Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence, Mr Marles, I table a ministerial statement on securing Australia's sovereignty.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This afternoon the Deputy Prime Minister made a statement in the House about Australia's sovereignty principles. I commend the statement. In the proper tradition of those kinds of statements being made, it is, indeed, a statement of the government's position, but it's also an opportunity to consider and reflect upon these issues.

Sovereignty, if it has any meaning in in this context, is about the capacity of Australia and Australians to shape our own future and not allow others to shape it for us. The Deputy Prime Minister's speech outlined the situation that Australia is in: a clear-eyed view of the world as it is, not as we would hope it to be. Indeed, our strategic circumstances in the region and at the global level are very complex and challenging indeed. The world that Australia confronts, and the region that we confront today, is the most challenging since World War II.

We no longer live in a benign environment. Complacency is no longer viable. That's why Australia must have a clear conversation, a clear doctrine, about our approach to sovereignty. But we must also work in tandem with like-minded countries and partners who share our democratic values and our aspiration for, in particular in the region, a sense of regional independence, sovereignty and self-determination. That can only be managed through robust policy frameworks and principles that maintain and protect our sovereignty, and today's statement by the Deputy Prime Minister is an important juncture in this approach.

Clarification of the framework is helpful. It's helpful to me in the work that I do in the two junior portfolios I have, in terms of trade and manufacturing. Those principles do inform that work. Minister Farrell again set out today in question time his approach: diversifying our markets, diversifying our products and leaning in hard to multilateralism and functional trading rules around the world. It matters also for our approach to issues like rebuilding industry capability in my own area of manufacturing. It's not just an economic prospect; industry capability is core to any meaningful approach to national sovereignty.

A number of principles were set out by the Deputy Prime Minister. Alliances matter—alliances with partners who share in an enduring way our interests and values and are prepared to take collective action to protect those interests and values. The Albanese government will of course continue to work with our US ally and our key partners to advance our interests, because, as the Deputy Prime Minister stated:

… our sovereignty is stronger when we work with others towards shared goals, in ways that respect each other's national interests.

He said:

… it is more important than ever that we work with the countries of the region to continue to reduce tensions and maintain the peace and security that has underpinned economic prosperity.

And like in the United States, where President Biden has begun the process of revitalising American manufacturing, so too will Australia. In the United States, President Biden, through the CHIPS act and the Inflation Reduction Act, together with House and Senate Republicans and Democrats alike, has grasped that industrial capability, sovereignty, national security and democratic cohesion are all interrelated and require renewal. The Albanese government's package of reforms in my portfolio area of manufacturing speaks to the same vital objectives that are mobilising American institutions, workers and their unions, firms and financial institutions. The US industrial revival is gathering steam.

The Albanese government's National Reconstruction Fund is our opportunity to shape our own industrial future. It is modern, it is mission focused and it is utterly relevant to the sectors critical to our national future, to our future national development and to our national security. Our friends, partners and others in the region are watching to see whether we grasp this national moment for industrial capability and manufacturing revival. There are very significant opportunities in the region—in security terms, climate and energy terms, food security terms and manufacturing terms—to have a shared approach to achieving these objectives.

It's a mystery to me why some people in this place oppose these objectives or, even worse, refuse to engage with them. They abrogate their national responsibility. The National Reconstruction Fund is an economic measure, yes, but it is a national security measure too, consistent with any sensible conception of what our national interest is. Australia's future industrial capability is too important to play politics with. We have to put headway over headlines, and substance before slogans. If President Biden in the fractured, polarised world of Washington politics can unite Republicans and Democrats around these objectives, surely we can do better in this place and back the National Reconstruction Fund.

As the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence said in his ministerial statement, Australia's frontline will always be diplomacy. He said:

Our primary effort is to use our diplomacy to reduce tensions and create pathways for peace.

