Gifting another $800 million to AUKUS “partners”

Written by: Nick G. on 24 July 2025

Above: Fremantle, April 2025

PM Albanese yesterday confirmed another non-refundable gift of $800 million to help pump-prime the ailing shipyards of our AUKUS “partners”, the US and British imperialists.

Together with an earlier gift of the same amount, it means that $1.6 billion of our money has been poured into the AUKUS black hole. More is to come.

It is no coincidence that the additional payment has been made as the US prepares to review AUKUS to ensure it supports Trump’s America First agenda. As part of the arrangement with the US, a President can cancel AUKUS if it results in any diminution of US war capacity.

With the current production rate, America will struggle to produce enough boats to meet its needs, let alone make another three for Australia.

The latest payment also comes just days after Albanese met with Xi Jinping, a gesture that had US opinion-makers (and some in Australia) suggesting that Albo was straying from the subservience required under the US Alliance.

It also comes in the wake of a disgusting display of backside-licking by Australian Ambassador to the US, and former Labor PM Kevin Rudd, who spoke effusively of his personal relation with Elbridge ‘Bridge’ Colby who will run the US AUKUS review. 

“Bridge has been around my place a lot of times, and so we have known each other for a long period of time, and that’s why I’m confident, quite apart from the mature relationship within our two defence establishments ... that we’ll work our way through this stuff,” he said.

However, others are not so confident, and some are even hoping ‘Bridge’ will burn the deal altogether.

Peter Varghese, a longtime Australian diplomat who ended his career in 2016 after running the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT)  for PM John Howard as permanent secretary, wrote in an op-ed piece for the Australian Financial Review, “I hope Elbridge Colby sinks AUKUS for Australia. The US might yet save us from ourselves by adding conditions to the nuclear submarine agreement that no Australian government could accept.”

Those conditions focussed on a request from the US that Australia commit to the US side in any war with China over its province Taiwan.

Albert Palazzo, who was the longtime director of war studies for the Australian Army, argued in a mid-June discussion of AUKUS that Colby’s review, “should be welcomed by all Australians as an opportunity for the Albanese government to scrap the agreement and wean itself off US dependency.” Palazzo concluded his recent piece saying that, “AUKUS remains an affront to Australian sovereignty.”

We, and a good many others, have been opposed to AUKUS from the outset. But that opposition has grown in recent times. All opposition is welcome, no matter from whom or how early or lately it is expressed.

Our opposition is based on our fight for an anti-imperialist Australian independence and socialism. 

This is the only future for Australia if it is to avoid war, and end the injustice and inequity of capitalism.

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