AUKUS ‘a deal for three nations’, says Kim Beazley

Former defence minister Kim Beazley says AUKUS should not be expanded and keeping the deal between Australia, UK and the US will give the alliance more power.

Former defence minister Kim Beasley opposes any expansion of AUKUS. Picture: AAP

Former defence minister Kim Beazley says AUKUS should not be expanded and keeping the deal between Australia, UK and the US will give the alliance more power to achieve “shared strategic objectives”.

His comment follows Japanese ambassador Shingo Yamagami raising Tokyo’s desire to participate in the alliance on “specific projects” and promoting the possibility of hosting the nuclear submarines Australia is set to obtain under AUKUS.

“I really would not want to see it expanded because its purpose is very clear and funnelled in our joint activities and joint research,” Mr Beazley told the UNSW Advancing AUKUS conference. “You may be able to get sufficient impetus behind a small organisation like this in terms of its coverage that does actually resolve a problem and does advance the interests of us all strategically.”

The West Australian Labor elder also argued for a dramatic increase to the country’s defence spending, which he said had been eclipsed by the National Disability Insurance Scheme in the last budget.

“This year our expenditure in the budget on disability insurance surpassed our spending on defence,” he said. “There needs to be a truly massive smartening up here.

“When I was defence minister, we were at about 2.5 per cent of GDP and 8 to 9 per cent of the budget. We’re now at 5.5 per cent of the budget and about just 2 per cent of GDP again, after 25 years.”

Mr Beazley later clarified he “wasn’t criticising the NDIS” but said it would surprise many Australians that this “social policy” now exceeded defence spending.

“Comparing it (defence spending) to what some people would think would be a fairly small proportion of the budget, that is disability insurance, and revealing that it’s actually greater than your defence spending, it drives the point home,” he told the ABC.

Figures from the budget show $49bn was put aside for defence, compared to almost $36bn for the NDIS. NDIS Minister Bill Shorten confirmed earlier this year the disability scheme would cost almost $9bn more than initially projected over the next four years, leading the scheme to cost $50bn by 2026.

Mr Beazley also stressed the need for countries in the West to diversify their sources of critical minerals, vital for the production of weapons and defence technology, away from China.

He said Australia needed to be able to fill the hole that could be left if the Chinese market closed off to Western countries.

“In Western Australia, the Northern Territory and actually in other parts of Australia as well, there is the capacity in very short order – we’re talking about five to 10 years – to extract and process sufficient of those materials that could completely replace the dependency that the US and for that matter Europe has on China,” he said.

Trade Minister Don Farrell said on Monday Australia needed investment from overseas partners to capitalise on critical mineral stores across the nation.

“You’re going to have more investment to extract those critical minerals,” he said. “Typically, we’ve never been able to have all the investment money for these developments to come from Australia. We’re going to need investment from overseas.”