While the hacks of Holt Street furiously talk up the latest PM Morrison election brain fart, the absurd “Arc of Autocracy” (otherwise known as the Hexagon of Horror), on the ground the notion has been given short shrift:
The mayors of Newcastle and Wollongong have expressed unease at the Morrison government naming their cities as a potential base for nuclear-powered submarines, with one describing the Aukus plans as a “fantasy”.
Questions have also been raised about the government’s process for shortlisting Newcastle, Port Kembla in Wollongong and Brisbane for a new east coast base, given that a previous Defence review had not backed them as most-preferred sites.
The South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick, a former submariner, said Scott Morrison’s announcement on Monday was “thick with political fog” with an election looming, noting the final site would not be selected until 2023.
Patrick said: “Why pork barrel in one electorate when you can – for the same price – pork barrel in three?”
Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison will use a key foreign policy speech on Monday to warn against ‘a transactional world, devoid of principle, accountability and transparency’.
Morrison said the government had “provisioned more than $10bn to meet the facilities and infrastructure requirements” for the transition from Australia’s existing Collins-class submarines to the nuclear-powered submarines to be acquired under the Aukus pact with the UK and the US.
He said Defence had looked at 19 potential sites and narrowed them down to the three preferred locations. Defence would now discuss the plans further with state and local governments and “begin negotiations on what will be an enormous undertaking”.
…However, the mayors of Newcastle and Wollongong both said they were not consulted about the decision. With both cities historically home to anti-war movements they expected considerable community opposition.
Both cities have passed official resolutions to make them nuclear-free zones.
There is also believed to be opposition to nuclear power, particularly where it is used to propel a weapon of war – although spent fuel rods from the Lucas Heights reactor have passed through Port Kembla on their way for processing in France.
Wollongong’s lord mayor, Gordon Bradbery, an independent, said he was waiting for more detail about the proposal before he would consult the local community.
“It’s not only nuclear power and nuclear-powered submarines, but it’s the location of a strategic defence asset and that would make anyone who gets this particular facility a target,” Bradbery said.
Oh, yeh. This base will be the second target on the Russian/Chinese Australian nuclear ICBM list. After Pine Gap. But it’s got to go somewhere populous so that the pork will buy a seat so strategic calculus be damned.
Perhaps that’s why the khaki election isn’t going too well for Morrison:
Scott Morrison has declared the Coalition the “proven choice” of voters when it comes to managing Australia’s national security interests, but the latest Guardian Essential poll suggests respondents do not believe his government would handle the war between Russia and Ukraine any better than Labor.
While the Coalition traditionally leads Labor on national security issues, the latest poll of 1,093 respondents has found voters do not yet have a clear preference, at least when it came to the Russian invasion.
Asked which political party was better equipped to understand and react to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, 24% of respondents said the Coalition, 24% said Labor, 33% said the stripe of the government made no difference, and 19% said they did not know.
Don’t get me wrong, I support any and all expansions of US navy integration around the entire Australian coast. But let’s not pretend that logic is playing a part in where they’ll go.
To wit, bring on the Asian NATO:
China warned the U.S. against trying to build what it called a Pacific version of NATO, while declaring that security disputes over Taiwan and Ukraine were “not comparable at all.”
Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his annual news briefing Monday that the “real goal” of the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific strategy was to form Asia’s answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. China has often accused the U.S. of trying to form blocs to suppress its growth, a complaint that’s likely to attract greater attention after President Vladimir Putin cited similar grievances before his invasion of Ukraine.
“The perverse actions run counter to the common aspiration of the region for peace, development, cooperation and win-win outcomes,” Wang added. “They are doomed to fail.”
Really? Looks like it’s coming together, to me, with Japan, India and Australia forming the nucleus and likely to expand that over time, which is why China is squealing like a stuck pig.
