WATCH LIVE: Former PM Paul Keating addresses National Press Club in the wake of China’s renewed criticism of AUKUS

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has launched a brutal tirade against the party he once led after Australia’s announcement on its nuclear-powered submarines.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined with his United Kingdom counterpart Rishi Sunak and United States President Joe Biden in San Diego, California this week to unveil the next steps in the AUKUS trilateral security partnership. 

Australia will receive three United States Virginia class nuclear-powered submarines from the early 2030s, before later operating the SSN-AUKUS based on a United Kingdom design that incorporates technologies from the three countries.

Mr Keating, a vocal critic of AUKUS, told the National Press Club on Wednesday the announcement marked the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since Billy Hughes’ bid to introduce conscription in World War I.

“Because underlying all this stuff about the need of nuclear power is the idea that China has either threatened us, or will threaten us,” he said. 

“Now, this is a distortion and it’s untrue. The Chinese have never implied that they would threaten us or said it explicitly. But what ‘threaten us’ means is an invasion of Australia.

“It doesn’t mean firing a few missiles off the coast like the Japanese submarines did in 1943, firing a few things into the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It means an invasion. All great battles are fought on land. They’re fought as invasions.

“The only way the Chinese could threaten Australia or attack it is on land. That is, they bring an armada of troop ships with a massive army to occupy us, this is not possible for the Chinese to do.” 

Mr Keating backed up his claim by saying the Chinese would “need to come 13 days of steaming, 8,000km between Beijing or Shanghai and Brisbane, say”.

“In which case, we’d just sink them all. See, the moment they leave their port, they are visible straight away,” he said. 

“We wouldn’t need submarines to sink an armada of Chinese boats, ships. We’d just do them with planes and missiles.

“You know the idea that we need American submarines to protect us, if we buy eight, three are at sea. Three are going to protect us from the might of China – really? I mean, the rubbish of it.” 

Mr Keating also slammed the cost of the nuclear-powered submarine program, which sees Australia replace its Collins class diesel-electric boats.   

The eye-watering cost for the defence upgrade to build and sustain the boats is estimated between $268 billion to $368 billion over the life of the program until 2055.

Defence spending will increase to 0.15 per cent of GDP on average from 2026-27 every year to pay for the submarines.

“Look, I’d say for the cost, $360 billion, we’re going to get eight submarines. It must be the worst deal in all history,” Mr Keating said.

“If we were buying Collins class replacements, we’d get at least 40 to 50 of those submarines… for the same price.” 

Mr Keating, who was prime minister and Labor leader between 1991 and 1996, was also scathing of the wording Mr Albanese has been using to describe the importance of the AUKUS partnership and the submarine deal. 

“Anthony Albanese’s running around now every second sentence he talks about… sovereignty,” he said. 

“He thinks if he drops the word in to enough sentences in an hour, it will actually happen. Our sovereignty’s just being peeled away by all of this. With the Collins class boats, we had complete sovereignty.”

Mr Keating further accused Mr Albanese of having “screwed into place the last shackle in the long chain which the Americans have laid out to contain China”.

In a statement issued ahead of his National Press Club appearance, Mr Keating said he spoke with one of the Prime Minister’s staff members last month seeking a discussion with Mr Albanese on AUKUS and the submarines.   

“The message was delivered but I heard nothing from the Prime Minister,” Mr Albanese said.