Australia’s submarine agency insists the Aukus agreement is progressing “at pace and on schedule”, but sceptics of the $368bn deal argue the chances of the US ever selling promised Virginia-class submarines to Australia are increasingly remote.
The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has said the Australian government is engaged “in an exercise of denial” about the parlous state of Aukus’s progress, while the Greens senator David Shoebridge said the deal was a “pantomime”, hopelessly one-sided in the US’s favour.
