Sometimes you just have to wait.
I’m not a very patient person, but I have learned two things about patience and persistence:
the hard, really important stuff never comes quickly; and
issues run in cycles. If you don’t hit the finish line this time, hang on: there will almost certainly be another opportunity.
The issue – this time round – is AUKUS: the multi-year, multi-stage, multi-billion-dollar three-way (Australia, UK, US) defence pact. In my first months at P&I, early last year, I got way ahead of myself and declared a tipping point on the matter. The P&I community has been talking about the cracks and contradictions in the deal since before it was announced with huge bluster at that unforgettable three-way press conference with Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison back in September 2021.
And it was Morrison who sat me back in my chair this week. After a week that, once again, highlighted the weakness of Australia’s position and growing community opposition to it, the former PM leapt to its defence.
He chose the ABC RN’s Global Roaming program to tell us not to worry: his ‘forever’ pact was on track. Later, he told the media, “Let’s not surrender because we think we’re not up to it.”
But the problem is not that we are not up to it – it is that the deal is falling apart, with more changes to it this week. Many of you will have heard the announcement from Defence Minister Richard Marles that we are now getting all second-hand Virginia-class submarines (the deal had been two second-hand and one new). The Minister and Defence officials then told Senate Estimates and media that three second-hand subs were actually what we wanted all along.
Really?
And it is not just the details, and the taxpayer’s money. It is more than that.
Mike Gilligan nailed it this week when he said: “The shift to second-hand Virginia-class submarines exposes the deeper flaw in AUKUS: Australia is committing vast public funds to a capability designed around US strategic priorities rather than Australia’s own defence needs.”
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating made it plain in P&I in March 2023 that the deal was a dud. He said AUKUS was the “worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.”
Gareth Evans backed up his former leader with pithy, devastating brevity: “AUKUS has been problematic from the outset, in terms of its deliverability, cost-benefit, and implications for our sovereign decision-making agency. Above all, the crazy irony of the whole project has always been that it commits Australia to spending eye-watering amounts to build a capability supposed to defend us from military threats which are in fact most likely to arise simply because we have that capability – and are using it to support the US in some conflict not in our interests to engage in – without any guarantee of support in return should we ever need it.”
So you’d think that would be it. Party elders don’t dictate policy, obviously, but this level of pushback from Labor figures of such substance is pretty unusual.
Fast forward to this week, and former Federal Minster Ed Husic has broken ranks on the matter and a public inquiry into AUKUS has been launched. It will be headed by Peter Garrett, and include former Western Australian premier Carmen Lawrence and former chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie. Garrett said AUKUS “was the most significant, and by far the most costly, decision made in secret by an Australian government, tying us to two other sovereign governments, and taking out an extraordinary amount of taxpayers’ money on a proposition which has got a lot of distinct and very difficult complexities and potential problems lying up ahead”.
Well, yes.
My best bit for this week was Peter Garrett telling us what he really thinks, via Midnight Oil’s 1982 US Forces. It
US forces gives the nod
It’s a setback for your country
Bombs and trenches all in rows
Bombs and threats still ask for more
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Catriona Jackson is the Chief Executive and Editor of Pearls and Irritations.