In French, buck teeth are called dents à l’anglaise, literally “English teeth”. Stay with me. The connection to the old dart, France, and the dishonourable origins of AUKUS will be revealed.
For the first time in more than a generation, the issue of defence is emerging as an election issue – of sorts. It came up in the first days of the campaign when Prime Minister Albanese insisted the US was a reliable security partner, that the defence relationship was “rock-solid” and that Australia was in the midst of a purchase of “HIMARS” from our US “ally”. He didn’t explain to his ABC national television audience that HIMARS is the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System capable of firing six rockets at medium range – or one missile at up to a 500km range. The last of 42 of these US-made advanced weapons systems were helpfully delivered in December 2024. They can be moved anywhere around the country for the Australian Army by the RAAF C17A Globemaster transport aircraft. Arguably, it’s a good defence spend. As long as the Pentagon has given us all the electronic keys we need to operate the system. They cost us a mere $1.6 billion.
On the same day, the PM was boasting about “HIMARS” without telling his audience what it is, Coalition election spokesperson, Senator James Patterson, was earnestly telling the same audience that an incoming Dutton Government would “spend more, sooner” on defence than Labor. He committed the Coalition to a 2.5% GDP defence spending target by 2029. His campaign weapon of war was an immediate Dutton order of a further 28 F-35A supersonic stealth strike fighters, from the US of course. The Albanese Government previously cancelled the extra jets, arguing they were not needed and the money could usefully be redirected within Defence. The additional fighters would no doubt match the 72 F-35As already in the hangars at RAAF Williamstown. They come at an additional “estimated” cost of $3 billion.
Patterson gave no details of the projected delivery dates of the ultra-sophisticated fighter aircraft. Nor did he explain why another 28 were needed – other than the squadron would now become an even 100. In other words, about as much rationale for defence purchases in Australia. In essence, he relied on the common knowledge of the average Australian punter that a systems-plagued, horrendously expensive fighter warplane will be widely recognised as an asset to Australia’s defence. Perhaps that’s because we get to see them with the kids when they do flyovers for crowds at car racing carnivals and on ANZAC Day.
Stand by for further defence election reveals. The Albanese Government may choose to highlight its current delivery of 46 of the 75 Abrams M1A2 battle tanks ordered from the US in January 2022. One thing it won’t say is why on earth the Australian Army needs battle tanks – or what enemy we might possibly use them against in our wide brown land. It is a given in military circles that it would be almost impossible for an enemy to land their tanks on our shores. They certainly won’t say that our purchase is modest, even puny, alongside the 2200 battle tanks deployed by another ally, the army of South Korea. The estimated cost of these behemoths, that we will probably give away to an ally after a few years, is expected to be $3.5 billion.
Come to think of it, the less said about tanks the better. It might remind people that we are still trying to give our redundant Abrams M1A1 tanks to the Ukraine army to do battle with Donald Trump’s new friend, Putin’s Russia. Or people might remember that in 2023 the army buried its entire fleet of 45 MRH-90 Taipan helicopters rather than selling them or donating them to Ukraine as their armed forces had requested. The decision was widely condemned as “crazy” and “bone-headed” – particularly as the urgent need for use by our Ukraine ally was obvious to all.
Perhaps, more strategically, the government might prompt a further defence purchase election auction by revealing that we are in the throes of establishing Australia’s first guided weapons production factory in Newcastle. The press release, well-timed for 28 March, got lost in the pre-election hoo-ha, but expect it to be re-announced any day now. The Defence announcement says:
Defence has signed a contract with Kongsberg Defence Australia to establish Australia’s first guided weapons production factory in Newcastle, NSW. This is the next step towards implementing the announcement made by the Australian Government on 22 August 2024. The world-class factory, to be built at the Newcastle Airport precinct, will manufacture and service the Naval Strike Missile and Joint Strike Missile for the ADF and international partners.
Missile production at the factory is anticipated to start in 2027… The project… is underpinned by a commitment of $16 to $21 billion over the next decade.
Thus far, neither major party has rationalised their defence spend promises with information about what these new weapons would do, why they are needed and how they fit into the grand plan known as the National Defence Strategy. It may be that all these systems could be important to the actual defence of the country if we were to be attacked. But there is no explanation of the end-use need, or indeed why the unnamed enemy — China — would possibly want to attack us using its military. Unless, of course, the real agenda is to make Australia ready to integrate our forces with the US should Washington decide to go to war with China. Perish the thought.
This brings us to the AUKUS elephant in the election campaign room. Or to reassign to AUKUS another graphic metaphor: one union boss colourfully described his members to me as the “bucktooth cousins” of the Labor Party. He meant the unwelcome and slightly embarrassing rank and file membership that is tolerated, but not heard in party decision-making. That is now the situation with AUKUS. Labor ranks are heaving with discontent over the AUKUS pact. It’s seen as both an embarrassment and a blight on Labor’s reputation for literate policy.
