Australian nuclear-related news – week to 10th October
Australian news to 10 October
- Hegseth calls US-built nuclear submarines the ‘apex predator’ of the seas – But are they right for Australia?
- Putting the boot into a new leader: the monstering of David Shoebridge.
Success at last! News Corpse is after me!
Noel Wauchope, 3 Oct 26, https://wauchope.substack.com/p/success-at-last-news-corpse-is-after
And here was I, all these years, thinking that only a few ant-nuclear nuts ever bothered to read my Australian website antinuclear.net. I am so chuffed that News Corpse has finally recognised my work.
It turns out that News Corpse has suddenly noticed my wicked infringement of copyright, that I did, just the bare 8 years ago. Yes, this evil act occurred on an article about Submission 76 to Senate Inquiry on Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia. It was about a farmer, Donald Fels, who opposed nuclear waste dumping in his area. What News Corpse didn’t like, was that I had used a picture of this lovely rural area, with animals grazing. I must have gathered this image from the Internet, and apparently, it was a News Corps image, and under copyright.
Interestingly, on making this discovery of my criminal action, News Corps did not bother to write to me and ask me to please remove the image, – (which I can tell you, all the others do, and I remove those immediately). No, they felt that this matter is so urgent that they employed the Visual Rights Group to demand from me both legal documentation that I had the licence to use the picture, and remuneration – – AUD $525.00, within 14 days, for misuse of its image under section 115(2) and s115(4) section 31 of the Australian Copyright Act.
Anyone who knows me at all well, will know that $525.00 is whopping for me, as I survive on a very low income. But that’s not the point. Actually I’m not sure what IS the point.
Does the use of a pretty picture of a few horses grazing, that was shown 8 years ago, somehow became suddenly important now to News Corps well-being? Or is it that they would prefer that I cease and desist from my current project, which is publishing many of the over 1000 Submissions to the AUKUS Public Inquiry? News Corps itself is strangely reluctant to publish any news at all about this Inquiry.
Last time this happened to me, it was quite a few years ago. The uranium mining company Paladin became most offended, because I quoted an article from a Mali newspaper. That article had said that the Paladin mine manager in Mali at the time was “insensitive to the needs of the local community”. Paladin sent Ashurst legal company after me. That time, a very good journalist saved me, publicising the issue in a national newspaper, and Ashurst backed down. That journalist has since gone on to build his own wonderful independent media.
Who knows what will save me this time? Meanwhile, I have immediately removed the offending picture. I just can’t bring myself to apologise to News Corpse. I mean, I usually do the polite thing. But I have in mind that old feminist chant ‘ “Don’t be too polite, girls”. I really think that it’s pathetic of News Corps to go for me so rudely. And I’d have a bit more respect for them, if they did cover this big AUKUS Public Inquiry. Of course, the submissions are already showing me that the nuclear lobby is boycotting the whole issue.
AUKUS public inquiry asks what Parliament won’t
Scott Morrison devised AUKUS in 2021 in partnership with Mike Pompeo. While Morrison was an incompetent neophyte in terms of naval geostrategy, the more experienced Pompeo hijacked Australia’s Future Submarine Project, turning it from a strategy to defend Australia into a strategy for locking Australia into war with China.
Despite the astronomical debt AUKUS will saddle Australia with, deep public unease over nuclear submarines and the economic absurdity of using Australia as a base against its major trading partner, China, there has never been a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.
By John Jiggens | 29 September 2026, https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/aukus-public-inquiry-asks-what-parliament-wont,21597
With AUKUS costs soaring and scrutiny lacking, a public inquiry is asking the questions Parliament has failed to confront, writes Dr John Jiggens.
AUKUS IS A HIGHLY controversial and wildly expensive nuclear submarine arms deal between Australia, the UK and the USA, created largely in secret by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2021, working with the man who would become his mentor in grift, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The epic failure in defence policy that led to AUKUS flows from the mismanagement by successive coalition governments of the Future Submarine Project. Realising that our Collins-class submarines would become outdated by 2024, the Labor Government initiated the Future Submarine Project in 2012 to purchase replacement submarines that would begin arriving by 2024.
France, Japan and Germany were invited to tender for eight conventional submarines for $20 billion with delivery to start by 2024.
After Labor lost government in 2013, the Coalition governed Australia for the next nine years under three different Prime Ministers: Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison. Every time the Coalition changed leaders, the leader changed the contract for which country would build the submarines.
The Abbott Government had planned to purchase 12 conventional submarines from Japan for $30 billion, but Abbott was ousted by Morrison and Turnbull in 2015, resulting in Malcolm Turnbull becoming PM.
Malcolm Turnbull rejected the Japanese deal, preferring the French tender and he changed the submarine deal. Turnbull was ousted by Scott Morrison in 2018 and Morrison, in turn, broke the contract Turnbull had signed with the French and sought a different builder for the submarines.
The deal Morrison signed off on in 2021 was for eight nuclear submarines from the U.S. at the mind-boggling cost of $368 billion. By then, eight years had been lost and under Morrison’s new AUKUS deal, the timeline for delivery of Australia’s submarines became sometime in the 2040s — two decades behind schedule.
The mainstream media never mention this disastrous mismanagement by Coalition governments of the Future Submarine Project and the cost blow-out from $20 billion to an astonishing $368 billion.
Rex Patrick, a submariner and former Senator, protested that this breathtakingly expensive AUKUS deal would bankrupt the Australian Defence Force. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating called AUKUS “the worst deal in all history”. They were just two of the numerous critics of this disastrous deal.
The worst deal ever
Besides wasting eight years changing contracts for building the submarines and putting the delivery date back two decades, as well as the extraordinary blowout in cost, there were many other outrageous provisions of the AUKUS agreement that justified Keating’s assessment of it as the worst deal ever.
Under Scott Morrison’s AUKUS deal, Australia will be responsible for disposing of the highly enriched uranium waste of all the partners of the AUKUS nuclear submarine fleets, the U.S., the UK nuclear submarines, as well as any nuclear submarines Australia obtains.
At the Brisbane session of the Public Inquiry into AUKUS, Commissioner Admiral Chris Barrie, a former head of the Australian Defence Force, disputed the claim that AUKUS would cost only $368 billion. Besides cost overruns, delays and material changes, which will add to that figure, there was one huge cost of the AUKUS agreement: the cost of disposing of nuclear waste that was never costed.
Admiral Barrie commented:
“But the other additional element which raises the question of whether costs can be contained and how that might affect the taxpayer in the long run is the requirement that Australia under the AUKUS pact is responsible for the disposal of highly enriched uranium waste.”
Admiral Barrie quoted an estimate of the expense of disposing of and securing the nuclear waste, which was derived from a South Australian royal commission that had costed a proposal that South Australia should become a repository for radioactive waste.
The South Australian Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission estimated construction, operation and decommissioning of a high-level nuclear waste repository at $145 billion over 120 years. The true cost of AUKUS will be over $500 billion.
A site for this radioactive waste facility has not been chosen, although possible locations on Defence land, including the Woomera Prohibited Area, have raised concerns among First Nations communities that traditional lands could again be targeted. No permission was sought from any First Nation’s people before Morrison signed off on this.
The coming war with China
Another reason why the AUKUS agreement is the worst deal ever is the replacement of conventional submarines with nuclear submarines. As Admiral Chris Barrie observed, nuclear submarines are designated as attack submarines.
The advantage of nuclear submarines over conventional submarines is that they are faster and can stay underwater longer. They are attack submarines and their naval purpose is to chase and attack enemy submarines. However, they are much bigger than conventional submarines, so they are more easily detected in the shallow waters of Australia’s continental shelf.
Conventional submarines are better suited for a policy of defending Australia, while nuclear submarines are designed to attack enemy submarines.
Scott Morrison devised AUKUS in 2021 in partnership with Mike Pompeo. While Morrison was an incompetent neophyte in terms of naval geostrategy, the more experienced Pompeo hijacked Australia’s Future Submarine Project, turning it from a strategy to defend Australia into a strategy for locking Australia into war with China.
The geostrategy embedded in AUKUS was an American strategy, designed to control the Indian and Pacific oceans and blockade China.
When the Pompeo-Morrison duo redesigned the Future Submarine Project in 2021, the USA had temporarily run out of wars, and U.S. geostrategy was turning into what was referred to by the U.S., their L-NP proxies and their media mates as “the coming war with China”.
China had emerged as a formidable economic and industrial power and was becoming a potential peer competitor with the U.S. Under the Wolfowitz Doctrine, the U.S. would not tolerate the rise of any power that can dispute its global dominance. The U.S. military was preparing for this coming war and was building up its nuclear submarine fleet for this purpose. This coming war with China was masked under the slogan of the Pivot to Asia.
