Even supporters of the broad thrust of the AUKUS trilateral security agreement were unsettled by the secrecy surrounding its development and the short-term political manoeuvring embedded in its genesis.
Demanding a response within 24 hours, the Morrison government clearly hoped to wedge Labor in the lead-up to the 2022 election, intending to portray any reluctance to endorse the proposal as evidence that the ALP could not be trusted with Australia’s national security.
Labor’s swift and poorly considered decision to endorse the agreement meant there was no serious debate ahead of the election. Both major parties committed us to AUKUS before any independent, informed public scrutiny and debate were possible, and both are now apparently unwilling to entertain any doubts about the deal, the anticipated total cost of which is $368 billion (already blown out in the most recent budget).
From Labor, too, there has been only studied silence on why it abandoned its long-held opposition to the deployment of nuclear power.
Once elected, the Labor government did not pause and take stock of the risks and benefits of the agreement or to engage the wider public and policy experts in the field. The dynamics of the decision-making, including the major players and their interests, are still largely hidden. Secrecy such as this always risks compromising the quality of policymaking and problem analysis: too few voices are heard, alternative viewpoints are excluded, basic assumptions underpinning the policy are unexamined while the risks are minimised and the benefits exaggerated. As a result, alternative – better – courses of action may be overlooked.
Most of the public justification has focused simplistically on the potential for local job creation, while the prospect that the AUKUS agreement “binds decisively Australia to the United States and Great Britain for generations”, as a US press briefing asserted, has been downplayed by Defence Minister Richard Marles.
This dramatic shift in Australia’s defence and foreign policy was engineered without Australians being consulted or fully informed of the reasoning behind the costliest defence project in Australia’s history, one with profound implications the nation’s defence and security. Many reasonable questions remain ignored and unanswered.
Chief among them is why the agreement was necessary at all. The fundamental question, put by several of the witnesses to the crowd-funded public inquiry into AUKUS, is precisely how the agreement is supposed to improve our security.
Serious and detailed arguments have simply not been advanced. The recent implausible justification for the decision to accept three used submarines – rather than one new sub and two second-hand boats – is a case in point.
Nor is it clear how the government intends to resolve the contradiction between our stated desire for self-reliance and the fact that AUKUS ties Australia tightly to the US war posture managed by an increasingly unstable and unpredictable regime.
Reasonable people may ask why we are signing up to the US project aimed at “containing” China and risking involvement in a war over Taiwan. For Western Australia, where the Stirling Base will play host to an increasing number of US nuclear-powered (and armed) submarines, this question is especially pertinent.
Overarching questions – such as whether closer integration with the US will lead to the loss of strategic control of our defence and whether the deal complies with nuclear non-proliferation agreements to which Australia is signatory – have not been subjected to scrutiny.
The government has apparently not managed to assuage the profound reservations among ASEAN nations about the foreign policy implications of the agreement, especially for our relationships with our near neighbours.
Uncertainties about whether the core element of the AUKUS agreement, the purchase and construction of nuclear-powered submarines, is in Australia’s best interests – or even achievable – also need to be aired and debated beyond the pages of specialist foreign policy and defence journals and conferences.
This is made even more pressing by the resignation on Thursday of UK Defence Secretary John Healey, who cited inadequate defence spending as the reason for his departure. Informed observers, including the former head of the Australian Defence Force, Chris Barrie, have already expressed serious doubts about the projected costs, delivery schedules and nuclear waste management protocols, as well as Australia’s capacity to deliver the technical expertise.
The possibility that the technology may be superseded needs expert investigation and disclosure. The fundamental question, put by several of the witnesses to the AUKUS public inquiry, is precisely how the agreement is supposed to improve our security.
What is clear is that the expected processes of security policy development and defence equipment acquisition were not followed, and Australian citizens were kept in the dark. The risk this poses to faith in government and willingness to accept its decisions is obvious and dangerous in a climate where political trust and engagement are already at alarmingly low levels.
Occasions where secrecy in policy development is justified are rare. And the AUKUS decision is not one of them – not least because of its monumental scale.
Ideally, policy proposals should be subjected to public scrutiny and challenge ahead of their adoption; secrecy is anathema to democracy, a governing system which depends for its legitimacy on the informed consent of the governed and on accountable institutions. The free flow of information is critical in ensuring that those holding power are subjected to checks within and outside the government: from public servants, independent courts, an independent press and civil society.
Informed public debate is only possible when the information to and from government is not distorted by vested interests, manipulation and deception, or restrictions on allowable communication. The AUKUS agreement appears to fail on all these counts.
Carmen Lawrence is a former Labor premier of Western Australia and federal minister. She is one of five commissioners conducting a crowd-funded public inquiry into AUKUS.
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Dr Carmen Lawrence was a research psychologist before enteringpolitics in 1986, becoming the first woman premier of a state government. She is now a Senior Honorary Research Fellow and Professor Emerita at UWA’s School of Psychological Science.
