Damien Green

Opinion | Australia must stand up to US and UK pressure over Aukus

Years after Curtin stood up to Churchill and Keating rejected the ‘US deputy’ label, Australia seems to have lost its backbone

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Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles (left), British Ambassador to the US Karen Pierce and US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sign the new Aukus agreement that would allow not just an exchange of naval nuclear propulsion information, but also the transfer of nuclear material to Australia, in Washington, on August 5. Photo: Courtesy of Australia’s government

Damien Green

Published: 5:30am, 22 Aug 2024Updated: 6:53am, 22 Aug 2024

Australia could persuade its Anglo-American allies to take a more rational approach to Hong Kong and mainland China in the interests of global peace and stability. Instead, the Australian political elite, seemingly in thrall to the United States, continues to fuel tensions with China. This positions the remote island nation as a potential pariah in its region.

Take the Aukus pact, for example, which will see Australia buy American and British nuclear naval capabilities for the first time. This has led to concern and even derision across the Asia-Pacific. Australians increasingly also have serious questions over the cost of the Aukus agreement, estimated at A$368 billion (US$245 billion), and there is growing unease at the undisclosed “political commitments” made by the Australian government with its Aukus partners, namely the US and Britain.

Through Aukus, Australia is committing itself to a historically monumental error. It is a pitiful waste of the ground gained by Australians over the decades towards being a more consequential and independent nation, notably through the courageous and visionary leadership of former prime ministers John Curtin and Paul Keating.

It is a shame that Australia’s political elite is not embracing the new age of geopolitical multipolarity, and is failing to acknowledge the waning of Anglo-American primacy along with the rise of the Asian century.

This ought to be the country’s time to shine as a smart, fiercely independent and trusted diplomatic peacemaker, not just for the Asia-Pacific but the world. Alas, Australia seems content to be America’s deputy sheriff in the Asia-Pacific, just as it was the willing supplier of largely working-class men as cannon fodder for Great Britain in the two world wars.

Indeed, both my grandfather, Alan Frederick Green, and his brother, my great uncle Frank Clifton Green, were sent, as young men from a rural working-class Australian family, over 10,000 miles from home to fight for the British Empire in Europe and the Middle East during the first world war (1914-1918).