AUKUS was announced shortly before the 2022 Australian Election, an election in which Morrison and his Defence Minister Peter Dutton ran on the China threat and “the coming war with China”. Repeatedly, Peter Dutton compared China to Nazi Germany, and declared China was backing Labor to win the election. Afraid of being wedged on foreign policy, the Albanese-led ALP pursued a “small target” strategy and went along with AUKUS.
However, in the following years, the U.S. military-industrial complex finds itself blessed with a surfeit of wars, led by a delusional and self-proclaimed “stable genius”, President Donald Trump: supporting Israel and its wars in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iran, designed to build a Greater Israel; and supporting Ukraine in a proxy war against Russia in which the U.S. supplied the weapons, and Ukraine supplied the occupants of the body bags.
Ironically, this proxy war was designed to knock Russia out of the ranks of the great powers. Instead, these wars have weakened the U.S. severely.
Too many wars. And the Iran war has widened, creating a new war between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The coming war with China, previously pencilled in for 2027, has been temporarily placed on hold.
The AUKUS Public Inquiry
Despite the astronomical debt AUKUS will saddle Australia with, deep public unease over nuclear submarines and the economic absurdity of using Australia as a base against its major trading partner, China, there has never been a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.
Our Parliament’s abject abdication of its responsibility for this ginormous boondoggle horrified a coalition of former MPs, retired military and naval officers, strategists, academics, union leaders and politicians. They noted the grifter-like silence of our political leaders and the failure of the mainstream media to question this looming disaster. They decided to organise an independent AUKUS Public Inquiry, under the auspices of the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF).
If the media and the Government refused to do their job, they would. They asked Australia two simple questions:
Will AUKUS keep us safe?
At what cost?
The Inquiry secretariat was headed by retired Major General Michael Smith and retired Labor politician Doug Cameron. They appointed five commissioners, led by Peter Garrett, former Midnight Oil vocalist and ALP Minister, as their lead commissioner and frontman. They invited Australians for submissions on AUKUS and received over 700 submissions.
Over the past three months, the five commissioners toured Australia, visiting all the state capitals, hearing from selected submission makers, including former Prime Ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, former Defence Ministers Bob Carr and Linda Reynolds, former Foreign Minister Gareth Evans and over 100 other concerned Australians.
Brisbane was the penultimate stop of the Public Inquiry on their tour of mainland states, before their concluding session in the Commonwealth capital, Canberra, after which they will write a report that they plan to release in November.
This is part one of a two-part story. Part two will be published soon.
Hegseth calls US-built nuclear submarines the ‘apex predator’ of the seas. But are they right for Australia?
Ben Doherty.4 Oct 26, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/oct/04/hegseth-apex-predator-nuclear-submarines-right-for-australia-aukus-ntwnfb
Some experts argue Virginia-class submarines government is buying second hand are good for fighting American wars, but not for defending Australia
On stage for his “arsenal of freedom tour”, the US secretary of defense – who prefers the appellation “secretary of war” – was ebullient.
“This Virginia-class submarine is a paragon of American engineering and fighting spirit,” Pete Hegseth roared, standing at Newport News shipyards where those boats are being built.
“It is the apex predator of the undersea domain, the most advanced and lethal submarine ever built.”
There are few who would argue with the Virginia’s lethality. Australia is set to buy three of these boats, secondhand, from the US navy, beginning in 2032.
But is it the right submarine for Australia?
Hegesth’s words, for all of their rhetorical bellicosity, were revealing: “American … fighting spirit”; “apex predator”; “ensuring America is free and safe and powerful”.
Virginia-class submarines – nuclear-powered and conventionally armed – are very good at travelling undetected fast and staying underwater for a very long time (limited, essentially, only by the capacity of the crew to stay submerged).
They are an attack submarine, an outstanding offensive platform for hunting and destroying a far-distant adversary, able to traverse thousands of miles of deep ocean undetected.
But Australia’s National Defence Strategy, released this year, says the nation’s “strategy of denial” – which aims to deter conflict before it begins – was “focused on safeguarding Australia’s interests in our primary area of military interest”. This includes the immediate region encompassing the north-east Indian Ocean through maritime south-east Asia into the Pacific as well as Australia, its populated offshore territories and its northern approaches.
A growing chorus of naval experts is arguing that the Virginia-class submarines are the wrong boats for this country.
The waters to the north of the Australian continent – from where any potential threat is overwhelmingly likely to approach – are shallow, best suited to a submarine far smaller than Virginia’s nearly 8,000 tonnes of displacement, some say.
A smaller, more nimble submarine, quieter when operating under battery, is a better platform for that role, they say. In addition, smaller submarines are cheaper and easier to crew: Australia could afford more of them, increasing the potency of its force.
The argument runs thus: the Virginias, and the even larger Aukus-class submarines set to follow, are nuclear-powered submarines perfectly suited to fighting a distant war on behalf of the US. But they are the wrong boats to defend Australia.
Defence or ‘projecting power’?
Dr Andrew Gaczol spent a decade as an international political analyst and policy officer at the Australian Department of Defence. He told an independent inquiry into Aukus coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum that the Australian public had been provided only two arguments in support of the Aukus deal, “and neither stand up to serious scrutiny”.
The primary argument put forward is that of defence of Australia.
Gaczol told the inquiry it was unnecessary to have submarines with unlimited range to defend the nation’s waters or conduct defensive operations in the region.
“The latest state-of-the-art Air Independent Propulsion (AIP) conventional diesel-electric submarines are more suitable as they are smaller, quieter when submerged and better suited to the relatively shallow waters of the Australian continental shelf and the waters to Australia’s north,” he said.
The second argument propounded for Aukus is the need for Australia – as a nation reliant on trade – to maintain open sea lanes around it.
Given the small number of attack submarines the Aukus deal will ultimately provide, critics argue they will not be able to protect Australia’s seaborne approaches.
Navies around the world operate on “the rule of threes”, which states that for every three of a complex platform you possess, only one can be relied upon to be operational at any given time. Essentially, of three submarines, one is on active deployment, one is training or conducting exercises, and one is in maintenance, dry dock or recovering from operations.
Australia plans to buy three Virginia-class submarines from the US, to be supplemented – when they are designed and built – by up to five submarines of the Aukus class. By the end of the 2040s, eight submarines would give Australia, at any time, a fleet of two, perhaps three submarines on active deployment.
“I can’t see how such a small number of vessels will be able to keep open all of Australia’s trade routes all of the time,” Gaczol told the inquiry.
“As a counterpoint, I note that the US navy has over 60 nuclear submarines and are currently unable to force open the strait of Hormuz.”
Gaczol says he supports Australia having submarines, but that the Virginia and Aukus-class boats were not ideal for Australia’s defence. The benefit of Australia’s geography – a vast landmass protected by thousands of kilometres of ocean – mean “the chances of Australia being actually sort of invaded are virtually nil”.
The oceans to Australia’s north are also relatively shallow – under 200 metres deep across parts of the Indonesian archipelago and South China Sea – meaning large nuclear submarines “are more easily detected” than smaller and quieter conventional boats.
As deep-water boats that can travel anywhere around the globe at high speed, nuclear submarines are unnecessary for defending Australia, Gaczol says, and are instead about “projecting power into another part of the world”.
“To put it colloquially, that’s not protecting our patch. That’s going into someone else’s patch and poking them in the eye,” he says.
Gaczol believes the acquisition of Virginia-class submarines suits US imperatives, not Australia’s.
“The only scenario I can really see these boats being applicable for is to chase Chinese submarines in the South China Sea should it come to a conflict there. Effectively, our force will be an adjunct of the US Navy.”
‘Best deal on offer’
Former South Australian senator Rex Patrick, an ex-submariner and resolute Aukus critic, is familiar with the aphorism “quantity is a quality of its own”.
He says while there was undoubted advantage to buying large attack submarines – greater payloads, more torpedoes, more capability to transport special forces soldiers – “there’s always a trade-off”.
“If the cost of buying one large nuclear submarine is that you could buy four other submarines for the same price, that’s a trade-off you have to consider.”
Aukus is forecast to cost up to $368bn by the 2050s – $33m a day for 30 years on a conservative estimate. Few, if any, major defence projects of this complexity run on time, or on budget.
And Aukus is dependent not only on Australia’s efforts to build a nuclear-powered submarine fleet from scratch: it is reliant on the US – beset by tenaciously laggard boat-building – to construct enough Virginia-class boats to spare three for Australia; and it needs the UK’s sole submarine-building yard to design and build the first of the new Aukus-class boats on which Australia’s domestically built boat will be constructed.
For far less than the slated cost of the Aukus deal, Australia could buy 20 conventionally powered air independent propulsion submarines, Patrick says.
“If you had 20 submarines, you’d have seven boats in the water, in seven different locations, and seven times the magnitude of problem for the other commander,” he says.
Patrick notes Canada, with the longest coastline in the world and facing many of the same geopolitical challenges as Australia, recently announced it would buy 12 air independent propulsion submarines from German shipbuilder TKMS for a reported $33bn.
