Subject: AUKUS.
E&OE.
SARAH FERGUSON:
The announcement of the details of Australia’s nuclear submarine program will take place early tomorrow morning in San Diego with the US President, British Prime Minister and PM Anthony Albanese sharing the podium. At a cost of more than $200 billion, the AUKUS agreement has been called the single biggest leap in defence capability in Australian history. It was struck by the Morrison Government when Peter Dutton was Defence Minister. He joins me now from Canberra.
Peter Dutton, welcome to 7.30.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you Sarah.
SARAH FERGUSON:
Scott Morrison says that AUKUS was the most closely guarded secret since the Second World War. When were you brought in on it?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Sarah, not long after I came into the portfolio. It obviously was a compartmentalised arrangement, which meant that there were only a handful of people in Australia who were briefed in. I guess our thought all the way through, was just that the size of the US system would mean that it would leak at some stage, but fortunately that didn’t happen and we were able to deliver the deal and I think it’s in our country’s best interests and we support the work that the government’s doing now.
SARAH FERGUSON:
Did Scott Morrison canvas it with you privately when he asked you to be Defence Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
Sarah, to be honest, I don’t recall a private conversation at the time, but certainly I supported it with everything I had. I thought it was in our best interest to get a capability. The advice was clear to us from Defence that the conventional submarine wouldn’t be able to operate in our waters because of technology developments, it could be detected and sunk when it came up to recharge its diesel generators.
The beauty of this vessel, of course, is that it can last for 30 years. The reactor is fuelled for that period and it can lurk beneath the water surface, and adversary doesn’t know where it is. So, there’s a great deterrence ability within the Virginia submarine in particular.
SARAH FERGUSON:
All of this became possible, as I understand it, when the Biden Administration came to power. Isn’t it one of the great ironies that this enormous leap in Australian defence capability had to wait for a Democrat administration?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, and for a Liberal government as well here in Canberra. The fact is that the Labor Party had cut defence, only 10 years ago in fact, in the 2012-13 budget by 10 and a half per cent in real terms, which brought the GDP spend ratio back to about 1.56 per cent. So we put that back up over two per cent and I think it’s because of that, to be honest, that Australia was seen as a credible player both with the Americans and with the Brits.
You’re right, there are many people within the Biden Administration, Kurt Campbell and others, who without them, the deal wouldn’t have been possible, and I’m very grateful to Lloyd Austin, the Defence Minister in the US, for the way in which he engaged with me and now with Richard Marles.
SARAH FERGUSON:
So, had the government and the Defence Department concluded that Donald Trump as President would have vetoed the deal?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t think it was possible at that stage. I think there was significant engagement with the Trump Administration, and I think what the public sometimes miss, is that the US system really spans administration to administration.
So, the interactions that we had with the Pentagon, for example, or when I was Home Affairs Minister with the FBI or the other agencies, it’s seamless. There are layers and layers of professional staff, both Democrat and Republicans, and the beauty of course of the alliance that we have with the United States is that it’s survived even Mark Latham and Kevin Rudd and others over a long period of time.
So, it’s served our country, it’s in our best interest that it be strengthened, and that’s what we achieved through the agreement that we struck through AUKUS.
SARAH FERGUSON:
Let’s move on from that comparison. But the idea of nuclear powered submarines for Australia had been around for a number of years. It’s reported that one of the things that finally made it possible was new technology that enables the nuclear reactor that will be on the boats to be sealed for the entire life of the boat’s life.
Was that breakthrough technology that made it possible?
PETER DUTTON:
The Americans definitely wanted to see a bipartisan position, not just support from the Coalition in government, but to know that if there was a change of government – which obviously transpired to be the case – that it would be supported by the Labor Party as well. To the credit of Mr Albanese and to Richard Marles, they supported the AUKUS deal, and they did it on the basis that it didn’t create a nuclear domestic industry. We’ll see what happens in terms of the waste disposal etc. but we will support the government in that stance.
As I say, the technology is quite remarkable in that it’s sealed as you say. The submarine can be powered and circumnavigate the globe for 30 years and not be refuelled. You only need to deal with the waste. That was part of the arrangement which made it easier. If you went with the French Barracuda, it meant that you had to refuel every seven to eight years from memory and it would have to be back, every couple of years, or a couple of years it was out of service every time it had to go back to France for refuelling.
SARAH FERGUSON:
So, is it important to avoid non-proliferation problems that Australia never builds its own nuclear reactors for these submarines?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we have international obligations with the IAEA and we were very conscious of that in the deal that we struck with the Americans and the Brits and our diplomats have worked around the clock, both under our government and now under the Albanese Government, to deal with any of those concerns. But there is not a proliferation issue here and anybody objectively looking at what we’re acquiring in the nuclear submarine would draw the same conclusion.
