AUKUS: An Expensive Way To Make Australia Less Safe

Has anyone else noticed how Anthony Albanese spruiks AUKUS with the gloss of “jobs”. Yes, shipbuilding jobs are real jobs. They matter. But if the argument a $368 billion program has to rely on jobs ads, it's already confessing its strategic weakness.

Because AUKUS isn't a jobs programme with a side-order of submarines. It is a multi-decade, multi-hundred-billion-dollar commitment to a very narrow capability pathway, underwritten by the US political system which is increasingly unstable and unreliable, and sold to Aussies through a fog of secrecy, symbolism, and alliance sentimentality. (Sorry that was a long sentence!)

The first problem: the “jobs” frame is a decoy

The government’s headline numbers and funding announcements are designed to make AUKUS feel tangible now: dollars committed, cranes in the air, apprentices in hard hats. Like $3.9 billion to progress a shipyard build in South Australia.

But the strategic core of AUKUS isn't a shipyard. It's the submarines, the supply chains, the nuclear reactor stewardship, the combat systems, the weapons integration, the training pipeline, the sovereign sustainment - which is a big worry given that Donald Trump will almost certainly be controlling them - and the political permissions that sit over the top of all of it.

Jobs don't equal sovereignty. Jobs don't equal deliverable capability. Jobs don't equal agency. Indeed, if AUKUS does keep going ahead, Australia will probably employ hundreds of people building the scaffolding for a capability that we never receive. That's a very expensive job creation program.

The second problem: the delivery risk isn't a footnote, it is the story

AUKUS’s most politically awkward truth is the one Malcolm Turnbull keeps pointing at: Australia is becoming more dependent on the US at the same moment the US is becoming less dependable.

Even if you love the alliance, this should make you nervous. AUKUS relies on American industrial capacity and American political will at precisely the moment these are under strain and volatility.

Australia can be enthusiastic. Australia can be loyal. Australia can be ready with chequebook open. But none of that will guarantee submarines.

Turnbull’s blunt assessment, echoed in serious reporting, is that America will prioritise its own fleet requirements, and that Australia has no enforceable guarantee of delivery if US politics or production falls short. And let's be honest, hope isn't a deterrent posture.

The third problem: AUKUS is dependency dressed as sovereignty

This is the psychological trick at the heart of the AUKUS pitch. Nuclear submarines are prestige platforms. They signal seriousness. They look like “great power” kit. They photograph well in ministerial announcements.

But sovereignty isn't a vibe. It's a capability: the ability to defend yourself without waiting for another country’s permission, spare parts, software updates, or political clearance.

AUKUS, as currently structured, expands the number of points at which Australia must wait.

If Australia’s future undersea capability is contingent on US production schedules, US congressional politics, US export controls, US workforce constraints, and US strategic priorities, then the arrangement isn't sovereign. It's deeply conditional. As France's foreign minister has said, Australia risks sacrificing sovereignty “for the sake of security”, and losing both.

The fourth problem: the democratic deficit is now a feature, not a bug

Mega-decisions in a democracy should come with maximum contestability: clear logic, clear risks, fallback options, and clear legal and fiscal scrutiny. Instead, AUKUS arrived in the middle of the night thanks to Scott Morrison's secrecy. Like many bad national commitments, it arrived suddenly, grandly, and as a fait accompli.

And under Labor, the democratic settings haven't improved. A “secret” parliamentary committee has been established to scrutinise AUKUS, controlled by Labor and the Liberals. The crossbench is excluded. If that sounds like a system designed to prevent disruption rather than enable oversight, that's because it is.

The fifth problem: the opportunity cost is strategic, not just economic

A basic point that Labor and Liberal keep hoping people won’t say out loud is the opportunity cost is immense. You don't spend hundreds of billions on one narrow defence capability and still get to pretend you can fund all the other things modern defence requires: drones, missiles, surveillance, cyber, resilient supply chains, northern base hardening, and the unglamorous but decisive work of making Australia very hard to coerce.

The future of conflict is accelerating. Ukraine has shown how fast battlefields are changing. Betting on a platform that may arrive decades late and will be potentially obsolete on arrival, is not “long-term planning”. It's strategic inertia with a massive invoice attached.

The sixth problem: AUKUS will make us less safe by making us look like a threat

And here is my final and harder truth about AUKUS: it will make Australia less safe. Call it “poking the panda” if you like. The strategic point is simple. Nuclear-powered Australian submarines, or even the looming prospect of them, are not interpreted in the region as neutral or defensive infrastructure. They're seen as a sign Australia that is choosing to become a forward-operating extension of the Trump Regime's power.

That perception matters. It shapes how neighbours read our intentions, how regional states hedge against us, and how Beijing assesses our role in a crisis.

China isn't poised to invade Australia. Geography alone tempers that fantasy - Beijing is closer to Berlin than it is to Sydney. But tying ourselves ever tighter to US force posture, and building a capability designed to operate alongside US submarines in contested theatres, makes Australia much more salient in great power competition. It increases the chance we are treated as a participant, not a bystander.

If you want a country to see you as a problem, keep telling it you're buying the tools to stalk it underwater for the next half century.

Deterrence is one thing. Provocation dressed up as deterrence is another. This is the part of the AUKUS story that rarely gets a full hearing: in supposedly buying insurance against a distant contingency, we're actually increasing the likelihood of becoming entangled in someone else’s nearer conflict.

So what should Australia do?

It's simple, we should ask the adult question: does Australia want defence that looks impressive, or defence that's actually ours?

A more credible posture is the one many serious analysts argue for: diversify, hedge, thicken the regional network, and invest in capabilities we can field, sustain, and scale without begging for foreign permission.

Because if the sales pitch is “jobs”, the fine print is “dependence”. And if AUKUS is something that Scott Morrison made up in secret, that should be a massive red flag .

The biggest and most strategic risk is that AUKUS doesn't just narrow our options. It narrows our margin for error, and makes us a more targetable and entangled player in a contest we don't need to be part of and can't control.

AUKUS is a very expensive way to make Australia less safe.