The Australian government, though, insists Aukus is “the best deal on offer”.
In June, the defence minister, Richard Marles, told the Shangri-La dialogue Australia had made the deliberate choice to increase the weight of its naval spending: more than 40% of Australia’s defence budget is now directed towards the country’s maritime domain.
“For a three-ocean nation, this is a strategic necessity,” Marles said. “Ninety-eight percent of Australia’s traded goods passes through Australian ports. Ninety percent of our fuel is imported. Our economic sovereignty, in the most basic sense, is a maritime proposition.”
And Marles argued an increasingly militarised region demanded a collective response.
“The free and open passage of goods, energy and data across the seas is not just Australia’s economic lifeblood – it is the economic lifeblood of this entire region.”
In a Lowy essay, former special envoy for defence Luke Gosling wrote that nuclear submarines will give the Australian defence force “a regionally superior capability that will help it to deter war and, if it must fight a war, to win”.
“Threatening to aggressors, lethal if provoked, but not overtly provocative, nuclear submarines are the ‘goldilocks’ long-distance capability.”
Amid a rising drumbeat of concern over Aukus, Labor senator Raff Ciccone rose in the Senate in June to argue Australia’s strategic environment had changed dramatically and the country “must respond to the world as it is”.
“Nuclear-powered submarines are the only platforms that can provide Australia with the ability to deter threats to our maritime supply chains, on which our way of life depend,” he said.
“They alone have the speed, the endurance and the stealth necessary to effectively provide this deterrence. They are the bolt cutters that will ensure that we are never wrapped in chains.”
Trident’s £3m jobs are a costly defence of Britain’s fading status
3rd October, By Samuel Rafanell-Williams, Scottish CND
ALICE laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Prime Minister. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
In order to complete our new Dreadnought submarine programme, 65,000 jobs will be required by 2030. This number has been quoted by the Prime Minister in Parliament, so it must be
true. The current cost of the Dreadnought programme is newly estimated at £240 billion by UK CND.
Scottish CND’s estimate in our Reclaim Our Clyde
campaign two years ago was £200bn. So if we divide our more conservative
£200bn by 65,000 jobs, we get just over £3,000,000 per job. Let me spell
out that astonishing sum again: £3 million per job.
CND has some good ideas
on what we might use that money for, such as: 220,000 extra nurses; 3.7m
affordable homes; Tuition fees for 8m students; Install solar panels on
every home. My pick would be ending world hunger. How many enemies would we
have then?
There is little doubt that the world is becoming more dangerous.
A well-used anecdote over the past century is that “generals are always
fighting the last war”. While this may be true of Donald Trump’s illegal
assault on Iran, the Ukraine war is surely quite the opposite.
Ukraine is
changing warfare techniques every few weeks. They are fighting the next
war. The drone technologies they invent are cutting edge for a couple of
months, then become obsolete. The state-of-the art Chieftain Mk 3 tanks we
sent them are unused and irrelevant. Russia’s expensive nuclear bombers
were seriously exposed in the “Operation Spiderweb” drone attack by
Ukraine in June 2025. Who is to say the UK’s own nuclear facilities are not
equally vulnerable? Russia, America and China are major powers. We are not.
The only one of six Astute-class nuclear submarines that is currently
seaworthy is the one launched last month on its sea trials. The rest,
almost new, are docked and awaiting repairs. The former prime minister Tony
Blair notes in his memoirs that deciding to renew the Anglo-American
Trident submarine fleet at Faslane had nothing to do with defence, but was
to consolidate our position as a major power.
This was evidenced this week
by Chancellor John Healey (formerly head of the Ministry of Defence)
announcing that £6bn would be spent on building three floating docks at
Faslane, in order to accommodate more nuclear submarines. This is only part
of the £15bn set aside for further developments at Faslane as part of
Project Royal Oak.
For context, £6bn is five times what the Scottish
Government spends annually on housing. To put it another way, a chronic
housing crisis in Scotland and beyond, among other social harms that could
be remedied with the more than £200bn spent on Trident renewal, is simply a
price the British government is willing to pay to sustain its ability to
destroy the northern hemisphere.
The National 3rd Oct 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26604113.tridents-3m-jobs-costly-defence-britains-fading-status/
Putting the boot into a new leader: the monstering of David Shoebridge
Identity politics is at its worst when it reduces the complex, dispersed and often contradictory workings of power to a cast-list of heroes and villains. It turns politics into the story of one man or one woman, oppressor or victim, with the facile implication that change is driven from the top down, by the capture or replacement of symbolic authority rather than by the patient reform of institutions, relationships and material conditions by a process of mutual agreement.
Urban Wronski Writes, 4 Oct, 2026
David Martin Shoebridge has been leader of the Greens for four days. In that time he has choked up on national television. He has been tagged an ecopopulist. He has been accused of prejudice. A Murdoch hack has charged him with being “snobby” to a police officer.
The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, tells him to go after One Nation instead. He found it “somewhat concerning” that, “at a time when we see a rise of a far right-wing party, Senator Shoebridge took the opportunity to actually criticise Labor.” Leave his government out of this.
Four days. That’s quick work. It’s also very old work.
Fleet Street called it monstering. In 1914, Kitchener’s propagandists did it with Belgian babies. Our corporate scribes have a four-day-old leader on the bayonet.
It would be easy to answer in kind. Find the villains, name them, shame them, go home. That’s the trap. Naming and shaming is their trade, not ours. The people doing this are seasoned operators and they are shameless. They aren’t confused and they aren’t stumbling. They are building something. The useful question isn’t who they are. It’s how the thing is built.
Start with Wednesday night. Sarah Ferguson had the new leader on 7.30 for eleven minutes. Her first question set the tone. “To get to know you, who is your key philosophical or political inspiration?”
Shoebridge named John Kaye, his mentor in the NSW Parliament, “a person of incredible principle, incredible courage,” dead since 2016. His voice caught.
“Oh, that still bothers you?”
“It still does. It’s a hard start to this interview, Sarah.”
“Why does it still move you in the way it does?”
He told her. She asked whether Kaye had expected him to become leader.
“You’d have to ask John.”
“Can’t.”
“Can’t,” he repeated.
A minute later the weeping man had become a bruiser. He and his deputy, Ferguson said, “came out aggressively” to “play hard ball.” Then: “Is that what voters want? An aggressive attitude towards Labor?”
Too soft to lead. Too hard to trust. Both charges inside three minutes.
The psychologists call it a double bind. The Tudors had a better name. Henry VII’s Lord Chancellor, Cardinal John Morton, had a rule for squeezing taxes out of the merchants of England. If a man lived well, he could plainly afford to pay. If he lived frugally, he must have money put away, so he could afford to pay.
Either way, he paid. Morton’s Fork. Shoebridge was skewered on it before he’d finished his first answer.
The ABC’s write-up knew exactly where the story was. “New Greens leader David Shoebridge gets emotional before launching attack on Labor“. First the tears, then the attack. The soft man, then the angry man. Then the “ecopopulist”. A character arc, pantomime villain included, ready for the promo.
This is the getting-to-know-you interview, and every new leader gets one. Who are you, really? What moves you? Who did you lose? It feels humane. It isn’t neutral. It turns the leader into the story, and once the leader is the story the argument is scenery.
Call it what it is: identity politics.
Identity politics is at its worst when it reduces the complex, dispersed and often contradictory workings of power to a cast-list of heroes and villains. It turns politics into the story of one man or one woman, oppressor or victim, with the facile implication that change is driven from the top down, by the capture or replacement of symbolic authority rather than by the patient reform of institutions, relationships and material conditions by a process of mutual agreement……………………………………………………………. https://urbanwronski.com/2026/10/04/monstering-of-david-shoebridge/
The first 200 Submissions to the AUKUS Public Inquiry
5 October 2026, https://theaimn.net/the-first-200-submissions-to-the-aukus-public-inquiry/
With a hasty executive action by the Scott Morrison’s government, Australia signed up to buy $368 billions’ worth of second-hand nuclear submarines, and created a special military alliance with USA and UK -“AUKUS”. The then Opposition Party, Labor, led by Anthony Albanese, quickly fell into line. Now the Albanese Labor Government has stuck with this arrangement, and is keenly pursuing it.
Civil society groups, led by The Australian Peace and Security Forum, and funded by voluntary contributions – crowd funding – set up the AUKUS Public Inquiry, with hearings across Australia, to examine the costs of AUKUS, and other factors – transparency, safety and environment, and strategic impact. The Inquiry will release its report in early November 2026. They also called for submissions from the public, and have now received 1020 submissions, all published on their website, if you scroll right down.
Well, I am carefully reading each submission. I’ve now read from Submission 1 to Submission 200 and will now attempt to summarise the general themes of these. Though this is barely one fifth of the 1020 submissions received, I still think it’s an indication of how it’s all going, and I will continue going through the whole lot.
