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SCOTT:

Filling in for Ruby Jones, I’m Scott Mitchell. This is 7am.

The single biggest defence spend in Australian history was announced this week – with the government committing up to $368 billion over the next 30 years to acquire new submarines.

Paul Keating has called it “the worst decision by a Labor government in a century.”

And big questions remain, about whether these subs will ever be delivered at all…

So what could a misstep in the rollout mean for our security, as tensions rise between China and the United States.

Today, Emeritus Professor of strategic studies at ANU, Hugh White, on why the AUKUS submarines might never be delivered.

It’s Thursday, March 16.

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SCOTT:

Hugh, this week Anthony Albanese appeared in San Diego with the US President, and the British Prime Minister, with a long awaited update to the AUKUS submarines deal. Can you tell me a bit about what was announced, and what exactly Australia has agreed to purchase?

HUGH:

When the initial AUKUS deal was announced back in September 2021, it was left completely unclear exactly how Australia was going to acquire these nuclear powered submarines. And so what the announcement we saw earlier this week was all about was putting the details around how that's meant to happen. And it turned out to be a lot more complicated than anyone expected.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Well, President Biden, Prime Minister Sunak, I am so honoured to stand alongside you both. Here overlooking the Pacific ocean…”

HUGH:

They had three elements, really. The first was they said it was all about, the sort of, shared values, and history, and culture, that those three nations have in common, and which has been so important in the way they've co-operated as strategic partners going back right into the 20th century. Right back to World War I, and so on.

Archival tape – Joe Biden:

“As we stand at the inflection point in history, where the hard work of enhancing deterrence and promoting stability is going to affect the prospects of peace for decades to come, the United States can ask for no better partners in the Indo-Pacific…”

HUGH:

The second point they made is that I see it as important for the development of each country's industrial and technological capabilities.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“We are also proud to partner with the United Kingdom to construct the next generation submarine, to be called SSN AUKUS: a new conventionally armed, nuclear powered submarine. Based on a British design, and incorporating cutting edge Australian, UK, and US technologies…”

HUGH:

But the real point, the point that was sort of floating along under the surface was, of course, it was all about muscling up to respond to China's challenge to the US led order in East Asia, which is so much the defining strategic event of our time. And I think, you know, that's what history will judge this is really all about.

SCOTT:

And so you mentioned before, that instead of buying one type of nuclear powered submarine, Australia is now buying two: first these Virginia class submarines, and then these next generation AUKUS subs. What's the thinking behind that, Hugh?

HUGH:

Look, it's a really important aspect of what was announced this week, and I think a really worrying aspect of what was announced this week. When AUKUS was originally announced, the suggestion was that we were going to buy a nuclear powered submarine. It now transpires we're going to buy two nuclear powered submarines. And the reason we're going to buy the Virginia class first, and then the AUKUS class second, is that the AUKUS class won't be ready, even on the most optimistic assumptions, it won't be ready until after our existing submarines, the Collins class conventionally powered submarines, have run out of service life. And so those Virginia class are really there to fill that capability gap, and to make sure that Australia still has some submarines to operate, and can make the transition from conventionally powered submarines to nuclear powered submarines in an orderly fashion. And when you put it like that, it sort of sounds sensible. But my own concern is that that adds so much to the complexity, and the risks to the whole process that that's going to end up, I think, being a real Achilles heel to the whole thing.

SCOTT:

And so I want to get to the cost here, Hugh. You know, the cost is projected at $368 billion through to 2055, and that would make this deal the biggest defence spend in Australian history. It's maybe up there with the most amount of money an Australian Government has spent on any purchase. So can you just help put that in perspective for me? Is this sum of money really as eye watering as it seems?

