After being toppled by his own MPs in 2018, former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull vowed he would not hang around his successors like a ‘miserable ghost’. He hasn’t kept his promise.
Turnbull has delivered a coruscating critique of the strategic partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States – known as Aukus. In particular, he has attacked its key feature: the US selling Australia up to three Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines, followed by an Aukus-specific class of nuclear boats developed jointly by Australia and Britain, based on the Royal Navy’s Astute class. Turnbull said that it is ‘stark, raving bonkers’ to presume these submarines will ever be delivered.
Strategically, Aukus is a Good Thing. It deepens cooperation between three close allies; it bolsters Australia’s naval capability to counter China’s growing military threat in the Indo-Pacific region; gives both Britain and the US a stronger Indian Ocean presence; and underpins the provision to Australia, by the US and Britain, of the very latest and best nuclear boats.
Politically, however, Aukus is fraught. The three leaders who created the partnership in 2021 – Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Scott Morrison – are long out of office, and their political opponents have inherited Aukus with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
