forces on rotation at Australian defence bases.
The US Navy is engaging a global defence contractor to employ around 110 engineers, mechanics, material and safety specialists to manage the Australian stockpile, which includes “crew-served weapons”, the documents show.
“Marine Corps activities in Australia support integrated global sustainment by maintaining ready-for-issue equipment and supplies for operations and exercises across the Indo-Pacific,” a US Marine Corps Forces Pacific spokesperson told AFP.
The spokesperson declined to comment on contract details or force planning assumptions but said Marines equipment is kept at “high readiness.”
Contracting arrangements and the operation of the facility would be made in close coordination with Australia’s Department of Defence.
The sharing of advanced technology with Australia is used to justify new embargoes on potential Chinese investment here (KPMG Trendlines on Chinese Investment in Australia):
Australia is not alone in the interactions generated by institutional investor as shown by the latest profile from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA):
At the apex of this society our Labor Government is now half-way through its second term in office. The decrease in Labor’s primary vote is quite alarming, but the alternatives are woeful.
AFR Redbridge Polling Assessment (30 August 2026)
Other Middle Powers in the US Global Alliance are experiencing this interaction with US corporate investment as summarized by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The US economy is being propped up by strategic investments in the economies of loyal allied powers.
Australia has drifted to closer economic and security ties with the USA to a degree that would have been difficult to anticipate a decade ago. Waves of corporate goodwill have persisted from the Scott Morrison years at the expense of our national sovereignty.
The Pratt Factory Event in Ohio 2019
PM Scott Morrison and Ambassador Hockey were there on the scene to offer support:
Given the wrath directed by the Trump administration towards PM Mark Carney’s mainstream Liberal Government in Canada, the Albanese Government is virtually forced to maintain cordial relations with an erratic White House administration to avoid the imposition of harsh punitive tariffs as imposed on Canada.
The world waits for the outcomes from the US Midterm elections on 3 November 2026 for the entire US House of Representatives and for one third of the US Senate.
Let’s hope that national sovereignty can be reasserted soon before Australians are more fully locked and loaded into a dangerous militaristic game with our most profitable trading partner.
Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building on the critical issues raised in each article. Your comments on this and related articles can be recorded on theaimn.net site.
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Minister Marles would serve Australia’s future interests better by addressing the distressing situation in his electorate of Corio where almost all of the manufacturing and exporting industries (Ford Motor Co, Alcoa, Pilkingtons Glass, wool stores and textile mills, plus a diminished capacity oil refinery have lead to unemployment, decline in worker skill levels and social dfisharmony particularly amongst unemployable youth. Geelong is no longer a significant export/import port or a manufacturing city. It is a welfare dominated city. The numerous empty retail shops in the Geelong CBD attest the decline of this once proud city.
The headline and photo on this article did not alert me to the major points being made, which are how closely Australia is becoming aligned with the needs of the USA. Yes, I have heard of AUKUS (not specifically mentioned here) but the information on plans to stockpile weapons here has not had much publicity.
I am very alarmed that there is to be an “Australian stockpile, with $30 million allocated to build warehouses and offices in southeastern Victoria for “critical forward provisioning”.
The Australian stockpile, expected to reach full capacity by 2028, will be kept in Melbourne before being moved to US warehouses to be constructed next year at an Australian military base at Bandiana in rural Victoria, tender documents show.”
Does Albo have any radical spirit left from his University of Sydney Days.
Does Albo have any radical spirit left from his University of Sydney Days.
I fail to understand why Australians can be so gullible and accepting of Trump and his government.
Another episode of Australia as the 51st State
Nothing of consequence will change until we ditch neoliberal bullshit, and deselect the mainly hopeless shitheads we now look at every day.There’s no nice way to look at this,we are fucked with the current pack of drones that crowd our so called ‘representatives’We are going backwards until some one of guts and intelligence grasps the nettle.
I can’t see anyone, anywhere, that’s going to save us.
We go on about this daily, but how is it going to change while too many of us find it all too hard.Our government has been hit with a mountain of testing issues, and so far have not got the balls , integrity or will to deal with them.
Albanese is certainly not up to the job, and it’s hard to see anyone else.
Any ideas?
Even infrastructure projects are being affected by security controls. Are Australians being prepared for war?
