Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the unamended passage of the Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025. That is because, importantly, it gives effect to Australia's obligation under what is widely known as the Geelong treaty, a bilateral agreement between Australia and the United Kingdom on a key part of the AUKUS defence partnership. The treaty is also more formally known as the Nuclear-Powered Submarine Partnership and Collaboration Agreement between the Government of Australia and the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The treaty was signed in Geelong on 26 July 2025 by the Australian Minister for Defence, Richard Marles, and his UK counterpart, Mr John Healey.

This bill and this treaty underpin collaboration between Australia and the UK under Pillar I of AUKUS, supporting the design, construction, operation, sustainment and regulation of nuclear powered submarines. The key purpose of this bill is to give legislative expression to article XXI of the Geelong treaty, which requires both nations to waive customs duties, excise and similar charges on goods imported or exported under this treaty. It ensures that eligible goods used as part of the redesign, manufacture and deployment of AUKUS submarines can move freely between Australia and the UK, without unnecessary financial barriers. At a technical level, its key changes are to insert item 58A into schedule 4 of the Customs Tariff Act 1995, providing a duty-free rate for qualifying goods for use under the Geelong treaty; to define 'Geelong treaty' into law; and to apply concessions to both future and certain unprocessed past imports when the treaty enters into force.

The coalition supports this bill for a number of reasons, including, fundamentally, that it helps to deliver on Australia's AUKUS commitments. Passage of the bill would mark a technical but significant step toward full implementation of the AUKUS submarine program. Importantly, it also facilitates deeper industrial and technological integration with the UK, one of our two AUKUS partners, alongside the United States. It deliberately has focused and targeted application. The new trade concessions apply only to goods for use under the treaty, safeguarding against any misuse or unintended benefit for importers or exporters trading in unrelated imports. It is therefore limited to defence related goods under government-to-government or authorised contractor arrangements. It also has minimal budgetary implications, with customs duties forgone in Australia largely expected to be offset by reciprocal measures in the UK. In addition, there'll be no widescale new administrative burdens for business, as the treaty applies only to approved defence related imports. The legislation has also already been endorsed by the coalition representatives on the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties, and we should maintain this stance in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Overall, the bill is straightforward and it enables legislative measures that directly align with Australia's AUKUS commitments, enhance the Australia-UK defence partnership and, importantly, advance Australia's strategic capability under Pillar I of AUKUS.

(Quorum formed)

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of this bill, the Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025, which forms part of Australia's deep and enduring partnership with the United Kingdom. AUKUS represents a world renowned opportunity to uplift Australia's capability, and it strengthens our partnerships with our most trusted allies.

Australia is a respected voice on the international stage, due in no small part to the tireless work of our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Penny Wong, whose leadership has restored and enhanced Australia's standing, particularly in our region but also across the globe. Our diplomatic efforts are fortified by our security here at home. We have a capable, modern defence force that underpins our commitment to peace and deterrence. Australia stands firmly for a rules based international order. We make no apology for supporting our democratic allies, nor for backing the multilateral institutions that help resolve disputes peacefully and prevent conflict.

As the Chair of the Defence Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, I have travelled with my fellow committee members across the country meeting with academics, industry leaders, think tanks and Defence officials. Our current inquiry, into the Defence annual report 2023-24, has revealed the scale of change now underway in our strategic posture. Australia is leveraging our natural advantages by orienting our defence capability to the north and investing in sea power, ensuring we can respond with agility and strength to potential threats.

Central to this transformation is the AUKUS partnership. The acquisition of Virginia class submarines followed by the SSN-AUKUS is pivotal to Australia's ability to deter conflict. These submarines are the apex predators of the sea—capable, stealthy and strategically decisive. Complementary littoral capabilities in the Army will strengthen this posture, giving Australia the capacity to deploy and manoeuvre rapidly across our region. One Defence leader recently put to me that the Australian Army of the future may well become the largest navy in the region. Such is the scale of the transformation before us.

Let me be absolutely clear: Australia seeks nothing but peace. All our families yearn for that, and Australians are committed to the peace of the world. If these submarines never see conflict, they will in fact have done their job. Maintaining peace requires preparation, and preparation requires vigilance. My role as Chair of the Defence Subcommittee is to ensure that the Australian Defence Force is ready, capable and accountable because every dollar spent must work hard in the national interest. Defence is in many ways our national insurance policy. We hope we never have to draw on it, but when the unexpected comes, as history tells us it can, it's an immense relief to know that we're ready.

Australia's cooperation with the United Kingdom and the United States is longstanding and deeply woven into our history. This was made starkly clear during my recent visit to Darwin, where the memory of the 1942 bombings remains alive in the community. It's a part of the collective psyche. Without the support of our allies during that dark chapter, Australia's defence would have been far more precarious.