Of course, our international security and our shared sense of a global, peaceful future is undermined by those who seek to resolve disputes by power and size rather than by international rules and norms. Russia's illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine and its nuclear brinkmanship are a salutary example of this. We remain deeply committed in Australia to working constructively with our partners, notwithstanding our occasional differences—our inevitable differences as sovereign nations—to make the world safe, peaceful and ultimately more prosperous.

It's vital, of course, that the Australian public and the parliament have confidence that, when enhancing our defence capability, we never trade away our sovereignty. As the Deputy Prime Minister said:

… we will not trade sovereignty for capability. To do so would be illusory. For the only point of increased capability is to strengthen sovereignty.

So I say to the Senate that it is well worthwhile reading the statement and considering what it means for our approach here. Our capacity to shape our own future, to pursue the policy objectives that we might differ upon in this place, is going to be very much determined by how we approach these questions of sovereignty and national security in the coming decades and how we lay the foundation for a strong, stable, credible Australian approach to these issues. Enhanced diplomacy, intelligence, economic statecraft, development assistance, trade, democratic resilience and our approach on questions like foreign interference are core to our capacity to keep Australians safe, maintain our national sovereignty and pursue the policy objectives that we think are relevant.

I'll just say in closing that I did see in the last parliament a recklessness about the consequences of hyperpoliticisation of some of these issues and some crass partisan politics undermining the core national asset we as Australians have of bipartisanship on these national security questions. I hope that colleagues in this place and the other place have reflected upon the consequences of hyperpartisanship and undermining that bipartisan national asset. It does damage the national interest. I hope that reflection has caused a fresh approach and that people are seized on these issues with the same sense of mission and urgency that the Albanese Labor government is.

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

In contributing to this debate today in relation and response to the Deputy Prime Minister's and the defence minister's statement in relation to AUKUS, it has been fascinating to read through this ministerial statement in the current context. What we have here is one of the most tortured political statements I have read in a very, very long time.

The Australian community more broadly were absolutely stunned by the announcement in the dying days of the former government of this so-called AUKUS pact. We woke up one morning to a bunch of articles about us acquiring nuclear submarines and sections of a Zoom facilitated press conference with President Biden, the then UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, and Scott Morrison on TV. Most of the community spent about a day hearing about this term—'AUKUS, AUKUS, AUKUS'—and then that was it. The mainstream media coverage ceased at: What would we be getting? What kind of submarine would it be? What kind of capability would it have? Left totally unexamined was why these three men had taken that particular moment to introduce the idea onto the global stage. Left unanalysed and unengaged with was the question of why these three people at this particular moment in time would take this opportunity to announce such a shared project.

Well, let's examine it a bit together. You had Scott Morrison, who knew in his heart of hearts that he was on the way to losing government, desperately trying to find a way to differentiate himself from an opposition that had decided that it would accept nearly anything that the Liberal government proposed in order to get back in power. You had President Biden, who had just endured week after week of scenes showing testament to the world of the absolute lack of judgement that has been displayed by the United States in the last 20 years in relation to foreign policy, global diplomacy and war. As its misguided intervention into Afghanistan came crashing down and we all watched those horrific scenes as Kabul Airport was evacuated, the weakness and the intellectual limitations of the United States were on display as never before. Then you had Boris Johnson, who, fresh from being foiled in his attempts to prorogue his own parliament, facing complete rebellion inside his own government, would have rather been on the frontlines in Kyiv than in the houses of parliament, facing his own colleagues.

And so these three men took the opportunity to try to change the conversation by making this announcement—something they had been cooking up in the background with their defence departments, which had purposefully been circumventing the State Department in the United States, the foreign affairs department of the Commonwealth of Australia and the foreign ministry of the United Kingdom. This has all been kept very, very close to the chest. All that was really given to the Australian people was: 'Hello everybody, we're going to develop a nuclear powered submarine in the face of decades of steadfast opposition by the Australian public to the nuclearisation of our waters. We're just going to do this now. We have no idea how we're going to achieve it and we have no idea how long it will take. We've got absolutely no idea how much it will cost—we'll figure that out. Just follow the shiny announcement over here.'

