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Thursday, March 30, 2023

Brian Toohey’s address to the Australian Anti-AUKUS Coalition’s national zoom meeting of 26 th March,2023


Nearly everything this government says about nuclear

subs is ludicrous and highly damaging.

Despite Defence Minister Marles apparently saying

Australia will not participate in a war over Taiwan,

Hugh White (ex- Dep Head Defence) says US would

never sell N subs to Australia without guarantees they

will always be used in a US war. Reason is these subs

are taken from of its line of battle, not additional ones

from the production line. Once again, Australian

sovereignty does not exist in the sense of being able to

use US weapons how we want to do after buying

them.


Marles now says the nuclear subs are not for war, but

to protect Australian merchant shipping. A leading a

leading economist Percy Allan points out there 26,000

cargo ship movements to and from Australia each year.

Nuclear subs have terrible maintenance problems and

if we buy the expected three second hand Virginia

Class attack subs from America, only one might be


operationally available at any time and probably none.

One sub, let alone none, can’t protect 26,000 cargo

shipping movements, but mainstream journalists

swallow this nonsense.


Before his sudden conversion to pacifism, Marles

wanted to deploy the N subs off the Chinese coast to

fire long-range cruise missiles into the mainland. This

represents a return to the Forward Defence doctrine

that failed in Singapore in 1942, and later in Vietnam.

Arthur Calwell gave a magnificent anti-war speech in

1965. He was fully vindicated when the Vietnamese

won a war against a horrendously destructive invasion

that was a war crime. Now, Albanese effectively

supports war.

With Labor now returning to the disastrous Forward

Defence doctrine, it’s worth remembering the

Coalition defence minister in 1969 Allen Fairhall

scrapped this doctrine and cut military spending by 5%,

while there were still 7000 Aust troops in Vietnam. The

Coalition then switched to the direct defence of

Australia. Whitlam, Fraser, Hawke and Keating all

embraced the defence of Australia, not forward

defence. Keating also adopted a long sighted policy of

seeking our security in Asia, not from it.


Howard reverted do America’s bidding in another war

crime of aggression.

Australia’s best defence is it’s surrounded by water

and long way from China or India. There is no evidence

either is a threat. If this changes for the worse, the Def

of Aust doctrine will come into its own.

Marles and Albanese will recklessly position nuclear

subs off China. But that’s where China’s forces are

concentrated. Because Marles and Albanese would be

playing to China’s strengths, they would then be

responsible for a disastrous military blunder when the

subs are sunk. It would be much better to play to our

strengths by defending the approaches to Australia by

buying highly advanced, medium sized, submarines

that are superior to nuclear subs.

Marles estimates his subs will cost up to $368 billion

(realistically over $400). As explained later, that

includes the crazy decision to pay the UK to co-design

8 new submarines for Aust. This dwarfs next highest

defence acquisition —$17 billion for F-35 fighter jets.


The US Government Accountability Office and the

Congressional Research Service have an outstanding

record for exposing appalling waste and incompetence

in US submarine shipyards. One Virginia sub was tied


up a jetty for five years before it could be fixed. The

US has a military budget of $US880, yet Albanese is

donating $3 billion to help improve the shipyards.


Marles did not take the responsible ministerial step

and commission a cost-effectiveness study of the

options before splurging $400 billion. Australia could

get ten superior conventional submarines for total

$10-$15 billion from Japan, South Korea or Germany

that could deter any hostile ships approaching

Australia from a couple of thousand kilometres away.

Submerged drones and mines could also help at a low

cost.

Japan’s new Taigei subs use highly advanced batteries

that run silently for several weeks without needing to

surface to charge the batteries. South Korean and

German submarines are about to get much improved

batteries. These new subs can run silently on hydrogen

fuel cells as well as batteries.

Nuclear subs are easier to detect. When they go at

high-speed, they make a detectable wake. Being much

bigger, they have a stronger magnetic impression than

suitable conventional boats.

Like other subs, nuclear ones they have to come to the

surface to stick up periscopes and radar and electronic


warfare equipment. They produce an easily detected

infrared signal due to the reactor constantly boiling

water for steam engines to propel the subs. (Nuclear

power does not propel the sub. Puffing Billy does.)

This government, largely unrecognisable for and Labor

values, is wasting $400 billion on dud submarines,

when so many pressing needs such as global warming,

social welfare, health, education, affordable housing

etc


Another huge problem with nuclear subs is the

government has rightly said it will take all the highly

enriched uranium waste at end of the sub’s life, then

safely store it. This requires the waste to be vitrified

overseas and returned in thick drums for burying deep

in stable dry unground rock formations for hundreds of

years and heavily guarded. Each reactor weights 100

tons and contains 200 kg of highly radioactive uranium.

