Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill 2024 and the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024—another Greens senator standing up in this place, because this is an incredibly important bit of legislation. It is sending Australia in totally the wrong direction. It is hitching our wagon to an unstable US. It is consolidating that relationship with that unstable US—colonialist, imperialist US—and we are spending an absolute fortune on it. We are spending $368 billion, a mind-boggling amount of money, to head us in the wrong direction.

Trying to get your head around how much $368 billion is actually quite difficult. My colleague Senator Waters outlined some of the programs, projects and actions that we could be spending that money on that would actually improve the lives of all Australians, to give you some idea of the significance of $368 billion. Another way of looking at it is you could spend $368 billion by giving $1 million to every resident of Hobart, for example. You could have everybody in Hobart being a millionaire. I'm not saying that that would be a sensible way to spend $368 billion, but it gives you an indication of how much money is being spent on these AUKUS submarines.

The bills that we are debating today are part of a suite of AUKUS related legislation. We have the Defence Trade Controls Amendment Bill 2024, which is ensuring our military export system is aligned with the US—which rings alarm bells for me, to begin with. A precondition for Australia to receive nuclear submarines was that we have to make sure that we are totally aligned with the US. When you look at US and the potential of a Trump presidency, the idea of being totally aligned with US military absolutely send shivers down my spine. I thought we were an independent nation. I thought that we should have an independent foreign policy. If you look at the regional conflicts and the potential for global conflicts and the war at the moment, I think the way for Australia to be safest and the way for us to play our role in trying to support peace, to support nonviolent resolution of conflict, to support diplomacy and to work effectively and multilaterally with the 160 countries in the world would be to have an independent foreign policy, not to slavishly go even further with aligning our interests with US military interests.

This bill will effectively create an export licence free bubble between the US and the UK concerning military and dual-use goods. The dual-use goods are pretty interesting because they cover a vast array of different goods which potentially could be used for military purposes. So it's not just our defence industries; it's other industries that will have restrictions on where we can be procuring from and where we can be exporting goods to. It would mean that Australia is effectively cut off from the rest of the world, with harsher and expanded restrictions on working with people outside the Anglo bubble.

I've got a newsflash for people: this country of Australia in fact never was people just of Anglo descent. We're a First Nations country. The First Nations people of this land have been here for 60,000 years. In the last 200 years, migration from all corners of the world has meant that over a third of Australians now were born overseas, and I think two-thirds have a parent that was born overseas. We are a multiracial, multicultural country. We are not just all aligned with the US and the UK. Many Australians have strong connections with countries, institutions, universities and communities outside that Anglo bubble. To have those harsh restrictions on working with people outside the Anglo bubble imposed on us because of this legislation will have really profound consequences.

Industry and the higher education sector have raised real and pressing concerns that this bill will lead them to have to apply for thousands of new permits just to do basic research and product development. One of the refrains we hear in this place is that we need to be getting rid of red tape. We need to be streamlining the ability of organisations to do effective work. But adding an incredibly intense permit process into what should be straightforward research is just going to hamper and hamstring a lot of research. My colleague Senator Faruqi went through the implications for research, and I want to associate myself with her remarks. The bill has, therefore, drawn widespread criticism, as it risks creating a significant disincentive for most of the world to work with Australian researchers and trade critical technology.

Another news flash is that, in the globalised world that we're in at the moment, researchers and people move. They move from one country to another. This means that if Australia does not create a supportive environment for that research to occur in, they just won't come here. That will be to the detriment of Australian society. That will be to the detriment of our ability to be using the products of research to be at the forefront of scientific research, where we should be. We have got the skills, ability, resources and responsibility to be at the forefront of scientific research, but this bill means that some of the best researchers in the world will say, 'Why would I come to Australia?' Given the limitations on being able to do the research that they want to do, they'll decide that they want to go somewhere else.

We've got another bill that's being debated today: the Defence Amendment (Safeguarding Australia's Military Secrets) Bill 2024. That's another insidious piece of legislation, aligning us closer to the US. It seeks to introduce harsher punishments and more ministerial powers to punish ADF personnel who train or work with certain foreign militaries and government entities. It's already illegal for defence personnel to disclose military secrets. However, this will require defence personnel and public servants to obtain authorisation before working for another government entity. Again, this is all part of a push to integrate Australian regulation with that of the US as part of the AUKUS deal and concerns that Australia won't be able to keep the US's nuclear secrets. The chilling effect of this second bit of legislation is just as concerning and should be ringing alarm bells for every Australian. Again, if we are concerned about our standing as an independent nation, not just being a lackey of the US, then we need to be making these decisions for ourselves and not just do what the US is telling us to do.

