So far ScuMo and his idiot mates have alienated China, France, the EU and now the USA. This is after they also unilaterally closed down Australia’s car manufacturing industry and stuffed up the NBN, among many other things.
Isn’t it lucky that they are such good economic managers.
The Yanks have had that problem with having to reverse engineer parts on some of their aircraft due to some subcontractors going out of business.
So we buy an AUKUS sub whatever that is and does it come with enough spares and bits or drawings to maintain it or is it like the aircraft that we buy and are totally reliant on the Yanks for everything including the armaments and missiles to make them useful.
But, but Death taxes!!
We will need all the drawings. Everything.
We are looking at a submarine fleet that will sail for at least 40 years. No spare parts stock will be sufficient. We will build parts as we need them.
Not having the ability to make parts and maintain our fleet over a 40 year time span is something we quite reasonably should avoid signing up to.
Can’t agree with you enough but I also don’t think that will happen. To be honest I’m not even sure that we will get one boat out of this deal.
I hate contracts getting torn up and I remember the howls of protest when Dan warned that he would cancel the East West Link if he was elected. The Libs signed it anyway knowing that they were heading for opposition and just to really ■■■■ the nest, signed a poison side deal guaranteeing profits to the link builders. Remember the headlines about how much that was going to cost and the waste? How much is a $90B contract going to cost to back out of?
I wonder if Biden will decide to take up their more cosy relationship with the French more official.
France and the US could choose to work together to really screw Australia over these subs now very, very hard.
After NZ offended our great and powerful friends across the water, allegedly the Five Eyes was reduced to Four; it was denied access to the five eyes; taken off the big map in the State Dept and could not secure any high level appointments.
Took a few years to get back in the good books.
What the fark will Australia do with nuclear submarines when they arrive in a few decades time?
We won’t have the technical capabilities to crew them. Will probably have to out source the crewing of them under foreign worker visa rules to the Chinese!
Waste of public money. But at least our old white male politicians can pretend the submarines are actually their shrinking flaccid penises.
Won’t cost us much. (Relatively.) We only gave out a contract for the design phase. Basically we pay $2 billion for a design we never build.
We just didn’t issue the next phase of the contract. No penalties to us. We didn’t promise anything.
And it wasn’t a $90 billion contract. That amount is the lifecycle cost over 30-40 years, not the design and construction costs.
We will start crewing US and UK subs to give our sailors the required experience. Same with the technicians on shore.
We will have some immensely well paid sailors in the submarine service. Pay enough and you will have zero trouble getting enough sailors.
What about the US extracting their overpriced pound of flesh from us. We saw how important we were to the Americans when we called on their help in East Timor and they said no. We’ve fought every war with them, but it’s not a balanced relationship, they will make us pay.
Australia will be out in the cold until the French election is out of the way. Great time for China to up the temperature, say by removing Australia as an approved study or tourist destination (only a matter of time before they do this, just waiting for the right moment)
America will come riding in to save the day for a country that has no true friends, but it will extract a heavy tribute.
This whole submarine change is to satisfy the Americans. We were building a fleet to operate off the southern coast of Indonesia. The Americans wanted a fleet of submarines to operate in the South China Sea. That required a change in capability that only nuclear could provide.
All this cost and diplomatic pain is to satisfy the US strategic needs. We aren’t driving this change, this is the pound of flesh you describe. This submarine fleet, this force projection to the Chinese coast, this is the tribute our American overlords are demanding of us for their continued protection.
So serious about change!
Macron said it was up to Australia to restore the relationship. It’s not just bilateral, with Brexit, France is one of the two EU big players,
The withdrawal of the French Ambassador from Washington was a first, subsequently restored,.
But in Rome, Biden came to Macron, at the Villa Bonaparte , the location of the French Embassy to the Vatican - not quite neutral ground - but a concession by the US ( and which included other high office holders)
High diplomacy message.
How can Australia match this?
Macron made a point of the otherwise strong bilateral ties.
Will we see French bases here , next door to the US marines?
Hmmm… Do we trust the Septics as much as that ? Remember Dump ?
The UK / US reactor is fuelled to last the life of the vessel. No regular overseas maintenance required.
And it really is time this country GREW UP and stopped hiding behind Mummy Britain and Daddy America.
That’s the claim… But who’s making that claim ? The guys who will be providing it, the Septic Empire. They’re about as trustworthy as their arselicker Scummo.
I agree with your distrust of the future US relationship, but engineering is engineering. The reactor is what it is. That part isn’t a con.
Being handcuffed to US foreign policy whims, that is a legitimate worry.
Fair call- right now there is a moderate in the White House. Imagine if a Trump-lite, ( or even Trump) gets back in, with the whole “how much can we grift” attitude? That only just occurred to me and its downright scary.