Political Futures: Heightened Internal Tensions at the G7 Leaders’ Summit

By Denis Bright  

As one of the invited guests to the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Alberta Canada (15-17 June 2025), Anthony Albanese will certainly enter a political and environmental firestorm. Australia is not the source of these international and environmental tensions.

Pressenza Press Agency (8 June 2025) covered the environmental context of the forthcoming G7 Leaders’ Summit:

Security officials at the G7 leaders’ summit in Kananaskis say plans are in place, including the possibility of evacuations, if wildfires become a serious threat. Kananaskis, located at the foothills and front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Its western edge borders Banff National Park and the Alberta-B.C. boundary.

According to government data, the fires are caused by campfires of humans. But several environmental groups are denouncing the oil companies’ practices of extracting tar sands.

In fact, Alberta’s oil companies have been draining the prairies for decades. Despite promises from industry and government to reduce water use in oil sands operations and restore wetlands that have been mined to a depth of more than two hundred meters, the delta’s ecosystem of the Athabasca River declined. It will become irreversible if oil companies actually triple their production in Alberta, as they have announced, by 2030.

Extracting oil from the tar sands requires enormous quantities of water. For every barrel of oil produced, at least 2.6 barrels of water must be extracted from the Athabasca River or local groundwater. For so-called “in situ” operations, which use steam to separate the oil from the sand underground and then pump the bitumen to the surface, freshwater consumption is less, but still significant.

The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) forecasts that production of crude bitumen – the thick, sticky oil found in Alberta’s oil sands region – will reach four million barrels per day in 2033, up from 3.4 million barrels per day last year.

The quiet killing of the Canadian giantess forests and its various animal species is an urgent reminder for the Canadian population to push the climate change agenda. Keystone Pipeline and the TC Canadian Mainline pipelines transport oil from Alberta to the United States. The Keystone Pipeline, which runs from Hardisty, Alberta, across Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and into North Dakota, continues south to Nederland, Texas.

Even without acquiring Canada as the 51^st State of the Union as recommended by the Trump administration, Trans Canada (TC) Pipeline networks have a big mix of US and Canadian corporate controls according to Gemini Google Bard:

Canadian institutional investors collectively form the largest single block of ownership. Canada’s “Big Five” banks (Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Montreal, Toronto-Dominion Bank, CIBC, and Bank of Nova Scotia) are among the largest shareholders. The Royal Bank of Canada consistently appears as the top individual shareholder, often holding over 9% of the company’s shares. Other major Canadian institutional investors include pension funds like the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan Trust Fund and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. These large Canadian entities reflect the domestic importance and investment confidence in TC Energy’s critical infrastructure.

However, U.S. institutional investors also hold a very substantial portion of TC Energy’s shares. Prominent U.S.-based asset managers and investment firms, such as The Vanguard Group Inc., Capital Research Global Investors, Capital International Investors, and FIL Ltd. (Fidelity International), are consistently listed among TC Energy’s top shareholders. The presence of these major U.S. funds signifies the cross-border appeal of TC Energy’s stable, income-generating assets, particularly its extensive U.S. footprint.

In the dash to obtain more multinational investment, Australian conservatives usually welcome more corporate flows and public private partnerships regardless of the costs to consumers and to our national sovereignty. The latest challenge has been associated with the closure of Darwin’s private maternity hospital by Healthscope as an appendage to Brookfield Asset Management (AFR 12 May 2025). Healthscope owns hospitals in every state and territory including Prince of Wales Private Hospital in Sydney, Knox Private Hospital in Melbourne and Darwin Private Hospital.

ABS data shows the extent to which Australia has become more dependent on new capital flows from the Anglosphere (7 May 2025). Despite our location in the Asia-Pacific Region, the US was the major source of our private sector investment capital inflows in 2024 and a major source of Australian overseas investment. These graphics cover investment inflows.

Instead of just accepting this status quo of the dominance of foreign investment from these developed market economies, there is a possibility of cultivating more investment from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and ASEAN Countries.

In Queensland, the Crisafulli LNP Government has wisely extended an invitation to China to address our capital flow shortage (16 May 2025):

MEDIA STATEMENT: Queensland strengthens presence in China with new trade office in Shenzhen

Queensland strengthens presence in China with new trade office in Shenzhen 

• • Queensland expands its on-the-ground trade and investment footprint in China, opening a new office in Shenzhen.
  • Shenzhen is a key city in China’s Greater Bay Area and a global centre for innovation, advanced manufacturing, and technology.
  • China is Queensland’s top export market – now worth $26.5 billion a year and growing.

This certainly clears the way for the Albanese Government to be less coy about expanding investment relationships with both Taiwan, China and Hong Kong to assist in diffusing regional tensions as a peaceful freedom of navigation commercial deal. The alternative is more government spending in military hardware at great cost to Australian deficit levels.

AI Resources in use with our trusted ABC News Networks and government departments at all levels of government should be open to fact-check topics already in the public domain. Gemini Google Bard can also assist with a free service for registered users. Replies in essay format with a detailed reference list can be requested. These references can be checked on an article-by-article basis even for topics that are not usually covered in the mainstream media. The speculations offered may or may not be fully correct but the investigation trail is more open to further scrutiny like this coverage of the management of nuclear waste problems.

Blurred Lines and Nuclear Futures: US Military Contractors and Australian Nuclear Waste

Introduction: The landscape of Australia’s strategic alliances and defence capabilities is undergoing a profound transformation, driven significantly by the AUKUS security pact. This shift is not merely about nuclear submarines but also encompasses deeper integration with the US military-industrial complex across various domains. A critical, and concerning, development revealed by Declassified Australia on May 31, 2025, is the involvement of a major US military contractor, Amentum Holdings, in backing an Australian company’s proposal for a nuclear waste dump in Central Australia. This convergence of military contracting, nuclear waste management, and existing sensitive US operations in Australia raises red flags about transparency, environmental safety, and the extent of US influence on Australia’s nuclear future.

Amentum Holdings: From Pine Gap to Nuclear Waste: The Declassified Australia report establishes a direct link between a prominent US military contractor and a proposed nuclear waste facility.

• • Pine Gap Operations: Amentum Holdings is identified as a “US military mega-contractor” responsible for the “day-to-day running of facilities” for the secretive US-Australian Pine Gap satellite surveillance base near Alice Springs. The company’s “Alice Springs-based workforce of 400 people” provides critical support services to the ever-expanding base, including “infrastructure management, facilities operations, and maintenance services”. This highlights Amentum’s significant and established presence within Australia’s most sensitive joint defence facility.
  • Chandler Nuclear Waste Dump Proposal: The core revelation is that Amentum Holdings has been “contracted to advise Australian hazardous waste company, Tellus Holdings, on the Chandler nuclear waste dump in Central Australia”. This proposed low-level nuclear waste dump is planned for construction within a salt formation on Southern Arrernte country, 15 km from the Aboriginal community of Titjikala and 120 km south of Alice Springs. The report emphasizes the potential for this site to eventually store “high-level nuclear waste from nuclear reactors in the proposed AUKUS submarines, as well as from other defence-related nuclear and hazardous waste, including visiting US and UK nuclear” materials.

Our political representatives on both sides of the political aisles in Australia can easily work more co-operatively to unscramble such complex political, environmental and cultural problems.

Greater political consensus offers the possibility of some new progressive departures from old style adversarial politics.

 

Denis Bright (pictured) is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback from readers advances the cause of citizens’ journalism. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Replies Button.

 

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