First of all, a pleasant surprise – the submissions were highly individual. As a seasoned submission reader, I was expecting to see a number of identical submissions, all derived from one sample plan. Not so. Although many people did have similar ideas, they were expressed individually, and often sounded personal, and some even passionate.
Secondly, they were in the main remarkably sceptical, and mostly opposed to the whole AUKUS project. Out of 200 submissions, only 6 were in favour of AUKUS. This is extraordinary, but is probably explained by the fact that this Inquiry was instigated by civil society groups, not by government or business organisations. Therefore, I think that the government and nuclear-industry – connected groups, and corporate media thought it best to ignore the Inquiry, and hope and trust that it would just disappear.
Those first 200 opinions on the AUKUS project came in two broad areas – those who focussed on the actual nuclear submarines – were they a good idea? and those who looked at the broader meaning of the AUKUS alliance between Australia, the USA and the UK. Of course, most submissions mentioned some of both aspects, as well.
In focussing on the nuclear submarines, writers considered their costs, their suitability for Australia’s defence, the lack of public and parliamentary scrutiny, the speed and secrecy of decision-making, safety, strategic implications, and management of toxic wastes.
The writers who paid attention more broadly, to the whole AUKUS alliance, considered the broader financial costs, issues of Australia’s sovereignty, democracy and the processes involved, secrecy, need for transparency, regional security and strategy, militarism, accountability, the involvement of the nuclear industry, and indigenous attitudes.
Those few who did support AUKUS (Submissions number 57, 169, 176 and 188,) stated the pro nuclear case, but did not seem to come from nuclear industry experts. They might have been from the industry, but there was none of the high-powered technical detail that I have come to expect from the nuclear lobby. This leads me to think that these were genuine personal opinions, and that the nuclear lobby has indeed boycotted this inquiry.
There were also a very few pro nuclear views, such as number 59 – POLICY WATCHDOG AUSTRALIA which offered some criticisms and recommendations. And a few who wanted a more formal, government-run investigation.
So, returning to the bulk of these submissions, most of them very thoughtful and well-argued, I’m just going to set out briefly the main concerns.
Far and away the main consideration was the cost – the financial price for the submarines, for supporting the U.S.A’s ship-building, and all the infrastructure needed in Australia
The second most important consideration was the nuclear submarines themselves, and strong arguments were put that these will not be fit for purpose, will be obsolete, and other craft would be more appropriate for Australia’s defence.
Really, almost equally important was the issue of Australia’s sovereignty. Many argued against too close an alignment with the USA.
Then came issues of the processes involved in Government decisions on AUKUS, reflections that it was undemocratic, lacking Parliamentary oversight, lacking transparency, lacking accountability. There were also strong concerns about militarism, about China not being our enemy, about better plans for regional security.
Of course, there are over 800 submissions more to go through. As I persist, I am publishing some of the most interesting ones on antinuclear.net. And looking forward to the final report of the AUKUS Public Inquiry. I don’t think that the corporate media will be so easily able to ignore that.
Submission to AUKUS Public Inquiry – How will Australia pay for AUKUS?- Rod Campbell, Richard Denniss and Jack Thrower .
200 Rod Campbell, Richard Denniss and Jack Thrower
The AUKUS trilateral security partnership fails to deliver even the most basic levels of transparency. The partnership was negotiated and struck in secret by the then Morrison Government and supported by the Albanese Shadow Cabinet without approval from the Labor Caucus or broader party.1
It has been reported that AUKUS was even kept secret from most of the national security cabinet for nearly a year and that its announcement took Australia’s Pacific allies by surprise.2
How will Australia pay for AUKUS? 1
This secrecy has been one of the few constants of the AUKUS program over the last five years. Australians have often had to rely on government processes in the United Kingdom or the United States to learn basic facts about a partnership with significant implications for Australia’s future.3
One simple question that successive governments have failed to answer is ‘how will Australia pay for AUKUS?’
Whenever suggestions are made for additional spending on education, health, climate mitigation, the arts or environmental protection, questions are immediately asked about how the new proposal will be financed. However, neither the Government nor the Opposition have expressed any concern about how to pay for AUKUS, most notably the nuclear submarine deal that forms part of AUKUS Pillar 1. In the words of Josh Frydenberg, Treasurer at the time AUKUS was signed, “Everything is affordable if it’s a priority. This is a priority.”4
Mr Frydenberg is correct. Australia is one of the richest countries in the world and as a nation we can afford to do almost anything that is considered a priority. We cannot, however, afford to do everything that is claimed to be a priority. Inevitably there will be trade offs. This submission attempts to put the cost of AUKUS, or at least the estimates available, in the context of the Australian Government budget to examine what some of these trade offs might be.
HOW MUCH WILL AUKUS COST?
The cost of AUKUS submarines is murky; there is no central and transparent accounting for all relevant spending.5
The main figure used in relation to the cost of AUKUS is $368 billion over 30 years. This figure was provided by the Department of Defence to the Parliamentary Budget Office
How will Australia pay for AUKUS? 2
(PBO) in early 2023 in response to a request from then-Greens leader Adam Bandt for “a breakdown of the cost of the nuclear-powered submarines to be acquired under the AUKUS agreement, over the life of the program.”6
It is worth noting that three years later, this same estimate is still the best information the Australian public has about the overall cost of the program. The continued use of this estimate might be reasonable if it was based on rigorous and transparent analysis, but it is not.
The entire response to Mr Bandt’s question, on which all public discussion of the cost of AUKUS is based, is less than a page. It is a one-line table with three dot points of “sensitivities and qualifiers”. The table provided by the PBO is reproduced below, [on the original] under its original heading:
Even the most basic details about this estimate are absent from Defence’s explanations. It is not clear if they are adjusted for inflation, or if so how. It is not clear what exchange rate was used in the estimates, only that the estimates are “subject to regular adjustments to cater for foreign exchange variations”. No such adjustments have been made public. It is not clear what “contingent events” trigger the occurrence of the contingency expenses, or in what years these events might arise. It is not clear how much of these costs would come from existing defence budgets or what is additional.
Defence states these costs represent upper-bound estimates. However, defence spending in Australia and around the world has a strong tendency for cost overruns. For example, the Australian National Audit Office’s latest Major Projects Report assessed 21 major defence projects; only 8 of these projects had no total scheduled slippage, and their total ‘budget variation’ (a proxy for cost overruns) since government second pass approval was $37.2b.7 The Defence/PBO costing also likely does not include several related costs, such as resources spent extending the life of submarines.
How will Australia pay for AUKUS? 3
Australia’s existing Collins-class submarines to bridge the gap until the AUKUS submarines are meant to be delivered.8
A more recent PBO costing places the cost of AUKUS up to 2028-29 at $17.95 billion, and the total up to 2035-36 at $83.3 billion.9 These newer figures cannot be directly compared but may indicate a higher overall cost to the program than the PBO’s 2023 estimate.
Ultimately, no one knows how much AUKUS will cost and those who have the clearest idea of the cost are choosing not to share their knowledge with the public. From the available estimates, it appears that the cost will average in the low tens of billions each year, with most costs being incurred between the mid-2030s and mid-2050s.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO PAY FOR THAT?
Broadly, there are three options available to the Commonwealth Government to pay for additional spending: raise more revenue, cut spending on other budget measures, or increase debt.
Raise revenue
Perhaps the most obvious way to pay for AUKUS is to raise more government revenue. In the current budget year, the Commonwealth Government expects to raise $760 billion in total revenue, so an extra AUKUS cost of perhaps $15 billion per year represents an extra 2%.10
As noted above, Australia can afford to do this. Australia is a low-tax country, with one of the lowest tax collection rates relative to the size of the economy among developed countries. Of the 38 economies in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), only eight have lower tax collection than Australia, and these include relatively low-income countries like Türkiye and Mexico, as well as tax havens
like Switzerland and Ireland. Australia would need to raise an extra $140 billion per year in tax revenue to reach the OECD average, similar to Canada or New Zealand.11
Australia could raise enough revenue to pay for AUKUS in many ways. Some of the more equitable and efficient would be:
• Taxing gas exports. A 25% tax on liquified natural gas exports, as proposed by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, could raise around $17 billion per year.12
• End diesel tax loopholes. The Fuel Tax Credit Scheme costs over $10 billion per year and mainly benefits coal and iron ore companies. It is widely considered an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy.13
• Cut superannuation tax concessions that mainly benefit the wealthy and cost up to $20 billion per year.14
Other options would be to increase existing taxes – a 5% increase in personal income tax or a 10% increase in company tax would offer revenue increases in the order of the estimated costs of AUKUS.
