The worst deal in all of history: Paul Keating slams Anthony Albanese, Richard Marles and Penny Wong on AUKUS

Paul Keating has lashed Anthony Albanese’s AUKUS deal with the US and UK as ‘the worst international decision’ by an Australian Labor government in more than 100 years.

Paul Keating addresses the National Press Club in Canberra by videolink from Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: Martin Ollman

Labor’s most-lauded living leader Paul Keating has savaged ­Anthony Albanese’s core nat­ional security policy and his closest political confidants, branding the $368bn AUKUS submarine pact “the worst deal in all of ­history” and an “affront to public administration”.

A day after the Prime Minister unveiled the agreement in San Diego with US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Mr Keating attacked the submarine plan as a waste of money, claiming the US and ­British-designed nuclear boats would be “of little military benefit to anybody”.

He told the National Press Club that Mr Albanese had “no mandate” for the deal inside the ALP, accusing him of undermining Australia’s sovereignty by tying its security in Asia to the “Anglosphere”.

The revered Labor reformer blamed the outcome on the ­advice of Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles, branding them “seriously unwise ministers” and claiming the nation’s defence and security establishment had “overtaken foreign policy”.

He said Senator Wong had ­decided in opposition to adopt the Coalition’s foreign policy to avoid controversy, while Mr Marles was “completely captured by the idea of America”.

“Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country, the US, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance lunging along behind, is not a pretty sight,” Mr Keating said.

“The marginal benefit to Australia’s defences is minimal while the cost is maximal – indeed, off the scale.

“The proposal is irrational in every dimension, and an affront to public administration.”

He said Australia’s future ­nuclear submarines would be “discoverable from space”, were too big for Australian waters, and the AUKUS money would be ­better spent buying 40-50 new Collins-class boats.

The longtime advocate for closer ties with China dismissed criticism of that country’s growing militarism, portraying it as a benign and “lonely” power that wanted a better relationship with Australia.

Senior Labor figures privately mused whether Mr Keating had “lost the plot”, but government frontbenchers refused to hit back at the party luminary, who sought to demolish their core national ­security policy on live TV.

“Whatever Paul Keating says about myself, the Foreign Minister, the Prime Minister, you won’t hear a bad word from us about him,” Mr Marles told the ABC’s 730 program. “I mean, the whole Keating government was the great peacetime, reformist, long-term government in our history.”

Mr Albanese,Senator Wong, and frontbenchers Jim Chalmers and Chris Bowen – who count Mr Keating as their mentor – also declined to comment.

Kim Beazley, who served as Mr Keating’s deputy prime minister, took issue with his former colleague’s assessment of the deal, saying the US-built submarines Australia would get were far superior to those operated by China.

“I don’t think China’s got a snowball’s chance in hell in catching up with them. This is an area of American capability which keeps on advancing and which China is miles behind. Their submarines are totally vulnerable to these,” the former Labor leader and past ambassador to the US told the ABC. “Maybe Paul is worried by the offence the Chinese are taking. My answer to the Chinese offence is, ‘You are building these submarines by the bushel’.”

Chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee Peter Khalil said Mr Keating was “one of our great prime ministers” but he had “seriously misrepre­sented” the AUKUS deal. “It’s not the benign world he was living in in the ’90s. The world has changed considerably,” he told the ABC.

Opposition cyber security spokesman James Paterson ­labelled Mr Keating’s comments as an “unhinged spray”.

With Mr Albanese still out of the country, Mr Keating said ALP members would “wince” at the agreement conceived by Scott Morrison but taken up by the Prime Minister with “unprecedented gusto”. The agreement represented “the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since former Labor leader Billy Hughes sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War I”, he said.

He said the AUKUS deal was subsidising the US and Britain’s submarine programs, with Australia “the only one that is paying”.

Mr Keating said the agreement had “screwed into place the last shackle” in the US plan to contain China, reinforcing its “strategic hegemony in East Asia with all its deadly portents”.

The former Labor leader who has previously had business interests in China denied having any conflicts of interest, saying his advocacy in relation to the Asian great power was in Australia’s national interest.

His comments came against a backdrop of bipartisanship over the AUKUS deal, which will see up to eight British-designed subs built in Adelaide after the delivery of 3-5 Virginia-class boats from the US in the next decade.

Yet there are growing questions over how the plan will be funded. Rumours are sweeping the defence industry over potential program cuts in the defence strategic review, with the Hunter-class frigate program and the army’s planned infantry fighting vehicles believed in the firing line.