Australians love the phrase “yeah, nah”. We’re masters of understatement and hate being blunt.
If something’s terrible, you’re likely to hear it described as “pretty ordinary”. If you’re suffering from an absolute bender the morning after, you’re feeling “a bit rough”. And “yeah, nah”? It’s a way of saying no, but not too directly.
We’re still digesting the news that we’re about to get a fleet of new submarines. In 2040, though we will borrow some second-hand ones before that. But in a case of understatement writ large in nuclear-powered font, we’re not sure if we’re getting a defence policy or an industrial policy. It’s officially both, which runs the risk that it is neither. But we haven’t said that. That would be too blunt.
Australia agreed under the so-called Aukus deal to host visiting US and British nuclear-powered submarines for the rest of this decade. In the 2030s, Australia, which has an ageing fleet of six diesel-electric conventional subs, will acquire three second-hand Virginia-class nuclear-powered subs (and up to two more). In the 2040s it will start building new subs designed to a UK model and with a US weapons and nuclear reactor.
The country will spend AUD368bn over the next 30 years to secure a fleet of eight submarines. It’s a step-change in naval power. These subs are faster and can travel further underwater (to, hypothetically, an area such as the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait) than the alternatives. They’re larger and carry more payload, be that weapons or people.
Good or bad? “It’s a bad idea,” says Rex Patrick, a former Australian senator and Royal Australian Navy submariner. And that’s from someone who likes subs and thinks subs are important. “The cost is just totally inappropriate and the opportunity cost is significant.”
More complicated
This is the fourth plan to replace Australia’s subs. We had them in 2009 (the Labor government’s plan for 12 future submarines), in 2014 (the Liberal government’s plan to buy Japanese-made subs) and in 2016 (a different Liberal government’s plan to buy French-made subs).
This time it’s even more complicated. The navy could, confusingly, have three different types of submarines in the water simultaneously: the existing Collins boats, the second-hand Virginia types and the new Aukus boats that are yet to be created. Do we think it will go ahead as planned? Yeah, nah.
And then there’s the industrial policy. “Your purchase means more wealth for Australia, more jobs for Australians as well as greater value for yourself.” That line could have come from the glitzy announcement on a San Diego dock, where prime ministers Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak lined up beside President Joe Biden to announce the deal, with its promise of 20,000 jobs for Australians.
But it didn’t. Rather, it’s from a 1929 pamphlet General Motors handed out in a PR campaign after the car company set up an Australian subsidiary. In 1931, GM acquired Adelaide-based manufacturer Holden’s Motor Body Builders. That lasted until 2017, when the doors were closed for good, following Mitsubishi, Ford and Toyota out of the country.
This time a country that couldn’t keep a car industry viable is planning to build nuclear-powered subs, and employ lots of people in the process. Does history suggest that will play out well for us? Yeah, nah.
It’s an industrial policy of sorts. Australia will spend more than $A3bn over the next four years — to increase US and UK shipbuilding capacities — to meet the initial extra demand and start training Australian workers in submarine-building. And then there’s the question of UN obligations.
These are powerful subs, powered by high-enriched uranium. They are unlike the proposed French submarines, which have low-enriched uranium reactors. The fuel in these is weapons-grade stuff. The material will only be used for propulsion and not for armaments, but even so that sits uneasily with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology.
It opens the door for other countries to pass around nukes and make the same argument. In 2021, when the Aukus deal was declared but not detailed, Australia’s then foreign minister, Marise Payne, said neither the NPT nor the country’s agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency prohibited naval nuclear proliferation.
“Australia, the US and the UK will not be playing political games which undermine that [nuclear control] architecture,” Payne said. “We expect ... members of the international community to act responsibly and to engage in the accurate dissemination of information, not disinformation or misinformation.”
So it’s all OK, then? Yeah, nah.
• Bleby is a senior reporter with The Australian Financial Review, based in Melbourne.
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