About 100 metres from the end of a runway earmarked to take spy planes for the Australian Defence Force and its allies, hundreds of vulnerable turtles are starving and dying.

The Australian government has reneged on its 1984 commitment to the UN “that it had no intention of making the Cocos (Keeling) Islands into a strategic military base or of using the Territory for that purpose” - part of the agreement to the Act of Self Determination for Cocos to be integrated into Australia.