Sluts for money, power, control, hoarding, elevation, egofixation and supremacy have maggoted history, always did and always will. We have them here in abundance, in politics, media, finance, a huge executive class well beyond natural controls of society. A financial result now and later is the go, the dream. They actually white ant us, for other leaders, bosses, nations, creeds, superstitions and “realities” control the life purposes of such sluts who serve, pose, act, dance and strip for others. We must define, out, reveal, assault our enemies, some treacherous, or go down and out. Australia needs its true heart, soul, path, road, story and not foreign criminality, bases, owners, carriers of infection, controllers. Fight for less of someone’s greed for more.
Kos Samaras on Australian political trends
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/09/the-major-parties-collapsed-why-didnt-the-greens-rise/
Thanks for a really interesting article.
“The decrease in Labor’s primary vote is quite alarming, but the alternatives are woeful.”
Labor teamed up with the Coalition to rig future elections in its favour, wound up police and unleashed them on peaceful Australian protestors, robbed Australians of a fair return on Australian resources and serves the interests of Israel and the USA ahead of Australians.
For me they are all red lines that Labor has crossed – it has to go.
“The decrease in Labor’s primary vote is quite alarming, but the alternatives are woeful.”
Throw Labor out. One Nation and the Coalition are not the only alternatives to Labor.
How do you come to the conclusion that Independents are ‘woeful’, Denis? How are the likes of Pocock, Wilkie, and Payman “woeful”, Denis?
How are the Greens “woeful”, Denis?
Labor went to the ’22 election on ‘we’re not Morrison’, to the ’25 election on the lie ‘if you don’t vote for us you’ll get Dutton’, and it is patently clear they will go to the ’28 election with ‘if you don’t vote for us you’ll get Hanson.’
It is a dishonest distortion of the reality and by demeaning more progressive alternatives, the Greens and progressive Independents, Labor is doing One Nation a favour. The people have woken up to the fact that Labor serves the USA, Israel and corporations, not the people, by smearing progressive alternatives Labor shills risk driving people to One Nation.
“…the alternatives are woeful.”
I have to agree with Thommo on this.
I’m sure that the sentence in question did not capture the totality of Denis’s thinking on the matter, but he said what he said.
The role of progressive minor parties is of great significance at present, and their significance will grow.
The lesson here is that in discussing serious matters, there’s no room for short-cuts or ambiguity.
Meticulous care is required, and where possible, each sentence should be powerful enough to stand on its own while contributing to the coherence of the whole.
An inquiry into systematic but legal tax avoidance by multinationals would improve the primary vote for Labor. A 29 percent primary vote is not a satisfactory level of support for a governing party with a big majority and goodwill from the Greens and progressie crossbench.
In the case of Netflix, very little is being paid back to the ATO part from the GST levied on customers. Australia does not have a flat “minimum company tax” floor that applies universally to all corporations regardless of profit or loss, meaning companies like Netflix have frequently reported paying zero corporate income tax in certain financial years despite billions in local revenue.
The LNP must explain why it has tolerated this anomaly for decades and it’s time for Albo to act on this problem.
Why are political insiders ignoring this problem and pouring so much money into the US Alliance expenses when US multinationals are the worst offenders on tax issues.
Junk food company are in the forefront of tax avoidance.
Let’s have a senate inquiry on this issue which is costing billions that coud be spent on social housing, infrastructure, public broadcasting and community development.
The Keating view on surrendering Australian sovereignty to anybody, especially the USA (Undemocratic Sewer of Apartheid).
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/09/what-paul-keating-wants-for-a-country-swimming-between-sharks/
Does President Trump use teeth whitener: Check out the pic
Worse than whitener: Trumps map of North America which includes all countries from the Caribbean to the Arctic Circle https://www.facebook.com/CBSNews/posts/president-trump-on-labor-day-posted-a-map-with-an-american-flag-covering-most-of/1497315625593610/
Use of teeth whitener cream does not lessen my contempt for President Trump’s authoritarian style.
Keep the US out of the Republic of Ireland and protect Ireland from transit stops at Shannon Airport by US military aircrafts.
Irish may have a progressive President in the recently elected Catherine Connolly but the two Irish conservative parties have a firm coalition which is open to more US influence.
Will there be a Green governmen Steve? Minority parties cannot form governments.
“Minority parties cannot form government.”
Our senate system gives significant influence to minor parties, depending on final numbers.
Years ago an single independent senator from Tassie, Brian Harradine, controlled the parliament for years due to the composition of the Senate.
Any minor party that secures a few Senate seats can control government legislation.