AUKUS and the Australian American Leadership Dialogue

Written by: Nick G. on 14 August 2025

The Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) currently meeting in Adelaide has brought two US congressmen to Australia to try and breathe life into the ailing AUKUS arrangements.

The AALD was established in 1992 by comprador capitalist Phil Scanlon as a “private diplomatic initiative” bringing together Australian and US leaders from a range of backgrounds.

Scanlon is currently working as adviser to London-based Greater Pacific Capital and New York-based P3 Global Management. From 2009 to 2013, he held the role of Australian Consul General in New York. He has been on the Business Council of Australia and spent more than three decades as a Governor of the Australia-Israel Chamber of Commerce.

Although promoting itself as an NGO, the AALD’s principal partner is the Australian Government’s Department of Defence. Other principal partners are multinational arms manufacturers Thales, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, as well as Deakin and Adelaide Universities, BHP and Doordash.

The two congressmen are both tied to US military expansion. The first, Republican Trent Kelly is the House Seapower and Projection Forces sub-committee chairperson.  His electorate includes a shipyard, as does the electorate of his Democrat partner in crime Joe Courtney. In his case it is a nuclear submarine shipyard at Groton, Connecticut.

Accompanied by SA Premier Malin-AUKUS, the two toured the Osborne shipyards 

Courtney, who is also a member of the Seapower and Projection Forces sub-committee of Congress, waxed lyrical about the “eye-watering investment that is going on in the shipbuilding sector here in Australia.”

It was not reported whether he also praised the eye-watering and non-refundable hundreds of millions of dollars that Australia has gifted the US for the sake of pump-priming shipyards like Groton which have labour shortages, supply chain problems and are currently running well behind schedule to produce enough nuclear submarines for the US, let alone fulfilling the AUKUS requirement to supply up to three US nuclear-powered submarines to Australia.

Courtney praised the collaboration between Adelaide and Connecticut universities on “cutting-edge work for the US Navy in terms of submarines and unmanned vessels…all kinds of stuff we can’t really talk about publicly.”

Malin-AUKUS parroted the pro-AUKUS spin emanating from the two congressmen, ignoring the Australian people’s wish for greater independence from US imperialism, and boasting that SA was “positioning itself as a security and technology partner of choice” for the US war machine.

The only bilateral US-Australian partnership that should be pursued is that between the two peoples, based on non-interference in each other’s affairs and a common commitment to opposing imperialism and building socialist unity. Both peoples would much prefer that eye-watering amounts were spent on education, health, housing and infrastructure.

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