AUKUS is now officially born and one day it will deliver eight nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. When that day comes no one can be sure. It will be three decades away. In the meantime Australia will meet its “capability gap” with slightly used nuclear-powered submarines from the US. Money, though, is no object.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave the political leader’s speech in San Diego today but let’s cut to the chase, do the right thing and christen these for what they are: Morrison-class submarines. It was the much maligned former prime minister who got the ball rolling, as he was happy to tell everyone last week via the pages of his old mates at The Australian.
It is also marvellously appropriate because whatever else it is, AUKUS is a marketer’s dream. It is quintessential Morrison. It has been hatched in secret and will continue that way. There will be no day of accountability. Most of us will be long gone before the promised product ever materialises. It will be prohibitively expensive. It is set to be some $368 billion over three decades — but we all know that’s a low-ball estimate, done for early sales purposes, and that it will at least double if not treble. It always does.
In the months preceding today’s announcement we’ve been treated to some outstanding marketing. The nuclear-powered sub is the “apex predator” of the sea, a descriptor which is somehow meant to say it all, and perhaps does for those who get a chubby from military hardware.
We have also learnt that AUKUS represents a “new dawn” for Australia, that it is the most significant defence initiative since World War II and that it will lead to a “seamless integration of industrial capacity” between the three nations.
Morrison called it “the forever relationship”. It is intended to bring “stability to the region”, of course. Naturally there is the jobs bonanza that 30 years of production will lead to. It is said to be 20,000 jobs in Australia — but again, who knows? It feels like a back of the envelope number. Take the first guess, double it and double it again. Who will ever check? And who will ever know?
In Canberra this morning Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said AUKUS would surpass the Snowy Mountains scheme and rival the establishment of the car industry. Six billion dollars will be spent in the next four years on industry, skills and workforce development, including training and apprenticeships. Australia will spend an estimated $30 billion on lifting the skills and capacity of the Australian industry and workforce.
There is set to be a construction yard built in Adelaide. Hundreds — maybe thousands — of Australian workers will be sent to train in shipyards overseas.
It is hard to avoid the strong whiff of opportunism from the British government in particular. UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is said to have been unable to contain his excitement that the project will breathe new life into Barrow-in-Furness shipyards in the north of the country, providing at least the promise of jobs for a government up against it. That other great marketing man, Boris Johnson, had also seized on the political sales possibilities.
As AUKUS became public last year, Johnson delightedly described the shipyards as the “vast maternity ward of these steel leviathans” and hailed the “massive” AUKUS deal as a development that would represent “the UK’s influence and values — the things we love and believe in — around the world”.
By sharing in the US’s nuclear secrets Australia has become irrevocably tied to the US alliance for its defence. Former PM Malcolm Turnbull alleges the deal means Australia sacrifices its sovereignty. It is a sensitive point. Albanese underlined today that the nuclear submarines would be “an Australian sovereign capability”.
Whatever the case, the deal has had the effect of placing Australia’s major political parties on a unity ticket with respect to nuclear submarines and the US alliance. If AUKUS is a forever deal, as Morrison put it, then Labor and the Coalition will also need to support it forever.
For Labor it is a long way from the days of Gough Whitlam and an era when the Labor left held an automatic suspicion of the US. Albanese started his career in the left wing of the Labor Party. Now he has signed on to a deal that means, among other things, that Australia will fund building new shipyards in the US to create the capacity to build more nuclear-powered subs.
Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles comes from the right wing of Victorian Labor. He is a staunch supporter of the US alliance. In many ways he is Tweedledum to the Tweedledee of former Coalition defence minister Christopher Pyne. Spot the difference.
Marles’ former staffer Anthony Hodges is a partner in Pyne’s lobbying firm which has an impressive list of defence firms among its clients.
Marles is aware that the $368 billion is surprising and breathtaking. But he is good with numbers and arguments in favour of the US/UK alliance and this is what he said today: “Now the cost is significant. But I would be quick to add that the sort of numbers that you have seen are capability of government out to the mid-2050s.
“You can look at a number of capabilities of governments beyond Defence which, if you cost it out to the mid-2050s, way have similarly large numbers.
