Editorial
The curse of AUKUS

Probably it is worth remembering a little about Scott Morrison, the man who conceived AUKUS. He is the single worst leader the country has ever had, unique in his venality and unseriousness. He is a man without ambition for anything but himself, a man as useful as a briefing paper is to a chimp.

Morrison did not care about policy. He did not care about the country. He did not care about process or probity. He was so terrible he made the Liberal Party think Peter Dutton was electable.

Morrison’s plan for AUKUS followed his plan for vaccine procurement. Both share similar features: lurid opportunism and a fundamental inability to look towards the future, even if the future is next week.

Morrison failed to take up offers to secure sufficient vaccines. He ignored key emails. Procurement was never closer than four months behind comparable nations. At one point he boasted of enough vaccine to protect one fifth of the population.

One feature of Morrison’s failures is that they compound. He makes little mistakes that become bigger mistakes. This is the way of the charlatan. With AUKUS, the mistakes at the start were so great that less than four years in they already represent a catastrophe.

When United States Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby pushes Australia and Japan for pre-commitment to support the US in a potential future conflict in the Taiwan Strait, he is doing what AUKUS always allowed America to do.

He is making clear that Morrison’s big announcement, uncritically supported by Labor since, was really about getting someone else to pay for submarines the US will ultimately use as their own. The deal offers no guarantees on the boats actually arriving, although America is already asking for guarantees on their deployment.

Anthony Albanese could still step back from AUKUS and focus on military priorities that would make Australia safer. The current review is a perfect opportunity, although Labor seems afraid of making any choices that would differentiate the party on defence policy.

Instead, we are stuck with a deal made on a beach by the most incompetent and inconsequential leader Australia is likely to know. We are stuck with a pact that makes the country less safe and that grossly misshapes our defence spending and priorities. In exchange for all this, we get precisely nothing.

Occasionally it is worth remembering that Scott Morrison once went on commercial radio to confirm he had never befouled himself at McDonald’s Engadine. The episode is a neat analogy for what he negotiated in AUKUS. He took an unquantified threat, gave all strategic advantage to someone else, and let them set the terms of the encounter.

Morrison may believe he neutralised a situation, but all he did was create the enduring image of a confused man at a fast-food restaurant, possibly wearing a rugby league jersey, wondering about the least complex path towards the toilets.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 19, 2025 as "The curse of AUKUS".

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