Despite all the media hype and political boosterism of AUKUS since 2021, the $368 billion baby has not yet been mentioned in the election campaign. That’s probably because highlighting AUKUS is now more likely to raise questions than to calm nerves about what the ABC bizarrely calls “the worsening security situation with China”. In a word, AUKUS is election poison. Amidst all the blather about sexy new defence purchases, we are being told there are now budget deficits as far as the eye can see. No money is available for Medicare dental, no money for government-funded housing, no money for a decent increase in the below poverty-line JobSeeker payment, no money for the environment, no money for universities and no money for city infrastructure upgrades. Yet we are saddled with this colossal outlay of defence expenditure over the next 15 years that no-one, on either side of politics, is willing to defend and explain.
At the very least, AUKUS should be the subject of a rigorous public inquiry under the auspices of the next Parliament. One subject that might get the AUKUS review ball rolling is examination of the two questions never yet answered. Whose idea was it, and why was it so quickly accepted by three governments without recourse to any form of parliamentary or public scrutiny?
The answer to the first question takes us back to the old dart. How many Australians know that AUKUS was claimed as the brainchild of a vengeful, mad, bad Boris Johnson? He was prime minister of the UK at the time of the first public announcement of the AUKUS deal. In his political memoirs Unleashed, published in October 2024 (unkindly reviewed by The Guardian as “the memoirs of a clown”), Johnson took full responsibility for conceiving AUKUS out of spite towards the French Government resulting from their dealings with the UK over Brexit.
At the time, British and American newspapers, including The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Telegraph, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal gave their readers the inside story as yet not widely known in Australia. They reported a trilateral discussion held between Johnson, Joe Biden and Scott Morrison at the June 2021 G-7 Summit held in Cornwall, England. The talks took place without the knowledge of the French Government or Naval Group – then under contract to the Australian Government to build 12 diesel-electric submarines in Australia. This approach was possible as a result of the UK not entering into a formal foreign policy and security treaty in the post-Brexit deal with the EU. As a result, the UK was free to pursue enhanced co-operation with other allies.
Boris Johnson reveals the awful history in his memoirs:
“The difficulty was that a previous Australian PM had commissioned the French to supply the next-generation submarine but these were proving to be too noisy and easy for an enemy to detect.
“The new treaty would mean breaking off a massively lucrative submarine deal for the French. This would go down exceedingly badly with the Élysée. So the big question was: would Joe Biden be willing to collaborate on a project — no matter how ultimately beneficial to America and the world — if it meant pretty massively cheesing off the French?
“My most important job at Carbis Bay was to organise a discreet three-way meeting Biden, the Australian prime minister Morrison and me – without being rumbled by the French. When we announced the AUKUS pact agreement later, they all went predictably tonto in Paris, but all was harmony that night in Carbis Bay.”
At the time Johnson’s book was published, London’s The Telegraph newspaper reported that he wrote that French President Macron was a “positive nuisance” during Britain’s push to leave the European Union. “He (Johnson) said he got his revenge by persuading Australia not to buy submarines from the French.” While it is possible Johnson exaggerated his role, it is notable that he has not been contradicted by Morrison, despite his own later claim to be “the father of AUKUS”.
Conceived in vengeance, born deceitfully in a sleazy backroom stitch-up at the G-7, the deal was unleashed on the Australian public by Morrison and a sinister Peter Dutton looking to (successfully) wedge Labor at the 2022 election. Almost four years later, AUKUS is friendless, strategically muddled and undeliverable. Recent events in the US, namely the Signal chat group scandal involving Trump’s Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and the whole ugly squad of Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have compromised American security authority. These ill-famed people are the arbiters of what we may now derisively refer to as the “Rules-Based Order” so beloved of our Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles. Hegseth is Australia’s go-to man in Washington for the AUKUS pact and the happy recipient of an $800 million cheque from Marles in March. The sooner we rid ourselves of this national security and budget deadweight the better.
The next national convention of the Labor Party will be held in July, 2026. I suspect party office will be able to sell tickets. In the absence of other action to dump AUKUS, I predict the “bucktoothed cousins” in the ALP will force the debate that was stifled in 2023. Unions and ordinary members in more than 100 state and federal branches and labour councils have already passed motions calling for AUKUS to be scrapped. These members will not stand by and let the factional warlords strong-arm a resolution supporting AUKUS as they did in 2023. It will be war, and I predict any Labor leader unwise enough to defy the rank-and-file a second time will be embarrassed before the party and the nation. That alone will make AUKUS unsustainable.
I sincerely hope it doesn’t come to that. The whole ugly deal should be as quietly put to sleep as it was awakened by the clandestine intrigues of Johnson and his Australian sidekick, Morrison.
Postscript: On 3 April the ABC reported that the United Kingdom has launched a parliamentary inquiry into the AUKUS partnership, with its scope to include the “impact of geopolitical shifts” on the deal since it was signed.
Kym Davey
Kym Davey is a human rights advocate and former Commonwealth and State public servant. He is a member of Labor Against War.