Jon Stanford’s response to Brian Toohey’s criticism of his promotion of nuclear submarines for Australia deserves a response.

Firstly, Stanford claims that Australian submarines must prowl off the coast of China.

This begs the question: Why?

Answer: To do the intelligence gathering bidding of the US.

As Toohey rightly says this task could be done by Japan or South Korea, or for that matter the US itself.

If as Stanford suggest, intelligence can come from the Five Eyes group, let the US do it itself and pass the information on to us.

Stanford also ignores the point that nuclear submarines, which in reality are large kettles boiling water to generate steam to propel them, must release large quantities of hot water which can easily be detected.

Stanford’s point that we do not have Northern bases, where we could harbour conventional submarines, is also easily countered. Having saved billions of dollars in not purchasing US nuclear submarines, we could use some of the funds to build an appropriate conventional submarine base in our North.

For more on this topic, P&I recommends:

SSNs for the RAN: A response to Brian Toohey

Brian Toohey (Pearls and Irritations, 14 February 2023) makes a number of criticisms of the recent four-part series on national security by Michael Keating and myself that was published in Pearls and Irritations earlier this month. He contends that we have made assertions that should not go unchallenged, particularly in regard to our support for the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs) by the RAN.

Australias national security strategy: no room for peace, arms control?

In contrast to Labor politicians such as Paul Keating, Bill Hayden, Gareth Evans and Gough Whitlam, the four part series recently published by Keating and Stanford on Australian national security sees no place for arms control measures and peace initiatives.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.