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NATIONAL HERALD | OPINION
Australia Is Being Taken for a Ride on AUKUS — and Labor Must Pull the Plug
The alarm bells around AUKUS are no longer coming solely from critics outside government. They are now echoing from within the ranks of Australian Labor Party itself.
What began as a rushed and politically convenient defence announcement under former prime minister Scott Morrison has steadily evolved into one of the most reckless and financially dangerous strategic commitments in modern Australian history. And now the cracks are widening.
This week, Labor MP Ed Husic publicly warned that Australia may never receive the submarine deal it was promised. His comments cut through the carefully managed talking points that have surrounded AUKUS for years.
“We need to be open as a nation that we are not going to get the deal that was promised to us,” Husic said.
He is correct.
The original promise sold to Australians has already changed dramatically. Instead of receiving a mix of new and second-hand Virginia-class submarines, Australia is now being lined up to accept three aging second-hand American nuclear submarines — vessels already well into their operational lifespan.
And Australians are expected to pay an eye-watering $368 billion for the privilege.
At what point does this stop being a defence agreement and start becoming an international clearance sale?
The reality is brutal. These submarines are not new strategic assets built for Australia’s future. They are aging American vessels approaching the back half of their service life, with reactor limitations, escalating maintenance burdens, and shrinking operational longevity.
A Virginia-class submarine has an approximate lifecycle of around 33 years. Some of the submarines reportedly earmarked for transfer could already be 15 to 20 years old by the time Australia receives them. That means Australian taxpayers may spend hundreds of billions of dollars acquiring submarines that deliver barely a decade of useful operational life before massive refit or retirement costs emerge.
This is not nation-building.
It is strategic absurdity.
Worse still is the looming “orphan fleet” disaster that Canberra refuses to honestly discuss.
Australia does not possess a domestic nuclear submarine industry. It does not have sovereign reactor infrastructure. It does not have the shipyard ecosystem, nuclear engineering workforce, or long-term sustainment capability needed to independently maintain these vessels.
That means Australia will remain permanently dependent on the United States for spare parts, reactor servicing, dry-dock access, upgrades, technical expertise, and disposal.
In other words: total dependency.
If Washington changes priorities, slows production, or simply decides Australia must align with future American strategic demands, Canberra will have little room to manoeuvre.
Even Husic openly raised concerns about sovereignty and the increasingly “transactional” nature of American politics under the possible return of Donald Trump.
Australians should be asking a very simple question:
Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars to become more strategically dependent on another country?
Even within Labor’s traditional base, concern is growing. Tim Kennedy from the United Workers Union has urged the government to revisit the agreement as the world changes rapidly. Former minister and musician Peter Garrett is heading an independent public review into the AUKUS defence pact, arguing that Australians were denied a genuine national debate.
They are right to question it.
Because the deeper Australians look into AUKUS, the worse the deal appears.
The United States is struggling to build enough submarines for its own navy. American production schedules are behind target. Shipyards are under pressure. Congress itself has raised doubts about transfer timelines.
Yet Canberra continues marching forward as though nothing has changed.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles continue insisting the deal remains the “right thing” for Australia.
But where is the evidence?
Australia is effectively being asked to bankroll America’s submarine industrial base while accepting second-hand assets with uncertain delivery dates, limited operational lifespan, and enormous sustainment liabilities.
If this were a commercial transaction, any competent boardroom in the country would reject it instantly.
And there is an alternative — one staring Australia directly in the face.
Instead of tying itself to expensive, aging nuclear submarines, Australia could acquire a fleet of advanced Air Independent Propulsion submarines from trusted industrial partners such as Germany, Japan or South Korea.
Modern AIP submarines are quieter, cheaper, faster to acquire, require smaller crews, and are ideally suited to Australia’s regional defence requirements. They offer long endurance, formidable strike capability, and crucially, can be sustained without turning Australia into a permanent nuclear maintenance outpost for the United States Navy.
Most importantly, they would provide Australia with a genuinely sovereign capability rather than a strategically dependent one.
At some point, Canberra must stop confusing prestige with practicality.
AUKUS has become a monument to political ego, strategic fear, and bureaucratic inertia.
Australians were promised a transformational defence capability. What they are increasingly being offered is an overpriced fleet of aging submarines, decades of dependency on the US, and an open-ended financial burden future generations will be forced to carry.
Enough is enough.
The Albanese government must immediately halt this disastrous trajectory, conduct a full independent review, and demand Australia’s money back before the nation sinks deeper into what is rapidly becoming one of the worst defence procurement mistakes in Australian history.
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