Importantly, AUKUS is not only a defence story. It's a nation-building story. This treaty will underpin our bilateral cooperation for at least 50 years. In doing so, it will support the construction of Australia's conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines and will create around 20,000 secure, high-skill, long-term jobs.

It struck me, as the committee was undertaking its inquiry last week, that in the time since I left school we've seen an erosion of long-term employment for Australians. So many jobs have been shifting as the economy has been changing and the nature of living has been changing. With support for industry now, particularly in shipbuilding, we will arrive at a point where it will be possible for people who are going into training now to have the chance of a lifelong career building amazing ships that support the defence of our nation and the growth of our economy. This is a very significant change for Australians. For those who might be in the chamber listening to my contribution today or those across this great nation who have got the wireless tuned in to hear what's happening, this is something that should not be lost. We are able to take steps to advance this possibility of hi-tech, high-skilled engagement in an authentic way in innovation for our nation through our strategic partnership with both the US and the UK.

I know how much the Minister for Defence, who hails from Geelong, has invested in that community—and don't we all know how proud he is to be a boy from Geelong! To now have the Geelong treaty as part of our nation's history and our shared collaboration with the UK is no small thing. It is in fact a deeply significant, symbolic, practical and historic moment.

What's really great about this project is that there will be good, secure jobs. In an era when work is too often insecure and fragmented, we have the prospect of well-paid, long-term employment positions, giving people a chance to build skills, raise a family and retire with dignity. This is an opportunity we are seizing with both hands. AUKUS will certainly drive a generational uplift in Australian skills, and it will create a thriving ecosystem of local industries supporting and sustaining this capability.

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the Henderson defence precinct, ably guided by my Western Australian colleague Senator Ellie Whiteaker. What I saw there was defence industry and maritime businesses working together, sharing expertise, pooling resources and strengthening the sovereign capability that keeps Australia safe. There is so much for us to do and so much more that can happen in this space.

I encourage all members of this chamber—and I note the agreement of the opposition in their first contribution to this debate—to support the Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill as a critical part of developing the infrastructure for the ongoing renewal of our industry, the defence of our nation and the honouring of our partnerships with like-minded countries that aspire to a world at peace where the rule of law prevails.

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

I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate we oppose the Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025, which follows on from the treaty signed between the UK and Australia on 26 July 2025 as part of AUKUS. If you want Australia to go and join the next US war, if you want Australia to spend billions of dollars trying to bail out the UK's failing meltdown of a nuclear submarine industry, if you want to see $375 billion of Australian taxpayers' money not spent on schools, housing, dealing with the climate catastrophe or making sure kids have enough to eat, if you want to hand over our sovereignty to decisions made in Washington, if you want to expand US bases on this continent and build the United States an $8 billion or $9 billion submarine base off of Perth, if you want to make Australia a nuclear target by expanding US bases in Pine Gap, Tindall and Stirling and building the US an east-coast submarine base in Newcastle or Wollongong—if you want those outcomes, then vote for this bill. That's what this bill does. It takes us down that path, to the beat of the drums of warmongers in Washington and the war parties here, Labor and the coalition.

If you want to go down the path of joining the next US war, with a lawless, increasingly fascist regime in Washington that has no interest in the so-called rules based order, that's selling out its allies as we speak and that is about as trustworthy as—well—Donald Trump, support this bill. That's what this bill does. This bill implements aspects of the UK-Australia agreement, specifically article 21 of the treaty, which requires the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Australia not to impose value added taxes, excise, custom duties and other similar charges on imports and exports of goods in connection with that treaty—basically, largely, AUKUS related stuff.

In one view, this doesn't really matter, because there's next to zero chance that the UK's failing industrial capacity will produce nuclear reactors or come close to producing an SSN-AUKUS submarine. Their own audit office says that their projects are in meltdown, their defence budget is in collapse, their economy is failing and their politics are fraying. Who would choose the UK as a partner for security in the Indo-Pacific now? Only someone who is ignorant of the reality of the UK's budget, economy and position in the world. So, in one view, this might not be relevant, because there's Buckley's chance of this actually coming into play. The problem is in the pretence that the UK can be a meaningful security partner for Australia in the Indo-Pacific in 2025. To remind the chamber, this isn't 1925, when they had an empire in this region, which was about as popular as a fart in an elevator. They got eventually thrown out by independence movements in our region, which wanted the UK out of the region and not to return—

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Shoebridge, I'll interrupt you for a moment, if you could take a seat. I'm going to commence by saying you haven't technically broken any of the rules of the Senate. With this being a week when we're trying to manage respectful practice and also respectful language, I'd just ask you to review some of the more colourful phrases that have popped into your contribution. I give you the floor again.

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

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Shoebridge, you will be in continuation. It being 12.15, we will proceed to senators' statements.