HUGH:

Look, by any standards, it's pretty eye watering. And it is worth bearing in mind that the government really has no idea how much this is going to cost. I mean, the numbers they actually put forward on Tuesday was a bracket from 268 billion to 368 billion. Well, if you're not sure about the outcome to the nearest $100 billion, you've really got no idea what you're talking about. The real question to me is not whether it's unreasonable for Australia to spend that sort of money on a military capability, because if we keep spending something like 2% of GDP on defence, the real question is whether that's the best way to spend that money. Whether we get the most capability, the most operational outcomes that we want from spending the money on these nuclear powered submarines, rather than spending the same money on something else. And about that, I'm extremely sceptical. And we have a big national conversation to have — which political leaders started having this week in Parliament — about how we're going to fund that, whether or not we're going to find ourselves cutting social programs like NDIS, as Peter Dutton appeared to be suggesting, in order to fund these high defence spending priorities. But we are as a country, as a community, going to have to ask ourselves, well, do we want to spend more on defence and fund that by spending less on other priorities like education, and health and NDIS, and so on? Or do we want to pay more taxes? It really is just about as simple as that. Or are we going to say, well, we're not going to spend that money on defence - we may be living in a more risky era, but we are still fairly secure down here in our part of the world.

Maybe we're just prepared to live with the risks, and that's a perfectly viable policy choice itself. And I guess the rush to AUKUS on the excitement about AUKUS, the kind of, you know, macho bravado that surrounded AUKUS, has short circuited that very important conversation.

SCOTT:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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SCOTT:

Hugh I want to go back a bit and talk about how we got here, because we've had several successive Australian governments now — both Labor and Liberal — looking to buy new submarines. When exactly did we first decide we needed some kind of next generation submarine, and why are defence planners so set that Australia needs some kind of new submarine at all?

HUGH:

Australian governments since right back in the 60s have seen submarines as a very important capability for Australia, and I think that's broadly right. I broadly support that. We put a lot of money and a lot of effort into building the Collins class submarines in the 1980s and through the 90s. They had some problems initially, but they've been a pretty good boat overall. But it was always clear, of course, that they were going to have a limited life.

And as early as around 2004, 2005, the Government's Defence Department started thinking about how we'd replace them.

Archival tape – Sabra Lane:

“The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is poised to release his government’s long-awaited Defence Whitepaper. The document sets out the biggest reorganisation of defence planning in a decade, with a multi-billion dollar investment in maritime defence at its core…”

HUGH:

Back then in the mid 2000s very grandiose plans were developed to build a submarine that was even more sophisticated than the Collins. It was going to be a very big and risky project. But then in the years after that, nothing was done to develop it. And what we had was really a decade of delay. And then when Tony Abbott became prime minister, he was seized with the idea that we should buy submarines from Japan.

Archival tape – Tony Abbott:

“The Coalition supports the case for new submarines to replace the current fleet-…”

Archival tape – News Presenter (ABC):

“The Abbott government wants to buy 10 state-of-the-art Japanese subs that will cost 20 billion dollars…”

HUGH:

We ended up deciding instead to buy a submarine from France…

Archival tape – Malcolm Turnbull:

“The recommendation of our competitive evaluation was unequivocal, that the French offer represented the capabilities best able to meet Australia's unique needs.”

HUGH:

And then the government under Morrison seized on the idea of switching to nuclear powered submarines…

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“As our first major initiative, it is as we’ve announced today, for Australia to achieve a nuclear-powered submarine fleet…”

HUGH:

And commenced the AUKUS process back in September 2021, which has produced the announcement that we saw this week. So it's been an incredibly long, protracted, confusing process in which there's been a lot of wrong turns and a lot of unnecessary delays. And I fear that what we're seeing today is just going to be one more example of that rather sad story.

SCOTT:

And we are now going ahead with that. And as you say, it is a large commitment both in terms of dollars, and it's a large political commitment, and what the commitment really is, is to a next generation of submarine that hasn't been developed yet. And I wonder, in your experience as someone who's seen so many plans over the years, can we be certain that at the end of this commitment, these submarines, they'll actually arrive, that we will see them?

HUGH:

Uh…no, I really don't think we can be certain about that at all. I think this is a very risky program and I think the chances of the submarines not being delivered at all, or being delivered very late and not doing what we want them to do, is very high. I mean, for example, the whole program depends on America being willing to sell us the Virginia class submarines and passing them over to us in around 2033. From then on, America will not be willing to pass on their Virginia class submarines if it means a significant diminution of their own capability. Second problem is, I think there's a real risk that even if they do, we won't know how to operate them.

The original concept of AUKUS was that we wouldn't get a nuclear powered submarine until into the 2040s, so that Australia would have something like 20 years to build up the incredibly complex and demanding skills required to operate nuclear powered submarines safely. And it's important to remind ourselves that a nuclear powered submarine has got a nuclear reactor right at the heart of it. These things are very difficult and very dangerous to operate, they've got to be operated with great care and expertise. And on the new plan, we've only got ten years to do that, not 20 years. And I think there's a real doubt that we're going to make that work.

