Keith Wolahan (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm proud to rise in support of the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety Bill 2023 and the Australian Naval Nuclear Power Safety (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023. There are many times when we will have disagreements with the government and seek to hold them to account, but they do deserve credit for their commitment to AUKUS, because AUKUS is one of those nation-changing projects that will only survive if the key requirements of bipartisanship are there. That's bipartisanship not just in motherhood statements but in actually seeing it through.

I give full credit to the previous government and the previous Prime Minister for his leadership in negotiating this trilateral partnership, which has multiple pillars, and full credit to the security agencies and then those from DFAT and Defence who negotiated that agreement and led the way. It was an example of Australia taking a leadership role in the world. Too often we downplay our own role in the world, but that is a credit to the previous Prime Minister and the previous government.

But that's the easy part. The hard part is in seeing it delivered. We know from conventional non-defence and defence projects that projects are often killed by middle management, by cost blowouts, by other priorities or by a lack of commitment. You can foresee that in the delivery of AUKUS over that timeframe, over that cost and over that level of complexity. Nuclear submarines are the equivalent that we have for spaceships. They have the most cutting-edge, difficult engineering and technological challenges you could possibly imagine, so there will be many reasons to delay, to block and to avoid. They are political, technological and often driven by personnel, so it is important that we all lean in at every stage to make sure that this project is driven forward in the national interest.

I'd like to speak about the purpose of AUKUS. There are many commentators, mostly from other nations not part of the trilateral agreement, who see AUKUS as an aggressive act. It's anything but. It's about deterrence, and I'd like to briefly talk about what deterrence means. AUKUS and the submarines and the other pillar 2 technologies are not built to fight a certain war; they're built to prevent future war. Before any conflict in human history has ever been started, there was a point when the key decision-makers decided whether it was worth it and worth it today. That process is called a war game. A war game can be formalised or informal, but there is a point where a decision-maker says: 'Is this in my national interest? Can I win?' The purpose of deterrence is that, in that war game, the answer is this: not today. Our task is to make sure that potential aggressors in the globe wake up and say, 'Not today.' One of the reasons they'll say, 'Not today,' is AUKUS. That's important. Its whole purpose is to create a more peaceful world. That is its whole purpose, and that should never be forgotten.

The other thing in terms of delivery is our role as parliamentarians. When you have three nations in a trilateral agreement, all of those challenges that I spoke about, from middle management to cost blowouts and technological challenges—you name it, it will be there—are all multiplied by three. So our role in the parliament is to reach out and have relationships with our allies in the other parliaments, Congress and the United Kingdom. That's where the friendship organisations and the trips through embassies are very important. We, of course, have our role to play in seeing this move forward, but we must also make sure that we are in constant dialogue with our partners to reinforce that in their nations.

Right now, on my phone—it's on silent—is the US presidential debate. That is a great moment in their democracy. They will make a decision in November, and whoever is elected, whether there's a President Harris or a President Trump, it's in our interest that either regime or either administration knows that there is a friend that is reliable here in Australia. At some stage, we'll go through our own election. So, for this project to survive, it must survive the twists and turns of three democracies. So far, it's doing that. We had a United Kingdom election, and there's a full commitment to the new Labor administration. We must lean in to make sure the new presidential administration in the US is just as committed, along with members of Congress.

The mechanics of the bills before us are quite dry. They're about setting up a regulatory regime, but this is important. Where you have the introduction of advanced technology such as this, it is important that we have the regulatory instruments and those bodies set up, ready to make sure that we do it in compliance with our domestic laws, international treaty obligations and the terms of the AUKUS agreement itself.

I'll single out the Senate in its role as a house of review in the report delivered on this provision. It's always a helpful process, particularly in complex bills like these that have consequences that the House may not get to deliver. The report was excellent. It had a number of recommendations, which, I understand, have been considered and accepted. In conclusion, it is important that we support this bill but that we, on all sides of the chamber, are ever vigilant in making sure that AUKUS is delivered on time and in the national interest. In that respect, it is in the national interest of the three nations. It is essential that it be delivered for all Australians, which we are committed to.

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