Cameron Milner: Why Australia should scrap AUKUS and spend $360b on defensive capabilities and fuel supply

The AUKUS deal, under which Australia is to receive its first submarine in seven years, is no longer fit for purpose. It’s a military deal that has already passed its use-by date. None of the trio of Donald Trump, Anthony Albanese or Keir Starmer will be around when the first Virginia class sub is delivered and all three are doing their level best to undermine the agreement’s relevance. UK Prime Minister Starmer has gone missing in action as he channels his inner Neville Chamberlain. Albanese keeps hiding behind a word salad of “no US request has been made” rather than just showing some courage by voluntarily sending the US our naval and air support to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. A deal like AUKUS should be above the leaders who currently occupy office, but its reason for being has been superseded, firstly by the Ukraine war and now the Iranian war. The Ukrainian war has shown how superior drone and automated defence technologies can defeat a traditional army of tanks, artillery and soldiers. The Iranian war shows how without a navy or an air force a nation can fight an asymmetric war against the globe’s largest military with the use of drones, missiles and fast boats — alongside economic weapons. Australia has started to recognise this. Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles last week announced a further $5 billion investment in drone capabilities, as well as the purchase of three Japanese-made frigates for $10b. Last year, Australia launched its new Ghost Shark drone submarine technology, another relatively modest program at a price tag of $2b. Compare this to the estimated $370b AUKUS will cost to deliver between three and up to five submarines between 2032 and 2050. China has already said it wants to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027, so the notion our subs are in any way a deterrent is fanciful at best. The first three are simply reprioritising subs the US was going to build anyway. They represent no new net gains for the overall alliance. AUKUS has blinded the political class into making a false promise of security for Australia at mind boggling cost, while the world is changing rapidly right before our eyes. As a nation, we don’t even have the 90 days of in-country fuel capacity demanded as a minimum for national fuel security. Japan stores 240 days and we started this conflict with well less than 40 days supply. We are vulnerable now as a nation. We lack the ability to even send one decent naval vessel to the Strait of Hormuz, despite our nation’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil Australia used to be a reliable partner of the US — and before that the UK — in times of global conflict. Two world wars and more recent Gulf wars, alongside Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, as well as our combined special forces operations across other conflict zones. We share similar values, even though they are being tested, thanks to weak leadership on both sides. Our adherence to the AUKUS deal is for Albanese an exercise in political convenience. While it stays in place, he can hide his hard Left views and keep playing footsies with China while hailing his support for AUKUS. But the reality is the Chinese empire will have either expanded by 2032 or it won’t have — regardless of Australia’s position. They are a clear and present danger already to our interests. What the last few weeks have shown is that the vulnerability of Australian life during a war even half a world away is already here. We don’t have enough sovereign fossil fuel capacity as a nation. A refinery fire at one of our last two shows us just how vulnerable we are. All this as the PM managed to hail a deal for 100 million litres of diesel as a huge win. Sounds great until you realise that’s one day’s supply. The AUKUS deal is a chimera, a shifting mirage and a total distraction from immediate threats and needs as a nation. Australia can support the US alliance and be a reliable security partner to the UK without the subs deal, simply by being more self-reliant and less vulnerable to our enemies. We can learn that wars have changed and that domestic energy security is as important as being part of a force projection in the South China Sea. The reality is our three subs will be under US command in any fight with China and they’ll only be used if the US hasn’t already cut a deal with China at the top table. While Australians are fed the false narrative that AUKUS is our security panacea, we are completely missing the opportunity to be part of a whole new wave of defence industry. We need to spend more on our national defence, but we are so over-invested in the subs solution at the expense our much more nimble and agile military defence technologies. Cancelling AUKUS isn’t about spending less, it is about spending as much more smartly. Ukraine doesn’t have a single submarine but has innovated and is exporting drone technology to the Saudis. The US and Israel aren’t using Virginia class subs in the Iran War. The world has changed. Our vulnerability as a nation is on daily display as we run out of fuel. Holding onto an obsolete deal like AUKUS so Albanese can claim not to be a closet peacenik is an exercise in political deceit. The world has changed and Australia should look to its own national security capabilities. The remaining $360b to still be spent on AUKUS should instead be spent on our own defensive capabilities, including our domestic and economic fuel supply capacity. Cameron Milner is a former Labor State secretary for Queensland