Against a tide of deepening discontent with AUKUS among Labor rank-and-file, which may prove the undoing of the security pact, defence appears to be quietly clothing the supposed benefits of the contentious submarine deal in neutral terms to school children.
According to a seemingly anodyne media statement released with little fanfare this week, defence has introduced a nationwide “nuclear-powered submarine propulsion challenge” in high schools to reveal, among other things, how nuclear propulsion “makes submarines more capable”.
The deputy chief of the navy, Rear Admiral Jonathan Earley, said in the media release it was hoped the curriculum would unmask how STEM subjects apply in the “real world”, thereby encouraging students to embark on careers as “submariners, engineers and technicians”.
It’s unclear, however, whether the curriculum will attach equal, if any, weight to science that conversely shows rapid evolutions in detection technologies will render submarines of all kinds obsolete by the 2050s or earlier.
According to an analysis undertaken by a multidisciplinary team at the ANU’s National Security College, it is “very likely or likely” such technology, which includes submersible drones, new weapons systems and improvements in the detection of chemical, acoustic and infrared signatures, will cause the oceans of the near-future to be “broadly transparent” in coming years.
“[Submarines] produce more than sound,” the researchers pointed out in a recent article. “As they pass through water, they disturb it and change its physical, chemical and biological signatures.”
“They even disturb Earth’s magnetic field — and nuclear subs unavoidably emit radiation. Science is learning to detect all these changes.”
The navy’s school curriculum push comes amid new revelations regarding the extent of deception and subterfuge engaged in by former prime minister Scott Morrison to secure the AUKUS agreement.
In an interview with journalist Richard Kerbaj for an upcoming book seen by newswire Agence France-Presse, Morrison explained that the broad strokes of the AUKUS pact were arrived at over the course of two-year-long secret negotiations beginning in late 2019.
He did not, however, concede that this secrecy and his failure to inform French President Emmanuel Macron of his intention to renege on the French submarine deal (until the eleventh hour) was tantamount to having lied.
“Not telling him is not the same as lying to him,” Morrison said.
“Our strategy was that if we are going to do this, we can’t let it lead to the French knowing — in case that damages the French deal. So, we had to build Chinese walls — pardon the pun — around our discussions,” he added, explaining he was concerned anger on the part of the French might move the UK and the US to pull the AUKUS deal.
Under the French deal secured by the Turnbull government, Australia had agreed to purchase a dozen conventional diesel-powered submarines from French shipbuilder Naval Group.
Morrison’s decision to cancel the contract famously prompted Macron to accuse him of lying, with the dispute ultimately costing taxpayers in the order of $830 million to settle.
Under the AUKUS pact, Australia has committed up to $500 billion for both the purchase of three second-hand US Virginia-class submarines early next decade and the construction of eight nuclear-powered submarines, with the latter projected to be complete by the 2060s.
But the Department of Defence has a long history of procurement failures and cost overruns, and is facing the added headwinds of a personnel “crisis”, having failed to meet recruitment targets for several years with shortages emerging in engineering, intelligence, cyber and communications.
In a heated exchange during May-June Senate estimates, Greens Senator David Shoebridge accused defence chief General Angus Campbell, defence secretary Greg Moriarty and Major General Wade Stothart, who heads defence recruitment, of lacking a plan to increase the defence workforce to the size required to deliver AUKUS.
“What’s the genius plan that you’ve got that’s going to turn around a decade of failure in this space? What’s the plan?” he said in a line of questions that referenced the billions earmarked for nuclear submarines, frigates and missile systems.
“The evidence would suggest that [defence has] no capable plan of delivering anything like the personnel required to operate those.”
In answer, Stothart explained that though it was a “challenging environment” for defence, its market research had revealed “young Australians” maintain a “high propensity to consider service in the Australian Defence Force”.
Campbell, for his part, refused to be drawn on whether he was responsible for failures in recruitment, saying he is “accountable to the minister” for his performance, not Parliament.
Against this thorny backdrop, Labor sources have informed Crikey that a widespread rank-and-file movement is marshalling to oppose AUKUS at Labor’s national conference in August.
“There is a real union and growing rank-and-file opposition to AUKUS,” said Marcus Strom, who formerly worked as a press secretary for Labor minister Ed Husic.
“The Labor movement knows it’s a bad and dangerous policy that is antithetical to Labor values, both in terms of the obscene costs, the absolute danger of dragging us into a potential war with China and blowing open the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.”
He added that defence’s submarine school curriculum drive, for what it’s worth, showed defence was “trying to create a nuclear industry in Australia” — a scenario he likened to “playing roulette with the future”.
An initiative to tell high school students
is a great idea, and should be expanded to cover similar important topics such as:
This is surely better than most of the useless stuff clogging up the national curriculum.
Excellent, SSR! We’ve had enough of their spin and lies.
You can include how having more than thirty percent of the population in poverty or homelessness due to housing shortages and continuous rent rises makes the country so much better as a place to live.
And really worth risking your life to defend.
I echo your comments. Very good indeed and, witty to boot! I hope science teachers give it their all and include ironic tone in these suggestions.
Right after their English teachers introduce them to Kafka.
Don’t forget the benefits of nuclear burns, birth defects, and nuclear winters. Good subjects for picture books for the littlies.
Powers that be had their success in the early mid ’80s removing ‘critical thinking’ from the then HSC year 12 English curricula and syllabi; disappeared environmental science and other measures to improve society.
While Australia has no grounded defence strategy then defence sectors can ‘play’ or ‘game’ any government of the day on procurement, while former Ministers grift and promote themselves to think tanks in UK and/or US (& Hungary too).
As observed in the US, education and schools have become the new battleground for ageing corrupt nativist authoritarians to condition future generations of citizens; dumbed down, Christian, nationalist and militaristic.
This is the absolute worst of totalitarian government brainwashing of children and is criminal in our society.
And the deal is most ridiculous, unnecessary project imaginable – and of course passes an obscene amounts of our money to rent seeking private contractors – somewhere in the world.
A Morrison last minute wedge , which Albo almost broke a leg rushing to cement – Appalling stuff.
What Tik-Tok addled young child is not currently fascinated by the looming death of four billionaires stuck in an airless carbon fibre tube somewhere at the bottom of the North Atlantic, and wondering if one day that too could be them.
Hope it serves as an object lesson as that too, could be their plight. A wicked waste of money though, suspect we’re just doing the bidding of the US with no way to get out of the deal.
A sub that didn’t even have the nous of an emergency breathing tube or emergency beacon…
The one good thing about AUKUS is the idea is so patently stupid and so ridiculously expensive, that I predict Australia will never get one nuclear powered submarine. The downside is that we will have wasted billions of dollars, by the time that the project is cancelled.
Hey… doesn’t like, everyone with a clue, figure that by the time we have these subs the march of tech will have rendered them entirely obsolete?
As in, anything bigger than a toy will be detectable in the ocean, so manned submarines will become useless.
Yes, but think of the good Aukus will do for the bank balances of Christopher Pyne and Joe Hockey?