David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The British empire in our region was not only unpopular; it was antidemocratic, it was imposed by martial law, and it stole from the people of the region their wealth, their dignity and their self-determination. They traded knowingly in drugs in China, in a global opium trade, knowing the damage it caused for about a century, to destroy people's lives, millions of people's lives, in China. They did it purely for profit. When I say it's about as popular as a fart in an elevator, that is about the nicest possible term I can apply to the UK's empire in this region. When the people in our region see us wanting to bring the UK back into the region—they finally got rid of them through independence movements, and we're inviting them back—we look like some throwback to the 19th century. It's like we're trying to reimagine the Anglosphere, with a white colonial lens over our relations with the region. When our neighbours, whether it's Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand or China, see us inviting the former imperial power back into the region, they say, 'Who the hell are you?' Why won't Australia realise we live in the region in the 21st century? Our neighbours in the region loathe the idea of us inviting the UK back into the region with nuclear submarines and defence plans.

If we take that cultural hit, that diplomatic hit, that people-to-people hit, what do we get in return? We get to bail out a failing meltdown of a nuclear submarine industry in the UK that pretty much every informed observer says has Buckley's chance of producing a nuclear reactor or meaningfully contributing to our defence via nuclear submarines. We're literally bailing out the sick man of Europe in 2025, inviting them back into their former empire and saying to our region: 'We don't understand that we belong in the region. We want to bring back the UK and the US as some kind of Anglosphere military domination of the region.' Our region loathes that, and that's what this treaty does. If you want to do that, if that's your plan for Australia's future, vote for this bill.

The Greens reject that future. We say we should be proudly part of our region. We should be engaging not with some fading, economically spiralling former imperial power on a modest sized island off Europe for our future; we should be engaging with our region. Our future security—our future economic relations and our future as a prosperous and positive nation—lies in our region, not in inviting Queen Bess back to ride in with a 21st century battleship to try and protect us in 2025.

This treaty sets in stone and makes clear that Australia is at the bottom rung of AUKUS as well, with the UK making all critical decisions on the design of the yet-to-be-built AUKUS nuclear submarines and Australia once again funnelling billions and billions of dollars into it. For those following along at home, we've already paid billions of dollars to the UK, and who has that money gone to? Instead of spending it on schools and hospitals and putting food on the table for Australians, the Albanese Labor government has given billions and billions of dollars to Rolls-Royce in the UK. That's who's getting the money from Labor—Rolls-Royce. That's what this bill intends to facilitate—more money going to Rolls-Royce. It's obscene!

When you read about this deal—the so-called Geelong Treaty, which is obviously some kind of ego driven term that is aimed to appease the august Deputy Prime Minister—it makes clear that Australia will be responsible for high-, low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste from UK submarines in Australia. We'll take their waste. There's the limited exception of spent nuclear fuel, but all the other waste produced by UK nuclear submarines—we'll take it, for the hundreds and thousands of years that it's toxic. The deal also sees Australia waive all claims of liability on the transfer of AUKUS nuclear submarines. So they can sell us duds—they can have a meltdown in Sydney Harbour—and the UK can just whistle at us: 'Sorry, former colony; you can't get anything from us, but thanks very much for the billions. We really liked it. The executives in Rolls-Royce are very grateful.'

My colleague Senator Whish-Wilson sat on the inquiry into this treaty, and I thank him for the work that he did. The Greens also issued a dissenting report to the consideration of the treaty and this bill. The majority report from the war parties, Labor and the coalition, contained a bunch of recommendations basically proposing that we implement the bill. But it has been made abundantly clear—