What we have seen in the more than 12 months since that statement is that the details of this agreement have not been ironed out and that the principal impact of such a shared project to bring into the world such a despicable weapon would be to fundamentally compromise the independence of Australia—our ability as a nation to make decisions in line with the Australian community's expectations. It's a baseline expectation of the Australian community that the government it elects will make decisions that reflect its interests. And yet here we have a project which would seek to bind us up with the United States for the next one, two or three decades in pursuit of a technology type with which we have no experience and no capability, and therefore must be wholly reliant on the United States and United Kingdom in that development process. This puts us completely in the power of two nations which, over the last two decades, have demonstrated some of the poorest decision-making in relation to war and foreign policy that has been seen since the Second World War.

This minister's statement references the United Nations charter and the absolute importance of upholding that charter, and of confronting nations when they violate it—particularly when they act in relation to wars of aggression. It rightly condemns Russia for doing so—as the Australian Greens have done on multiple occasions. The torture in this statement comes in when you realise the fact that this minister is making this speech less than a month out from the 20th anniversary of the United States violating that charter, and the Australian government joining with the United States in the violation of that charter, through the illegal and immoral invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. The irony in that almost beggars belief. Twenty years on, with Iraq still in ruins and with Afghanistan falling apart, this Labor government would ask the Australian people to put their faith in the United States, not only for the next 10 years, not only for the next 20, but for the next 30 or more years, gifting to them in the process multiple billions in public funds.

There will be some who say, 'They're just lending us a piece of technology; they've done that in the past.' To make such a statement is to demonstrate such a profound level of duplicity in this discussion as to be unworthy of this place. Every member on the Labor side, every member of this government, understands—truly, they understand—that this technology acquisition is fundamentally different. This is not a propeller. This is not a new version of troop carrier. This is a nuclear powered submarine, reliant on an industry we have purposely never developed in this country—a capability that we have actively chosen not to develop, because of the risk it poses to triggering an arms race in our region, the very region the minister says he seeks to stabilise.

In putting this forward, they suggest to us that we would be able to co-build this capability, having no ability to sustain it ourselves for decades and yet utilise it solely in our national interest. I ask you to consider whether that really sounds right. Do we really believe that the United States and United Kingdom would gift us the opportunity to use their shipyards to build boats for us if they believed that we would ever utilise them against their national interests, against their strategic objectives? Pull the other one.

Twenty years on from Iraq, in the aftermath of the collapse of Afghanistan, we must learn the lessons of this recent past. We must strike out on our own, we must have an independent and peaceful foreign policy.

Raff Ciccone (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the ministerial statement of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence given earlier today in the other place. In that statement, Deputy Prime Minister Marles outlined Australia's sovereignty principles and explained how cooperation with our friends and partners enables us to pursue our national interest and enhance that sovereignty.

The strategic circumstances that we find ourselves in are the most complex and challenging since the Second World War. It's hard to pick up a newspaper without reading about escalating tensions in our region or active conflict on the European continent. This is the backdrop against which the Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Defence, delivered this statement on sovereignty today and in the context of much discussion about the AUKUS agreement.

There has been some suggestion that the acquisition of nuclear propelled submarines through AUKUS would serve to undermine Australia's sovereignty—and we have just heard Senator Steele-John's contribution—because the development of this new capability for the Royal Australian Navy will come through cooperation with our strongest and closest allies, the United States of America and the United Kingdom. This suggestion that's been put, particularly by the Greens, is wrong. Those who make it fundamentally misunderstand sovereignty and the strategic environment in which we are living.

In these challenging times, it is more important than ever that Australia works closely with our friends, with other like-minded states, to secure our collective security. This is why we have the AUKUS arrangements. This cooperation is managed through robust policy frameworks and principles that maintain and protect our sovereignty, here in Australia, sovereignty that is at the heart of national security and Australia's way of life. Protecting this will always be the Albanese government's first priority.

