AUKUS: "Dead Seahorse"
Can Washington go ahead with the sale of Virginias to Australia in the absence of an understanding that it will join the US in any regional fight, particularly over Taiwan.
Marles, with all pretension, flogging a dead seahorse
By Paul Keating
Sep 28, 2024
Richard Marles and his mate, the US defence secretary, are beginning to wilt under the weight of sustained comment in Australia critical of the AUKUS arrangement.
Marles, unable to sustain a cogent argument himself, has his US friend propping him up in London to throw a 10,000-mile punch at me – and as usual, failing to materially respond to legitimate and particular criticisms made of the AUKUS arrangement.
The US Defence Secretary, Lloyd Austin, claims AUKUS would not compromise Australia’s ability to decide its own sovereign defence issues, a claim made earlier by Richard Marles and the prime minister.
But this would only be true until the prime minister and Marles got their phone call from the president, seeking to mobilise Australian military assets – wherein, both would click their heels in alacrity and agreement. The rest of us would read about it in some self-serving media statement afterwards. As my colleague, Gareth Evans, recently put it, “it defies credibility that Washington will ever go ahead with the sale of Virginias to us in the absence of an understanding that they will join the US in any fight in which it chooses to engage anywhere in our region, particularly over Taiwan”.
In London, Marles claimed that the logic behind AUKUS matched my policy as prime minister, in committing to the Collins class submarine program. This is completely untrue.
The Collins class submarine, at 3,400 tonnes, was designed specifically for the defence of Australia – in the shallow waters off the Australian continental shelf.
The US Virginia class boats at 10,000 tonnes, are attack submarines designed to stay and stand on far away station, in this case, principally to wait and sink Chinese nuclear weapon submarines as they exit the Chinese coast.
At 10,000 tonnes, the Virginias are too large for the shallow waters of the Australian coast – their facility is not in the defence of Australia, rather, it is to use their distance and stand-off capability to sink Chinese submarines. They are attack-class boats.
When Marles wilfully says “AUKUS matches the Collins class logic” during the Keating government years, he knows that statement to be utterly untrue. Factually untrue. The Collins is and was a “defensive” submarine – designed to keep an enemy off the Australian coast. It was never designed to operate as far away as China or to sit and lie in wait for submarine conquests.
And as Evans also recently made clear, eight Virginia class boats delivered in the 2040s-50s would only ever see two submarines at sea at any one time. Yet Marles argues that just two boats of this kind in the vast oceans surrounding us, materially alters our defensive capability and the military judgment of an enemy. This is argument unbecoming of any defence minister.
As I said at the National Press Club two years ago, two submarines aimed at China would be akin to throwing toothpicks at a mountain. That remains the position.
The fact is, the Albanese Government, through this program and the ambitious basing of American military forces on Australian soil, is doing nothing other than abrogating Australia’s sovereign right to command its own continent and its military forces.
Marles says “there has been demonstrable support for AUKUS within the Labor Party”. This may be true at some factionally, highly-managed national conference — like the last one — but it is utterly untrue of the Labor Party’s membership at large – which he knows.
The membership abhors AUKUS and everything that smacks of national sublimation. It does not expect these policies from a Labor Government.
