Locally, I have spoken to many Casey residents in the last few weeks who are very concerned about development near the Casey group centre where two 11- and one 13-storey apartment blocks will be built, ignoring community concerns, not least of which are that there will be only one car space allocated for every two units. Parking in the area will thus become a nightmare. The local Green-Labor government needs to rethink this one.
At a national level, well done to Messrs Morrison, Dutton, Albanese and Marles on clinching what appears to be a very good deal that will give the Royal Australian Navy a true deterrent capability for decades to come. At the time of writing (just prior to Albo’s formal announcement), it looks like we will buy three to five Virginia class subs from the US, and financially assist the US in starting a third production line to build more Virginia class subs in the US before, from 2035 onwards, in partnership with the UK, design and build a smaller boat to succeed the British Astute class. This new boat will be built in Adelaide and at Barrow-in-Furness in the UK. It’s expensive, but costs are spread out over 30 years. What can go wrong?
The first part looks good – buy a tried and proven US boat. But 2035 is a long way off and I have grave doubts if the UK is capable of fulfilling its end of the agreement. When the cold war ended in 1991, the UK spent five per ent of its GDP on defence. It was the pre-eminent Western European military power. Under Margaret Thatcher, the highly competent UK defence forces had won in the Falklands and in Gulf War 1. In the early 2000s under Tony Blair, they performed very well in Sierra Leone and in Gulf War 2. Unfortunately, David Cameron largely destroyed the UK defence force with his disastrous cuts in 2010, and apart from poor old Liz Truss (who lasted all of 45 days as PM and who wanted to raise UK defence spending from two to three per cent), no other UK Tory PM (including Rishi Sunak) has shown any inclination to spend any real money on defence. Also, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer looks like winning the 2024 UK election and the UK Labour Party shows even less likelihood of increasing defence expenditure; they could torpedo (no pun intended) AUKUS as they have a strong pacifist streak.
Still, despite these potential problems, at least we’re off to a running start and it doesn’t matter a great deal if the new UK/ Australian sub does not get off the ground – we can always just get more Virginia class boats from the US.
The fact that the Chinese Communist Party is having apoplexy about our nuclear subs deal means we are on the right track.
In the meantime, it would be good to get Japan and possibly France involved in AUKUS and expand it to FAUKJUS. That would really get up China’s nose and it has a certain cheeky ring to it as well.
