Well, isn’t that great? We’re going to get nuclear submarines whether we want them or not.
And when? There has been a suggested date of 2024. In the meantime, our poor old Collins class will have to soldier on and face whatever conflict we are dragged into by an unimaginative government.
But that is not the only issue here. We have long prided ourselves on our Westminster-style parliamentary system of government, unlike the US, whose president has similar powers to those old-time absolute monarchs they fought a War of Independence to escape. In most things, our Prime Minister (simply elected by the party that happens to have won a majority in the last election) and the ministers he appoints, can be restrained by Parliament to some extent. Not so, it seems in the case of Defence.
How much discussion/notice did Parliament receive of this new agreement? Was it discussed with Cabinet? What about the Opposition? We have an election looming in the near future. Even if you don’t place any faith in polls, it’s possible that a Labor government will have to cope with any fallout from this development. Even leaving China out of the equation, this decision could make our SE Asian neighbours nervous and France has a legitimate cause for complaint about the sudden (and dare I say dishonourable) scrapping of the previous submarine contract.
So what exactly are we committing ourselves to in this new AUKUS agreement, signed so enthusiastically by Scott Morrison? The old ANZUS Treaty has been used in the past to justify involving Australia in disastrous conflicts – Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq. After watching Donald Trump as US President, should we always blindly follow America’s lead as we have in the past? Joe Biden is, as yet, an unknown quantity, though the poorly-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan bodes ill for future military adventures.
So, perhaps it is time for Australians to ask: Who has the power to commit our Aussie troops to foreign wars? Our constitution, written in a time before aircraft, tanks, radio, radar, electronic communication etc, and when submarine technology was in its infancy, allows the Prime Minister to declare war without consulting Parliament, or even his/her own cabinet. This made sense back at the very beginning of the 20th Century, allowing for quick deployment in an emergency. But times have changed. Surely, our experience of Covid 19, with its remote business meetings shows how such decisions could be brought before parliament for ratification.
Lynne Cairns 