AUKUS, Port Kembla and why Gough Whitlam Would Roll in His Grave

Fifty years ago, Gough Whitlam finally put a stop to Australia’s nuclear plans at Jervis Bay. Known as Booderee by the Traditional Custodians, it’s now a national park and Aboriginal land owned by the Wreck Bay Aboriginal Community. But less than 100km up the road at Port Kembla, Australian Labor is now proposing a nuclear submarine base.

Port Kembla isn’t just an empty industrial sacrifice zone. It is a living community. It’s steelworkers and surfers, migrant families and artists, beaches and rainforest escarpment, lyrebirds, quolls, sea turtles and sea Country. It is a place on Dharawal Country with cultural depth, ecological richness and working-class pride.

But the Guardian Newspaper has reported on secretive government documents that list Port Kembla as the preferred east coast base for nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS. The documents even warn that the base could make the region a military target.

Think about that. A nuclear submarine base and a nuclear target in the Illawarra. With multiple nuclear reactors coming and going secretively on submarines fuelled by highly enriched uranium. The documents admit “nuclear submarines may be far riskier because … highly enriched uranium … is more like the uranium used in nuclear warheads … and they store enough to operate for over 30 years.”

And then comes the waste. Australia still has no permanent high-level nuclear waste facility. Yet AUKUS will create exactly that problem: radioactive waste that will need to be managed for millenia. The risk is obvious. First they’ll say it is only a base. Then they’ll say waste management must happen somewhere. Then communities like Port Kembla will be told to be “practical”.

The old insult has been that places like Newcastle and Port Kembla are just industrial towns: useful, expendable, not beautiful enough to defend. But the Illawarra region deserves investment in clean industries, renewables, housing, education, climate resilience and First Nations-led care for Country - not a nuclear militarisation project that ties Australia more tightly to American war mongering and makes us a direct target when someone like Trump chooses his next fight in our region.

Gough Whitlam would be appalled if he were alive today and knew of this. Especially because it’s coming from the Australian Labor Party which he led and which has supposedly prided itself on a long-standing anti-nuclear stance.

Photo of Port Kembla Beach from the Illawarra Region newspaper.