New developments in AUKUS agreement prompts discussion over Australia’s role in the agreement
The Prime Minister has rejected claims that Australia could soon store radioactive waste under a revamp of the trilateral AUKUS agreement for nuclear submarines. Under the new document, partner nations have made undisclosed "political commitments" so the US and UK can transfer technology and secrets here.
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00:00The AUKUS agreement for Australia to acquire nuclear submarines has been around for some
00:08time.
00:09Last year we saw the leaders sign off on a new agreement in San Diego for an optimal
00:14pathway and now we're learning that there is a revamped agreement that has been agreed
00:21to by all three partner nations and as you mentioned it does contain, we're told, some
00:28political commitments but the details of those are yet to be revealed publicly, they will
00:33be though shortly we're assured.
00:36And in this agreement the government stresses that it's important because it sets up the
00:41transfer of naval nuclear material that Australia will need to have nuclear powered submarines
00:49as well as those continuing arrangements for secrets from both the United States and the
00:55UK to be given to Australia so that it can also have a fleet of nuclear submarines operating
01:03as soon as possible.
01:05But it has prompted some questions today, there have been concerns from particularly
01:11anti-nuclear campaigners who say that the language that the US President has used about
01:17this new agreement could open the door for Australia down the track to accept high level
01:22radioactive waste from both the United States and the UK.
01:27The opposition leader is also demanding more detail, let's hear from Peter Dutton.
01:32I think the Prime Minister should provide an explanation as to what Australia is signed
01:36up to.
01:38We don't know the detail of it yet so we'll wait for that before I make further comment
01:41but as you know we negotiated AUKUS with the United States and the United Kingdom.
01:46It's an incredibly important asset for our country.
01:49The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who of course was Defence Minister when the AUKUS
01:53agreement was first announced, so he's sounding pretty positive about these developments today.
02:00The Prime Minister though has been challenged to answer what is in the political commitments
02:05that have been made to secure this latest deal and he's also hit back at suggestions
02:13that Australia could become a radioactive dumping ground.
02:18There'll be no nuclear transfer from either the US or the UK, that's the detail, that's
02:25very clear and that's not part of the arrangement.
02:28Nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors in them, that's the detail there as well.
02:35For some time now we've heard the former Prime Minister's views on AUKUS and he is perhaps
02:41the leading critic of this arrangement in Australia.
02:45The former Labor leader has again hit out at what he thinks is a growing dependence
02:52on the United States and we've seen evidence of that this week with the AUSMIN talks again
02:58agreeing to further US deployments in Australia.
03:02Paul Keating was on the 7.30 program last night and again making his arguments against
03:08the AUKUS agreement and generally the alliance with the United States.
03:14Let's hear a bit of that now.
03:18The Albanese government and their policy is likely to turn Australia into the 51st state
03:27of the United States.
03:29We're now defending the fact that we're in AUKUS.
03:32If we weren't in AUKUS we wouldn't need to defend it, let me amplify the point.
03:36That is, if we didn't have an aggressive ally like the United States, aggressive to others
03:43in the region, there'd be nobody attacking Australia.
03:47Former Prime Minister Paul Keating there speaking on the 7.30 program.
03:52Now the current Prime Minister, the other Labor leader, Anthony Albanese has said that
03:58his former colleague is welcome to his views but again, pointingly, the Prime Minister
04:05has said that Paul Keating left office almost 30 years ago in 1996 and that incidentally
04:12was the year Anthony Albanese came to Canberra as an MP.