Buy our, not UK, submarines, ‘Bono’ Joe Biden told Scott Morrison

Joe Biden suggested Australia buy US designed Virginia class submarines as a condition of US support for AUKUS, a new book reveals.

US President Joe Biden, centre, in a trilateral meeting with British PM Rishi Sunak, right, and Anthony Albanese during the AUKUS summit. Picture: AFP

Joe Biden insisted Australia buy US rather than UK designed submarines as a condition of US support for the AUKUS security pact and the US president’s clout within the Five Eyes intelligence group is like the singer Bono’s within rock band U2, Scott Morrison says.

The former prime minister had expected to purchase UK-designed Astute class submarines in early 2021 as part of an emerging AUKUS agreement until President Biden personally suggested, at the pair’s first in person meeting to discuss AUKUS at the G7 meeting in Cornwall in June 2021, the US Virginia-class instead.

The Secret History of the Five Eyes by Richard Kerbaj.

“When you talk about U2, it’s really Bono you’re talking about, even though the others, like The Edge, are great. But they’re not Bono,” Mr Morrison told Richard Kerbaj in comments laid out in the UK-based Australian journalist’s new book The Secret History of The Five Eyes, to be released in Australia in coming weeks.

“I don’t care whether it is a Holden or a Ford. Whether it’s an Astute or a Virginia. I just care that it is something that we can build and we can sail and that can work and we can afford and make happen,” Mr Morrison said.

The comments suggest the acquisition of up to five Virginia class submarines by the 2030s, announced formally in March Prime Minister Anthony Albanese alongside Mr Biden and UK prime minister Rishi Sunak in San Diego, were largely a forgone conclusion.

Mr Morrison also suggested the US chose the 15th September 2021 announcement date for AUKUS, at which Joe Biden appeared to forget Mr Morrison’s name, referring to him as “that fellow down under”, to distract attention from its withdrawal from Afghanistan weeks earlier, in which American soldiers had been killed.

Then-prime minister Scott Morrison with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the 76th UN General Assembly on September 21, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

“AUKUS actually was very timely for the Biden administration. Such a decisive, big, grand, Indo-Pacific, multilateral, partner-engaging... It was the best news story… probably better for them than us in many respects,” Mr Morrison said, pointing out the exit had been “seen as a disaster of international implications”.

The new US-built submarines, which will replace the outgoing Colins class, combined with a new class of attack submarine, dubbed the SSN-AUKUS, to be built in Australia from the 2040s, would cost up to $368bn, the government said.

The fanfare of the public announcement in San Diego and sense of common purpose among Washington Canberra and London obscured a lack of trust among the three Five Eyes leaders during the negotiation period, according to Mr Kerbaj.

“It became very obvious to me that Morrison didn‘t trust Biden’s word alone,” Mr Kerbaj, who interviewed the former Prime Minister for his book over weeks from London this year, told The Australian in an interview.

Mr Morrison kept French President Emmanuel Macron in the dark about his plans to dump a $90bn submarine contract from 2016 with France’s Naval group until the day before the AUKUS announcement because he didn’t trust the Americans or British to keep their word under pressure from Paris.

“Morrison had in fact placed more faith in Macron‘s ability to kill AUKUS, than he had in Biden’s willingness to stand by Australia’s side in the event that France raised an objection to trilateral defence pact between Canberra, Washington and London,” Mr Kerbaj said.

The announcement day would be the “ink on the deal”, Mr Morrison told Mr Kerbaj, arguing it would have been “irresponsible” to give Paris an opportunity to scuttle the plan.

Mr Morrison revealed he asked his officials to explore an AUKUS-style alternative to the contracted French submarines, which had been plagued by delays and cost blowouts, after he won the 2019 election, efforts that culminated in a secret meeting between Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Mr Morrison in Cornwall in June 2021 to thrash out AUKUS before its announcement three months later.

A furious Mr Macron accused Mr Morrison of lying to him once the details emerged, recalling his ambassadors from Washington and Canberra, and later convinced Joe Biden to publicly criticise Mr Morrison for not having told Paris earlier.

“[Biden] did what he did, gave us a bit of a public clip over it. I had my deal. I knew that there would be prices to pay and I was happy to pay them,” Mr Morrison said.

The book also reveals how Mr Morrison and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose defence industry in 2016 was part of the three horse race with Japan and France to build Australia’s next generation of subs, shared a joke over France’s ultimate loss of the contract at the Glasgow climate change conference in late 2021.

“She said, ‘Oh, tell me what happened?’ It was a very funny conversation and a bit cheeky but which I enjoyed. She said, ‘I’m glad we didn’t get that one [the contract]’,” Mr Morrison said.

Mr Morrison also justified exclusion of New Zealand, which was part of the post-World War II, ANZUS security alliance with Australia and the US, because it didn’t “have something to bring to the table”.

“Now, that’s not to disrespect New Zealand, but they’re a country with a different capability... And in many ways they obviously benefit from Australia’s investment in these things – from geography and from the relationships”.

“This was the top-level room at the casino – you’ve got to buy your way into the game... and we massively upped our investment in our security agencies and activities and our operations… we bought our way in,” he said.

Then New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, were informed of the emerging security alliance until only days before it was announced.