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Albanese keeps debate in check, but two ALP heavyweights deliver brutal AUKUS verdicts

Anthony Albanese seems increasingly unlikely to avoid a public debate about AUKUS and major changes to national defence policy.

Anthony Albanese seems increasingly unlikely to avoid a public debate about AUKUS and major changes to national defence policy. Photo: AAP

One week since he handed down a $368 billion policy to acquire nuclear-powered submarines in California, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears no closer to seeing it accepted.

Labor’s two most influential foreign policy thinkers have spoken out against the AUKUS plan and its attendant commitment to make Australia a more active military presence in Asia, as criticism was aired by an MP in the lower house and others in caucus.

On Tuesday, a flustered Mr Albanese chided a journalist who asked him if Labor was divided over AUKUS as he walked through Parliament, and his office did not respond to questions from The New Daily.

It seems increasingly likely that Mr Albanese may not be able to avoid a public debate about the major change to national defence policy –though there is not yet any serious suggestion it could be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

And like the father of the submarine pact, Scott Morrison, Mr Albanese so far seems assured of not having to “risk AUKUS on the Australian Labor Party”.

Hometown hero

In Sydney’s Marrickville, Mr Albanese’s political home, this weekend’s anniversary of the invasion of Iraq was marked with a debate on foreign policy folly two decades on.

Mr Albanese protested about the earlier invasion but did not appear at the Marrickville Town Hall for a discussion of its lessons.

Among those in attendance was Bob Carr, a former NSW premier and Labor foreign minister, who said the tone of national foreign policy debate had shifted suddenly about five years ago.

He said there was an alternative to AUKUS and the increased potential for “sleepwalking into a ruinous and horrific war” in which one defence source told him Australia would get “licked”.

“The biggest factor driving China panic is Australian security agencies who believe their counterparts in the US are disappointed that Australia might not go all the way with the USA,” he said.

Australia’s top spook and former long-time Liberal Party adviser Andrew Shearer was named by the Wall Street Journal last week as the man who first negotiated AUKUS on the nation’s behalf with an old friend and top White House adviser after they shared breakfast.

Mr Shearer did not respond to a request for interview or questions. But he was previously Mr Morrison’s cabinet secretary and oversaw an unprecedented expansion of secrecy provisions to any meeting at which Mr Morrison was present.

Long-time Labor foreign minister Gareth Evans wrote that he was not convinced of AUKUS’s merit in a piece for The Guardian.

“The core issue is how comfortable we should be in so obviously shifting the whole decades-long focus of our defence posture away from the defence of Australia […] toward a posture of distant forward defence,” he said.

“The case must be made, not just asserted.”

Concerns flagged

In caucus on Tuesday MPs, including Libby Coker and Michelle Ananda-Rajah, presented Mr Albanese with questions about AUKUS cost and how Australia’s sovereign control of submarines would be assured.

“When the Australian flag is on any piece of equipment, Australia is in control,” Mr Albanese said according to a spokesman.

Australia is moving to secure the workforce to operate the subs but only has capacity to turn out five qualified crew members a year for vessels that need 130; dual crews with America will cover the shortfall. 

“I fully support the government’s announced AUKUS plan,” Dr Ananda-Rajah said through a spokesman.

Josh Wilson, the MP for Fremantle, which includes a major shipyard, had on Monday raised questions about whether the deal served the national interest on the floor of the House.

“The AUKUS agreement – arrived at with some characteristically questionable secrecy by the former government, and some strange ministerial arrangements – is not a sports team of which we have all suddenly become life members,” Mr Wilson said.

“It will only be effective if we do our job as parliamentarians, which is to look closely and ask questions in order to guard against risk.”

Mr Albanese snapped at a reporter who asked him questions about party unity whom he said had nearly bumped into his companions.

But in an unusual digression in response to a question from Liberal MP Karen Andrews on the cost of living, Mr Albanese for an interview she gave after it was revealed last week that she had unknowingly shared the Home Affairs portfolio with another MP besides Mr Morrison.

Ms Andrews asked why new information about who had been in government was still coming to light months after the PM released an inquiry report he said was a landmark for integrity which had “sunlight shining in on a shadow government”.

She said Mr Albanese had been elected on a promise of transparency and had to bear responsibility for information continuing to be kept secret. Former PM Malcolm Turnbull said all appointments should be made public immediately. 

The PM prefaced his response to a question about rising prices to ridicule the idea he bore responsibility for the previous cabinet.

“Hang in there!” he said, of her request for information.

“You never know what might happen,” the PM added, acidly.

Mr Albanese’s department of Prime Minister & Cabinet refused a request to list all people who had been appointed a minister in the previous Parliament on Tuesday but did not say why.

Months ago, after the government established an inquiry only into Mr Morrison’s own appointments and not any of his colleagues’, Mr Albanese reflected on his predecessor’s disrespect for the Parliament and lack of self-awareness.

Between the budget and the ALP national conference in August Mr Albanese may have less time to look back on his handling of these matters but more for returning to a forward-leaning defence policy.

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