A senior strategic analyst has called for the Federal Government to rethink the Pine Gap communications facility, saying some of its work now is "ethically unacceptable". Australian National University Professor Des Ball previously supported the joint Australia-US communications facility near Alice Springs, but changes to its role since the Al Qaeda attacks in 2001 have changed his mind. "I've reached the point now where I can no longer stand up and provide the verbal, conceptual justification for the facility that I was able to do in the past," he said.

But for the past decade it has also been involved in the US drone program, which has killed thousands of militants and some civilians in countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Iraq. "We're now locked into this global network where intelligence and operations have become essentially fused," Professor Ball told 7.30. "And Pine Gap is a key node in that network - that war machine, if you want to use that term - which is doing things which are very, very difficult I think, as an Australian, to justify."

Malcolm Fraser: An unlikely radical

Fraser, the most pro-American of all Australia's leaders during the latter stages of the Cold War, began to question the character of almost every aspect of America's international behaviour: its narcissistic self-image as the light unto the world, its imperial arrogance, its systematic abuse of military power.

He came to believe that a long-standing, deep-seated and self-crippling "craving" for dependency on a great and powerful friend is to be found at the very heart of what he calls Australia's "national psyche".

In 2011, President Obama announced that Darwin would become a US Army base; Fraser tells me that it was "an absolute disgrace" that this momentous decision was scarcely debated in Australia. He also thinks it disgraceful that we allowed President Obama to announce the US decision for its pivot into the western Pacific while on Australian soil. This symbolises for him the willing abdication not only of our independence but, more deeply, of our sovereignty.

The former prime minister Malcolm Fraser has launched a wide-ranging attack on Australia’s “complacent” foreign policy, accusing the government of being harmfully dependent on the US.

In a speech delivered at Melbourne University, Fraser said he was “ashamed” that Australia was led into the Iraq war on “falsehoods” and criticised the current deployment of American troops in Darwin. Around 2,500 American troops began rotating through Darwin for training last year, with US marines set to bring equipment such as amphibious assault craft, jets and helicopters to Australia, in a bid to enhance the US military position in the region.

Fraser, who was Liberal prime minister between 1975 and 1983, said this was an example of a damaging imbalance in the US-Australian relationship.

"They aren’t going to say ‘Canberra, we don’t like what people are doing here and we want to attack them and we want to use those forces you’ve so conveniently housed in Darwin.’

“They’ll do it and we’ll read about it in the newspapers. Our prime minister will be told about it after the attack is made. Because that’s the way these things work.