Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy takes as tough stance as he plays down AUKUS diplomatic storm
Australia’s Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy has taken a tough stance over the latest diplomatic storm with China, saying “the best way of securing peace is deterring war”.
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The suggestion that Australia’s nuclear submarines could one day be used in a war over Taiwan by one of US President Joe Biden’s top diplomats was “pretty unremarkable”, according to Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy.
In an exclusive interview, Mr Conroy also dismissed the angry reaction from China over US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell’s commentary on AUKUS as “understood and expected”.
Dr Campbell last week said Australia’s future nuclear vessels would have “enormous implications in a variety of scenarios including in cross-strait circumstances” – explicitly linking the pact to Taiwan’s fate in a way other AUKUS leaders had been reluctant to do.
Chinese government spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian said the comment was “very dangerous” and would “endanger peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait”.
But Mr Conroy took a tough stance as he played down the diplomatic storm, declaring: “The best way of securing peace is deterring war.”
“Increasing the number of the most advanced submarines in the world being in the arsenal of the alliance – that’s about deterring conflict,” he said.
It came as Kevin Rudd, Australia’s ambassador to the US, used a major speech to declare that despite the recent stabilisation in relations with China, Australia and the US needed to remain “deeply sober” about the future of Taiwan.
“There is nothing in our analysis which suggests that China’s strategic intentions in relation to Taiwan, nor its military preparations for achieving that objective by force, have in any way changed,” he told the US Naval Academy’s foreign affairs conference.
“In fact, they continue apace.”
Mr Conroy was speaking in Washington DC, where he revealed America’s biggest military shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls Industries had struck a deal with Australia’s Bisalloy Steel to trial their steel for use in building the Virginia-class submarines Australia will buy in the 2030s.
The firm will be the first Australian company to supply HII’s construction of nuclear vessels, with Mr Conroy saying it was a critical step forward in the AUKUS pact, given 70 per cent of the components used in the Virginia-class boats came from “sole source” suppliers.
HII executive vice president Eric Chewning said the company was also working with another 300 Australian companies to see if they could be included in their supply chain.
In the interview, Mr Conroy acknowledged the submarine program risked being hit with delays and cost overruns, describing it as “the most complex industrial work that happens on the planet”.
But he said the UK was on track to finish the design of the SSN-AUKUS – the submarine that will eventually be built in South Australia – within the next two years, and that the UK would bear more of the risk as it built two submarines before Australia finished its first.
Mr Conroy also echoed Defence Minister Richard Marles’s warning about the need to improve the culture and limit the resistance to change among Australia’s defence bureaucrats.
“We’ve been very clear that we want to lift capability in the department. They’re very good people, but we need greater capability,” he said.
“If you’ve got people who don’t have confidence in their capabilities, they’re going to be very risk-averse and wrap everything in red tape. I don’t want that. I want people to move faster and I’ll back them in to do that.”
Mr Conroy also played down fears that the potential re-election of former US president Donald Trump could knock AUKUS off course, saying that while America was “pretty finally balanced between both sides of politics”, he was confident the pact would “survive and prosper” given the strong bipartisan commitment.
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