“But this is a significant cost. The best estimate of the cost — to be honest the most transparent and honest estimate of this cost — is 0.15% of GDP through the life of the program. And that needs to be seen against a Defence budget which is currently running at 2% of GDP and is expected to grow to 2.2% of GDP.”
It was “an investment in our nation’s security” and “an investment that we cannot afford not to make”.
The politics fashioned around the China threat are such that the Greens is the only major party that departs from the US alliance script — and the party has decried the spending announced today.
“Today’s $368-plus billion nuclear submarine announcement will not only make Australia less safe, it will force deep cuts in critical spending on health, education, housing and First Nations justice for decades to come,” Greens Senator David Shoebridge said.
Shoebridge’s press release claimed that Australia’s push to join the nuclear submarine club was “already causing unrest” with key regional allies and added fire to a growing regional arms race. These objections would only grow with the purchase of second-hand Virginia-class submarines, leaving Australia entirely reliant on US crews, docks, leadership and support to operate what are meant to be sovereign defence assets, he said.
AUKUS has already shifted shape since the idea was unveiled by Morrison, US President Joe Biden and Johnson in 2021. Its supporters have been at pains to point out that it is not just about building submarines but also represents a cooperative agreement covering a range of defence technologies. Call that expectation management should things not work out.
The immediate winners include defence manufacturers, of course, for whom AUKUS is also a “forever” arrangement — or at least stretches out for enough years to make handsome careers for a raft of defence executives.
And what of Morrison? Will his AUKUS legacy mean he is remembered as a visionary? Or will it prove to be yet another Morrison mirage?
It’s impossible to know. But it is hard to get past the fact of where Morrison has now landed: as a member of the hard-right-wing US policy centre, the Hudson Institute, where he sits alongside his old Pentecostal buddy and extreme China hawk Mike Pompeo.
Is the AUKUS deal an expensive way of making us all less safe? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
How to pay for these ridiculous subs? Easy, repeal stage 3 tax cuts, start taxing fossil fuel and multinational companies, remove neg gearing, remove CGT discounts, remove rebates on private health insurance, stop funding rich private schools. Just plug all the tax loopholes like trusts etc. Here is your big chance Albo. Once you have done all this ditch the stupid subs .
Maybe that description is more revealing than the spruikers realise. Everywhere you look in the world, apex predators – those big, fierce animals that thin out the herds of herbivores around them – are either extinct, going extinct or struggling to get by under threat in reservations. They certainly do not bother us, for all the screaming headlines on the very rare occasions one out of the several billion humans on the planet gets hurt by one. On the other hand very large numbers of humans are killed every year by a creature that is nothing like an apex predator. Mosquitos are far more deadly to us than any apex predator and they are getting more deadly each year as global warming helps them. To continue the analogy, small drones, quite likely autonomous, operating under water, on the surface or in the air, and developed to detect and attack that are the mosquitos of future warfare. By the time we see one of these apex predator submarines it will very likely be as much use as a war elephant; a white one.
Very thoughtful of Dutton to offer to assist the Government with the cuts necessary to pay for these toys………….
…………………..although possibly a mistake to alert an unsuspecting audience too soon that to fund this brain-fart, Australia will have to cease spending on anything else.
I’m sure his “hit-list” will have Newstart and Public Education front and centre………….
…………after all, Defence Spending and Tax Cuts are his only priorities.
And the care of the disabled as he said this morning. Yes trade the population’s health and survival for war toys……
The new, improved “loving, caring” Dutton lasted all of thirty seconds………….
Australia’s defence policy is not very sophisticated at its core. Ideologically built on a settler society, colonial outpost mentality, it is wedded to American protection. We offer lives and treasure and hope this will keep coming good to our advantage. On one level the subs are just more of the same but bigger. We will be better, even more integrated auxiliaries to American forces, or proxies on occasion, big white chiefs of the Pacific, and we’ll spend lots with them to do it.
Where the UK fits in is a bit weird. Presumably for logistic purposes and perhaps an appeal of Menzian nostalgia to help the Coalition leap on the thought bubble. But it’s been a long time since anyone would look to the UK for engineering prowess let alone manufacturing. But maybe these navel yards are now run by the Germans?
