David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I share the deep anxiety of Senator Lambie in relation to the government's underperformance in this space. The questions that Senator Lambie was asking are questions that many people are actually asking right now. Senator Lambie was asking for details for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 financial years of each and every payment made to the US government in relation to AUKUS, indicating the date of the payment, the reason for the payment and the amount of the payment. She wants the same for payments made to the UK and then also asks for details of the total amount spent on AUKUS for each of those financial years and what, if any, monetary commitments or promises have been made to the US in relation to Australian investment in US shipyards. How is it that the minister can't answer that? How is it that you can't answer that almost instantly? I think the reason is because there is no actual dollar figure that Australia has committed to.

We keep getting told by the government that AUKUS is about jobs in Australia. I think there's some inflated figurer that between now and the end of the century there might be 20,000 jobs. If you look at an assessment given by PwC in a dark room lit only by a candle, you'll find 20,000 jobs in Australia. But what this government is actually going to invest in is not Australian jobs but US jobs and UK jobs. You don't have to take my word for it or Senator Lambie's word for it. Read the most recent Congressional Research Service report on the AUKUS submarine deal. They've done two. The most recent one was only about 10 days ago. That said there is no conceivable pathway at the moment for the United States shipbuilding industry to produce sufficient submarines for their own purposes and also to meet the additional submarines required for the AUKUS submarine project.

Currently, the US submarine industry is knocking out about 1.2 to 1.3 Virginia class submarines a year. To meet their own requirements just for Virginia class submarines they need to radically increase that to two Virginia class submarines a year. Then, on top of that, to meet the AUKUS commitments they need to increase that to 2.3 Virginia-class submarines a year. Then from 2030 they're also going to have to produce an entirely new class of larger nuclear submarine called the Columbia class. To meet that massive increase in nuclear submarine shipbuilding, the Congressional Research Service says that that's going to require a fivefold increase in the US workforce for building a nuclear submarine. That's not a doubling or a tripling or a quadrupling but a fivefold increase in the US workforce for their nuclear submarine shipbuilding.

Let me be clear, there is no current funding or plan from the Biden administration that goes anywhere near achieving that kind of increase in workforce—a fivefold increase in the workforce. And we know—if anyone's been watching the debate—the incredible capacity restraints that the US is facing in terms of their shipbuilding, particularly the highly skilled shipbuilding for nuclear submarines. What have we heard from the Albanese government about that? Nothing. What have we heard from the RAN about that? Absolutely nothing. It's as though they pretend this problem doesn't exist. That's the scale of the increase needed for US shipbuilding. A fivefold increase in the workforce is the scale needed.

What has Australia committed financially to that under the AUKUS agreement? There has been a lot of discussion about a US$3 billion commitment that Australia has allegedly made to the US industrial base. That commitment is A$4.7 billion. That number has been bandied around. It seems like an eye wateringly large amount of money, A$4.7 billion, and no doubt the Albanese government is quite happy for that figure to be bandied around, because that's an almost achievable amount. It's an incredible amount of money—A$4.7 billion of Australian taxpayers' money—to be spent entirely on US jobs. It's an almost achievable amount until you realise that the actual commitment made by AUKUS is not to a bounded figure like US$3 billion. That figure has been made up, no doubt for political convenience, by Albanese. That amount is not found in any agreement, in any exchange, with the United States. It's not found in the AUKUS agreements.

The agreement that Australia has actually made is for a proportionate contribution to the US shipbuilding industry. Did I mention that the US shipbuilding industry needs a fivefold increase in workforce? What's Australia's proportionate contribution to a fivefold increase in the US nuclear-ship building workforce and the infrastructure that underpins it and the shipyards that underpin it? It could well be a multiple of US$3 billion. That's probably why Minister Marles is refusing to answer Senator Lambie's questions, because actually answering the questions would bell the cat and explain just what an open ended financial commitment Australia has made not to Australian jobs but to US jobs under the AUKUS deal. It is literally a blank cheque of a proportionate contribution to the kind of investment that is going to see a fivefold increase in US jobs and the associated infrastructure and shipbuilding facilities underpinning that. And we get no answer from the defence minister—complete silence; crickets. Why? Because it is downright embarrassing.

Now, you would have thought that with all these questions going unanswered there would be an obvious response from Defence. A whole bunch of question from Senator Lambie, from Senator Roberts, from me and, no doubt, from members of the opposition haven't been answered. I would have expected that the obvious response from Minister Marles, the secretary of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Force—that troika of underperformance—would be to appoint a general. We should get a fresh general, or an admiral or an air marshal, to answer questions that have been unanswered. Let's get some gold braid appointed to answer the questions. Why don't we add to the 219 star-ranked admirals, generals and air marshals to actually answer some questions. Get them to do something. They haven't got a plane, they haven't got a tank, they haven't got a ship, but there's 219 of them answering whatever thought bubble has got into Minister Marles. Why doesn't the troika of underperformance appoint a general to answer the questions? That would be consistent with the ADF: not a substantive response, not telling us how much money—just appoint another general. At least then we might get some answers.

Question agreed to.