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

I rise in the same parliament that failed to prevent Australia from going to war 20 years ago, a war based on lies. Right now, the same forces that campaigned for that failed, devastating war in Iraq—powerful forces in the media, the weapons industry and the political class—are again baying for war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives have been lost since that first failed war, over a million Iraqis are still displaced as refugees, and their government still cannot provide basic material needs or basic security—all from a war of aggression that our country took part in and that was based on a proven lie. Unless we learn from that history and demand accountability, we are at serious risk of repeating it.

We should be building a safe, peaceful future for Australia and our region. Instead, the Albanese Labor government is seeking to permanently handcuff us to the United States military's aggressive war-fighting plans in our region. The Albanese government has now officially adopted a hand-me-down coalition war plan and jettisoned any pretence of a foreign policy based on peace and diplomacy. That is a national strategic surrender by Labor to the coalition. Unless this deal is reversed, Prime Minister Albanese will go down in history as the PM who drove us towards a war we never chose and one that no Australian wanted—that is, provided the war is not so cataclysmic that no-one will be able to write history after it.

First, let's deal with the big lie behind this AUKUS submarines deal. It's a lie to claim these nuclear submarines are about defending Australia. They are all about projecting lethal force well beyond our maritime approaches into the South China Sea. This is worth repeating and repeating often. These submarines are not designed to defend Australia. They have been specifically designed to threaten other players well outside our immediate region. There is no question that this will inflame regional tensions and further drive a regional arms race. In fact, since this announcement I—and, I note, others who have spoken out against it—have been asked by senior journalists across the media spectrum, including from the ABC: given the Greens or others don't support the $368 billion plus being spent on the AUKUS submarines, what would the Greens do to prevent Australia being invaded by China? Not one credible analyst—not one—has said that that is the strategic risk faced by Australia.

War is not inevitable, and the Greens join a growing chorus of former prime ministers, former foreign ministers, defence experts and millions of people from across the political spectrum who are pointing out the sheer recklessness of this deal. This deal marks the demotion of Australian diplomacy and the bypassing of Foreign Minister Wong and Foreign Affairs for an international posture literally driven by Defence, defence hawks and, in this case, the US and UK arms industries. We've seen Indonesia and Malaysia express very real concerns about this project. We are negatively impacting our relations with some of our key neighbours, and what are we getting in return? At best eight submarines, at the cost of damaging relations with some of our key neighbours. How will that make us safer? We cannot crew, maintain or deploy these nuclear submarines without the express consent of the United States. That is the very definition of surrendering sovereignty.

The next big lie is, of course, the cost of this deal. Having backgrounded key journalists the night before the announcement, the government is now refusing to publicly back the $368 billion figure. That was always, it seems, intended to be an interim backgrounder, given to a handful of chosen media, to bridge us towards what the real cost is. Last week I, like millions of Australians, went to bed one night with a reckless $200 billion deal for the AUKUS submarines and woke up with a $368 billion problem, secretly backgrounded by the government. Now they're telling us that that's not even the figure. It's 0.15 per cent of GDP, whatever that may be. What a bizarre way of costing a project, and what a way of handing a blank cheque to Defence, who have now been told by the Minister for Defence that this reckless project is too big to fail.