Investigating the Foolish: The AUKUS Public Inquiry is Announced

Of the three countries involved in AUKUS, that most draining, useless and even pernicious of security pacts, Australia has been the only country indifferent, even scoffing, about the need for an inquiry into its merits. Unsurprisingly, both the US and UK inquiries have found much to merit the project – Australian taxpayer money has sluiced and soothed the submarine industrial base of both countries – but have also expressed concern about their respective production rates of nuclear-powered submarines.

While the first pillar of the agreement promises, with mighty emptiness, that the Royal Australia Navy will receive three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs), with the possible opportunity to acquire a further two, the prospect of their timely arrival looks increasingly doubtful. The recent developments at the Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore that these will be hand-me-downs from the US Navy already suggests the lack of regard Australian personnel and their slavish representatives are held in. Add to this a joint as yet undesigned UK-Australian SSN design that will use US technology, the chances that a fleet of these expensive hulks finding their way into the hands of Australian sailors looks damnably remote.

With the Canberra mandarins and political governors insisting that no official inquiry be conducted into AUKUS, it has fallen to those keen on a public inquiry to take up the mantle. The crowd-founded AUKUS Public Inquiry, coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF), will be led by a number of commissioners, spearheaded by former federal environment minister and frontman for Midnight Oil Peter Garrett. Former MPs, retired military and naval officers (these include former chief of the Australian Defence Force Chris Barrie), strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders promise to feature in this inquiry into the unpardonably foolish.

In remarks made on launching the inquiry, Garret declared that AUKUS “was the most significant, and by far the most costly decision made in secret by an Australian government, tying us to two other sovereign governments, and taking out an extraordinary amount of taxpayers’ money on a proposition which has got a lot of distinct and very difficult complexities and potential problems lying up ahead.”

The inquiry proposes to answer a number of salient if self-evident questions. Will Australia, for instance, ever receive the sought and undeservedly celebrated submarines? Where and how will the toxic medium to high-level nuclear waste be stored? (Australia lacks a single facility suitable for that task.) How many actual jobs will be created in Australia, and at what opportunity cost? (The conservative estimate of AU$368 billion is a ruinous one when considering what other parts of the federal budget will suffer as a result.) Why does Australia find itself in a situation where it will potentially join a war with the United States against China, its largest trading partner? The two last questions go to the central soundness (or lack of it) regarding AUKUS: whether sovereignty will be jeopardised (a moot point: it already has been), and whether the pact will turn the country into a nuclear target.

Other subsidiary matters will also fall within the purview of the inquiry.  Transferring nuclear technology in this manner not only sets a precedent of destabilising value but raises concerns about nuclear non-proliferation treaty commitments and the environmental costs arising from developing nuclear storage facilities. Governments in Australia have repeatedly failed to consult and engage local communities about such projects, which have usually stymied in failed negotiations and costly litigation. How the martial dictates of AUKUS risks corrupting the tertiary sector in terms of research and university institutions is also a worry, given the tentacular nature of the military-industrial-university complex seen in such countries as the United States. Money hungry university vice chancellors and their morally flabby inner circles can always be trusted to make their institutions and countries less secure if the price is right. Then comes that most relevant of considerations: “Were credible and less costly alternatives to AUKUS properly assessed before the decision was made in secret?”

Civil society groups have welcomed this long-awaited effort. “The AUKUS agreement was conceived in secret and continues to be shrouded in secrecy,” observed Rtd Army Major Cameron Leckie, spokesperson for the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN). “Australians deserve the truth about what they are paying for, what they are getting, and what risks this agreement carries for our sovereignty and security.”

In parliament, independent MP Allegra Spender raised a “Matter of Public Importance” demanding that the government “be transparent about the risks to the delivery of AUKUS and how Australia’s national and security interests will be protected especially in light of recent changes to contract terms.” There were also “emerging gaps in capability” arising from the Collins-class Life-of-Type Extension program, intended to supposedly drag out the deployment of boats beyond their retirement. Other parliamentarians, all independents, including Sophie Scamps, Dai Le, Zali Steggall, Nicolette Boele, Kate Chaney and Monique Ryan, also expressed similar reservations about AUKUS. Pithily, Ryan, who represents the Melbourne federal seat of Kooyong, called the crowdfunded independent inquiry into AUKUS “a national embarrassment” for the government: “it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves crowdfunding for the submarines themselves.”

Even more heartily, there are rumblings of disquiet within the Australian Labor government about the pact. Former cabinet minister Ed Husic, whose career as a frontbencher was scrapped, if only temporarily, by the factional fanaticism of his own party, is demanding a fresh caucus vote on the agreement. “We are not going to get the deal that was promised,” Husic told Sky News. He suspected a straitjacketed deal were the submarines ever to arrive. “You know, you can almost imagine [the Americans] saying, ‘We give you these, you will do this with them’. And so there’s an active sovereignty question there.”

While his efforts to raise the issue on June 2 were dismissed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy with the usual nonsense that AUKUS was more than just a submarine agreement, the number of dissenters are growing. May their numbers burgeon sooner rather than later.