Ex-foreign minister Carr blasts Aukus on NZ visit
Aformer Australian Foreign Minister has blasted pillar two of the Aukus pact as “pure bull **** ”.
Bob Carr, a former Premier of New South Wales and Foreign Minister in the Labor Government led by Julia Gillard, was visiting Wellington as part of a conference on Aukus organised by the New Zealand Labour Party.
Aukus is primarily about the United States and the United Kingdom delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. However, the second pillar of the deal would involve sharing non-nuclear advanced technology like quantum computing, artificial intelligence, hypersonic missiles and cyber warfare.
US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell has made encouraging noises about New Zealand joining up to that part of the deal and last week the Aukus partners said they were open to letting Japan join. South Korea and Canada have also been floated as potential members.
Carr told yesterday’s conference that pillar two was “fragrant, methane-wrapped bull **** ”.
“Why do I call it bull **** ? Because it’s been cobbled together to make it look like there’s more to Aukus than subs — there isn’t,” Carr said.
Carr was joined by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, former Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga, and Otago University Professor Robert Patman.
He was critical of pillar one of the deal too, noting that it was one of the largest offshore transfers of Australian wealth in history, as much as A$368 billion ($400b) at this stage, far more than the A$90b ($97b) cost of the French-built submarines which were cancelled to make room for Aukus.
American submarines will be loaned to Australia while it waits for British-built Aukus submarines to be built and delivered.
He was concerned the deal was an erosion of Australian sovereignty because the US, which is itself worried about not having enough submarines, would not allow its own to be loaned to Australia unless it was confident Australia would use them in line with its interests.
If Australia and the US parted ways during the decades-long wait for Aukus to come to fruition, Australia might be left without any submarine capacity at all. “You should be aware that Aukus is shaping up to leave Australia less well defended — quite possibly for the first time since the 1960s without a sovereign sub capacity.”
The sovereignty argument was given a boost recently with Campbell saying the submarines would further American ambitions in the Taiwan Strait, where the self-governing Island of Taiwan faces the threat of a Chinese invasion. Campbell said the deal would “have enormous implications in a variety of scenarios, including in cross-strait circumstances”.
He added: “I would argue that working closely with other nations, not just diplomatically but in defence avenues, has the consequence of strengthening peace and stability more generally”.
Clark, who has become one of Aukus’ most strident domestic critics, said the Government’s decision to explore signing up to pillar two was the latest in a “slippage” from New Zealand’s truly independent foreign policy.
She noted that when she was Prime Minister, the existence of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network went unacknowledged. Now it is the basis for joint statements on foreign affairs and co-operation between anglophone countries on things like finance. She said heading further down that road risked aligning the country with one power against another.
“The slippage in the independent foreign policy is not something that happened in a statement out of Washington DC last week, it has been something that has eroded for some time,” she said, referencing a warm joint statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
She noted that countries and blocs that shared New Zealand’s democratic values, like the US, the UK, the European Union, and India, had very rarely opened themselves up to trading with New Zealand. “We seem to focus a lot on shared values, but we have shared interests,” Clark said, warning there was a “risk of dividing into values camps”. She said that “New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalating tensions”.
Peters will next month deliver a major foreign policy speech outlining how he sees Aukus. So far, the Government has been keen to emphasise that officially, there is no change in position between this Government and the last on Aukus, both are open to exploring it.