As for China, they should remain a clear focus for our defence planning but the current hysteria is laughable. Amazing you can get a $368 billion plus spend out of it that doesn’t do much and will take ages to do anything. And did anyone ask how many of the Nine papers’ “expert” panel actually spoke Chinese or had published in reputable peer reviewed journals of expertise on Chinese or Asian politics and history?
You protest too much! What are you demanding? Logic? Common sense? Understanding of history? Knowledge of China? What kind of tree-hugging, inner-city latte-sipping appeaser are you?
Poor old Poms have yet to wake up to the fact that they are no longer the planets apex predator.
And when Scotland (home of my ancestors) finally gives them the finger, I wonder if they’ll even wake up about their true position in the “New World Order”.
But the saddest thing about this stupid business is that the world will be a very different place in 15 years time. And while we continually offer our subservience to the rule of the US weapons Oligarchs, most other nations (particularly in South East Asia) will see us for what we are. And it won’t reflect well on our ability to be viewed as a reliable ally (or economic partner).
Most likely in 15 years US hegomony may not exist. It will probably be a multipolar World. Thus the question, are the boats to prevent this? I suspect so. However, if so, will they be ready in time? What will be their purpose if they are not ready on time?
Perhaps we can do a deal with China and sell them as scrap iron to be recycled for other purposes. Almost another Pig Iron Bob story.
A USUKA apex predator sub does not make this country safer or stand taller like some maritime Rambo but exposes us on th world stage as a toady, little more than a remora and scavenger hanging around with the big boyz.
Li’l Johnny was keen to be Shrub’s Dep’ty Dawg in the region but this is more like that annoying yappy, puppy Tyke from Tom&Jerry cartoon, forever trying to attach himself to the Spike the bulldog.
I’m so stupid I have to ask these lame questions:
Q1. The stated big advantage of nuclear subs is that they don’t need refuelling for 30 years. But I’m guessing the crews will still need food and water? Couldn’t we use non-nuclear subs and just top up the fuel while we’re topping up the food and water?
Q2. Our politicians are very keen to make sure it’s clear: These are nuclear powered subs, but they won’t, never, not ever, couldn’t possibly happen… have nuclear missiles. Righto… so, despite eye-watering amounts of money, decades of time lag and a slew of ‘what could possibly go wrong’ factors, we’re happy to end up with a capability that’s armed with big fire-crackers to terrify and fend off nuclear-armed enemies?
Rest easy fellow Ozzies; we’re safe from Reds under the bed and the Yellow Peril. Thanks Ant, Rish and Joey. Good job.
A reactor is a container with some radioactive material in it. That material produces lots of energy, of which we use the heat. We’re not too keen on the particles, gamma and X-rays produced, so we coat the system in shielding to stop that before it makes our submariners glow in the dark (and die). Because a LOT of energy is produced, we need to keep it cool. If we don’t, the reactor melts in the heat. Then our submariners… you know the drill.
The reactor itself, while being a marvel of technology, is a simple concept. It boils water to produce steam to turn a turbine. The cooling system, on the other hand, is extremely finicky and ultra-sensitive, with lots of moving parts. It needs maintenance, as do the crew as you point out, so while fuel isn’t much of a problem just about everything else is. On the other hand – hyperbole aside, nuclear-powered submarines can quietly travel a long way underwater in a way that conventionally-fuelled submarines can’t.
What Australia wants with that capability is a mystery to me though. In the past subs were used to disrupt merchant shipping to cause shortages in enemy countries that needed the imports. By themselves though subs are just an annoyance. You don’t win a war by having superior submarines. Our problem though is that any country big enough to make submarines a deciding factor is just too big for Australia to take on. We can win a war against Fiji or even NZ without them, but when it comes to any power large enough for us to release the submarines the best way for us to win a war against them is to avoid one in the first place.
Those hot reactors, as you suggest, require cooling. That cooling water leaves behind a plume of hot water showing an easily detectible path.
See above!
Nuclear boats cannot travel quietly, they have pumps running non stop to keep the reactor cool that create a constant volume of noise hence detectable.
They can shut the pumps down temporarily, but then need to vet the heat externally then also detectable.