Cut spending
An alternative to raising taxes to pay for AUKUS is to cut spending. If this is the preferred option chosen by the Government and the Opposition, then, these preferences should be made explicit. Government budgets are a statement of the priorities of the Government, and by choosing to cut other programs to offset the cost of AUKUS, this is a statement that the AUKUS submarine deal is viewed by the Government and Opposition as a higher priority than other areas of spending.
Spending programs of the general magnitude of AUKUS costs are summarised in Table 2 below: [on original]
Cut opportunities appear to be in the order of spending programs such as the Phamaceutical BenefitsScheme, Job Seeker unemployment benefits, Child Care Subsidy, the Australian Army and funding for both private and public schools. It is unlikely that a government would cut an entire program to pay for AUKUS, as this would have profound impacts on huge numbers of Australians and would likely be extremely unpopular. Instead, cuts to many different programs would be more likely in order to minimise political fallout.
Higher debt
A final option available to the Commonwealth Government is to simply incur a higher level of debt than would otherwise be the case. It is not clear whether the existing PBO cost estimates discussed above include any debt-related costs. Assuming they do not, with no efforts to increase tax revenue or curtail other spending, then the cost of AUKUS could increase government debt by its full value of $368 billion (plus interest).15 If this total were borrowed immediately, interest payments would reach $15 billion per year, assuming a government borrowing rate of around 4%.
According to the most recent budget figures, the Commonwealth Government’s net debt stood at $616.6 billion. Adding over $367.6 billion in additional debt would increase net debt by 60% to nearly $1 trillion ($984.2 billion).
CONCLUSION
There is no ‘right’ answer to the question ‘how to pay for AUKUS’. Democracies are free to make decisions on how to spend, tax, and incur debt based on whatever the public decide to prioritise. However, for this process to properly function, Governments must be clear about how these decisions are made and on what basis. The AUKUS submarine deal has not been justified; it has simply been stated. It is for the Government to explain how it will be paid for.
Submission to AUKUS Public Inquiry – absurd that the seller of submarines is immune from any liability – Monica Mesch.
179.Monica Mesch.
Subject: Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Government of
the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear
Propulsion
I thank the Committee for allowing submissions relating to the above Agreement.
I particularly wish to submit my total disagreement with Part E of ARTICLE IV
Naval Nuclear Propulsion Plants, Related Equipment, and Material:-
E. Australia shall indemnify, subject to paragraph F of this Article, the United
States and the United Kingdom against any liability, loss, costs, damage or
injury (including third-party claims) arising out of, related to, or resulting from
Nuclear Risks connected with the design, manufacture, assembly, transfer, or
utilization of any Material or Equipment, including Naval Nuclear Propulsion
Plants and component parts and spare parts thereof, transferred or to
betransferred pursuant to this Article.
It is unconscionable that Australia, on behalf of its citizens, would sign off on
allowing this section in a treaty or otherwise with any dealings or purchases that
it makes with any country.
Ask anyone of your citizens if they’ve ever bought materials or equipment that
indemnify a supplier in the manner in which you propose?
It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard of lately…. and ridiculous!
Submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry – no plan for dealing with the nuclear wastes – John Thompson.
170. John Thompson
Neither the US nor the UK have solved the problem of military nuclear waste
despite it being a problem for more than 50 years.
The US Navy handles its nuclear waste jointly with the Department of Energy
(DOE). The Navy splits the waste into two main categories: spent nuclear fuel
(high-level waste) and the reactor compartments themselves (low-level waste
High-Level Waste: Spent Nuclear Fuel
When a naval reactor is defueled or a ship is decommissioned, the spent nuclear
fuel is taken from the vessel at a specialized shipyard—usually the Puget Sound
Naval Shipyard in Washington or the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia. It is placed
into massive, heavily shielded shipping containers designed to withstand train
crashes and fires. It travels via rail to the Naval Reactors Facility at the Idaho
National Laboratory (INL) in a remote desert area.. Once there, it is cooled in water
pools and eventually transferred into dry storage casks made of thick steel and
concrete. It will remain here until a permanent national underground repository is
built.
Low-Level Waste: The Reactor Compartments
This part of the Navy’s nuclear disposal process involves the empty reactor hulls.
The remaining steel reactor compartment is still radioactive due to the metals
exposed to radiation during operation. At the Puget Sound Shipyard, workers cut
the reactor compartment completely out of the ship’s hull. They seal it by welding
thick steel plates over all openings, turning the entire compartment into its own
huge leak-proof shipping container. The massive steel cylinder (often weighing
between 1,000 and 1,500 tons) is loaded onto a specialized barge. It is towed
down the Pacific coast, enters the Columbia River, and travels inland to the port of
Benton. At the river port, a massive multi-wheeled high-capacity transporter
moves the container off the barge and slowly drives it across the desert roads to
the Hanford site in Washington State. There the load is lowered into Trench 94, a
massive open excavation. These containers are expected to remain structurally
sound out in the open for more than 500 years, hoping there will be no low-level
radiation leaks into the surrounding environment
The British Royal Navy handles its spent nuclear materials through a very
fragmented strategy.
High-Level Waste: Spent Fuel Cores
When a Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarine reaches the end of its service or
requires refueling, it is taken to the Devonport Royal Dockyard in Plymouth, where
the highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel core is extracted from the submarine. It is
then loaded into heavily shielded, robust transport containers and moved across
the country by rail to Sellafield, the centre of the UK’s nuclear industry.
At Sellafield, the spent fuel is placed into specialized cooling ponds for several
years to lower its temperature and radiation levels. Then it is transferred to
modern, heavily engineered dry-storage facilities on-site. Like the US, the UK plans
to keep this fuel in interim storage until a permanent national Geological Disposal
Facility (GDF) can be located and constructed deep underground. No progress has
been made on this.
Intermediate & Low-Level Waste: The Submarines
Unlike the US Navy, which carves out its reactor compartments and deposits them
in a large open desert trench, the UK has faced a massive historical backlog with
its retired hulls. For decades, the UK has not have a finalized land-based disposal
site for the reactors. Instead, the Royal Navy currently has over 20
decommissioned nuclear submarines sitting afloat in non-tidal basins at two
dockyards. Some of these “laid-up” vessels have been waiting out-of-service for
longer than they were actually operational.
To attempt to resolve this problem, the UK Ministry of Defence launched the
Submarine Dismantling Project. Some of the minor low level radio-active materials
will be sent to a civilian Low Level waste respository. The High Level waste is to be
directed to so-called interim storage facilities giving a century to find and establish
a deep geological repository.
These are Australia’s two partners in the AUKUS project. Neither of them has been
able to deal adequately (or safely) with the nuclear waste problem. Yet we are
entering into a partnership with them. Our government has no plan for dealing
with the problems of nuclear materials and waste (and possible accidents) and
therefore no estimate of costs, timelines, locations, etc. In my view, it is entirely
irresponsible, indeed reprehensible, to allocate very substantial sums to the
acquisition of nuclear equipment or permit such equipment to be operated from
Australia without appropriate strategy and plans and costing for this matter.
Submission to AUKUS Public Inquiry- AUKUS benefits foreign entities not Australians – Simon Murr.
168. Simon Murr
The most serious risks for Australians are:
Dependence on U.S. political and industrial reliability (which is not guaranteed).
Receiving older, less capable submarines at enormous cost.
A potential decade‐long submarine capability gap.
Strategic entanglement in U.S.–China rivalry.
Massive financial exposure with uncertain returns.
Submission to the AUKUS Public Inquiry- SEA LANES, SUBMARINES AND THE LIMITS OF AUSTRALIAN POWER- Peter Holding.
150. Peter Holding
Executive Summary
This submission argues that:
• The principal justification for AUKUS—the protection of Australia’s sea lanes—is unconvincing in the context of a major conflict between the United States and China.
• The ability of any allied naval force to guarantee normal commercial shipping during a major United States–China war is highly questionable. Australia’s proposed fleet of three nuclear-powered submarines would make only a limited contribution to that task.
• Australia’s submarine contribution is unlikely to materially alter China’s strategic calculations or significantly strengthen deterrence.
• Claims that AUKUS will provide Australia with substantially greater influence in Washington are overstated. Australia’s strategic value to the United States already derives principally from intelligence cooperation, particularly Pine Gap, and from Australia’s geographic position in the Indo-Pacific.
• Concerns about coercion in a China-dominated Asia deserve consideration, but discussions often overlook the reality that allies as well as rivals use economic and political pressure to advance their interests.
• Australia’s long-term security is more likely to depend upon economic resilience, diplomatic flexibility and political independence than upon a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.
The central question is not whether Australia faces strategic challenges. It clearly does. The question is whether AUKUS is the most effective and proportionate response to those challenges.
Protecting Australia’s Sea Lanes
One of the most frequently repeated justifications for AUKUS and Australia’s massive expenditure on nuclear-powered submarines is the need to protect “Australia’s sea lanes”.
