Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian community expects that Australia and its government will have an independent foreign policy. We do not expect—we explicitly reject—and we do not want Australia's foreign policy to be set or dictated to us by the United States of America. The AUKUS agreement puts Australia at the behest of the United States for decades to come. When America says 'jump', Australia, under AUKUS, in order to get the submarines promised, will now have to say 'how high?' every single time. This concept is made more terrifying, more perverse, sickening, fear-inducing, by the idea that the ringmaster in years to come may well once again be Donald J Trump, the current presumptive Republican nominee.

Not only does the submarine deal come with a—let's say it politely—hefty $368 billion price tag, it comes with the expectation of Australia's absolute loyalty and compliance with the foreign policy goals of the United States. Despite this government doing all that it can, regardless of the desire of the Australian community, to stay in absolute lockstep with the United States, Australia is already receiving the thin end of the American stick, committing to spend $368 billion of public funds to purchase these vessels yet receiving no time line for the submarines that will saddle our community. In fact, we are sitting in a situation where the US commitments so early in the project are already not being held up.

The US have made very clear that their submarine capability is not on track to deliver the surplus vessels needed to supply Australia, and yet we continue to plough ahead with this policy, led—and I do mean 'led' in the very broadest sense of the term—by a government that finds itself without the spine to admit the reality of the AUKUS political pact: that it was a press conference concocted by Biden, who needed it because of the disastrous withdrawal in Afghanistan; by Johnson, who needed it to distract from domestic political pressures; and by Scott Morrison, who wanted literally anything else on the public agenda than the crumbling record of his own government.

Those three men got together, crafted AUKUS with their select teams and announced it to the world. Morrison believed in his heart of hearts that Labor wouldn't be foolish enough to go for it and therefore would create a point of difference ahead of the election. Well, he put too much store in the ALP. They folded in 24 hours, supported the concept of AUKUS and have signed our WA communities up to a legislative framework that could see us host not only tonne after tonne of high-level nuclear waste in Western Australia but also the nuclear waste of the United Kingdom and of the United States. The Greens will continue to oppose the AUKUS political deal every vote, every rally and every time because we know that peace, nonviolence and a foreign policy guided by these principles are the actual solutions and priorities demanded by the Australian public.