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

This motion calls for an Australian sovereign defence manufacturing industry but it is ignoring the elephant in the room—that is, when it comes to defence expenditure, the single-largest defence expenditure proposed is under AUKUS Pillar 1 and to some extent under AUKUS Pillar 2, which is seeing hundreds of billions of dollars of Australian taxpayers' money, public money, spent on weapons systems and investment in industries entirely offshore in a historically dangerous gamble. We saw that yesterday when we got the AUKUS 2.0 agreement finally tabled. And what did that show? It showed that, for this $368 billion gamble for US, UK—potentially at some point partly Australian nuclear submarines—both the US and the UK have put into that agreement multiple get-out-of jail-free cards, and the Albanese government has put us on the hook to indemnify both the US and UK governments if something goes wrong, perhaps a catastrophic accident with a second-hand sub. Who pays for that? It's not the United States but Australian taxpayers. The US and the UK will set the price, including for the enriched uranium they're going to sell us, and they take away any independent consultation Australia has with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I've never seen such an irresponsible, one-sided agreement signed by an Australian government, and every aspect of the agreement is a blow to Australian sovereignty. Don't take my word for it; this is what it says. At the end of article I of the agreement, it says that, if the US or the UK determine that such cooperation with Australia will constitute an unreasonable risk to their defence and security, they don't have to do it. If it constitutes an unreasonable risk to the defence or security of the UK or the US, they don't have to do it.

Article IV(H) is an extraordinary provision. It says that Australia can make payments of appropriated funds to the US or the UK for the purpose of implementing the agreement, but there's not a single provision in AUKUS 2.0 for the US or the UK to pay a single dollar to Australia. It's not even envisaged that they may pay Australia for some of it. The only provision is for us to give money to them. We've already started doing it. We've given some $5 billion to the US for their sovereign capacity and some $5 billion to the UK for Rolls-Royce and their capacity. But it doesn't even contemplate that there might be a dollar flowing the other way.

Article XIII says that, at any point, the US, the UK or Australia can terminate the agreement with one year's notice, and then it says that we have to give everything back. Every single thing gets returned—the subs, the technology, the information. Do you know how much we get in return when we hand over all the stuff that Australia has paid maybe tens and tens of billions of dollars for? Not one cent. They can terminate it on one year's notice and get all their stuff back, and we don't get a cent. Who would sign this stuff?

You want to see the last bit. It's the understanding that's attached to it. It's some private understanding—now public, because we forced it upon them—and that says the final word in these agreements is that the UK and the US expressly say that they don't have to do anything if it will adversely affect the ability of the United States or the United Kingdom to meet their respective military requirements. They can stop if at any point it degrades their respective naval nuclear propulsion submarines. They can just stop. How much do we get back? Not one cent.

That's not an agreement; that's a surrender. We sent Marles off to the United States to negotiate for a new bucket, and he came back with a sieve. It is extraordinary. I meant Minister Marles. That's only pillar I.