The third big risk, the one you touched on in your question, is that the British are designing a brand new submarine. They've only just begun to design it. They're hoping to get their first boat in the water by the late thirties. They're hoping that Australia building in Adelaide with a brand new workforce, and a brand new yard, will get a new boat in the water by the early 40s. All one's experience of dealing with big defence projects, and particularly, I might say, with submarine projects, suggests that there's a really high chance that that schedule will slip, and will slip by a lot. If any one of these problems arises, if any one of these parts of the program fall over, we're going to find ourselves with a submarine capability which is very seriously depleted, or not really operating at all.

And so I think the better thing for Australia to do, instead of taking on all the costs and risks and complexities of operating, buying and operating nuclear powered submarines, would be to use the same money, or less money, to build a bigger fleet of conventionally powered boats that would actually be more operationally useful and have more operational impact.

SCOTT:

But is the real cost here, is the real price tag that we're paying, the costs that it takes to be part of the alliance with the US and the UK? Is that ultimately worth it, even if it is a much higher price tag?

HUGH:

That is exactly the key to this whole situation. Anthony Albanese keeps on saying that AUKUS is about a lot more than submarines, and he's right. I think if you really dig deep into this, what you see is that AUKUS is really about Australia seeking to reinforce, expand, deepen the alliance commitment between Australia and America. Now Britain's in there too, but I think, you know, Britain is very much the third wheel on this bicycle - it doesn't play a significant role in all of this; for Australia this is really all about the relationship with America.

SCOTT:

And when we talk about our strategic position and us being embedded in that alliance with the United States, this purchase embeds us in that out to the 2050s and beyond. And I know it's very hard to project what the world will look like in the 2050s, but what are the risks of us being locked into this partnership when you think about how very different the world could be in 30 years time?

HUGH:

As strategic circumstances in Asia have got tougher, as China has started to look more threatening, the instinct of Australian governments has been to cling harder and harder to the United States. Right at the heart of AUKUS — particularly the way the actual program was unfolded for us in San Diego earlier this week — is this idea that America will provide Australia with its Virginia class submarines, which come out of the American Navy's order of battle. Now, the United States would never do that unless they were absolutely sure that in the event of a war between America and China, those Australian submarines would be available to America to help them fight that war. In other words, what we've done by signing up to this AUKUS construct is to commit ourselves much more unconditionally than we ever have before, to supporting the United States in a war with China over an issue like Taiwan. And I think we really have to ask ourselves as a country whether that's a smart idea. Whether that's a war we want to fight. And, you know, right at the heart of my question about that is a very simple fact that I don't think that's a war that America's going to win.

The other aspect is that I do think the Chinese regard AUKUS as a good propaganda tool for them to criticise Australia, and America, as turning away from the region, as turning back to our old Anglo-Saxon mates, turning it back into, let's be blunt, a white man's club, and perpetuating the idea that Australia is separate from the region; looks to its security from Asia, not in Asia. That was the famous slogan that Keating and Hawke used, that Australia should look for security in Asia, not from Asia. AUKUS looks like a reversal of that.

SCOTT:

Hugh White, thank you so much for your time.

HUGH:

It's my pleasure.

SCOTT:

You can read Hugh White’s article ‘The AUKUS submarines will never happen’ published by both Australian Foreign Affairs and The Saturday Paper, this week.

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SCOTT:

Also in the news…

Electricity bills will continue to rise across the country, as energy regulators announce their draft price estimates for the coming year.

The Australian Energy Regulator predicts an increase of around 20% in New South Wales, South Australia and South-East Queensland. Meanwhile, Victorian prices could be around 30% higher.

Final prices are still to be decided, and will take effect in July.

AND

One of the strongest cyclones in recorded history has made landfall in Africa for a second time, killing more than two hundred people in Malawi and Mozambique.

Tropical cyclone Freddy initially formed on the tenth of February off the coast of Western Australia, before travelling 8000 kilometres across the South Indian Ocean, and hitting the African coast twice in a fortnight.

I’m Scott Mitchell, see you tomorrow.

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