Fatima Payman (WA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Australians, I have good news. At a time when we're being squeezed on our mortgages and in the supermarkets, this news will come as a great relief to everyone. Australia has made its first AUKUS payment to the United States. That's just under A$800 million shipped off to the US. It's not to build our submarines but to upgrade their facilities where they might, one day, choose to build our submarines. That's $800 million not spent on our schools, though this government doesn't seem keen to fully fund them anyway. That's $800 million not invested into Medicare, into mental health or into lifting JobSeeker above the poverty line. That's an $800 million donation to the 50 states that rule over us, the 51st state. And didn't our government lay down like a snake and crawl towards the seat of power at the recent meeting with the American Secretary of Defense, where Richard Marles said the AUKUS deal—