AUKUS: Nuclear-powered subs on target for 2030s, Brits assure Anthony Albanese
British Defence Minister Ben Wallace has assured Anthony Albanese that the first AUKUS submarine would be designed and ready in the 2030s.
“Do not steal our workers,” British Defence Minister Ben Wallace joked with Anthony Albanese at the nuclear submarine plant in Cumbria, while expressing confidence that the first AUKUS submarine would be designed and ready in the 2030s “to see off threats that are approaching us”.
Mr Wallace said the “bulk” of the design of the next generation submarine, called the SSNAUKUS, would be finished in three to four years and the project would stick to a tight timetable.
“We are confident we can deliver. We need to ensure there is no back-up in the queue. It is in my interests as well as Australia’s interests that we are on time and on budget; we need the services of the submarines too,” he said.
The Prime Minister said: “First product will begin to roll off here in the 2030s, and in the 2040s (it will roll out of the factory) in Australia, but we will start on construction of the transformation in Osborne in South Australia next year.’’
Mr Wallace’s words about workers, said in jest, have amplified what is the project’s biggest challenge: for Australia to independently train a new generation of hi-tech workers in a nuclear industry largely foreign to Australia manufacturing.
Mr Albanese said the submarine workforce would be a huge benefit to Osborne, similar to the car industry that drove Australia’s post-war economy.
He stressed that the AUKUS deal, a $368bn, three-decade long program to acquire nuclear-powered submarines in a tripartite deal with Britain and the US, was about “jobs and more jobs”.
He said Australian workers would be involved in exchanges with Britain and vice versa and insisted that his government had been upfront and transparent about the costs of the project.
Mr Albanese confirmed that the Australian government would “purchase three or more” submarines from the US to ensure there would be no capability gap before the AUKUS submarine was ready.
The US subs would be on rotation in Australian waters in 2023, while the British subs would undertake the rotation from 2026.
Mr Wallace said because the submarine project would take 20 to 30 years, it would be “deceiving people” to talk of an accurate price, with so many uncertainties about future costs and inflation.
He said Australia had made a strategic decision to gain the capability to keep adversaries guessing and to join the exclusive club of five nuclear-powered nations.
“It’s a strategic capability and it keeps the adversaries guessing because the new submarine would have elements, some of which are very secret and some of which are very traditional,” he said.
Asked about China’s concern about the AUKUS arrangement, Mr Albanese said that countries in the Asia-Pacific region understood Australia’s interests.
Mr Albanese toured the Barrow-in-Furness manufacturing plant of BAE before he was to attend King Charles’s coronation on Saturday.
He will meet British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Friday at Downing Street, where he will tell him “Enough is enough and it is time this issue is drawn to a close” in relation to Julian Assange.
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