The former Labor foreign affairs minister Bob Carr says officials in Canberra and Washington acknowledge that the US will never build and sell nuclear submarines to Australia, describing the $368bn Aukus agreement as the two countries “living a lie”.
Carr, a leading critic of the deal, expects American-operated vessels will instead be stationed at bases in Australia, with a future US president likely to determine that China’s military might would make it too difficult for three or more Virginia-class nuclear submarines to be transferred to Australia.
“It’s now conventional wisdom in Washington as well as in Canberra that we’re not going to get the subs, and we’ll be assembling some alternative,” he said.
“That leaves us looking at what we’re going to get in their place.”
Australia’s foreign affairs minister under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, Carr told Guardian Australia’s weekly Australian Politics podcast that the deal signed in 2021 had been reduced to a diplomatic joke.
“We’re living a lie. We’re living a platonic lie. It’s a diplomatic fig leaf or fiction that they’re going to be subs at the end of this.”
“I don’t think that even people in our defence establishments believe that this deal has been a good one for us.
“They’re very conscious of the budgetary pressure on all other defence platforms because we are shovelling such cash into a single defence platform, and that one that might well be overtaken by technology, with all the newfound wisdom coming out of the Ukraine war, for example.”
The Albanese government says Aukus is proceeding as intended, noting the US president, Donald Trump , has pledged full support.
Already Australia has paid more than $3bn to support US submarine manufacturing, part of promised payments of about $4.6bn over the deal’s lifetime. Billions more are being spent on infrastructure, workforce and construction.
Labor agreed to support the plan for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines in opposition, after negotiations under the former prime minister Scott Morrison, the then US president, Joe Biden, and the then UK prime minister, Boris Johnson.
But delays and cost blowouts for production of submarines for the US navy have led to scepticism that Australia will receive the in-service boats. The agreement requires the US president to sign off on transfer of submarines, subject to domestic demand for the US military.
The first Virginia-class nuclear sub from the US is due to arrive in Australia in 2032, with another arriving every four years, before the bespoke SSN Aukus model comes online in 2042.
Earlier this month, a crowdfunded public inquiry called the plan “the worst, riskiest and most costly defence decision ever made by an Australian government”, urging its immediate termination .
Former Labor MP and Midnight Oil frontman Peter Garrett, alongside former chief of defence Adm Chris Barrie, led the inquiry dominated by critics of the deal. They said Australia risked being dragged into military conflict with China because of Aukus.
The Albanese government was dismissive of the inquiry report, despite evidence from Carr, the former Labor minister Gareth Evans and the former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Supporters of the deal, including former defence ministers Linda Reynolds and Christopher Pyne, argued in favour of Aukus.
This week, the defence minister, Richard Marles , said Aukus was “absolutely happening”.
“It represents the biggest industrial project in our country’s history,” he said.
“It’s the biggest leap in our military capability since the establishment of the navy more than a century ago. This is keeping Australia safe but, at the same time, this is providing thousands of hi-tech, high-skilled, lifelong jobs across Australia.”
