By Denis Bright
With both sides of the mainstream Australian political divide supporting the AUKUS deal, debate about the merits of this commitment by Scott Morrison has largely gone into recess.
As the third anniversary of Scott Morrison’s announcement of the AUKUS deal on 16 September 2021 approaches, there is growing confidence in the defence establishment that Australians have accepted the need for nuclear-powered submarines. The Defence Special Supplement in The Australian (28 May 2024) is a sign of this confidence. Multinational defence companies have lined up to fund advertisements which demonstrated their patriotic commitment to AUKUS with the support of the South Australia Government.
Each of the defence companies listed maintains a profitable involvement in both military and civilian projects. The KBR engineering company of Houston emphasizes a benign involvement in Australian civilian engineering projects like the Snowy Mountains upgrade and the Adelaide to Darwin Railway. This company is more deeply involved in the military sector globally.
Readers with access to the Defence Supplement can undertake their own research to uncover the ownership and activities of each of the British and US companies listed in the supplement. Here is a sample of the defence outreach from KPR Engineering:
KBR’s Defense Systems Engineering Business Unit goes beyond providing full spectrum engineering and technical solutions across the lifecycle of DoD military systems on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. KBR differentiates itself in the industry by integrating emerging technologies with platform experience to deliver increased value to US DoD and our allies.
Advertising in combination with sensational eyewitness news reporting works in eroding resistance to AUKUS. The Lowy Institute has monitored quite favourable public support for AUKUS arrangements:
Expect concerns about AUKUS to resurface in the future as the cost burdens increase and the encirclement of China by the US Global Alliance takes its toll on longer-term trade and investment relationships between Australia and China. Strategic mishaps are always possible as surface vessels and submarines compete for space in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea. Sabre rattling over uninhabited rock outcrops and remote islands has continued for a couple of decades over rival claims about freedom of navigation. Fortunately. There have been no major mishaps.
Ironically, the US has not ratified the UN’s Freedom of Navigation conventions from the 1980s. Its strategic policies seek alternatives to Chinese trade and investment links with countries across the US Global Alliance as an afford to the peace outreach of China:
Percentage Changes in Chinese Foreign Direct Investment
The costs of the AUKUS extend well beyond the financial and strategic costs of future naval hardware. Australia’s support for the naval encirclement of our best trading partnership will have an unknown impact on our own regional economic diplomacy. Australia’s Future Fund Chief Executive Dr Raphael Arndt dared to warn that global strategic tensions had intruded into financial decision-making and risk assessments (AFR Weekend 15 June 2024). The longer-term impact on Australian trade and investment with China is still a matter for speculation.
Financial Costs of AUKUS
According to Al Jazeera News (11 June 2022), the Albanese government completed a final payment to France of approximately $850 million for breach of contract over the abandonment of the purchase of twelve Attack-class submarines from Naval Group. Despite cost increases and construction delays, delivery of the diesel-electric submarines should have commenced in the late 2020s at a cost that was a fraction of the AUKUS estimates.
The costs of the AUKUS deal are less transparent. Construction costs alone extending over 30 years were initially set at up to $368 billion (AFR 17 March 2023). The extended delivery dates are a cause for concern. US and British supplied nuclear-powered (SSN) submarines might be deployed here in the late 2020s. At least three Virginia class submarines will be built for Australia with a new class of British submarines arriving in the late 2030s before Australian built SSNs come online in the 2040s.
Strategic Risks
Hopefully, the strategic risks of maintaining a new SSN fleet were considered prior to the AUKUS announcement by Scott Morrison on 16 September 2021. How could this have been achieved competently with a critical review from only three cabinet ministers?
Media concerns should have been raised after Scott Morrison claimed in the 7.30 Report interview with Sarah Ferguson that discussions on the AUKUS alternatives were made with just two other ministers at a time when he held multiple ministerial portfolios with the approval of the Australian Governor General between March 2020 and the election in 2022 (14 March 2023).
Before attending the G-7 Summit in Cornwall as a specially invited guest of the Summit Chair Boris Johnson, Scott Morrison had been sworn into the portfolios of Health, Finance, Industry, Science, Energy and Resources, Home Affairs and Treasury. The 47th G-7 Summit convened a month after Scott Morrison’s last two ministerial appointments. Perhaps Boris Johnson could be quizzed on this issue. Both Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison met in person at the G7 Summit in Cornwall (11-13 June 2021). It is logical for them to have discussed the emergent AUKUS deal which was hardly the brainchild of Scott Morrison as claimed by Sky News (27 February 2024).
New SSN submarines place at risk our currently favourable economic diplomacy with China. There are hazards for extended operations in stealth mode in disputed waters. Readers can always investigate the risks of accidental collisions, mechanical malfunction, radioactive hazards and psychological stress on crew members.
Even in friendly waters off Hawaii, the USS Greeneville (SSN-772) surfaced too close to a Japanese fishery high school training ship Ehime Maru. It sank with the loss of nine people on 9 February 2001.
A show of force to diffuse a territorial dispute is an archaic concept. Such gimmicks belong to the pre-1914 era. Both Britain and the US have a long history of involving middle powers in bolstering their strategic outreach.
When the Great War (1914-18) was in stalemate on the Western Front, the Nationalist Government of Billy Hughes in Australia tried two unsuccessful referendum proposals to introduce conscription for overseas military service. British Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Secretary of the State for War and Air Winston Churchill welcomed these initiatives.
Britain had more success by imposing the secret Treaty of London on Italy in 1915 with promises of territorial gains and financial loans if Italy joined the war effort against Austria-Hungary. Similar inducements were offered to Woodrow Wilson’s administration in the USA.
There were few dividends for Italy from the Treaty of London. Prior to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Britain and France had worked out secret arrangements to divide up the Turkish Empire. France gained a mandate over Syria and Lebanon while Britain opted for control of oil rich Iraq, Palestine. Britain had occupied the Suez Canal to sever it from the rest of the Turkish Empire in December 1914.
The consequences of the British Mandate over Palestine still reverberate today in the arbitrary division of Palestine and the emergence of Israel as an enclave of the US Global Alliance.
It is for progressive sections of the media to untangle the secret diplomacy of Scott Morrison which brought Britain back to its old East of Suez roles which had fallen by the wayside a half-century ago. ASEAN was founded in 1967 to offer peaceful alternatives to the arms race in the Indo-Pacific Region. It has since expanded to eleven members with the addition of Timor-Leste. This offers the hope of permanent alternatives to the old imperial alliances in South East Asia.
Both sides of Australian mainstream politics want to hoist those imperial umbrellas at great financial and strategic costs to future generations. Continuing to quiz political insiders about the consequences of their strategic and diplomatic policies is imperative in these troubled times. Asking questions should be imperative for all political parties.
This You Tube extract from a Senate Committee hearing in 2018 displays confident and professional comments from Rear Admiral Greg Sammut. Our strategic arrangements should be part of legitimate parliamentary accountability processes as embedded into the text of ANZUS Treaty of 1951-52.
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