But what exactly are these sea lanes, and can the proposed submarine fleet achieve that objective?
through the Indonesian archipelago, the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca, the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific. Through them flow our exports of iron ore, gas, coal and agricultural products and many imports upon which Australia depends- manufactured products, pharmaceuticals, industrial components and much of our refined fuel.
As a trading nation, Australia clearly has an interest in keeping these routes open. The question is whether nuclear submarines can do so.
Can Nuclear Submarines Keep the Sea Lanes Open?
The central assumption behind current defence policy is that Australia can contribute to the protection of these sea lanes and, through deterrence, help prevent conflict from occurring in the first place.
Yet this argument becomes difficult to sustain when one asks what would happen in the very conflict for which these submarines are supposedly being acquired: a war between the United States and China.
If such a war occurred, commercial shipping throughout East Asia would immediately become hazardous. Insurance costs would soar. Shipping companies would avoid conflict zones. Missile strikes, submarines, drones, mines, cyberattacks and attacks on port infrastructure would threaten commercial traffic. The economic consequences would extend far beyond the immediate combat zone.
The argument is not that Australia’s submarines would operate alone. Supporters of AUKUS envisage them contributing to a broader allied effort, principally alongside the United States. Even so, it is difficult to see how allied naval forces could guarantee the safety of commercial shipping during a major war between the world’s two largest military powers.
Modern conflict would not resemble the relatively uncontested maritime operations of recent decades. Long-range missiles, submarines, drones, cyberattacks, mines and attacks on port infrastructure would create risks across vast areas of ocean. Commercial shipping companies and insurers would respond accordingly. Insurance premiums would rise sharply, many vessels would avoid conflict zones altogether, and some trade routes could become effectively unusable regardless of how many warships were deployed.
Australian submarines might contribute to military operations conducted by an allied coalition. That is not the same thing as ensuring that commercial sea lanes remain open for normal trade. The ability to sink enemy vessels is not necessarily
the same as the ability to guarantee the safe passage of civilian shipping.
Indeed, the widespread use of drones in Ukraine and the Middle East has highlighted how relatively inexpensive systems can threaten far more expensive military platforms. This raises further questions about whether a strategy centred on a small number of extremely costly submarines represents the most effective means of protecting Australia’s interests.
Would AUKUS Strengthen Deterrence?
Nor is it obvious that Australia’s submarine force would significantly increase deterrence.
China will make its strategic calculations primarily based on the military capabilities and political resolve of the United States. It is difficult to believe that Beijing’s decision-making would be materially altered by the addition or subtraction of a small Australian submarine force.
This does not mean the submarines would be militarily irrelevant. Rather, it means that their existence is unlikely to be decisive in the strategic calculations of a great power.
Does AUKUS Increase Australia’s Influence in Washington?
A second argument often advanced is that AUKUS increases Australia’s influence in Washington.
Australia already possesses assets of enormous value to the United States, particularly Pine Gap and other intelligence and defence facilities. If Australia has influence in Washington, it derives principally from these assets, from decades of intelligence cooperation, and from our geographic position in the Indo-Pacific.
Three submarines will not provide influence that Pine Gap does not already provide.
More fundamentally, history suggests that great powers pursue what they perceive to be their own interests. If a future crisis over Taiwan occurs, Washington will act according to its own assessment of American interests, not according to the wishes of Canberra.
What Would Chinese Regional Dominance Actually Mean?
Supporters of AUKUS often respond that the real issue is not sea lanes or submarines but what happens if China becomes the dominant power in Asia.
No serious analyst suggests that China intends to invade Australia. Australia is geographically distant, sparsely populated, militarily capable and occupies a continent that would be extraordinarily difficult to conquer and administer.
The more plausible concern is that China could seek to pressure Australia to align more closely with Chinese preferences on issues such as Taiwan, intelligence cooperation, human rights criticism or regional disputes.
That concern is not irrational. However, it raises an important question. Why do we assume that coercion is uniquely a Chinese problem? Economic Coercion by Allies: Recent Examples
The United States has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use economic pressure against allies when it believes its interests require it.
Recent examples are instructive.
In 2025 the Trump administration imposed significant tariffs on Canada despite Canada being one of America’s closest allies, a NATO member and a Five Eyes intelligence partner. The dispute became intertwined with broader political disagreements and repeated public comments questioning Canadian sovereignty and suggesting that Canada should become America’s “51st state”.
The administration also imposed and threatened tariffs against Brazil while openly criticising legal proceedings involving former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a political ally of President Trump. Trade measures were linked to concerns about Brazil’s domestic political decisions.
Similarly, the United States threatened retaliatory tariffs against several European allies in response to digital services taxes and regulatory measures affecting major American technology companies. The objective was not simply to secure market access but to influence the domestic regulatory choices of allied governments.
These examples demonstrate that great powers frequently use economic leverage against both allies and rivals.
Coercion, Influence and Australian Independence
China has certainly attempted to exert pressure on Australia. It has objected strongly to criticism of its human rights record, calls for a COVID inquiry and other policies it regarded as hostile. Its trade restrictions on Australian exports were clearly intended to influence Australian behaviour.
However, China’s pressure has generally been directed at what Australia says or does about China.
By contrast, the United States has often sought influence over Australia’s domestic economic arrangements themselves.
Successive American administrations and corporate interests have pushed Australia on pharmaceutical regulation, intellectual property rules, investment
provisions, agricultural market access and other matters. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme has repeatedly been a target of American lobbying because it restrains drug prices and therefore pharmaceutical profits.
In other words, China has largely sought to influence Australia’s foreign policy towards China. The United States has often sought to influence how Australia’s domestic economy operates.
Indeed, one could argue that American influence already penetrates much more deeply into Australian institutions than Chinese influence does. Intelligence cooperation, defence procurement, technology standards, financial markets and trade arrangements all bind Australia closely to the United States.
The point is not that America and China are identical. They are not. The point is that the mere possibility of coercion cannot by itself justify one alliance and condemn another relationship. The relevant question is not whether coercion exists, but how much coercion exists, in what forms, and with what consequences.
Trade, Protectionism and Australia’s Economic Interests
Australia is a trading nation. Yet if our prosperity depends upon open markets and relatively free flows of goods and capital, it is worth noting that China remains deeply dependent upon and supportive of international trade while the United States has become increasingly protectionist.
Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, tariffs, industrial subsidies, export controls and economic nationalism have become mainstream features of American policy. Donald Trump accelerated trends that were already emerging, but those trends have continued under subsequent administrations.
This raises a difficult question. If open trade is an Australian value, why do we automatically assume that our economic interests align more closely with the United States than with China?
Historical Affinities and Strategic Assumptions
The usual answer invokes shared history, shared values and the alliance.
Australia has deep historical, cultural and institutional ties to the Anglosphere. We speak the same language as Britain and America. Our legal and political systems have common roots. Our intelligence services are closely integrated.
But perhaps these historical affinities also shape our perceptions in ways we rarely examine.
Australians tend to view the United States as familiar and therefore reassuring, even when Washington imposes tariffs on allies, seeks changes to our domestic policies, or pursues its own interests at our expense.
China, by contrast, is often portrayed as fundamentally alien, opaque and threatening.
The old phrase was “the inscrutable Oriental”. We no longer use such language openly, but it is worth asking whether remnants of that mindset still influence some of our strategic assumptions.
This does not mean China poses no challenges. It does. Nor is Australia about to abandon the alliance with the United States. Support for the alliance is deeply embedded in Australian political culture and remains strong across much of the electorate.
Conclusion
This submission argues that public discussion of AUKUS often proceeds from a series of assumptions that deserve closer scrutiny.
Even if one accepts concerns about China’s growing power, it does not automatically follow that spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines is the most effective response.
The ability of even a large allied naval force to guarantee normal commercial shipping during a major United States–China war is highly questionable. Australia’s proposed submarine capability would make only a limited contribution to that task. Nor is it likely to alter China’s strategic calculations in a decisive way or provide Canberra with substantial additional influence in Washington beyond that which Australia already derives from intelligence cooperation and its strategic location.
Australia’s security ultimately depends not on the illusion of controlling events far beyond its power, but on maintaining economic resilience, diplomatic flexibility, political independence and a realistic understanding of the limits of Australian influence.
Submission to AUKUS Public Inquiry – Citizens Party – foreign interests used Australian Strategic Policy Institute to foment fear of China and drum up support for AUKUS.
149. Robert Barwick On behalf of Citizens Party
AUKUS is the policy product of foreign interference
On 15 February 2024 Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) senior analyst Dr
Alex Bristow explicitly connected the willingness of the Australian public to bear
the growing cost of military spending that AUKUS represents, with our level of
alarm about one country—China.
