Pearls and Irritations

The Roman emperor Nero was a horrible, horrible man, as Donald Trump might put it. His murderous reign of terror has certainly earned him a place in the history books, but the only thing most people believe about him is certainly false: that he played the fiddle while Rome burned. He may have strummed his cithara while the conflagration raged, but even this much is uncertain.

True or not, the rumour has perpetuated the image of a tyrannical emperor who blithely continued his musical pursuits while thousands around him were either dying or fleeing in terror.

There are many things other than cithara playing that can distract us from what’s happening around us. Industries peddling consumer goods such as jewellery, gas-guzzling sports cars, yachts, haute couture and expensive holidays certainly keep us from noticing – or perhaps reward us for ignoring – the really unpleasant, life-threatening aspects of modern existence.

While some of these industries may pay occasional lip service to matters such as global overheating, species extinction and environmental destruction, they don’t aim to make us march in the streets, or to boycott certain companies – except, of course, their competitors. They don’t prompt us to lobby our politicians to rein in the fossil fuel and animal agriculture industries – the two largest contributors to global overheating. Instead, they make us feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’, in John Howard’s memorable words, about doing little if anything to confront these fearful realities, let alone address other, more quotidian challenges. Whether intentionally or not, these industries are highly effective in stopping us from getting as mad as hell and refusing to take it any more.

For the vast majority of us, these goods and services would usually count as luxuries. But how could something like military spending possibly be a bedfellow with them? It just seems to be the wrong kind of thing to count as a luxury. Still, there is a clear path that may lead to this strange conclusion if we consider a recent and particularly controversial example of military spending: Australia’s commitment to the AUKUS agreement.

This ‘new enhanced trilateral security partnership’ between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States promises us a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines over the next three decades or so, at an estimated cost to Australian taxpayers of $268–368 billion – although the actual cost may be more than three times this amount if other assessments are close to accurate.

When any government is deciding how to spend its taxpayers’ money, it must give the utmost priority to ensuring that the nation’s territory, its inhabitants, and their interests and values are preserved and protected from the most credible and imminent threats. Of course, this will include threats of military attack. But it must include much else besides.

A decisive problem with AUKUS is that it looks set to play no role in addressing any of the credible threats currently facing Australia – military or otherwise. Not only is it quite ill-suited to meet the reasonable and fairly minimal expectations we might have of defence spending – protecting Australia from imminent or probable future attack – but it also has no bearing whatsoever on defending us from the host of looming and highly predictable threats arising from global overheating.

And this is to assume that AUKUS actually unfolds according to plan – an unwarranted assumption, according to many seasoned strategic and security experts. Moreover, even if everything falls perfectly into place, these vessels might not even be able to operate effectively in an ocean that has already been irrevocably altered by acidification and climate change.

So, if AUKUS can’t be expected to play a significant role in Australia’s defence against known and imminent threats of any kind, what could possibly justify our current government’s dogged commitment to it?

Setting aside AUKUS’s expected failure in military terms and focusing only on climate-related threats, there are two basic approaches to justifying it that might help here. The first is what I’ll call the Nero Justification. This comes in a variety of flavours, but they all lead to the same devastating conclusion: that our current government is presiding over the most profound and far-reaching strategic and moral failure in our nation’s history.

I’m sure we would all prefer this not to be true. So let’s banish this from our minds for now, and consider the other basic approach to justifying the government’s enduring love affair with AUKUS. This is what I’ll call the Pollyanna Justification. Being a fan of ‘relaxed and comfortable’, this is where I’m putting my money. At least for the time being.

According to the Pollyanna Justification, the Prime Minister knows something we don’t know: his government has already budgeted handsomely – albeit highly secretly – for addressing all the known and likely threats of global overheating. After carefully scrutinising the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, he and his team of experts have put in place a comprehensive range of funding and other strategies that ensure we will avoid all of these threats, meet or exceed our Paris Agreement commitments, and still have a spare $300+ billion to splurge over the next few decades. This puts us in the luxurious position of being able to indulge in acquiring an octet of highly complex but largely useless submersible nuclear reactors – perhaps as a pilot study in the use of nuclear power; perhaps for purely recreational purposes.

Thus, if the Pollyanna Justification prevails, this would mean that the government’s apparently ‘irresponsible, secretive and smug’ decision-making on AUKUS – as recently characterised by former Prime Minister Paul Keating – is actually no more irresponsible and smug that a secret birthday treat.

Far from being a strategic and moral failure of catastrophic dimensions, AUKUS will turn out to be a symbol of the fact that we are on track to deal decisively with the ever-increasing challenges of climate change, solve the housing and cost-of-living crises along the way, close the gap, and deal with all of Australia’s other outstanding social justice issues. And we’ll still get home in time for tea and to fiddle with our new toys while the planet is not burning – thanks to this soon-to-be-announced package of ingenious initiatives and funding measures.

Perhaps the Big Reveal of this fully-funded climate package will be in the leadup to the next Federal election. And perhaps the government will also lay out its fully-funded roadmap for dealing with all those other problems that might otherwise have a prior strategic or moral claim on the AUKUS funding. It’s so comforting to be able to rest assured that global overheating will soon be a nightmarish memory of the past. While we wait excitedly to learn the details of these solutions, we can all breathe easily, curl up in front of the latest Netflix series, and allow the government to enjoy the delicious anticipation of the arrival of our luxury nuclear toys.

Of course, if there’s no such Big Reveal, we may have to revisit Nero.

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