Pat Conroy’s assurances about US submarines at HMAS Stirling raise more questions than they answer about rotation, sovereignty, nuclear ambiguity and Australia’s control of its own naval base.
Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has told the ABC’s 7:30 that US submarines using Perth’s HMAS Stirling naval base will be gone by 2032. That prompted a clever lead into the interview by host Sarah Ferguson, who said, “Analysts say that will come as a surprise to the US military.”
Pat Conroy was interviewed last week by the ABC from Washington DC following meetings with senior Pentagon officials, presumably providing rock-solid assurances that Australians will be picking up the tab for the AUKUS submarines for a nation which lacks the capacity to meet its own submarine needs.
The transcript of the interview appears on the Defence website, but there is a glaring omission: Defence left out the first half of Ferguson’s intro, which was, “Just don’t call it an American base, the official name is Submarine Rotational Force West.
“As the date gets closer, questions are intensifying about what this means for Australia and Australian sovereignty and what the American military thinks it’ll be entitled to at the West Australian base long term.”
Not just the intro, but the crux of the issue and one that Conroy fumbled through in an attempt to ignore.
As for preparations for hosting US submarines in Western Australia, Conroy said, “senior US officials said that they were very happy with progress and they were looking forward to Submarine Rotational Force West beginning next year.”
Hardly reassuring for our sovereignty when a cabinet minister discusses plans for an Australian naval base in terms that the objective is to keep a foreign power “very happy”.
To her great credit, Ferguson pushed back against the 11 and a half minutes of talking points Conroy had brought with him to the interview. She posed the question of what hosting US submarines means for Australia’s sovereignty; that didn’t appear to be on the answer sheet.
What is a rotation?
Conroy was adamant that US Virginia-class submarines would only be using HMAS Stirling on a ‘rotational’ basis.
That is just political waffle; they will for all intents and purposes be based in Perth.
Assuming they are not in dry dock for repairs, nuclear submarines spend up to 80 per cent of their operational life at sea; the remainder is at naval bases for crew rotations, supply replenishments, maintenance and minor repairs.
For the Submarine Rotational Force West vessels, all this will happen in Perth.
Conroy told Ferguson, “I’m saying that this is a time limited rotation… that’s why they’re not based there. They’re only in HMAS Stirling for a limited amount of time each year.”
That limited time has nothing to do with minimising the handing over of our sovereignty to the US and everything to do with the simple fact that by their very nature these submarines spend a ‘limited amount of time’ in port.
Ferguson put the proposed end time of the Virginia-class rotation to Conroy a number of times, to which he only answered in the early 2030s.
What about the nukes?
Pushed on the inevitability of US nuclear-armed submarines moving in and out of Perth and what it means for Australia as a signatory to the Treaty of Rarotonga, he was non-committal.
The Treaty of Rarotonga bans the testing and possession of nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. This is in direct conflict with the US policy of not disclosing whether US naval vessels are nuclear armed or not when they visit foreign ports.
Without providing a reasonable explanation, Conroy saw no problem saying, “we respect their stated policy position, they respect ours and both can coexist.” Respect doesn’t mean adherence – the US will not adhere to our policy position and will not budge on theirs. That is handing over sovereignty in action.
Pushing back against the frightening idea – from the LNP’s point of view – that US submarines will be gone by 2032, opposition defence spokesman James Paterson accused Conroy of a “bizarre US submarine backflip”, saying it was like evicting the Americans before they arrive.
Given US subs will be free to come and go as they please in an Australian naval base, just who is evicting whom?
Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than 25 years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. As a print journalist, he has contributed to most of Australia’s major news outlets. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business news website, APAC Business Review.