Why AUKUS Divides Australia's Labor Party

In mid-August Australia’s Labor Party held their national conference. The conference occurs every three years, and is the peak body that convenes the party’s federal, state, and territory branches to deliberate on a broad platform. Governing federally, as well as every state and territory bar Tasmania, there was much for Labor to be confident about, yet despite the back-patting there was one issue that divided much of the party: AUKUS and its provision of a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines.

Since inheriting the agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States from the previous Liberal and National coalition government, Labor has proceeded with fleshing out the substance and details of AUKUS, with its senior leadership enthusiastically embracing the deal. However, there remains a faction within the party that is deeply suspicious of AUKUS and this was on display at the national conference.

There are genuine problems that need to be acknowledged about AUKUS. Australia currently lacks the capabilities to actually run a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Given the lack of a domestic nuclear industry, and only a tiny number of Ph.D. qualified nuclear physicists in the country, Australia will need to build a nuclear workforce virtually from scratch. This will not only include an estimated 200 nuclear physicists (and a pipeline for more), but also engineers, lawyers, regulatory experts, and policy advisers with a deep understanding of nuclear technology. This is no easy task to achieve within a decade, when the first three Virginia-class submarines are expected to be delivered.

Alongside this, improvements in undersea detection technology may make submarines less of a strategic advantage. There are also a number of diplomatic balls to juggle, especially with Pacific Island states – which have a principled opposition to nuclear material – and Southeast Asia, where there is suspicion of great power competition. Indonesia has expressed its concerns about the nuclear-proliferation ramifications of the agreement.

Yet the details of AUKUS were not what the opposition to the agreement within Labor’s national conference were concerned about. Instead, the concern arises from a suspicion that any acquisition of military hardware (nuclear or otherwise) is “warmongering” by default. There is also an underlying concern that the agreement highlights a strengthening of Australia’s alliance with Washington.

In recent years two prominent figures within the Labor Party – former Prime Minister Paul Keating and former Foreign Minister Bob Carr – have both become vocal critics of AUKUS and the broader U.S. alliance. The opinions of both men have been severely compromised by their post-political careers: Keating has been on the advisory council of the China Development Bank; Carr became the head of the Australia-China Relations Institute, a think tank funded by Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese Community Party-linked billionaire, who was subsequently stripped of his permanent residency in Australia on national security grounds.

While both men have gained financially from their strong links to China, they also tap into something deeper than their pockets within progressive thought more broadly. There has always been a strain of anti-Americanism within Australia’s progressive politics. This form of politics has an instinctive suspicion of hegemony and therefore automatically deems the United States to be a negative force. This suspicion is compounded by a hostility to the liberal economic ideas that the U.S. embodies. Challengers to U.S. power – whether the Soviet Union historically or China today – are deemed to be more legitimate actors, and less likely to use their power nefariously (against all evidence to the contrary).

The United States has clearly assisted with this suspicion through reckless and unnecessary wars like Vietnam and Iraq, both of which were opposed by progressive forces in Australia for good reason. Alongside this, the current state of U.S. politics – and in particular the prospect of a second Trump administration – exacerbates this anti-Americanism. (Ironically, though, Donald Trump’s lack of suspicion toward authoritarian states is very similar to many of the “anti-war” activists within the Labor Party.)

The Labor Party’s senior leadership came to the conference ready to challenge these elements. Pat Conroy, the minister for defense industry and minister for international development and the Pacific – himself a member of the party’s Left faction – caused a scene by asking whether AUKUS dissenters wished to be on the side of Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party and a supporter of appeasement toward Nazi Germany during the 1930s.

However, even while Keating was prime minister himself, or when Carr was foreign minister, the Labor Party functioned as a whole with a clear-eyed pragmatism that allows it to be a trusted force by the wider Australian public. The motion to continue to support the AUKUS agreement was carried by the conference by a bit under three-quarters of the delegates. This was the final domestic hurdle the agreement needed to clear, which now allows Canberra to focus on fixing the logistical and diplomatic problems.