AUKUS reveals the Scott Morrison show is the only one in town

Has the Morrison era’s legacy of lies, secrecy and corruption utterly dissolved our capacity to separate truth from unreality? Or did it so lower standards of public debate — so erode public expectations of respect and transparency — that it breached that unholy point of no return, consigning us, unfathomably, to an eternity in Morrison’s depraved new world?

I raise this because if you’re someone who believes Prime Minister Anthony Albanese represents an obvious departure from the former government’s penchant to reject observable reality or lie and gaslight with abandon, you’ve been misled.   

Nowhere, during Labor’s national conference in Brisbane last week, did this reality manifest more clearly than over the contentious issue of AUKUS, where — after much wrangling behind the scenes — a limited, though at times fierce debate ensued Friday afternoon on the conference floor. 

His government’s unqualified support for AUKUS, thundered Albanese in a well-rehearsed speech, was “an act of clear-eyed pragmatism”, “the choice of a mature nation” — something that would pave the way for the country to “take its rightful place on the world stage”. 

Rounding on those who oppose AUKUS, the prime minister then insisted that any scepticism over the military pact was necessarily coloured by a Panglossian worldview unhinged from the realities and weight of the current moment. Contrary to the naysayers, he said, AUKUS was and is the inevitable conclusion of “serious people who are seriously concerned about Australia’s national interest”. Those who don’t indulge in “sunny optimism” but “analyse the world as it is, rather than as we would want it to be”. 

“I have come to the position based upon advice and analysis that nuclear-powered submarines are what Australia needs in the future,” he declared, adding that there’s “no security in isolation”. 

Echoing Albanese’s screeds was Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who told delegates that though AUKUS is a “hard choice”, it’s “actually a clear choice”, before going on to say — over jeers — that there’s no greater “Labor act” than supporting the defence pact. “Given what we face,” he said, in a reference to a deeply complex, uncertain and bifurcated world, the half-a-trillion-dollar-plus agreement is actually a “modest step”. 

And running with Albanese’s bizarre theme of isolationism was Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy, who invoked some contrived and ugly polarisation with his suggestion that the ideal standard-bearers of those who oppose AUKUS — which includes the party’s vast rank-and-file membership — were Neville Chamberlain and Robert Menzies. 

“When Menzies was arguing for appeasement and tried to cut defence funding, John Curtin was the one who argued for a massive increase in investment in our Air Force and Navy to deter aggressors in our region,” said Conroy. “So, delegates, do you want to be on the side of John Curtin or do you want to be on the side of Pig Iron Bob Menzies?”

“Strength deters war. Appeasement invites conflict.” 

It was a slur labelled “ridiculous” by the lone Labor MP who spoke against AUKUS, backbencher Josh Wilson, and one that prompted party elder and newly appointed patron of Labor Against War Doug Cameron to tweet: “Branding those of us who oppose AUKUS as engaging in appeasement is a cheap shot far removed from reality.”

But it didn’t matter. The isolationist jibe was merely emblematic of the common threads animating the positions variously articulated by Albanese, Marles and Conroy: gaudy condescension and gaslighting on the one hand, and on the other that casual, reflexive certainty and arrogance so typical of politicians who’ve scarcely, if at all, held a job outside the halls of Parliament. 

Consider, for instance, Albanese’s insistence that those who oppose AUKUS must, by definition, be unserious, immature people given to both “sunny optimism” and fringe notions of isolationism. 

Consider, too, the sheer swagger of his rewriting of recent history, where his declared pride in having affirmed Labor’s support for AUKUS in “less than 24 hours” (without caucus consultation) has now vanished in favour of a narrative that presents AUKUS as something accepted after carefully considered expert advice. AUKUS is a necessity, he would now have us believe; not the product of preelection, small-target politics — never mind his refusal to share the contents and authorship of the “advice and analysis” he now says compelled him to that view. 

The same holds for Marles, who referenced the military build-up in China but not the fact that the United States accounts for nearly 40% of global military expenditure and China 13%. And so too Conroy, whose highly selective quoting of Labor history and tradition finds reflection in the 32-paragraph statement on AUKUS he and Marles attached to the party’s national platform.  

Indeed, the contents of the statement invoke an eerie symmetry with the Morrison government, which as a general rule was more given to grandstanding and spin than to governing.  

For one thing, no fewer than five paragraphs were dedicated to the (untrue) claim that AUKUS and our “defence partnership” with the United States in no way erodes or runs contrary to our nation’s sovereignty. Notably, this sentiment wasn’t confined to the (also untrue) claim that the submarines will be under the sole “control of the Australian government”. It extended to the rather large claim that AUKUS and like initiatives enhance “Australian sovereignty and self-reliance”. 

It’s obviously not easy to reconcile such statements with the sovereignty expressly ceded under Australia’s 2014 Force Posture Agreement with the United States, which among other things has allowed the “permanent rotation” of US forces and efflorescence of US military bases on the continent. And nor are they so easily squared with the parameters of AUKUS, which envisions permanent rotations of US bombers (which may or may not carry nuclear weapons) and US and British submarines beginning later this year. 

In reality, the only way these paragraphs can be construed as even loosely true is if one accepts the government’s fraught reasoning that no loss of sovereignty can possibly have ensued if these arrangements both required our consent and improve our military capability. 

It’s in such ways that the roots of the government’s obvious contempt for the intelligence and will of the people are thrown into sharp relief.  After all, Marles himself has said that it is sovereignty (as he understands it) and not democratic consent which sits at the heart of the “compact between a government and its citizens”. 

And if that is so, it becomes possible to see why the government attaches so little weight to debate, consultation, transparency — those usual considerations that condition democracy — or at least sees them as subordinate to the whims of those faceless spooks who putatively know better than the people. 

Hence Labor’s dishonesty, in its 32 paragraphs, that it is diplomacy, and not militarism, that remains at the forefront of Australia’s foreign policy stance; that it will continue to “ensure” the country continues to meet its nuclear non-proliferation obligations, even as both AUKUS and the FPA directly undermine this stance; and, perhaps most tellingly of all, its “belief”, as opposed to assurance, that AUKUS will in no way draw the country into yet another dangerous US-led war.

Stepping back, the overriding reason Labor has adopted this stance was made clear in Albanese’s opening address to the conference. “Each of us understands that winning and holding government is not only true to our principles, it is essential to fulfilling them,” he told the party faithful. “We know that what we have begun can be undone unless we are there to protect it.” 

So, taking the long view, this is ultimately all about power. Not so much its sovereign exercise, but power for power’s sake on the part of one man and his ponderous pride: Albanese. Presumably lost on him is the unadulterated irony of his words. After all, if Labor’s ready embrace of AUKUS, the stage three tax cuts, the carbon credits scam and other transparency-reducing mechanisms, such as national cabinet, are any guide, fears rooted in the erasure of one’s legacy would hardly be animating the Coalition from the opposition benches. 

On the contrary, what we have before us is a Labor leadership bent on erasing its own party’s rich history. Not only its achievements with respect to China and, more broadly, Asia over recent decades, but so too its principled anti-nuclear and anti-war positions. 

Albanese calls it supreme pragmatism. Others might call it a betrayal of time-honoured beliefs and values. What’s left is power unspooled from any purpose and overriding vision except to remain in office. It’s an empty vessel, as Laura Tingle says, but one with many of the barnacles of the former government. 

Absent a fight on the part of the party faithful and movements like Labor Against War, the threat of war, deepening inequality and the accelerating climate crisis are all destined to last until doomsday if all that confronts them is the Albanese government.