This is all for AUKUS, particularly the $368 billion on submarines. What are the benefits? We've got all of these problems with it and all of these costs. Why are we doing it? If somebody were able to say: 'Well, you've got this incredibly beneficial reason for investing this amount of money. You've got these drawbacks, but AUKUS is going to really deliver the goods', then maybe we would sit down and listen. But from what you can see about AUKUS, it's actually not about defending Australia. It's about projecting force in the South China Sea and tying us to the war-making ambitions of the US and the UK. It's dangerous. AUKUS is a dangerous move that's going to make us less safe, and it compromises our sovereignty. Accessing these nuclear submarines comes at the price of having to unconditionally follow the US into its next war. The Albanese government's making Australia the US's 51st state effectively, turning the country into an arm of the US military. We're likely to not even get Australian owned nuclear submarines, but we're going to spend $368 billion destabilising the region and being a dumping ground for US and UK nuclear submarines. As part of doing that, we'll be painting a big target on ourselves.

The Albanese Labor government has already promised to give nearly $10 billion to the US and the UK military as part of AUKUS. We are literally funnelling Australian funds into foreign military industry. The $4.7 billion going to US submarine manufacturing is not just for conventionally armed submarines but to also train and equip the workforce to make nuclear armed submarines. That's what our money is going towards: nuclear armed submarines. So not only are we spending this money on the nuclear powered submarines, we are spending money to make nuclear war, nuclear proliferation, even more likely.

AUKUS only leaves Australians worse off. We are giving up our ability to exercise independent foreign policy, risking destabilising the region and losing an exorbitant amount of public money on unnecessary nuclear submarines. Is it because the Australian public want this? No. Eighty per cent of Australians don't want our primary ally to be the US, but AUKUS ensures that this will happen. AUKUS stops us from engaging with the world independently. Why is our government letting the US dictate our legislative agenda? Why is our government effectively making us, when it comes to our military and defence operations, the 51st state of the US?

And then you get to the $368 billion and think about the opportunity cost. Politics and government are about choices, and this government is choosing to spend $368 billion on AUKUS rather than on so many other things that would actually make Australia better off. I want to focus on income support because, when it comes to income support and raising the rate of income support to above the poverty line, we've been told by this government over and over again: 'Look, we'd like to be able to do that but we just can't afford it. We look at the budget. We've got to cut our cloth to suit the circumstances. Sorry.' And so we got a measly $4 a day in the last budget, which doesn't come anywhere near lifting people out of poverty. It leaves people living in tents, living in cars with their kids. It leads them unable to afford more than a meal a day. It leaves them unable to afford their medications. It leaves them homeless. It leaves their kids unable to go on school excursions, unable to afford equipment. This is what the reality of living in poverty means, and yet this government is making a choice. We are choosing to spend an obscene amount of money on useless military equipment, on useless nuclear submarines, and we are choosing to leave people in poverty.

I want to share a story that I received late last year. Aeryn, who is a JobSeeker recipient, shared with me their devastating story about struggling to survive on JobSeeker. I'm sharing this because, as I said, this debate is about choices. This is about a choice that this government is making to spend $368 billion on submarines rather than to raise the rate of income support above the poverty line. If we weren't spending this money, we'd be able to help people like Aeryn. Aeryn told me:

I have been reliant on income support for nearly sixteen years. Currently I receive Jobseeker Allowance, as I have done since I finished university in October 2016. … Groceries take up half my net payment, and bills take up the rest.

I am also disabled—one of the more than 40% of people on Jobseeker with a disability. I'm autistic, I have depression and social anxiety disorder, and I experience migraines. I also use either a cane or crutches for mobility. But because specialist appointments are expensive, I've been locked out of the Disability Support Pension simply because I can't afford to pay or save for them. I need to see a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist as part of applying for the DSP, but I don't have the money for it. I've been asked if I would consider crowdfunding, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea and see it as a last resort.

For whatever reason, whether my disabilities or my lack of work experience, I have found it impossible to find a permanent job. My only jobs have all been temporary. My Bachelor's degree is gathering dust because no employer will give me a chance. If any of the employers I've applied to work for wanted me as an employee, they would have hired me seven years ago. I can only assume, therefore, that I'm unemployable.

Because I'm a Jobseeker recipient, I'm required to engage with an employment service provider. Every single provider I've been a client of, all six of them, has been utterly awful to deal with. I've been abused, I've been "parked" and not given the help I need to find suitable work, and most recently I've been forced into "resilience training" that caused me to become suicidal.

…   …   …

Prime Minister Albanese promised when he was elected that nobody would be left behind. People on income support are clearly nobody, because guess what? You are leaving us behind.

And Aeryn's story is not unique, very sadly. There are millions of Australians who are suffering, yet this government is choosing to spend $368 billion on nuclear submarines.