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Australian news, and some related international items

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 Realising that our Collins-class submarines would become outdated by 2024, the Labor Government initiated the Future Submarine Project in 2012 to purchase replacement submarines that would begin arriving by 2024.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.

October 7, 2026 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

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.”

October 7, 2026 Posted by | Uncategorized | Leave a comment