Australia's front line will always be diplomacy. To quote the Deputy Prime Minister: 'Our primary effort is to use our diplomacy to reduce tensions and create pathways for peace.' But it is also prudent, in our uncertain strategic environment, to strengthen our defence capabilities, which are a key factor in maintaining our sovereignty. As the Deputy Prime Minister highlighted, while defence capability does not define sovereignty, having high-end capability ready to deploy at our complete discretion allows us to determine our own circumstances without coercion.

The geopolitical challenges that we face, we do not face alone. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies and like-minded states. Indeed, cooperation with others is integral to protecting our sovereignty—not detrimental to it, as some have wrongly suggested. This suggestion by some that Australia should be isolationist in our development of defence capability ignores the very fact that our relationships with other states, in and of themselves, are an essential part of our capability. Measuring our ability to defend our nation is not as simple as adding up all the equipment and Defence Force personnel. We must also consider how our allies can assist us, should the worst ever happen, both in the development and the procurement of defence material and through direct cooperation in military operations.

You only need to look at Ukraine at the moment to see this principle in action. Australia is one of the largest non-NATO contributors to defence against Russia's unprovoked illegal invasion of Ukraine. Therefore, Ukraine's relationship with Australia makes a direct contribution to the defence of Ukrainian sovereignty.

When I was on board HMAS Canberra last year—a vessel whose hull was made in Spain, whose combat system was developed in the United States and whose fit-out was completed here in Australia—I really appreciated how, along with all our allies, we can work together to improve each of our individual capabilities and therefore make significant contribution to our own national sovereignty.

To return to AUKUS specifically, the argument that nuclear propelled submarines acquired for the pact cannot contribute to sovereign capability, because we require support from our allies, ignores the fact that we are currently working in a collaborative manner on several defence and intelligence operations. Australia jointly operates three facilities with the United States: the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, the Joint Geological and Geophysical Research Station and the Learmonth Solar Observatory. Not only do these very important facilities provide critical functions that directly support our national security but, importantly, they also help to operate other facilities right around the world because they're all interconnected and help our allies and friends when they need assistance. Importantly, we could not operate these facilities in isolation. I think that is the point that some in this place seem to forget.

These collaborations with the United States facilitate intelligence cooperation and communications that help ensure that Australia and our Five Eyes partners maintain an intelligence advantage. The insights and intelligence gained through the Five Eyes partnership play a vital role in informing decisions that protect and strengthen our sovereignty, demonstrating once again that our strong international relationships are a vital asset. The Albanese government will continue to work with the US and our key partners to advance our interests because, as the Deputy Prime Minister stated, 'Our sovereignty is stronger when we work with others towards shared goals in ways that respect each other's national interests.'

As I mentioned earlier, these shared goals are not just about improving our defence capabilities. We must also work together in efforts to reduce tensions and to maintain the peace and security that have underpinned our economic prosperity and way of life. As we saw recently, foreign minister, Penny Wong, and defence minister, Richard Marles, and many other ministers have gone abroad to re-establish and reconnect with some of our closest friends—not just in our region of the Pacific but in Asia, Europe and the United States. It is so important to have very strong friendships when it comes to those who we have been shoulder to shoulder with in times of war and times of real need. As we have done with our friends in Ukraine, the solidarity and support that we have given them is so vitally important.

By recognising that we have shared goals with our allies and collaborate in an effort to achieve those goals, we achieve more in our own interests than we ever could if we acted in isolation. It is entirely appropriate that the Australian public and the parliament have confidence that when we enhance our defence capability that we never trade away our sovereignty. The Deputy Prime Minister was very much on point today when stating that we will not trade sovereignty for capability, because the only point of increased capability is to strengthen our sovereignty.

Question agreed to.