How ever did it come to this!
It is familiar to all that Scott Morrison, Prime Minister and Minister for Everything at the time, pulled the AUKUS rabbit out of his Akubra as a wedge issue for the forthcoming 2022 Federal Election. It appears that he did so with only a small inner circle in his own LNP knowing of the plan, not informing the National Security Council until shortly before its announcement and, against the expectation of the Biden administration, giving Anthony Albanese, then Opposition Leader, just 24 hours’ notice of this monumental shift in Australian Defence and Foreign policy. Previously, some semblance of a bi-partisan approach had been shown towards Australia’s Defence and place in the world, or at least some open discussion – so we citizens have been led to believe.
The next thing, a commitment to Morrison’s AUKUS (and high-end tax cuts) become part of the Federal ALP Election Policy – to avoid a ‘wedge’ on these issues, rather than try to confront the complexities and present to citizens/electors the arguments involved, during an election campaign, against the LNP and, of course, the baying hounds of the Murdoch press. Some might think that Democracy is based on the principle of each citizen carefully considering important issues confronting their society, then casting their vote according to their best judgement. But no issue, no discussion, no consideration. The electoral convenience may be undeniable, but responsible Democracy it ain’t! The electoral campaign geniuses who advised and decided on this policy to wrest political power from Morrison – “you can’t do anything unless you’re in government”- only succeeded in ushering Morrison into every Labor Caucus for the life of AUKUS….
We rank-and-file ALP members meekly accepted all this as an offensive but perhaps necessary electoral tactic and fulfilled our Election Campaign duties, because everyone wanted to get rid of Morrison. After all, AUKUS could be shunted off into an Inquiry and allowed to wither on the vine. Normal Parliamentary Operating Procedure. But, along with the High-Income Tax Cuts, these undemocratically decided policy changes became issues of parliamentary virtue signalling – implementing the Election Platform ‘promises’ that were ‘voted for’ despite the fact that there had been no discussion or evaluation of these issues for the electorate to consider prior to voting. They just came as part of the whole ALP package. Then came Albanese’s AUKUS 2.0. Bigger, more sweeping and bellicose, and with a price tag that rose from Morrison’s $170 billion to Albanese’s $368 billion – that’s $368,000,000,000. And out of nowhere! Within the ALP there was neither discussion nor democracy. Gradually, and thanks very much to contributors to Pearls & Irritations, the enormous implications of AUKUS 2.0 became known, not only to the whole of Australia, but for the first time to ALP rank-and-file members too. No argument of ‘supporting the leadership’ and ‘staying in power’ or ‘virtue signalling on electoral integrity’ could justify support for such appalling policy and its subservience to the American imperial world view. So many of us hoped for a better world, a more peaceful world – at least for us in the Pacific and the Southern Hemisphere.
What happens in the ALP National Conference will reflect the power and promotion structures of the Left and Right Factions, not the sentiments of the ALP rank-and-file. The Factions may have once fostered policy development and adoption while avoiding terminal internal conflict. But today they have become primarily parallel career promotion structures for aspirants to Party office, Advisor jobs, or safe Parliamentary seats – at least for those who show sufficient loyalty to the Faction. And through that ‘loyalty’, the Factions have become instruments of top-down control – if you value your career prospects. There may be some managed debate at Conference, but deals will be done, trade-offs found, Unions assuaged – and voting discipline enforced. But whatever good social initiatives may be adopted, from Housing to Climate Change, their cost will have to compete with the AUKUS spending. In ALP Caucus or Cabinet, Morrison will be silently present, thanks to his wedge politics, the pathetic electoral timidity of Federal Labor and, unbelievably, Albanese’s expansion to AUKUS 2.0.
While the hope of many of us, inside the ALP and beyond, is that ‘it will never happen’ (at least in regard to the nuclear-powered submarines), inter-operability with and integration into the American war-making enterprise is already with us. So we cannot just stand and hope, we MUST push back. It may begin at the National Conference, but it MUST continue beyond – if we wish to see the vision of what our nation and our world could be!
Otherwise, we’ll just be left trying to decide on the names of the submarines – HMAS Albatross is already taken; ‘Canberra’ has been taken by a ‘Star-Spangled Kangaroo’ of the US Navy; perhaps HMAS Scorpion, after the nuclear-powered US submarine that did so much good work in Nevil Shute’s ‘On the Beach’….
Douglas McCarty
Douglas McCarty, now retired, was formerly a Civil Engineer in Structural Design and Construction, a Secondary School Teacher of Physics, General Science and Mathematics, and a University Tutor in Education at Flinders University. He is a rank-and-file member of the Australian Labor Party.