The controversial Aukus deal, which involved the manufacture and supply of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia, has long raised eyebrows since its surprise announcement in 2021 due to the proposed use of nuclear power in the region, the steep A$368 billion (US$242 billion) cost to Australian taxpayers and perceptions as a platform to counter China.
Last Friday, former Australian prime minister Paul Keating, said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that Aukus could sell Australia out as “the 51st state of the United States” after information about the new agreement started trickling in following the announcement from Washington.
“What Aukus is about in the American mind is locking us up for 40 years, with American bases all around Australia, not Australian bases. Aukus is really about – in American terms – the military control of Australia,” he said.
Unlike other nations which have American bases, Australia did not need to host them as it was a continent with borders with no other countries, Keating said.
“The only threat [to us] is because we have an aggressive ally because of Aukus,” he said, referring to the US.
In a radio interview on Friday, Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles refuted Keating’s claims that increased US military build-up in Australia was turning Australia into an American base. Instead, it was a reflection of “growing cooperation between Australia and America”.
“We are talking about a greater defence industrial capability of Australia so that we can meet our own national interests and our own needs,” he said.
“This is a partnership that we’ve been involved in, including during the period of Mr Keating’s prime ministership, it is a partnership that we’ve been involved in for the better part of a century. And so none of that is new.
“But we do face a world which is very complex, where the rules-based order is under threat.”
He added there was no prospect of any nuclear waste coming to Australia from the US or the UK as a result of the agreement, which was a legal step to permit the transfer of equipment from the US or the UK such as nuclear reactors for the production of the Aukus submarines. The agreement gets around domestic laws such as those in the US that prohibit exports of these materials to foreign countries.
Under the agreement, Australia will receive some submarines from the US and build submarines with shared technology.
Keating, who famously called for Australia to boost security ties with Asia rather than with the US in the 1990s, said in a statement over the weekend that while international conditions had changed, the geography of Asia and Australia had not.
The Albanese government has instead turned to the “Anglosphere to garner Australia’s security”, Keating added.
Call for more transparency
The Australians for War Powers Reform has also called on Canberra to divulge to Australians the “additional commitments” made to the US.
“If the commitments made by the Australian government are ‘political’ and not based on national security, surely these should be made public,” said Alison Broinowski, the organisation’s spokeswoman and former diplomat.
“Is it possible that these secret ‘undisclosed political commitments’ relate to Australia’s involvement in a future overseas war?”
Leading activist group GetUp! has started a petition to stop “opening the floodgates for Australia going full-scale nuclear” and called for an explanation on how Australia would be storing radioactive waste from the Aukus submarines.
A parliamentary inquiry earlier this year sounded the alarm that Australia could be a nuclear waste dump under the current Aukus arrangement and called for a rewriting of laws to specifically rule out accepting nuclear waste from the US or the UK.
Separately, on Friday, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the Nobel Peace Prize-winning civil society coalition, pushed Canberra to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) “without further delay”.
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Aukus will ‘get done’, Biden tells Australia’s Albanese during visit to Washington
Aukus will ‘get done’, Biden tells Australia’s Albanese during visit to Washington
Australia, like the US, has not signed or ratified the treaty, which was adopted in 2017 and has attracted 93 signatories.
The new Aukus agreement put Australia in danger of wasting taxpayer funds if the US or the UK were to walk away from the deal, the Australian Greens said.
It also indemnified the US and UK for any “liability, loss, costs, damage, or injury” associated with the use of nuclear submarines and allowed these two countries to determine the price of uranium it was selling to Australia, Greens senator David Shoebridge said.
“I have never seen such an irresponsible one-sided international agreement signed by an Australian government. Every aspect of this agreement is a blow to Australian sovereignty,” he said.