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

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee for inquiry and report by 1 June 2026:

The AUKUS agreement and its implications for Australia's environment, safety and independence, with particular reference to:

(a) the advice and analysis provided to the Government before and following the AUKUS agreement;

(b) the implications of AUKUS and the acquisition of nuclear submarines for militarisation and stability in the region;

(c) the implications of the AUKUS agreement for Australia's foreign policy and defence policy including the projected role of AUKUS submarines in defending Australia;

(d) the capacity of the United States of America (USA) and United Kingdom (UK) nuclear submarine industries to provide Australia with either existing Virginia class submarines or future SSN-AUKUS submarines;

(e) the impact on the balance of Australia's defence capacity given the scale of resources required for AUKUS nuclear submarine acquisitions and procurement;

(f) the impact of the AUKUS agreement on Australia's international obligations and adherence to international law;

(g) the impact on Australia's defence in the event the UK and/or the USA cannot provide the submarines envisaged by the AUKUS project and considerations given to an alternative plan;

(h) the management and storage of nuclear waste and its impact on First Nations land and communities; and

(i) any other related matters.

I understand that the government is going to viciously oppose this; seek to gag it, perhaps; and end it before even having a debate on a referral. That, I think, highlights how scared the government is, how scared Labor is, about giving the public the chance to have its voice heard on AUKUS, giving independent experts in defence and security the chance to provide their opinions and their considerations of just how dangerous and reckless AUKUS is, and also about permitting the rational assessment of what is in Australia's national interest. Of course they're scared of a merits based debate on this. Of course they're scared about giving the public a right to be heard, because Labor know there is so little support for their pro-Donald-Trump ties to the United States war plans, which they picked up, having taken them out of the microwave, when handed to them by Scott Morrison.

You only have to look at the most recent polling of the Australian public when it comes to support for tying us to the United States and Donald Trump. We've had Defence Minister Marles repeatedly talk about how much he loves the United States—at times, you wonder who he got elected by—and how his shared values that he has with the United States and Australia's shared values with the United States are one of his reasons for tying himself, Australia and our Defence Force to Donald Trump. But, of course, polling released today from the Australia Institute shows only eight per cent of people strongly agree with the proposition that the defence minister has when he talks of shared values with the United States.

The Australian people want this parliament to ask tough questions about defence. They want us to ask: 'Will we ever get nuclear submarines? Surely there would be something be to do with $375 billion than invest in nuclear submarines we'll never get from either the UK or the US.' But instead of listening to the public and hearing those calls for transparency, we have a Labor government that is going down the warpath. Indeed, we've got a Labor government that seems to be so taken up with its love of weapons, with its love of war plans, that we have statements, including from the defence minister, that surely must trouble even some Labor backbenchers.

As we're having this debate here, there is a weapons expo happening in Sydney, the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition. It's an international weapons fair paid for by Chris Minns's Labor government of New South Wales and also by the defence department as funded by Prime Minister Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles. Labor, state and federal, is funding an international weapons expo happening right now in Sydney. Of course, they've invited Israeli weapons manufacturers, manufacturers who have tested weapons on Palestinians, to the ultimate shame of Labor.

What did Labor Defence Minister Marles say at the opening of that weapons fair? It shows their attitude and why Labor is so keen to take us down a path of more weapons and more war, tying us in to US military plans. He kicked it off by saying:

I know that Admiral Hammond has literally been salivating—

These are Defence Minister Marles's words—

about the prospect of the Sea Power conference this year, to have so many chiefs of Navy congregated in one spot is a kind of version of Navy Disneyland.

Instead of seeing a collection of international arms dealers with weapons designed to kill as many people as efficiently as possible as a threat to human safety or as a moment in which you could reflect upon the anxiety of a global weapons fair, Defence Minister Richard Marles sees it as a Navy Disneyland.

He goes on. He then starts waxing lyrical about how much loves weapons and how much he loves machines designed to kill as many people as possible. You couldn't make this up, so I'll just read onto the record what Richard Marles said—

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Shoebridge, just a reminder to refer to those from the other place with their correct title.

