By Eileen Darley
The speech below was given by Eileen Darley, convener of the Port Adelaide Community Opposes AUKUS. The “Raukous Against AUKUS” protest was held on 14 September, the 4th anniversary signing of the AUKUS pact. It was held at old Osborne House, close to the Osborne Naval Shipyard where the SSN AUKUS nuclear submarines will be built.
Neighbours and Comrades,
We’re here today because we’re being sold a lie. The AUKUS agreement is not about keeping Australians safe. It’s about locking us, the people of this country, into someone elses war plans. We’re often told that AUKUS was just a Morrison thought bubble that the seceding ALP Govt didn’t want to get wedged on and so continued. But the truth is, as reported in the Washington Post in 2022 that unbeknown to the Aust public two retired US Admirals and three Navy Civilian leaders worked in secret as advisers to the Aust Govt and it was they who groomed and prodded the Morrison Govt into this dud of duds deal which sees us forking out eye-watering amounts of the Australian peoples money to buy and build virtually non-existent never mind defunct nuclear submarines! And what happened when an ALP Govt came to power? What did PM Alabanese, Minister for Defence Richard Marles and Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong do ?They not only kept AUKUS but committed us to pay billions towards the failing naval shipyards and submarine corporations in the US and UK so they could catch up on their lagging schedules!
And why? Because they’re hellbent on making sure we are up front and centre in US plans for a war with China. They know what their masters want and they’re such clever little puppets they even sometimes give it to them before they’re asked. Recently Marles flew to the US to meet with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Pentagon officials where they demanded Australia give a concrete commitment to deploy their nuclear subs and all the rest of our military capacity to the next US war of aggression and to increase our spending on military hardware to 3.5% of GDP.
So let’s be clear what AUKUS is? It’s a war pact. They’re building nuclear submarines here, in our community , not to defend our coastline but to patrol the South China Sea thousands of kilometres away so the US can try to contain and deter its greatest economic rival with military force. Anyone who thinks those subs will not be under US command is being dangerously naïve.
And it doesn’t stop there. We all know how infamously fragile the US and UK’s own submarine industries are and it’s highly unlikely we will ever get the 2nd-hand Virginia Class Submarines we’re supposed to get in a few years. But here’s what we will get: we’ll get US and UK nuclear submarines in rotation in WA from 2027 and the yet-to-announced base in the East, likely Port Kembla, to add to the alarming build-up of US troops and hardware in the North of Australia under AUKUS’partner the Force Posture Agreement. That’s the agreement which allows unimpeded access to Australian Airfields and Ports including nuclear-armed B2 Bombers . Say goodbye to the last vestiges of Australian Sovereignty. If we ever had it.
And at what cost is this death cult to we the people? $368 billion, $30 m a day for thirty years , but that’s just the beginning, and all levels of Govt are in on it. Anyone who witnessed the Premier Peter Malinouskus or as we in PACOA refer to him MalinAUKUS spruiking the deal he’s struck in Britain with Rolls Royce where at least 4.7b will go to give them a helping hand will know that. In the middle of cost of living crisis! A housing crisis! Where people are struggling to pay their rents and mortgages, their power bills. Where there’s never enough money for Public schools and health and Aged care but seemingly endless dollars for the war machine. And that’s before the estimated 100’s of billions estimated as cost for a national nuclear waste dump that goes along with them. Because what can the good people of the LeFevre Peninsula also expect in the Osborne AUKUS package? Why the storage of nuclear waste of course. They passed legislation especially for us. Do they think we’re fools? Every reactor creates waste. Even in the building process they’ll create nuclear waste that has to be stored safely for up to 300 yrs. The new Defence-related regulators told us that recently when they came to sell their wares at at a forum they designated a community consultation. Right across the road from where people live, where kids go to kindy, next to a river and its surviving mangroves and its precious dolphin reserve. It beggars belief the disdain these leaders have for us! The navy spruiker was asked when our community was going to be informed how they are to access the emergency plan and I tablets in the event of a nuclear accident. She didn’t know because safety plans hadn’t been made yet!! None, zilch, zero! We just had to trust that at some stage they would be. She also had no news on where the National Nuclear Waste Dump was going to be. But we can make a pretty good stab at that and we know it will be on First Nations land. Once you accept nuclear submarines you accept a national nuclear dump. The one the Barngarla people heroically defeated at Kimba. The one they’ve been wanting to build in SA for decades. That’s not a maybe , that’s their plan. To truck the most toxic material known to humankind through our streets and dump it for 10,000 years!
Well here’s some news for them : we don’t want their radioactive jobs. We don’t want our families and kids and friends at risk from war or nuclear accident. And PACOA are not the only ones. There are grassroots groups like us springing up all over the country- Stop AUKUS WA, Woollongong Against War and Nukes, Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, Labor Against War, the Australian Anti-Aukus Coalition. Mobilising to stop AUKUS, kick out US troops, close all foreign bases, and withdraw from the alliance with the deadliest force on the planet.
