Urgent! Have your say on AUKUS

All Australians who are concerned about the AUKUS agreement that puts Australia on the hook for $368 billion nuclear submarines and a massive military build-up to go to war against China now have a chance to have their say.

The Joint Standing Committee on Treaties is taking public submissions for an inquiry into the “Agreement among the Government of Australia, the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation Related to Naval Nuclear Propulsion”.

But write your submission ASAP, because you only have a few days—submissions close this coming Monday, 2 September.

AUKUS is the product of secret negotiations between an Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who had secretly given himself more power than any politician in Australian history; a buffoonish British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who was brought down because he flouted his own laws; and a sinister US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who is itching to start a war with China.

AUKUS wouldn’t exist, however, if not for one of the greatest acts of political cowardice in Australian history, when Scott Morrison informed then-Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese and gave him just one day to agree to it, because the White House wouldn’t commit to AUKUS without bipartisan agreement in Australia, i.e. without the confidence that both sides of politics were committed to this huge bill payable to the Anglo-American military industrial complex.

Any self-respecting political leader in a sovereign country would have told Scott Morrison to take his ultimatum and shove it, and make the election a contest between a party committed to investing in essential services for Australians vs. a party committed to the lunacy of gifting $368 billion to US and British weapons manufacturers to take us to war against our biggest trading partner.

Instead, Albanese cowered in fear that he would be called “weak on national security”, and gave his agreement sight unseen.

Now the Australian people have to pay for it, while we have a social housing crisis and our housing is unaffordable, our underfunded hospitals are putting patients in danger, our underfunded education standards are tumbling, our regions are contracting economically from lack of investment, and our national debt is through the roof.

And the latest news about the AUKUS agreement is that despite all the money Australia is committed to outlay, the USA and UK are under zero obligation to actually deliver the nuclear submarines, and if they don’t deliver we won’t get our money back.

AUKUS is symbolic of Australia not having an independent foreign policy, but being subservient to the two countries that the late former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser called our “dangerous allies” who keep dragging us into deadly, immoral, and futile wars—the USA and UK.

What you can do

Make a submission immediately to this inquiry, denouncing AUKUS in your own words, but in no uncertain terms.

A submission is anything you want: it can be a detailed, point-by-point refutation, or it can simply be a short letter expressing your opinion.

Whatever sort of submission you make, do it and email it in or upload it ASAP—by Monday 2 September at the latest.

Let’s set off a shockwave of opposition in this inquiry!

Click here for the inquiry webpage, where you can see more information and the upload portal for your submission.

To email a submission, use the details below:

Committee Secretary
Joint Standing Committee on Treaties
PO Box 6021
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
Phone: 02 6277 4002
jsct@aph.gov.au