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

A very good reminder. I will read onto the record what Labor's defence minister Richard Marles said this morning at an international arms fair:

And here on the Expo side of it, we will be seeing an incredible display of what our industry can produce; awesome power, ingenious autonomous systems and craft of all shapes and sizes which spread, which span the breadth of the beautiful, the menacing and the extremely cool.

That's the defence minister talking about robotic weapons. That's the defence minister talking about missiles. That's the defence minister talking about artillery pieces. That's the defence minister talking about machines whose only purpose is to kill people, and he defines them as 'beautiful' and 'extremely cool'. What is wrong with Minister Marles? What is going on in his head for him to describe weapons of death in a weapons fair as 'extremely cool' and 'beautiful'? Does this reflect some Labor values that have been hidden and are now coming to the surface, where Labor salivates at a 'Disneyland' of 'beautiful' and 'cool' weapons? That's what Labor's been doing today.

Is it any wonder that thousands of young people and others gathered outside that and opposed Labor's festival of death and festival of cool killing? Is it any wonder? I want to put on the record my gratitude to everybody who came out and peacefully opposed that weapons fair. They came out and said, 'Our governments should not be investing in death and war.' I want to thank my Greens colleagues in the New South Wales parliament for challenging Chris Minns when he steps up and says, as he did today, that he wants the defence industries to be a massive part of the future plan of New South Wales.

The Greens have a different view, which is not investing in weapons, killing and death; not sending weapons into a genocide; and not promoting lethal autonomous weapons as, to quote Defence Minister Marles, 'extremely cool'. We think that the global weapons industry is a threat to our collective survival. We can see far better things to do with $375 billion than give those kinds of fantasy moments to Defence Minister Marles in his dystopian, disturbing and indeed incredibly skewed world view.

Of course, AUKUS isn't just designed to give Defence Minister Marles his Disneyland death moments. AUKUS is also designed to take Australia into the next US war with China. We should be clear about that. Apart from climate change, Labor's plans to take us into a US war with China is probably the most serious security issue facing Australia, and, saying that plainly—that the Albanese Labor government is actively making plans to take Australia into a future US war with China—shows what a risk this is. That's what Labor is doing now. War with China would be disastrous for Australia, disastrous for China, disastrous for our region and disastrous for the world. Rather than lean into it, as Labor is doing, and seek to join the US in that war, tied to the hip with the US under AUKUS, the Greens reject that analysis. We reject Labor's theory that war is inevitable. While war is far from inevitable, the Albanese government's boots-and-all commitment to AUKUS and its surrender to Trump's war-making plans does risk fuelling a foolish and dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy to drag Australia into war.

Under the guise of AUKUS, Labor has been inviting a major US military build-up on our shores. Far from keeping us safe, that escalates regional tensions. It leads in turn to more US military build-up, and that non-virtuous military spiral is where Australia's security is indeed the biggest loser. Multiple war games have shown that the war Labor's making plans for will most likely produce one of two outcomes: either the US loses, or everyone loses due to catastrophic civilian, military and economic losses. That's the war that Labor wants to take us to. That is the war that the Albanese government wants to divert hundreds of billions of public dollars to join, to fight—I say alongside but probably from behind and as directed by the US military. What makes it worse is when you realise that it'll be Australia, not the US, that will be on the new front lines of this future war. Australia is not currently part of the front lines of any war, but we'll not be put on the front lines of this war by accident. It will be by design, and, to its eternal shame, it's a design that's being approved by and largely paid for by our own government.

For the past decade, the US has begun to accept that many of its existing forward military bases in the region, from Japan south, are incredibly vulnerable to military attack if the US initiated a war in the Pacific. That has led the US to look for a sucker somewhere south—to seek more and larger bases in Australia that, whilst still in the Asia-Pacific, are less vulnerable to being destroyed in the first 24 to 48 hours of a conflict. And what does that expansion look like? It looks like AUKUS. It looks like an $8 billion US nuclear submarine attack base being built by Australian taxpayers at HMAS Stirling in Garden Island, off Perth, right next to an expanded $25 billion Defence precinct.

Debate interrupted.