This episode focuses entirely on AUKUS, which is totally dominating the national security debate at the moment – and that’s not necessarily a good thing with everything else being ignored.
First we had the news from the US that they will only build a single Virginia class submarine in 2025, which looks like a deceleration in their effort to reach a rate of 2.33 per year needed to have excess platforms to then sell to Australia. But for our government, it’s business as usual with the line that they are very confident that everything is going to plan. What is that confidence based on? One suspects nothing more than being patted on the head by senior US figures and being told, trust us – and thank you for the gift of $4.7 billion that you will start transferring later this year.
Then there was another forelock-tugging performance during the visits from the UK of Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps. The Australian euphoria about signing a Status of Forces agreement is ridiculous – these things are simple, routine, legal agreements that are put in place all the time. Australian politicians need to stop grovelling.
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Well done Kym. It is very unlikely that we will ever see such a sensible questioning of AUKUS (the cost, design, timelines, patting-on-the-head US approval) in any of the mainstream media, including “our” ABC.
Another aspect, which you have touched on before, is the so-called jobs “bonanza”.
I don’t begrudge any of those who end up with jobs because of AUKUS. They say there will be 20,000 new Australian jobs, including 8,700 involved in actual submarine construction.
But that’s $18 million per job.
We’ve never had teachers, paramedics, engineers – or soldiers, sailors and air personnel – costing that much to train.
How many jobs are we not creating to improve education, health, infrastructure and defence for Australia’s real needs – by wasting $368 billion on AUKUS.
The $4.7 billion just gifted to the UK will create 1,700 UK jobs at Rolls Royce in Derby. That’s at a cost to Australia of $2.7 million per UK job.
The combined gift of $9.4 billion to Rolls Royce and the US shipyards, shared between the 565,000 unemployed in our country, would mean $16,370,000 per person over ten years, or $1,637,000 per year for a decade.
Of course, if it wasn’t spent on AUKUS, there’s no guarantee that it would be diverted to job creation in Australia.
But these huge amounts of money, for no overall employment advantage to our people, should not be dignified as a jobs “bonanza”.
Thanks. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of Australian jobs will be pouring concrete.
As much as I concede that Nuclear Powered Submarines have the Range and Speed that Diesel Electric Boats don’t, I’m still not convinced that this AUKUS deal is a good one. Apart from the actual operation of the boats, there is the infrastructure associated with them, neither the U.S. or U.K seem to be in any position to begin AUKUS before the late thirties, we will possibly be operating two different boats and what do we do with the spent fuel rods and the big question do we actually need Submarines that advanced. If the Strategy is Deterrence by Denial all we require is a Submarine with an operational range one or 1or 2 hundred nm beyond the exclusion zone, especially if it’s equipped with a VLS. The whole thing in a nut shell is,by the time we actually get AUKUS up and running it quite possibly will be surpassed by new technologies. Also consider, that any adversary with actual designs on invading Australia, will just move before we Aquire the means to hinder them.
I agree. By 2045 the PLA(N) will probably be conducting exercises in the Gulf of Carpentaria and conducted extended patrols in the South China Sea will be the least of our worries.