THE SUB TO NOWHERE
Canberra — building the sub to nowhere.
AUKUS is wrong on several levels. Here is another one.
Two fleets in one plan. Three second-hand submarines bought from the United States, and five built at home to a new, unproven, three-nation design — enlarged beyond its parents, in a yard that does not yet exist, by a nation that has never built a nuclear submarine. Meanwhile one partner cannot build the boats it already owes, and the other cannot keep its own fleet at sea.
That is the engineering and build plan. The memo sets out everything it asks to go right — and how many of those things have to go right at once.
Now ask the next question
Here is an advocate of the deal setting out the issues himself. Watch it, then ask yourself the question the plan never answers.
Can eight submarines and a dozen or so surface ships escort the tanker traffic this country needs every month simply to keep running? Was the United States Navy able to keep Hormuz open? What made those ships pull back — and that was against Iran. How do we expect tanker protection to go against China’s military?
We would starve. That is the plain end of it.
AUKUS is wrong on several levels at once. Strategically, it buys a capability that does not answer the war we would actually face. Sovereignty, because of what we have signed away to get it. Trade, in how it positions us towards our largest partner. And diplomatically — it signals to the region that we are not interested in a mutual relationship or a united Asia, and have chosen a side instead.
It ends badly for this country either way. Which is why I am calling for a Royal Commission into AUKUS and the defence plan — not to cancel it by slogan, but to put the whole thing in front of people with the power to compel documents and witnesses, and let the case be tested in the open.