Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Trump is a tariff tyrant. He is showing all too much evidence of being an unreliable ally to Australia and he is a bully. Just as you would not kowtow to a bully in a schoolyard, we should not be letting him walk all over us on the global stage, yet the Labor government is doing all too little to stand up to him and his outrageous international ambitions. Australia made a $798 million AUKUS donation to the US last Saturday, and two days later President Trump announced a global 25 per cent tariff on steel and aluminium imports on the Monday, with no guarantee of Australian exemption. Why are we handing over a huge payment to this man who has no regard for Australian sovereignty for a submarine deal that so many experts say has no chance of realisation? It's a bad deal, and we should end it.

We know that Trump is an unpredictable ally and that the usual rules of diplomacy do not apply. Trump only makes deals that suit him. So why is Labor sinking our public resources into such a bad subs deal? AUKUS is expected to cost up to $368 billion over the next three decades, and now we're dealing with a US president who is even less likely to deliver us a single submarine. Even Labor's own people are calling out the reality here. Former Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans has said that the notion Australia will have full sovereign control of nuclear-powered submarines is, frankly, 'a joke in bad taste'. Many agree.

The Greens say no to handing over blank cheques to a billionaire bully. We need to draw a line in the sand to defend our sovereign independence.