“We will not generate or sustain public consent for necessary rises in defence
spending and the whole-of-nation effort required in the years ahead until our
national security establishment stops treating China as a taboo subject in public”,
Dr Bristow wrote in an article on the ASPI website (https://www.aspi.org.au/strateg
ist-posts/we-mustnt-be-afraid-to-mention-china-in-public-discussions-about-defenc
e/).
There you have it—focus on China to “generate” public consent for mega-spends
like AUKUS.
However, this was not mere advice from ASPI; the AUKUS Public Inquiry should
examine how ASPI has taken the lead on focussing Australians’ attention on China
for more than a decade, and how it has been funded by the US and UK
governments, as well as American and British weapons manufacturers, to do so.
Having paid ASPI in the low tens of millions of dollars over more than a decade to
make repeated, mostly unfounded and always exaggerated accusations against
China in Australia, the US and UK governments and their biggest weapons
companies have already received billions of Australian dollars through the AUKUS
program.
This is the universal business model of the military-industrial complex: sponsor
think tanks that relentlessly hype tensions and threats; cash in with defence
contracts.
Analysis by APAC News published 31 March 2021 (ASPI sponsors collect billions
from Defence) showed that ASPI received almost $7 million in sponsorship and
commercial revenue the previous year, the majority from foreign governments and
weapons companies.
APAC News reported that since 2001, weapons companies that sponsored ASPI
had collectively received more than $51 billion in contracts from the Australian
government.
Because of its funding, ASPI became a specialist in hyping a China “threat”
narrative.
The AUKUS agreement was announced later in 2021 following an intense period of
relentless anti-China commentary from ASPI.
The quality of ASPI’s analysis varies, from sometimes competent analysis, such as
its assessments of China’s technological capabilities, to ridiculous, baseless
fearmongering.
For example, this year is the 10th anniversary of a particularly embarrassing
instance of ASPI inciting baseless hysteria. In 2016, when Australia conducted its
first online census, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) census website portal
failed, overwhelmed by the public trying to access it on census night. ASPI
Executive Director Peter Jennings immediately jumped to shape the media
narrative by claiming China hacked the census. “I think we’ve had quite a
sophisticated attempt to take down the ABS and maybe also to steal information,”
he told the ABC. “They [China] have the capacity to do this and the interest to do
it.” The ABS later concluded that there was no hack—the IBM hardware hosting the
website was inadequate for the job.
The census claim was a harbinger of things to come, as 2016 coincided with a shift
in US policy towards confronting the rise of China, which ASPI faithfully
represented in Australia.
For a decade, ASPI has pumped out allegations of Chinese cyberattacks on
Australian institutions, foreign interference in Australian politics and the Australian
Chinese community, Chinese infiltration of Australian universities through
academic research collaboration, Chinese bots manipulating Australian social
media, and more.
Because the Citizens Party regularly fact-checked ASPI’s claims, and debunked
most of them, it also became ASPI’s target: an ASPI report in 2023 claimed that
Chinese bot accounts on Twitter were boosting two things: statements by former
prime minister Paul Keating, and the Citizens Party’s campaign to stop banks from
closing branches in regional Australia! (The bot accounts ASPI identified had no
followers and no engagement, and ASPI didn’t prove they were Chinese.)
In this period the Australian media has amplified ASPI’s claims, and ASPI personnel
became permanent, ubiquitous fixtures on media interviews and current affairs
shows when anything to do with China was in the news—without ever declaring
the conflict of interest from their funding.
The Citizens Party urges the AUKUS Public Inquiry to examine the way the foreign
interests which are profiting from AUKUS used ASPI to shape public opinion in
Australia to accept the bill for AUKUS.
In this period the Australian media has amplified ASPI’s claims, and ASPI personnel
became permanent, ubiquitous fixtures on media interviews and current affairs
shows when anything to do with China was in the news—without ever declaring
the conflict of interest from their funding.
The Citizens Party urges the AUKUS Public Inquiry to examine the way the foreign
interests which are profiting from AUKUS used ASPI to shape public opinion in
Australia to accept the bill for AUKUS.
Why Britain cannot deliver SSN-AUKUS on schedule
Australia is pinning its strategic future to an overburdened, fiscally constrained UK industrial baseline.
Peter Briggs, October 1, 2026, https://pearlsandirritations.com/post/2026/10/why-britain-cannot-deliver-ssn-aukus-on-schedule/
Britain says SSN-AUKUS remains on track. But its shipyards are already stretched while new reactor and workforce capacity is still being built. Australia is betting heavily on that gap being closed in time.
The public relations narrative of AUKUS Pillar 1 rests on a singular, untested premise: that the United Kingdom can seamlessly transition from its current Astute and Dreadnought submarine programs to deliver a brand-new, complex, 10,000-tonne nuclear-powered attack submarine, SSN-AUKUS, on schedule.
Recent developments in the UK demonstrate that this political optimism is fundamentally disconnected from the physical, contractual, financial and industrial realities on the ground at BAE Systems’ shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness.
In September 2025, King Charles formally commissioned HMS Agamemnon, the sixth Astute-class submarine, into the Royal Navy. Press releases heralded a major defence milestone. Yet, far from entering active service, Agamemnon remained tied up inside the Devonshire Dock Basin at Barrow for another full year, only departing for initial contractor sea trials on 24 September 2026.
The early commissioning reverses standard Royal Navy procurement. Laid down in July 2013, Agamemnon took 13 years and two months simply to leave the dock. Her actual entry into service will not occur until mid-to-late 2027 – a 14-year construction timeline.
This ceremonial exercise illustrates a broader pattern of political messaging substituting for industrial output. Claims that steel will be cut for the first SSN-AUKUS hull at Barrow in 2027 follow the same pattern. Embarking on physical hull fabrication before completing a preliminary design review (PDR) and freezing the 3D spatial design model risks severe engineering setbacks. For SSN-AUKUS, detailed design funded under a £3.95 billion development contract running through 2028 remains under way. Without a stable PDR baseline, internal layouts, reactor integration and pipework remain in flux. ‘Cutting steel’ in 2027 will merely involve cutting test rings or material qualification modules rather than assembling an operational warship.
Yard saturation and uncontracted infrastructure
The physical state of Barrow shipyard exposes the impossibility of fast-tracking SSN-AUKUS.
The heart of Barrow’s manufacturing capability is the Devonshire Dock Hall (DDH). Currently, the DDH is full. It houses the first three Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines (Dreadnought, Valiant and Warspite) alongside the final Astute hull, HMS Achilles (Boat 7), while initial fabrication for the fourth SSBN (HMS King George VI) proceeds off-site. There is no physical bay space inside the primary hall to establish an SSN-AUKUS production line.
The severity of this spatial bottleneck was underlined in a recent planning application submitted by BAE Systems Marine Ltd for its North Quay site, immediately adjacent to the DDH. BAE sought municipal approval to erect a 125-metre-long temporary enclosed scaffold structure on the open quay to house overflowing component manufacturing and outfitting. In its official filing, BAE acknowledged the improvised structure was explicitly required “as a result of capacity constraints within the Devonshire Dock Hall (DDH)”.
When a major nuclear shipyard must resort to 125-metre fabric sheds on quayside aprons to handle current workloads, absorbing a new 10,000-tonne attack submarine line strains credibility.
To bypass this bottleneck, BAE Systems purchased an 18-acre former gas site at Ramsden Dock. The plan is to manufacture hull cylinders on this port land and barge them via a roll-on/roll-off (Ro-Ro) quay to the main dock basin. However, the site requires extensive clearing, re-grading and deep piling before shed construction can begin.
Crucially, while the initial £3.95 billion contract covers preliminary 3D design and basic enabling works, primary contract packages required to build these sheds and construct the Ro-Ro wharf remain unexecuted or fragmented across future budget cycles. Furthermore, in July 2026, the UK MoD awarded a £5.9 billion delivery contract strictly prioritised for the Dreadnought-class SSBN. Because Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent takes total strategic precedence, primary nuclear engineers, dry docks and yard resources at Barrow are contractually locked into Dreadnought through to the delivery of the fourth boat in the late 2030s.
Reactor supply and logistics bottlenecks
The industrial choke point extends beyond Barrow to the nuclear supply chain at Raynesway in Derby, where Rolls-Royce Submarines manufactures all Royal Navy reactor cores.
To support both Dreadnought and SSN-AUKUS, Rolls-Royce began work to double the footprint of its Raynesway site in July 2026. Once assembled, complete PWR3 reactor modules must be transported over 150 miles by road in heavy-duty, radiation-shielded containers under armed police escort along the M6 and A590 corridors directly into the Barrow yard.
While the PWR3 reactor has been lowered into lead boat HMS Dreadnought inside DDH, manufacturing and delivering reactors for follow-on SSBN hulls alongside initial SSN-AUKUS units creates a severe industrial queue. Raynesway remains constrained by strict nuclear licensing oversight and an acute shortage of specialised nuclear-certified welding technicians.
