Anthony Albanese has signalled Australia will retain full operational control of nuclear submarines acquired under the Aukus pact in any circumstances where there was a conflict over military strategy with the US and UK.
During the second world war, then Australian prime minister John Curtin found himself in direct conflict with the British government when Winston Churchill demanded Australian troops be deployed to Burma. But Curtin insisted troops return to defend Australia after the fall of Singapore in 1942.
Asked on Wednesday what would happen in a situation like the one Curtin faced with Churchill, whether Australia would be in full control of the submarines or whether our independence could be muddied by operational oversight by the US or UK, the prime minister said: “Australia will maintain our sovereignty.”
Albanese said the deployment of military assets in the event of any conflict was “a decision for Australia as a sovereign nation, just as the United States will maintain its sovereignty and the United Kingdom will maintain its”.
The prime minister used a speech to the National Press Club on Wednesday to foreshadow increased defence spending as a consequence of the looming government response to the Defence Strategic Review, while characterising the Aukus security arrangement between Australia, the US and the UK as “the future”.
There is persistent speculation the next steps in the Aukus pact will be outlined by the three alliance partners in the US in March.
Paul Keating has previously raised concerns about the potential for Aukus to erode Australian sovereignty. Keating has contended Aukus will see Australia’s strategic sovereignty “outsourced to another state, a North Atlantic state, the United States” which is dangerous, given the US had “no idea what to do with itself in Asia”.
Keating’s concerns about sovereignty are shared by another former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull has been calling on the government to answer whether nuclear submarines could be “operated, sustained and maintained by Australia without the support or supervision of the US navy”, and whether that effectively meant “sovereignty would be shared with the US”.
Concerns about a diminution of Australian sovereignty were heightened back in 2021 when Biden’s top Indo-Pacific adviser, Kurt Campbell, observed that Aukus would lead to “a deeper interconnection and almost a melding in many respects of our services and working together on common purpose that we couldn’t have dreamed about five or 10 years ago”.
Campbell later clarified his remarks. “I fully understand how important sovereignty and independence is for Australia. So I don’t want to leave any sense that somehow that would be lost,” he said during an Australian webinar ahead of the 2022 election.
The sustained controversy has prompted the defence minister, Richard Marles, to declare in a speech to parliament that acquiring nuclear-powered submarines would “dramatically enhance” Australia’s sovereignty, rather than undermine it.
The head of Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine taskforce says Australia will retain full operational control over the submarines, while potentially having US or British engineers on board to provide technical advice.
During Wednesday’s speech at the National Press Club, Albanese hinted that Australia needed to expand its nuclear research as part of Aukus, saying the arrangement would lead to “greater exchanges as well and greater knowledge buildup”.
Albanese said that in order to “back up the assurance of sovereignty” Australia needed to build up its “human capability” – not just “capability in terms of things that are metal and shiny”. “That’s very much a part of our focus and our thinking,” he added.
The prime minister also strongly backed the Asio chief, Mike Burgess, who has stepped up his warnings about espionage and foreign interference.
Burgess used his annual threat assessment speech the previous night to say he was “concerned that there are senior people in this country who appear to believe that espionage and foreign interference is no big deal”.
Burgess said some unnamed “individuals in business, academia and the bureaucracy have told me Asio should ease up its operational responses to avoid upsetting foreign regimes”. At no stage did Burgess suggest ministers were among those urging Asio to rein in its work.
But Albanese said on Wednesday he wanted to make clear “that Asio is doing the right thing and that they have the support of my government in all of their actions”.
