{"id":709960,"date":"2026-06-02T08:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T08:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709960\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T08:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T08:06:14","slug":"not-the-deal-promised-labors-ed-husic-questions-aukus-pact-that-will-deliver-secondhand-subs-aukus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/709960\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Not the deal promised\u2019: Labor\u2019s Ed Husic questions Aukus pact that will deliver secondhand subs | Aukus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia needs a backup plan for the Aukus<\/a> submarine agreement, Labor MP Ed Husic has warned, arguing sluggish US production and the \u201ctransactional nature\u201d of the Trump administration have put the multibillion-dollar defence deal at risk.<\/p>\n

The defence minister, Richard Marles, this week agreed to US requests for Australia to accept three second-hand Virginia-class nuclear submarines, rather than a combination of new and old vessels<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Husic spoke out during Labor caucus on Tuesday in what former Labor minister Kim Carr described as an \u201ccourageous\u201d intervention.<\/p>\n

It was the most significant internal criticism of the $368bn deal \u2013 agreed by the Morrison government in 2021 and endorsed by the then-Labor opposition \u2013 since heated debate at the ALP national conference three years ago. Labor ultimately continued its support of the multi-decade pact.<\/p>\n

Husic said production rates of submarines in the US were too low for Australia to realistically expect boats to be handed over in the early 2030s.<\/p>\n

The deal requires the sitting US president to agree to release submarines based on the US having an adequate supply for its own navy, even though Australia is paying to boost production.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be open as a nation that we are not going to get the deal that was promised to us,\u201d Husic said.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven how transactional the Trump administration is, you can almost imagine them saying \u2018we give you these, you will do this with them\u2019, and so there\u2019s an active sovereignty question there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t be a renegotiation; it\u2019s a reality about the production rates and whether or not we\u2019ll get them. What\u2019s the contingency? What\u2019s the plan B?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ed Husic at Parliament House on Tuesday. Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n

US shipyards currently produce between 1.1 and 1.2 Virginia-class submarines each year, well below the target yearly rate of 2.33 needed for the deal to go ahead as planned.<\/p>\n

Husic said there was disquiet about Aukus within the wider party rank and file. He suggested Marles had been forced by the US to say he was happy about the new arrangements after weekend talks with his counterpart, Pete Hegseth, in Singapore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an issue about [the] reality \u2026 confronting us, about whether or not we will even get the new deal that has been put to us based on what\u2019s happening in the US,\u201d Husic said.<\/p>\n

The former cabinet minister was dumped in a factional deal orchestrated by Marles after the 2025 election. He is close to the former prime minister Paul Keating, one of the loudest critics of the Aukus plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The shadow defence minister, James Paterson, said Husic\u2019s intervention represented a \u201cfull-on Labor revolt\u201d. Paterson demanded Marles pull his colleague into line and reaffirm the government\u2019s commitment to Aukus.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely legitimate to ask questions about how this government is going about delivering Aukus, about the details of Aukus,\u201d the Liberal MP said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is much more concerning is to have a former cabinet minister still in the Labor caucus questioning the merits of Aukus altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paterson questioned why secondhand submarines would be cheaper and easier to operate, as claimed by Marles. \u201cIf that was the case, why wasn\u2019t this the optimal pathway three years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After meetings on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday, Marles said servicing and training efforts would be streamlined because Australian crews would not operate two different American-made submarines before the bespoke SSN Aukus model comes online in 2042.<\/p>\n

The first Virginia-class from the US was due to arrive in Australia in 2032, with another arriving every four years, before the Australian-built model was ready for operations.<\/p>\n

The former Labor industry minister and long-time Aukus critic Kim Carr praised Husic for breaking ranks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAukus commits Australia to an extremely expensive, high-risk, long-term military project that deepens dependence on an increasingly erratic US, while delivering uncertain strategic benefits decades into the future,\u201d Carr told Guardian Australia.<\/p>\n

Husic\u2019s comments come on the same day former Labor minister Peter Garrett was announced as the head<\/a> of a public inquiry into Aukus, backed by unions and non-profit groups.<\/p>\n

Former West Australian Labor premier Carmen Lawrence and former defence force chief Chris Barrie were among the commissioners chosen for the inquiry, which is not a parliamentary review.<\/a><\/p>\n

Garrett said there had been no proper parliamentary scrutiny of the deal, calling it \u201cthe most momentous and expensive decision ever made by any Australian government in the modern era.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opposition to Aukus continues to harden in the wider Labor movement, setting the stage for an internal fight at the party\u2019s upcoming national conference in Adelaide. <\/p>\n

A motion calling on the Albanese government to review the security pact last month won support in the Victorian branch for the second year in a row. <\/p>\n

The grassroots Labor Against War action group is pushing to strip all references to Aukus from the national platform, which is up for debate at the July conference. <\/p>\n

The group\u2019s submission to consultation on the draft platform, seen by Guardian Australia, seeks to insert a reference to the \u201cillegal US-Israel war on Iran\u201d and guarantee that Labor would not commit military forces to an armed conflict that is \u201cnot consistent with international law\u201d.<\/p>\n

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers<\/a>, said on Tuesday that Labor remained committed to delivering Aukus.<\/p>\n

Arthur Rorris, the secretary of the South Coast Labour Council, which opposes the establishment of a nuclear submarine base at Port Kembla<\/a>, said the proposed base was never intended for Australian submarines but \u201cwould be ceded to the United States navy as a staging post for their 7th fleet\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding submarines for Australia was never at the top of Washington\u2019s agenda; establishing a base for their forever wars certainly is,\u201d Rorris said on the weekend.<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Ben Doherty<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia needs a backup plan for the Aukus submarine agreement, Labor MP Ed Husic has warned, arguing sluggish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-709960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}