The human and civil bottleneck
The physical sheds at Barrow may eventually be erected; however, the civil infrastructure required to support the workforce does not exist in the numbers required.
BAE Systems has expanded its Barrow workforce from 11,000 to approximately 16,000, aiming for over 18,000. In 2026, the UK House of Commons Defence Committee warned that infrastructure investment at Barrow “has already faltered”. BAE Systems formally advised local government that the shipyard requires 900 new homes to be built annually in Barrow to house incoming technicians. Current local construction struggles to deliver 200 units per year. Thousands of contractors commute daily along the single-carriageway A590, creating severe transport gridlock.
In response, the UK Government established ‘Team Barrow’ with a £200 million regeneration fund. However, Team Barrow leadership has publicly acknowledged that this seed allocation falls far short, stating that £400 million to £800 million in combined investment will be required to tackle the town’s infrastructure deficit. Furthermore, this funding is designated for general municipal upgrades – schools, healthcare and roads – rather than industrial shipyard tooling.
Britain lacks the localised housing, transport capacity and specialised nuclear-certified trade workforce to operate two concurrent submarine construction lines.
Strategic imperatives: NATO vs Indo-Pacific overreach
This industrial overstretch must be viewed through the unforgiving lens of Britain’s fiscal deficit and shifting strategic priorities.
Under mounting financial pressure, the UK Ministry of Defence faces a multibillion-pound structural budget shortfall. The UK Strategic Defence Review has formalised a mandatory ‘NATO-first’ posture, directing military resources, capital investment and force readiness primarily toward European defence and deterrence against Russian aggression. Facing a security crisis on its continental doorstep, Whitehall cannot afford to bankroll massive, long-horizon industrial expansions designed to project power into the Indo-Pacific.
Sustaining Britain’s continuous at-sea deterrent via Dreadnought consumes the lion’s share of UK capital expenditure. Coupled with urgent demands to re-arm land and air forces in Europe, attempting to design and build a bespoke 10,000-tonne attack submarine for Australia would appear to be a lower priority.
Industry is striving to recover from decades of systemic neglect that has left operational SSN capability immobilised and the continuous at-sea deterrent under strain. Political ambition cannot overrule the laws of industrial capacity, national economics and engineering physics.
Australia is pinning its strategic future to an overburdened, fiscally constrained UK industrial baseline. The physical and financial evidence at Barrow – an unbuilt off-site facility, a saturated main assembly hall requiring temporary outdoor work space, unfinalised contracts for primary manufacturing sheds, acute housing deficits, severe reactor supply chain queues, and a UK defence budget deficit whilst pivoting back to Europe – demonstrates that Britain cannot deliver SSN-AUKUS on the promised timeline.
Relying on ‘schedule-free’ assurances while ignoring these constraints guarantees a severe capability gap for Australia. It is time for Washington, London and Canberra to acknowledge these ground realities and undertake a fundamental reappraisal before industrial overreach turns into operational and political catastrophe.
Peter Briggs
Peter Briggs retired from the RAN in 2001 after a 40-year career, specialising in submarines. This included two submarine commands, command of the RAN Submarine Squadron, director of Submarine Policy and Warfare and Head of Submarine Capability Team, established to rectify Collins introduction into service issues. He was the president of the Submarine Institute of Australia from 2006-09 and is a frequent contributor to public debate on Australian submarine matters.
Radiation-related cancer deaths more common in aircrew than other occupations, study finds
By science reporter Jacinta Bowler, https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2026-09-30/pilots-flight-attendants-radiation-cancer-death/107175724
In short:
Almost 7 per cent of all deaths among US flight attendants and pilots from 2020 to 2024 were due to radiation-related cancer, the highest rate among the 500 occupations studied.
The researchers suggested increased mortality could be caused by cosmic radiation, which aircrews are exposed to at higher levels.
What’s next?
The Transport Workers’ Union and experts have called for better protections for workers but the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency says the results are not clear-cut.
A large US study has found that of 500 occupations, flight attendants and pilots have the highest proportion of radiation-related cancer deaths.
The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, looked at almost 13 million US death records from 2020–2024.
The researchers found that radiation-related cancers (such as leukaemia, breast, thyroid and skin cancers) were listed on 6.9 per cent of deaths among flight attendants and 6.7 per cent of deaths among pilots.
This was the highest and second-highest proportions of radiation-related cancer deaths across all occupation groups in the US.
In comparison, ground crews, who work in a similar environment to aircrew but without the air travel, do not have the same elevated proportion of radiation-related cancer deaths as the pilots and flight attendants.
“These findings support consideration of occupational radiation protections for aircrew members commensurate with their exposure level,” the researchers concluded.
While the research was based on US data, it might be applicable to air crews around the world, said Catherine Olsen, an epidemiologist and melanoma researcher at QIMR Berghofer who was not involved with the study.
Exposure to cosmic rays
Flight crews spend much longer in the air than the average frequent flyer and are more exposed to cosmic radiation — high-energy particles from the Sun and other cosmic sources.
Exposure to too much cosmic radiation can damage our DNA, cause radiation sickness and increase the risk of some cancers.
On the ground, we are well protected from cosmic radiation.
Australians on average receive 3.4 millisieverts a year from all types of ionising radiation.
But the thinner atmosphere at higher elevations where airplanes fly lets more radiation sneak through.
Aircrews are among the most exposed groups of workers to ionising radiation, according to the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA).
It limits aircrew exposure to 20 millisieverts (mSv) per year averaged over five years — about the same as three chest CT scans.
The organisation also has a lower “reference level” of 6 mSv per year, that they recommend aircrew and airlines try to maintain.
While it is well known that aircrews are exposed to increased cosmic radiation, linking that to increased cancer mortality is complicated.
Dr Olsen said that comparing air crews with other occupations like ground crews and nuclear workers provided more evidence that the cosmic radiation could be causing the increase in radiation-related cancer deaths.
“I’m confident that it’s a very-well-conducted study,” she said
“A limitation is that there’s a possibility that there might be misclassification on death certificates if that occupation is not recorded properly.”
But an ARPANSA spokesperson said the study did not account for lifestyle factors like alcohol consumption, circadian rhythm disruption and lack of sun protection, which can also increase the risk of radiation-related cancers.
Dr Olsen said if there was an increased risk of death in these occupations, airlines and healthcare professionals needed to be more aware.
“When those flight crew and pilots are having their medical checks, there should be a heightened kind of degree of concern of any symptoms that might be related to cancer.”
Cancer risk ‘not discussed’
Ebanie Fletcher, who has worked as an Australian flight attendant for more than 20 years, said radiation risk was not something that was discussed by the airlines.
“None of it is really talked about, especially not by our safety regulators or the industry as a whole,” she said.
Dr Olsen said there were various approaches to managing exposure for flight crews around the world.
“In the US, even though they classify pilots and flight crew as being occupationally exposed to this ionising radiation, there’s no monitoring of the dose that people are exposed to,” she said.
“In Europe, it’s a little bit more regulated.”
In Europe, airlines are required to assess crew exposure, plan schedules to factor in cumulative risk, and provide protection for pregnant workers.
ARPANSA maintains the Australian National Radiation Dose Register (ANRDR), which records occupational exposure to radiation in industries from uranium mining and some medical facilities.
Airline companies can sign up to this registry, but it is voluntary.
“Airlines monitor and manage rostering arrangements to ensure aircrew do not exceed the reference level,” a spokesperson said.
“Our advice is that there is no evidence of an increased health risk from naturally occurring cosmic radiation during flying when exposure is maintained below the 6 mSv per year reference level.”
Ms Fletcher said she did not believe that individual doses were monitored in the Australian industry, although she noted that airlines did limit flight hours when someone was pregnant.
“Apparently it’s important to them when we’re pregnant not to be exposed to radiation but not for any other purpose,” she said.
Virgin, one of the Australian airlines the ABC contacted, said that it monitored radiation to the standards in line with ARPANSA guidelines.
Transport Workers’ Union national secretary Michael Kaine said more needed to be done.
If we’re learning that the job of keeping Australians safe in the skies may come with serious health risks, we can’t leave workers to deal with those risks as a scatter-gun approach, airline by airline,” he said in a statement.
“We need an approach that puts workers and passengers at the centre.”
1 This month
17 October, Free Public Talk on Nuclear Issues in South Australia
David Noonan will speak on public interest concerns over the new Roxby Downs Indenture Act 2026 on BHP copper-uranium mining and ore processing in SA, and on how AUKUS may face SA with a High-Level nuclear waste agenda.
Dr Jim Green will discuss international developments in the field of nuclear power including ‘small modular reactors’ and Generation 4 ‘advanced’ nuclear reactor concepts.
Help Aunty Sue Protect Her Land and Sacred Sites From Destructive Rocket Testing.
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AUKUS – https://aukuspublicinquiry.com/
PETITION – To: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Government
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
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