Let's scuttle AUKUS before it sinks
It is a positive departure from the theatre of the absurd that has recently characterised the Australian government's approach to security, especially its pandering to British delusions and determination to flog the dead horse that is AUKUS. Just the preceding month of July saw a conga line of such folly. Examples are as memorable as they are depressing.
Britain's commitment to the defence of Australia was declared to be ' absolute ', according to the UK Defence Secretary John Healey, in a show of solidarity as substantive as a mirage within a hologram within a dream. But it is not Australia's dream. Australia remembers the fall of Singapore and the tissue-like protection of British security guarantees. It is exclusively a British dream, and one that should receive no traction in Australia.
At the heart of this imperial hallucination lies the AUKUS fallacy – the belief that Australia's defence and security is well served by the acquisition of eight nuclear-powered submarines; that the US will magically increase production of its Virginia Class submarines from 1.2 to 2.3 per year, enabling it to share some with Australia; and that the UK and Australia are capable of developing from scratch a new nuclear-powered submarine within a suitable timeframe and to an acceptable level of reliability and capability (noting that Britain's current Astute-class nuclear attack submarines are often not at sea, including now, when all seven of them are wharf-side in repair or awaiting repair).
The deficiencies and contradictions in the AUKUS submarine project are so great that in the commercial world such a prospectus would not gain one investor. It is accordingly irresponsible for the Australian government to bankroll such a doomed venture to the tune of $368 billion, which could be better used in real, effective and appropriate defence platforms and munitions, equipment and personnel, not to mention hospitals, schools or even houses.
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Apart from the unfortunate but telling example of British maritime industrial inability as demonstrated by the Astute-class submarine, Australia has also been burdened by Britain's contribution to the Hunter frigates, which Strategic Analysis Australia director Michael Shoebridge has described as a ludicrous waste of money for very little military capability.
In this context, the bilateral Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Treaty, known as the Geelong Treaty, signed by Australia's Defence Minister, Richard Marles, and Healey, condemns Australia to providing the UK with ongoing industrial support for the next 50 years.
Of course, the signatories present the heralded collaboration as vital to Australian and UK shared security interests, but such an assertion collapses under analysis of UK security interests in Australia's region, UK military capabilities available now or in the future to defend Australia, and UK military industrial capabilities to design, manufacture and maintain the submarine capabilities of its imaginings.
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