What's in store for Australia if we persist with AUKUS?

Whatever it is, it's not good, so it's time to abandon it.

A new report from Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR) – called AUKUS and the surrender of Transparency, Accountability and Sovereignty – shows there is a multitude of unanswered questions about the AUKUS agreement.

For instance:

• What’s its purpose?

• Is there even any real need for it?

• How much is it really going to cost us?

• Will it cost us our entire future if it makes us a nuclear target?

• Are there better and cheaper ways to defend Australia?

• Will we actually get the nuclear submarines proposed in the agreement before we are obliged to be the disposal site for nuclear waste from the aged submarines of the other two parties?

• Will we get any submarines at all?

• And in the unlikely event that any submarines arrive here, will we be in control of them?

Secrecy surrounding AUKUS leaves all these and a multitude of other important questions without the official answers that Australians are surely entitled to.

AUKUS, announced and pursued as it was without any consultation with the Australian people or the parliament, is without doubt the most high-handed insult to Australians. Continued secrecy about it, including secrecy about as yet undisclosed “political commitments” made in 2024 by the three parties in a revised version of the agreement, confirms that the governments who locked us into it (that’s Labor and the Liberal/National Coalition) have no intention of being open with Australians, much less accountable to them. They would appear to consider that our future is theirs to do with as they like, regardless of the risks to our safety and sovereignty. They appear to regard our future as theirs to threaten by whatever form of executive overreach they consider necessary for their domestic political advantage.

Oddly enough, though, there is only so much a government can cover up about something like AUKUS. The few things that have been revealed about it make it very easy to see the extent of the threat it poses to our national security, personal safety and wellbeing. Australians don’t have to be insiders in the Canberra defence and security establishment to figure out the threat. They can spot it straight away, simply because certain things must be published about the agreement if those political parties that were so eager to sign onto it are to make any domestic political capital out of it at all. Some degree of disclosure is required for that purpose; and in this case, now that some disclosure has occurred, the risk posed to Australians by AUKUS is self-evidently far greater than any benefit the government might try to advertise.

Contrary to the popular view among politicians, when it comes to obvious threats to their future, Australians are not stupid. Nor do they have no access to information that will enable them to spot a serious threat to their security and spot who is threatening them. And in the case of AUKUS there is just too much information around that gives the lie to the wisdom of the agreement and the real source of the threat. Each published detail makes AUKUS smell a little more foul. At a starting price of $368 billion, the cost is gobsmackingly high, especially if the US can vacate the deal at any time (and they can). That alone would be enough to put millions of Australians off.

But a few more million would be put off when they consider what’s in store for Australia if we persist with the deal. That too is something the government can’t cover up. AWPR’s report makes it clear that AUKUS exposes Australia fully to existential disaster. There are any number of ways it can kill millions of Australians, including by exposing Australia’s lands and people to nuclear contamination and conventional military or nuclear attack.

And making matters worse, when AUKUS is combined with the Force Posture Agreement, it establishes Australia as a military base of the USA and therefore as the launching pad for any war that America may wish to start with any country, including nuclear powers like China – which obviously makes Australia a target. This builds a very clear picture for Australians that the probability of large scale attacks on Australia is high enough to suggest the deal should be vacated. It is just too risky and unnecessarily so.

And now that Trump has burst back into the scene with all his rule-breaking, unreliability, untrustworthiness, and contempt of allies, we can expect a few million more Australians to reject AUKUS. They only need to look to the experience of the Ukrainians for insight into what's in store for us if we do not abandon AUKUS and the Force Posture Agreement and seek instead to establish an independent defence capability built on peaceful economic cooperation and respect for international law (especially human rights law).

Trump’s treatment of Ukraine shows us the ultimate fate of countries that are situated in regions America may consider strategically essential to pursuit of its interests via military means. It suggests that any American administration that disregards the international rules based order (as Trump’s does) may well not stint at starting a proxy war from bases on our soil, watching millions of us be killed, leaving us to lose that war, and then working with the enemy to divide up the spoils of Australia. This is what has happened to Ukraine.

Fortunately, though, this grim prospect need never be made a reality. It is not ineluctable. If anything, the AWPR report makes it clear how easy it would be to come up with a better, cheaper and more reliable plan for defence of the nation and retention of our sovereignty over the continent and decisions about our future prosperity. Australia has the capacity to develop an alternative defence plan that does not expose us to the huge risks posed by AUKUS and there is room at this point for the government to step back, analyse the risks Australia is really facing, and tailor an integrated defence and diplomacy strategy that will head off those risks.

Any political party that chooses to be open and honest with Australians about the challenges we are really facing – challenges which are not about China but are mainly about climate change and pollution – is likely at this time to gather the respect of Australians. And the sooner Labor and the Coalition figure that out, the more likely they will be to retain seats in the parliament.

There are dozens of ways to secure our future that are better and cheaper than AUKUS. Australians interested in practical and effective defence plans which offer the prospect of peace and security at an affordable price may be interested in another report released in 2022 by the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network - or IPAN - called “Charting Our Own Course: Questioning Australia’s involvement in US-led wars and the Australia-United States alliance – A People’s Inquiry.”

And if the government is looking for path to a safer future, they can find strategies for creating a better relationship with Australians for that purpose in Australia Together, the nation’s first community-driven, long term, integrated plan for a future of wellbeing and security for everyone.

Disclosure: Bronwyn Kelly is a committee member of Australians for War Powers Reform. The views expressed here are her own.

This article was first published in Independent Australia.

Want to know more about Australia Together?

Find out all about this plan and the collaborative process being used to build it here. Chapter 8 of Australia Together contains strategies for development of a fully integrated defence, diplomacy and security plan for Australia. Find them under the section headed “Governance 12 - Peace & Security”.

Want to know more about ACFP?

Find out all about ACFP and how to become involved here.