Our case against AUKUS is more relevant than ever
Jan 18, 2025
Next Monday, Donald Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States.
In the weeks leading up to this event, Trump has made various claims to expand US territory by military means to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal and use economic force to coerce Canada into the United States.
When asked what Australia thought of this, our PM replied: “I’ll leave the commentating to the commentators.”
Frankly, that’s not good enough from a Labor Prime Minister.
Since 2011 and Barack Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’, the United States has increasingly cast China as a military opponent that needs to be contained. Meanwhile, the US sees no need to contain itself to its borders, amassing the largest overseas military base network ever seen in ‘peace time’.
AUKUS is designed to put Australia at the forefront of the US military planning against China.
Paul Keating has already noted that Biden’s Pacific guru, Kurt Campbell boasted to European diplomats that AUKUS is about ‘locking Australia up for 40 years’.
Just this week, speaking to a private briefing of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, senior Republican congressman, Michael McCaul – said he sees “Australia as the beachhead to counter China. Australia is the key country, continent … and that’s why AUKUS is so important.”
The US is very happy putting other people’s children in the firing line to defend its empire.
AUKUS is not about an independent defence policy for the Australian people, it is about locking Australia into US war plans with China.
In September last year, the US Navy released its plan for “America’s War Fighting Navy”.
It states: “This Navigation Plan drives toward two strategic ends: readiness for the possibility of war with the People’s Republic of China by 2027 and enhancing
the Navy’s long-term advantage.”
The United States, the “sole and indeed first truly global power” (Zbigneiw Brzezinski, 1997), while still more powerful than any competitor, knows it is in relative economic decline and that a regional power, China, could one day contest its total global hegemony
So, it is preparing to go to war. It brooks no rivals, even at the regional level.
Other than to appease the US, Australia has no strategic interest for a war with China, our major trading partner.
AUKUS has recast Australia as an Anglophone military outpost at the edge of Asia, rather than a regional partner with the world’s fastest growing economic region.
Envisaged by the Pentagon, enabled by senior conservative bureaucrat and director of National Intelligence Andrew Shearer, embraced by Scott Morrison and, fearing a wedge, nodded through by the ALP leadership with just 10 hours consideration, AUKUS has reframed Australian defence and scientific partnerships – to the detriment of the Australian people.
AUKUS 1.0 pledged Australia to fork out funds approaching half a trillion dollars over three decades to underpin the US and UK flagging defence industrial base and for us to bankroll a new British designed nuclear submarine. It might never arrive.
Championed as a job builder, at $18m a job, it is the worst employment creation scheme in history. And the first jobs it is subsidising are in San Diego.
In the interim, Australia was to buy three to five US Virginia class nuke subs. This was Pillar 1.
It also started the process to lock Australian science into the service of the AUKUS military priorities.
This is Pillar 2.
It is to – as far as possible – make the dual-use military technologies of the AUKUS countries interoperable in these areas:
- undersea capabilities
- quantum science
- artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomy
- advanced cyber
- hypersonics and counter-hypersonics
- electronic warfare
This is with the explicit aim to ‘reduce the significant lead China has’ in these technologies.
In February last year, Australia passed the Defence Trade Controls Bill. It locks in these dual-use technologies and research between these countries.
It is now a crime to even talk to scientists outside of the US and UK on some of this research.
A last-minute intervention by the Australian Academy of Science ensured that an exclusion was put into the legislation for ‘fundamental or basic research’ – but it also includes hefty prison terms for any scientific collaboration without a permit with non-AUKUS countries.
So far, so bad.
Of course, the whole premise of these discussions is that scientific research should primarily serve the military industrial complex, not benefit human society for peaceful development.
But even all this isn’t enough for the US and UK.
Australia has already forked out $10bn to both countries to refit their shipyards.
However, the Pentagon has noted it is way behind its own schedule to build its nuclear submarine fleet – so the idea of selling or lending three to five subs to Australia is not palatable. There are fears that future governments might not play ball if/when it comes to attacking China.
So last August, we got AUKUS 2.0.
A new deal signed by the Australian government gives the US and UK an ‘opt out’ clause with just a year’s notice.
Further, the updated agreement indemnifies the US and UK from any ‘liability, loss, costs, damage, injury (including t a third party)” arising from nuclear risks.
It also makes Australia responsible for the storage and disposal of all nuclear waste from AUKUS – it isn’t clear if this is just the Australian subs, or the whole AUKUS fleet.
And finally, and most worrying, the US President Joe Biden revealed in a letter to US congress in August that the new agreement “provides additional related political commitments” by Australia.
The Australian government has refused to make public what these commitments are.
Most pundits believe it relates to the US being able to ‘recall’ any AUKUS submarines for a war with China.
So where does this leave us?
Giving the nod to nuclear power for submarines has opened the door to the Liberals raising the standard for nuclear power for power generation.
I mean, if it’s safe in our oceans, why isn’t it safe on our land?
Labor Against War has called on the government to be consistent on nuclear energy.
We said in June:
Nuclear energy should play no part in Australia’s energy mix. Dutton’s distraction is about extending Australia’s reliance on, and production of, fossil fuels and delaying the urgently needed transition to renewals. It is not a serious attempt to reduce carbon emissions.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said the policy is a “nuclear fantasy”. We agree.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has said the plans are “too slow, too expensive and too risky for Australia. It’s not a plan, it’s a scam.”
Chris Bowen is spot on, but this assessment equally applies to AUKUS: a dangerous and expensive scam introduced by Scott Morrison.
By continuing with the Morrison nuclear submarine plan, the Albanese Government has unfortunately opened the door to Dutton’s nuclear energy fantasy.
If nuclear energy is too risky on terra firma, it can’t be safe for our oceans. And AUKUS brings with it the added risk of weapons-grade nuclear waste, nuclear proliferation and a US war with China that is against the interests of the Australian people.
The Government must be consistent: we need to reject nuclear energy on land and at sea.
We have had Peter Dutton just ahead of an election say that everything the Albanese government has done is bad – apart from AUKUS.
Yet Paul Keating has said AUKUS is the worst foreign policy decision by a Labor government since Billy Hughes tried to introduce conscription.
I know who I believe on this matter.
It is up to us in the labour movement, in the Labor Party, to keep the pressure on the government to abandon AUKUS.
We know that Paul Keating is right when he said: “The membership abhors AUKUS and everything that smacks of national sublimation. It does not expect these policies from a Labor government.”
Further, we need to build on our alliance with unions opposed to AUKUS.
The government has not dared lay out its plan for where it wants the east coast nuclear submarine base, because it knows all hell will break loose when it does
And we should target the national conference in 2026 to continue the fight against AUKUS. We might not win this year, or the next, but defeating AUKUS and stopping a war with China is too important to let slide.
And it is up to us.
From Monday, this alliance is an alliance with Donald Trump. We need to rescind it.
This is a speech delivered by Labor Against War National Convenor Marcus Strom to the Kings Cross branch of the Australian Labor Party on 15 January 2025