When used in nuclear power stations, uranium is

enriched to about 5%, the same as in French and

Chinese nuclear submarines and 20% in Russians. It’s

93% for ours, greatly exacerbating the disposal

problem.

I recently asked Australia’s principal nuclear safety

organisation, the Australian Radiation Protection and


Nuclear Safety Agency. It refused to answer. Perhaps it

was intimidated by Defence.

Marles exacerbated the problem by saying the waste

uranium would be stored “on” defence land. It can’t

be stored safely on top of the land. It must be stored

deep underground. He’s not dealing with low-grade

hospital nuclear waste.

Neither the US or the UK has a high-level underground

nuclear waste repository. They could easily pressure

Australia into securing their waste from their nuclear

subs reactors here.

It seems likely the burial site will be on land in central

Australia that is important to Australia’s indigenous

population. Whatever happens, it is essential there is

no repeat of the wa indigenous people were wilfully

exposed to radiation during and after the British

nuclear tests in the 1950s and 60s in Australia’s south

and central desert areas.

As well as the radiation spread by fallout from

atmospheric tests, a much worse danger was the 22.2

kilos of plutonium spread by other trials conducted on

the surface and blown on the wind at Maralinga. The

secret goal was develop triggers for British hydrogen

bombs. One kilo of plutonium contains over 16 billion

times the international standard for the maximum


possible permissible body burden in humans. It has a

half life of 24,000 years. It, and other radiation, was

particular danger to aborigines wandering around the

testing and trial sites.

Two Native Patrol officers complained they were given

the impossible task to ensuring aboriginal people we

kept out of danger over vast areas. Journalist

journalists Paul Malone and Howard reported that the

head that the head of the British weapons research

establishment responded to the complaint by saying

the officers showed “a lamentable lack of balance . . .

apparently placing the affairs of a handful of natives

above those of the British Commonwealth of Nations”.

The secret AUKUS pact gives the UK another chance to

display its values about nuclear issues and Australia. It

doesn’t even meet its own nuclear standards. The

nuclear HMS Dreadnought began service in 1960 and

retired in 2020. Instead of being dismantled as

required, it remains in a dock over 40 years later. Its

nuclear fuel has been removed, but this not in the case

of nine others that have retired. These are stored on

water at Plymouth, where numerous accidents have

occurred involving submarines still in service.


Many journalists put great faith in intelligence briefings

from right wing ideologues and others about the

alleged threat from China. They claim Keating can’t say

anything of value because he hasn’t received an

intelligence briefing in decades. On the contrary, this

is a distinct advantage.

Keating’s detractors should pay a lot more attention

to the role intelligence played in the illegal invasion of

Iraq. The recent 20 th anniversary of the invasion, led by

George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, reminded

us that this act of aggression was solely justified by

phoney intelligence. Howard falsely claimed that at

the time of the invasion his government “knew” Iraq

possessed weapons of mass destruction. He knew no

such thing. Thanks largely to the much-disparaged

weapons inspectors, Iraq certainly didn’t have any. Yet

Howard falsely said they were “capable of causing

destruction on a mammoth scale”.

Many Australian journalists now rely on purported

intelligence and propaganda for their flimsy claims

about Chinese acts of aggression, which barely rank

alongside the death and destruction wrought by the

US, aided by Australia over decades. Chinese

journalists also rely excessively on government

sources, but they should be a model.


The White House engaged in a blatant act of

propaganda when unveiling the plan for Australia to

get nuclear submarines. It claimed, “For over 60 years,

the UK and the US have operated more than 500 naval

nuclear reactors . . . without incident or adverse effect

on human health or the environment.” In fact, two US

nuclear submarines, the Thresher and the Scorpion,

sunk during that period with the loss of all lives.

Mainstream Australian journalists have not shown any

concern about this staggering falsehood. Key White

House staff must’ve have known it was a lie. What

advice Albanese got from Andrew Shearer, a key

intelligence adviser, is not publicly known.


By the time Australia’s new nuclear submarines arrive

around 2050, sanity may have prevailed and peace

broken out. Meanwhile, advances in sensor technology

and computing power will probably make N subs

relatively easy to detect and destroy. Bang goes $400

billion.

This is a talk I gave to a zoom meeting on March 26,

organised by the Australian Anti-AUKUS Committee



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