SARAH FERGUSON:
Now, the reason I ask that, because when Vice Admiral Mead, who led the Taskforce that laid out what’s called the optimal path, the best path forward for AUKUS, when we asked him about nuclear reactors, he was careful to say, ‘we’re not envisaging that at the moment’. Do you anticipate that Australia could one day have the capacity to build its own nuclear reactor?
PETER DUTTON:
I don’t think that’s realistic to be honest Sarah. You know, from Jonathan Mead’s perspective, he’s a person that our country owes an enormous amount to. He has been the head of the negotiations on this program from day one, and he’s an exceptional Australian, he’s served his country with great distinction to this very day and hopefully for many years into the future. So, there’s no doubt he would be leaving options open for decades and decades into the future. But the IP, if you like, is rested with the United States. They’ve only the ever shared it once with one other country and that’s the United Kingdom in the 1950s and we will be the only other country I think that they will share it with and that’s at the heart of the deal.
SARAH FERGUSON:
So just to be clear, of course, that’s the nuclear propulsion technology I was asking you about, the reactor. To be clear, you see no point in the future where Australia could be building a nuclear reactor?
PETER DUTTON:
I think the technology, as it’s been established in the United States and with Rolls-Royce as the manufacturer of the reactor in the United Kingdom, I think it wouldn’t make any economic sense, frankly. We’re talking about the propulsion system, as you point out, as opposed to nuclear weapons and nobody’s proposing nuclear weapons for these submarines.
SARAH FERGUSON:
As I understand it – and of course we’re waiting for the details to come out tomorrow, but you know more about it than most people – the proposed new British boat will be using American combat systems with American weapons. How important is that to the success of AUKUS i.e. that we don’t have two very different types of boats for the submarines for the future?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think it is, I’ve seen the speculation in relation to that, I think it is essential that that system be a feature of the new design out of the United Kingdom. It’s obvious that Russia is going to continue to be problematic, not just in relation to Ukraine, but a broader threat to Europe and the Americans obviously have a very significant role to play there; but the British, more than anyone, will have a huge tasking for their submarines in and near their waters and across the channel and in protecting broader Europe as Russia continues on its current pathway.
So, the Brits will understandably and rightly have a very significant obligation there, but as Prime Minister Sunak’s pointed out, the Brits have been very keen to step up in the Indo-Pacific, but the Americans will have the more significant role in our region, given their equities in Guam and in Pearl Harbour and elsewhere in the Philippines. So, the interoperability with the Americans and through their systems for both the Brits and for us is absolutely essential.
SARAH FERGUSON:
So, when this was being discussed, when you were in government, was there consideration that tying ourselves so closely in with the US Navy would make us more of a target?
PETER DUTTON:
Quite the opposite. I think the fact is that we’re dealing in an environment where Australia hasn’t changed her values, Indonesia hasn’t, the Philippines, the United States, the United Kingdom, all of us crave peace and stability in our region and that’s the absolute underpinning of AUKUS is that it provides a deterrence for any country who may be thinking about taking Australia on, or one of the allies of the United States or our partners otherwise.
It’s an uncertain time that we live in. The Europeans are pointing this out, Jens Stoltenberg’s pointed out his concerns about what’s happening in the Indo-Pacific, the build up otherwise.
We’re a population in the end of 25.8 million people on an island essentially in the middle of nowhere and if we think that we can go it alone or that our chances in the next decade or two or the next 50 years is best served by us cutting links with established partners like the United States, or the United Kingdom, I think that is wrong thinking and I think we would be in a very perilous position very quickly if that was the course that we were to take. So, we bolstered the friendship with the United States and the United Kingdom, India, Japan and many others, and that’s in our national interest to do so.
SARAH FERGUSON:
Let me just ask you about the numbers, because the amount of money, the figures that are being used today are clearly very, very large. The Prime Minister said possibly more than $200 billion – it’s a hard number almost to take in. You’ve said that this is crucially a matter of bipartisan support. Does that extend to the budgetary savings that will be needed to foot such a massive bill? So what I’m asking you, are you prepared to think outside the usual partisan box to give the government leeway to make budget savings in the national interest?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, short answer is yes Sarah. I mean in my Budget-In-Reply speech last October, I said that we would work with the government if they had tough decisions to take, for example, keeping the NDIS sustainable – it’s an incredibly important program, but it needs to be sustainable – and if the cost trajectory on that is going to result in it falling over then I think the government itself has pointed out that that’s not sustainable. So if there are different ways in which we can provide support to the government, we’re happy to do that.
There will always be points of difference about where spending priorities lay and we’ll work through all of that, but this is over a long period of time, the numbers you’re talking about can span into the 2050s and perhaps beyond that. The immediate time of the forward estimates over the next four years, that’s the most sort of crucial period to focus on, but we would encourage the government to be transparent about the money that’s involved, be upfront with the Australian people because it is a costly process, but as we know, as history has demonstrated, there’s an enormous price to inaction as well.
SARAH FERGUSON:
On that bipartisan note, Peter Dutton, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
PETER DUTTON:
My pleasure. Thanks Sarah.
[ends]