On July 20, 2026, hundreds of activists, academics, and Traditional Owners converged on the Pine Gap signals intelligence facility, located roughly 15 kilometers from Alice Springs, in the largest demonstration against the site since 1987. The protest, which saw participants travel from as far as 2,000 kilometers away, served as the climax of a three-day event organized by the Anti-Militarism Action Network and Mparntwe for Falastin to address U.S. military presence in the Northern Territory.
Arrerente Elder Aunty Felicity, a traditional owner of the Kuyunba land where the base has sat since 1966, led the call for the facility’s closure. During the protest, she delivered a formal letter to Australian Federal Police (AFP) Inspector Ken Napier, demanding the return of the land. The demonstration featured chants such as “Close Pine Gap,” “Shut it down,” and “Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.” Police established two checkpoints to monitor the march, and activist Aahana Nag was arrested after locking herself to a car, effectively blocking the base's main access road for over an hour.
Aunty Felicity, who noted that the Americans took her grandfather in 1962, was joined by three generations of the Hayes family. When Inspector Napier greeted the family at the gate, saying “Welcome,” the daughter of Aunty Felicity, Wyonna Hayes, responded, “You’re welcome to my country.” The protesters highlighted the stark disparity between the heavily resourced base and the nearby Irrkerlantye community, also known as White Gate, where many custodians live without basic services that much of Australia takes for granted. In White Gate, water is trucked in, power is supplied by a small set of solar panels, and there is no sewerage.
Aunty Felicity expressed deep concern regarding the facility's alleged role in enabling conflicts overseas. Among her requests is compensation for families in Gaza who have lost relatives in a war she said the base has helped enable. She stated that she and her community do not want to feel guilty about bad things happening to children overseas, noting that while they are not the ones controlling the facility, they feel guilty that it is coming from their land. Leaked documents from Edward Snowden in 2013 previously suggested that data collected at Pine Gap is shared with Israeli intelligence without explicit filters, a point of contention for many protesters who believe the base makes Australia complicit in potential war crimes.
Dr. Richard Tanter, a leading expert on the facility, noted that while the government describes Pine Gap as a single entity, it actually functions as three distinct operations: a ground station receiving data from geostationary satellites, an interceptor of international communications from countries like China, Indonesia, and India, and a relay station for the U.S. Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado. According to Tanter, the base has expanded from 36 antennas in 2016 to 45 today, many of which are obscured by radomes designed to conceal their focus. He highlighted that three of these satellites are dedicated to covering the Middle East, including Iran and Gaza.
Convergence organizer Jorgen Doyle emphasized that the action reflects growing unease regarding the Australia-U.S. alliance, noting that northern Australia has become a primary location for U.S. military construction spending, with over $300 million funded under U.S. congressional defense authorizations. Despite the presence of many Australian staff at the facility, critics argue that they lack the power to veto its operations. Tanter described the base as the “poisoned heart” of the bilateral alliance, warning that its presence potentially renders Australia a target for nuclear or conventional missile strikes.
“The United States has displaced the custodians of these lands and has built an intelligence facility that provides critical intelligence for their illegal military operations,” Nag said afterwards.
