Turnbull says Australia ‘mugged by reality’ on Aukus deal as US set to halve submarine build

The former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said Australia has been “mugged by reality” over the Aukus submarine deal after the US announced it will halve the number of submarines it will build next year, throwing the Australia end of the agreement into doubt.

With the US president, Joe Biden, continuing to face a hostile Congress, the Pentagon budget draft request includes construction of just one Virginia-class nuclear submarine for 2025.

Under the Aukus agreement, production is meant to be ramped up to ensure Australia will have access to at least three Virginia-class submarines from the US in the 2030s. That is to fill a “capability gap” before nuclear-powered submarines to be built in Adelaide enter into service from the 2040s.

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, played down the impact of the US budget announcement, insisting that “our plans are very clear”.

“We have an agreement that was reached with the United States and the UK,” Albanese told reporters in Darwin on Wednesday. “That legislation went through the US Congress last year. That was a product of a lot of hard work.”

The defence minister, Richard Marles, said earlier that the US remained committed to the deal.

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of Aukus, Australia, the United States and United Kingdom remain steadfast in our commitment to the pathway announced last March, which will see Australia acquire conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines,” he said.

“All three Aukus partners are working at pace to integrate our industrial bases and to realise this historic initiative between our countries.”

Greens senator David Shoebridge, who has been critical of the Aukus deal from the start, said the US budget announcement was the beginning of the end of Aukus.

“When the US passed the law to set up Aukus, they put in kill switches, one of which allowed the US to not transfer the submarines if doing so would ‘degrade the US undersea capabilities’. Budgeting for one submarine all but guarantees this,” he said on X.

The US budget does include increased spending on the submarine industrial base, which was a key component of the Aukus pillar one deal, as it laid the groundwork to increase production in the coming years.

But Turnbull, an architect of the French submarine deal which was unceremoniously dumped by the Morrison government in favour of the Aukus deal, said Australia was now at the mercy of the United States for a key part of its defence strategy.

He said that the US needed to increase submarine production to meet its own needs before it was able to transfer boats to Australia, but were now only producing about half as many that were needed for the US navy and were struggling to maintain the boats they held, due to labour shortages.

“What does that mean for Australia? It means because the Morrison government, adopted by Albanese, has basically abandoned our sovereignty in terms of submarines, we are completely dependent on what happens in the United States as to whether we get them now,” he told ABC radio.

“The reality is the Americans are not going to make their submarine deficit worse than it is already by giving or selling submarines to Australia and the Aukus legislation actually sets that out quite specifically.

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“So you know, this is really a case of us being mugged by reality. I mean, there’s a lot of Aukus cheerleaders, and anyone that has any criticism of Aukus is almost described as being unpatriotic. We’ve got to be realistic here.”

The ALP grassroots activist group, Labor Against War, want the Albanese government to freeze Aukus payments to the US so as not to “underwrite the US navy industrial shipyards”.

The national convenor of Labor Against War, Marcus Strom, said Australian taxpayers should not be footing the bill for America’s dockyards.

“We are on the hook to the tune of $3bn as soon as next year as a downpayment for subs that might never arrive and be useless on delivery,” he said.

“This Labor government managed to junk Scott Morrison’s tax plan. Why would it be so stupid to continue with his war plan?”

While the Pentagon has sought to assure Australia its submarine production will be back on track by 2028, the looming threat of Donald Trump returning to the White House has raised further concerns the deal will be scuttled.

“On Aukus pillar 1 we are effectively in conflict with the needs of the US navy, and you know as well as I do the American government, when it comes to a choice between the needs of the US navy and the Australian navy, are always going to back their own,” Turnbull said.

Marles has previously denied Aukus will erode Australia’s sovereignty. In a speech to parliament last year, Marles said Australia would “always make sovereign, independent decisions on how our capabilities are employed”.

Additional reporting by Daniel Hurst