The woman was taken to hospital by ambulance for treatment of facial injuries and later released. In July Mr Elwood was permitted by the court to relocate to Robertson Barracks in Darwin as part of the US Marine Rotational Unit.

who controls and directs the US Marines on board Australian naval ships, and who directs the Australian ships with the US marines on board?

The deployment of US marines to Darwin announced by Julia Gillard in 2011 was partly aimed at countering the rise of China and anchoring a US presence in the Asia-Pacific region, according to Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes.
“China was a part of the backdrop of that, not because we want to use the marines in Darwin to go to war with China, but because their presence sends a message to all the countries in the region that the US is going to be engaged here,” he told The Australian.
“We had to be careful and work through the Australian government. We didn’t want to antagonise China, but we wanted to show the US working with allies like Australia in that part of the world.”
Mr Rhodes called Australia a “top tier” US ally who shared “the same basic view of the world”.

For more information, contact: giveemtheboot2@gmail.com or visit www.ipan.org.au

The Corps has steadily been increasing its footprint in Australia over the years as the force begins once of the largest mass movements to the Pacific since World War II to counter a rising China. The Corps is also flexing forces to other areas across the Pacific such as Guam in an attempt to spread out its Marines generally clustered on Okinawa, Japan. About 22,000 Marines are stationed in Okinawa, Japan.