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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Just one day after Jack McLennan's relationship fell apart, he vanished. I couldn't believe this was happening. Immediately, accusations started flying. You need to cough up and you need to confess.
Chapter 2: Should Australia spend $368 billion on nuclear submarines?
But it soon became clear there was so much more to the story. There has to be something more nefarious going on. I'm Rob Bergen. Join me as I investigate what became of Jack in the new season of Unravel. You know where my son is. Search for the Unravel podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.
Should we be spending up to $368 billion on nuclear submarines over the next 30 years? Well, Peter Garrett, the former Labor Minister and Midnight Oil star, doesn't think so. So he set up a crowdfunded inquiry into the AUKUS submarine deal.
It's perfect timing, with the government announcing the original agreement has changed a bit, with the US to switch out one new sub for, well, a second-hand one.
Chapter 3: What prompted the crowdfunded inquiry into the AUKUS deal?
Today, Sam Roggeveen, Director of the Lowy Institute's International Security Programme, on the growing concerns about the deal. I'm Sam Hawley on Gadigal land in Sydney. This is ABC News Daily. Sam, why don't we start with a very brief history lesson about how this Orcas deal came about, which was basically via a diplomatic crisis with the French, wasn't it? Remind me of that.
Well, Orcas was announced in September of 2021 when the Morrison government decided that the project to procure Orcas
12 french designed and built submarines which were powered by conventional that is diesel electric motors that that project would be cancelled and instead we would buy nuclear-powered submarines from the united states today i announce a new partnership a new agreement that i describe as a forever partnership a forever partnership
for a new time between the oldest and most trusted of friends.
The actual reason why we cancelled the French deal and went with AUKUS instead is actually still a bit of a mystery. There's a great book to be written on that subject by someone in the future, but no Australian government, I would argue, has yet given a really coherent and comprehensive strategic case for why we switched from the French attack class submarines to the AUKUS submarines.
Right, yes, and of course we had that rather interesting moment with Emmanuel Macron when he was asked, did he lie to you in relation to Scott Morrison?
Do you think he lied to you? I don't think, I know.
That goes down in history, right? That moment.
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Chapter 4: How did the AUKUS deal change recently?
Indeed. Well, I would have the world's smallest violin for the French, I must say. I mean, there's a reason you put cancellation clauses in contracts. It's so you can cancel them. And the French were generously compensated.
All right. Yes, we did lose out by $3.4 billion because we dumped that deal. Now, that deal was worth $90 billion. The Orcas deal, as you say, was born. That has a price tag of $368 billion. So just explain or remind me, what do we actually get for that?
Well, it's up to $368 billion. That's the figure we have from governments. So somewhere between 268 and 368, that was the figure offered at the time. Essentially, what we get for that is eight nuclear-powered submarines.
Chapter 5: What historical context led to the AUKUS submarine deal?
And the first three and potentially as many as five of those submarines will be American. They will be Virginia-class submarines from American shipyards. And then the final three, and maybe as many as five, will be a new class of nuclear-powered submarine to be designed and built primarily in the UK, but also in Adelaide. And at the moment, that's simply called SSN AUKUS.
But that is purely a paper design at the moment. The process of designing and building that submarine has only just begun.
Right. Okay. And yes, just a reminder, when we signed up to this rather large deal, the president back then, Joe Biden, he seemed to forget the prime minister's name.
Thank you, Boris, and I want to thank that fellow down under. Thank you very much, pal. Appreciate it, Mr Prime Minister.
Which, Sam, I guess no businessman with that sort of money on the table would ever do.
Well, it's actually worth remembering that AUKUS is an extremely attractive commercial proposition for the United States. We're investing billions of dollars in American shipyards and in the American military-industrial complex.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of getting second-hand submarines?
Pretty good deal for the United States.
All right. Well, Sam, of course, now the AUKUS deal is changing and we will come to how we're going to be getting some secondhand submarines in a moment. But this deal, this AUKUS deal, it has its critics. And now the former Labor Minister, Peter Garrett, he has crowdfunded to set up an inquiry into this deal.
This is the biggest amount of money that the Commonwealth of Australia will ever spend in our lifetime to deliver submarines that may not arrive in time at all to be useful. And if they are to arrive, have so many questions and issues around them.
What do you make of that?
Well, I would say, first of all, that more scrutiny is welcome. And that hasn't happened in the parliament. So if it's going to happen outside the parliament, then great. But ideally, we would have much more parliamentary scrutiny on this deal as well.
It's interesting to me that over the past few years since AUKUS was announced, criticism and scepticism about AUKUS has tended to come from the progressive side of politics. I notice the Labor MP Ed Husic has spoken up, so have certain members of the union movement, so that's roughly in line with that progressive left side of politics.
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Chapter 7: What are the criticisms surrounding the AUKUS deal?
What's, I think, even more notable in this regard is that we're also seeing some doubts emerging from the right of Australian politics.
Recently, we've had Senator James Paterson, who's the opposition's defence spokesman, give a speech at the Press Club in which he aired the idea that just in case these submarines arrive late, the government should be thinking about other kinds of military capabilities to fill the gap.
And I think we're doing the public a disservice just by saying everything is fine, everything on track, no need to be alarmed. I think we do need to make changes so that we can deliver AUKUS. And I think we do need contingencies for potential capability gaps.
And then Joe Hockey, who is the former Liberal Treasurer, of course, in the Abbott government, and these days really well plugged in in Washington through his consultancy, he said that for the first time he's having some worries about whether these submarines can be delivered.
You know, for the first time I'm a little nervous about the Virginias. And that's after a few conversations on the Hill in the last... But that's technical. That's not because of the relationship. No, not because of the relationship at all. There's no problem at a military-to-military or bureaucracy-to-bureaucracy level.
It's just a question of whether they can actually build the Virginians fast enough.
That's significant because when the Morrison government announced AUKUS, so at that moment in late 2021, we were less than a year out from an election. The Morrison government was unpopular. And I think part of the political reasoning behind the agreement was, well, if we can make this big announcement about a submarine project,
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Chapter 8: How might Australia address potential military capability gaps?
we can kind of goad the opposition into opposing it and then we can have a car key election, as they say, and we would be traditionally the Liberal Party tends to win those kind of debates. Now, the Labor Party decided not to take that bait. They endorsed AUKUS right from the beginning.
But if now we're in a situation where we start to see the Liberal Party distancing itself a little bit from AUKUS or expressing doubts, then I think that does create a little bit more political space for the government to do that as well.
Why don't we now, Sam, turn to the changes and what's been shifting in the past week. What's changing?
Well, the previous deal was that Australia was going to get, as I said, three and maybe as many as five submarines from the United States. So if we start with that baseline number three, what we understood was that two of those would be effectively secondhand boats from the United States. So these would have been submarines that were already in operation in the US Navy before
They would be refurbished and then they'd be sold to Australia. But then the third boat would be completely new. As of last weekend, the government has announced that, no, we're no longer going to get a new submarine. All three will now be used submarines. And the government's argument is that this is good news because it helps simplify the process. And they have a point.
You know, submarines like the Virginia-class are built in what they call blocks. or trenches effectively. So they build maybe five or six. And then the Navy says, well we'd like to add this element, and we'd like to take that part out, and we need this new capability on board. And so they start building six more of a slightly upgraded type.
And previously Australia would have got two different types of Virginia class submarines. Now we're only going to get one, and yes that does simplify the process.
Right. And they're presumably cheaper.
Well, the government has signalled that there are some cost savings, but they're actually going to be pretty modest. So, yeah, I wouldn't expect a lot of cost saving.
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