Paul Keating says US Aukus review could ‘save Australia from itself' as sceptics hail chance to exit pact

The Guardian

a day ago

A chorus of Aukus sceptics, including former prime ministers Paul Keating and Malcolm Turnbull, say a US review represents an 'opportunity' for Australia to escape a controversial deal that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and leave Australia, ultimately, less able to defend itself.
The US department of defense has announced a 30-day review of the Aukus nuclear-powered submarine deal 'ensuring that this initiative of the previous administration is aligned with the president's 'America first' agenda,' a Pentagon official said, 'and that the defense industrial base is meeting our needs'.
Keating said that the review 'might very well be the moment Washington saves Australia from itself … from the most poorly conceived defence procurement program ever adopted by an Australian government'.
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He said in a Thursday statement that the Pentagon review was 'subjecting the deal to the kind of scrutiny that should have been applied to AUKUS in the first instance', describing the deal as 'hurriedly scribbled on the back of an envelope by Scott Morrison, along with the vacuous British blowhard Boris Johnson, and the confused President, Joe Biden – put together on an English beach, a world away from where Australia's strategic interests primarily lie.'
Keating said the US would lose nothing by walking away from the deal and still 'achieve what they have been after all along … turning Australia 'into a US nuclear-armed fort pointed against China'.
Turnbull, whose pre-existing submarine deal with French giant Naval was dramatically torn up in favour of the Aukus agreement in 2021, said Australia should 'wake up' and review the agreement itself.
'The UK is conducting a review of Aukus. The US department of defence is conducting a review of Aukus. But Australia, which has the most at stake, has no review,' he said on X on earlier Thursday.
'Our parliament to date has been the least curious and least informed. Time to wake up?'
Former foreign minister Bob Carr said Australia and the US needed to come to a 'mutual agreement' that recognised Aukus served neither's interests, and allowed either side to withdraw without weakening the alliance.
'The Trump Administration has picked a notable sceptic of Aukus [Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's under secretary of defense for policy] to conduct the review for one reason: they know they won't be able to supply the boats to Australia because their own ship building lags so significantly,' Carr told Guardian Australia.
'It is best for us that we don't linger over this, because America's got the option of increasing the cost to us and forcing us to accept the basing of a sizeable submarine fleet in our ports, every vessel being a nuclear target should there be war between the US and China.'
The former South Australian senator Rex Patrick, an ex-submariner and established Aukus critic, said the US review was a 'great opportunity' for Australia to walk away from an increasingly unworkable agreement that would jeopardise Australia's sovereignty and capacity to defend itself.
'There is no doubt this project is both unaffordable and highly risky, and delivers a solution to Australia a decade after it's supposedly needed.'
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens defence and foreign affairs spokesperson, said Australia needed to pursue more independent defence and foreign policies, 'that do not require us to bend our will and shovel wealth to an increasingly erratic and reckless Trump USA'.
He said the Aukus deal made Australia a 'junior partner' in American military strategy, rather than an equal ally.
'Donald Trump is erratic, reckless and careless of America's allies and alliances but he does have one fairly constant trait, he puts US interests first and allies last.
'The USA is reviewing whether to scrap Aukus while Australia has just handed the US an $800 million Aukus tribute payment. We're locked into a $375bn deal that our 'partner' might walk away from.'
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Shoebridge said he believed the US review would find that America could not spare the submarines to sell to Australia, and argued parliament should launch a full inquiry into the Aukus deal, before the government 'wastes more billions on submarines we will never see … [in] a deal that ties us to America's military aggression against China.'
Under pillar one of the agreement, signed in 2021, the US will sell Australia between three and five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, with the first to be delivered in 2032. These will replace Australia's ageing Collins class diesel-electric submarines before Australia's own Aukus nuclear-powered submarines can be built.
By the 'late 2030s', according to Australia's submarine industry strategy, UK shipbuilders will deliver the first specifically designed-and-built Aukus submarine to its own Royal Navy.
Australia's first Aukus submarine – based on the UK design but to be built in South Australia – will be in the water 'in the early 2040s'.
Aukus is forecast to cost Australia up to $368bn to the mid-2050s.
Australia is providing significant subsidies to the industrial bases of both the US and UK. It has already paid $A798m – the first instalment of $A4.7bn pledged – to the US. It will pay A$4.6bn to the UK.
But the deal's feasibility has come under significant pressure regarding both nuclear-capable senior partners
In the US, there are consistent concerns that America's sclerotic ship-building industry is incapable of building enough submarines for its own defences.
Legally, the US can only sell the boats if the commander-in-chief – whoever is then US president – certifies that America relinquishing a submarine will not diminish its own undersea capability.
The US navy already has a shortfall of submarines, expected to worsen over coming years, and shipyards in America are running up to three years late in building new Virginia-class submarines, a 2024 US navy report found.
Colby, who is leading the US Aukus review, has repeatedly said he is 'very sceptical' about the pact and its benefits for the US.
He told the US Senate armed service committee that the US was not building enough submarines for its own defence, and would not sell submarines to Australia if that might jeopardise American interests.
'We don't want our servicemen and women to be in a weaker position and more vulnerable… because [the attack submarines] are not in the right place at the right time.'
The UK parliament announced its own inquiry into Aukus in April, which will examine whether 'geopolitical shifts since the initial agreement in 2021' have rendered the agreement unworkable
In January, the UK government's own major projects agency described the UK's plan to build the nuclear reactor cores needed to power Australia's Aukus submarines as 'unachievable'.