The Trump administration’s decision to review the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal should not be a cause for panic within the Albanese government.
At least, not yet.
A recently completed defence review in the UK saw that government commit to building up to 12 SSN-AUKUS class submarines to replace its current fleet of seven nuclear-powered, conventionally armed Astute class submarines.
Anthony Albanese must make the AUKUS defence pact irresistible to Donald Trump.Credit: Stephen Kiprillis
The announcement overnight on Wednesday has prompted the usual suspects in Australia – supporters, opponents and doomsayers – to rush out with predictable critiques, warnings and prognostications.
It comes hot on the heels of US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth calling for Australia to increase defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP, a call that was met with little enthusiasm by Canberra.
Supporters and critics of the deal need to stop a moment and take a breath.
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has taken a nativist turn that, to some extent at least, echoes that country’s “America alone” stance of the 1930s (though then president Franklin Roosevelt’s personal views on the role of the US in the world were markedly different to Trump’s).
This freshly announced review will look at whether the AUKUS deal should be scrapped or changed.
And it’s in that second option, change, that there is an opportunity for Anthony Albanese and the Labor government to cement the deal.
Put simply, Albanese needs to make AUKUS great again by super-sizing the deal and offering the Trump administration more than was agreed to under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.
Anthony Albanese is expected to meet Donald Trump at the G7 summit in the next week.Credit: Justin McManus, AP
As a former Defence official, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, puts it, Trump’s view is that the AUKUS deal began to be negotiated during his first term before Biden took over and closed the deal.
Instinctively, Trump supports AUKUS because of the advantages it offers the United States in terms of additional basing in the Indo-Pacific theatre but “it now needs to be bigger than the Biden plan”, according to the official.
“We can’t just offer them more money [Australia has promised to pay the US about $4.5 billion to help ramp up production of the submarines], it has to be bigger than that,” the official said.
“The way to get support for it is to make Trump feel like it is his again. Australia will need to offer something like better facilities at Henderson [the submarine base in Western Australia]; a second graving yard, though they are expensive, would be ideal as it offers maintenance on US submarines and would take the pressure off Guam and Pearl Harbour.”
Top US officials, including AUKUS sceptic Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s Deputy Under Secretary of Defence, have spoken recently about the need for increased submarine availability - that is, for the US fleet submarines to be able to spend more time in the water and less time in maintenance.
That’s where the graving yard - a dry dock that raises submarines out of the water for more involved maintenance work - comes in. One is planned for the Henderson submarine base already but increasing the offer to two, so that US submarines can be serviced in Australia - and spend more time in the water and on duty - is the sort of offer the US would welcome.
Albanese’s first face-to-face meeting with Trump is expected to take place next week at the G7 summit in Canada. Between now and then, the prime minister and defence officials will be crafting an offer for the US president to consider while the review takes place.
The prime minister will not be willing to cede any ground on the sovereign control of the US-made submarines and nor would he be willing to settle for a deal that sees US submarines rotate through Australian ports but for us to miss out on the submarine capability.
But if Albanese comes up with an offer to make AUKUS great again, there will be little to worry about in terms of the subs deal proceeding.
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