As the Australian prime minister prepares for his visit to the UN in New York next week, Robert Macklin looks into what Anthony Albanese might be hoping for on the trilateral security deal.

Is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese really committed to the continuing AUKUS fiasco, or is he playing the long game where he hopes America will let him off the hook, or the whole edifice collapses from within?

Since I have a rare respect for Albo’s Machiavellian scholarship, I think the latter. I also think he’s following Sun Tzu’s reported edict, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”.

Albanese was a Cabinet minister on two of the three occasions that led to the purchase of the world’s most advanced RAAF “platform” from the US, the penetrating attack weapon, the “Growler”. Some 13 of them were delivered to Queensland’s Amberley base in 2017 and since then have been melded into the RAAF’s guard duties. Last week, the Americans signed contracts for the design of a similar capability for their surface ships.

The Growlers would be far more effective in any military confrontation than the AUKUS subs. For example, we could mount an attack (if we were that stupid) on a Chinese battlespace (say Taiwan) as the only other country in the world to have this capability. The Growlers could lead an attack force which would electronically disable the enemy’s response throughout the mission, including air-to-air and ground-to-air missiles, plus refuelling.

The three Cabinet discussions were outlined to me by the ministers themselves during a procurement Case Study commissioned by Defence via ASPI in 2023. They took place in the Howard, Rudd and Gillard Governments, capped by the much sneered at meeting between Julia Gillard and Barack Obama. Gillard permitted US Marines to train in Northern Australia. In the event, Australia was the big winner. In his address to Parliament, Obama gave a broad hint of the deal when he emphasised, “We will preserve our unique ability to project power and deter threats to peace. We will keep our commitments, including our treaty obligations to allies like Australia…”

Howard’s defence minister, Brendan Nelson, had earlier connived with him to take the initiative — without informing the department’s leadership — to buy 24 “Super Hornets” to close a possible “capability gap” prior to delivery of the 100 F-35s we had ordered. Defence, fearing it would interfere with the F-35 order, was opposed; however, Cabinet agreed and voted “yes”. (At the time of writing, the RAAF is still short of 28 F-35s.)

Since the “Growler” used the same body architecture as the Super Hornet, the US manufacturer asked if we’d like some of our 24 with added electronic connections for easy conversion. Kevin Rudd’s defence minister, Joel Fitzgibbon, supported the plan, but again the department opposed it. Rudd supported his minister, Cabinet agreed and voted “yes”.

Finally, Stephen Smith was in the Defence chair when Gillard put the question to her Cabinet. According to references in a book by former foreign minister Bob Carr, I was told, the departments of PM&C, Treasury, Finance and Defence all opposed the purchase of the Growlers.

However, one after the other, all the ministers agreed. Then I was told, “The prime minister leans over the table and she says, ‘Smithy, it looks like you’ve got your Growlers’.”

Accordingly, the AUKUS subs costing $368 billion to be paid to the US, plus more than $30 billion to the UK, for delivery in the never-never, are surplus to requirements. Australia’s spend of $1.7 billion on our own Ghost Shark underwater drones last week could well presage an “off ramp” exit.

Meanwhile, since Albanese’s Defence Minister Richard Marles remains infatuated by Morrison’s AUKUS thought bubble, the prime minister keeps him cheek by jowl. He knows that time is on his side… along with lots of recruits from the last election.

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