Negotiated rapidly and in secret, the AUKUS pact to produce new nuclear-powered submarines is among the most expensive, consequential and opaque deals in British and Australian military history. Ian Lowe reports on the launch of a new civil society-led expert public inquiry into AUKUS that aims to provide the scrutiny so lacking from Australian politicians.
Australia is holding a public inquiry into the AUKUS agreement. The trilateral security partnership between Australia, the UK and the USA was negotiated in secret in 2021 by the leaders of those three countries. Not one of those leaders is still in office. Incredibly, given that this is by far the most costly defence project in Australian history, there has been no parliamentary scrutiny of the deal in Australia. It continues to be shrouded in secrecy, despite the high stakes and eye-watering projected cost. Retired major-general Michael Smith has described the arrangement as “the worst defence decision since we relied on Britain to defend us in World War II”.
Opinion polls have shown increasing levels of concern across Australian society as people have gradually become aware of the possible consequences. Now a group of former MPs, retired military and naval officers, leading strategists and academics, human rights lawyers and union leaders have joined together to hold a public inquiry. It is being funded by donations from unions, community organisations, faith groups and concerned citizens. The inquiry was formally launched in the Australian parliament building on Tuesday 02 June. It is coordinated by the Australian Peace and Security Forum (APSF) to ensure it is grounded in expertise, independence and evidence-based examination of the issues. The fundamental question being considered is: will AUKUS keep Australia safe – at what cost?
The inquiry is being directed by five distinguished individuals:
- the Hon. Peter Garrett, former lead singer of Midnight Oil and Cabinet Minister,
- the Hon. Dr Carmen Lawrence, former Premier of Western Australia who was later a national Cabinet Minister,
- retired Royal Australian Navy admiral Chris Barrie,
- Indigenous leader Karina Lester, and
- Leanne Minshull, co-director of a prominent think-tank, the Australia Institute.
Submissions have been invited from the public and relevant experts. Hearings are scheduled for major cities, with the intention of producing a report in October 2026.
At what financial cost?
The first question the inquiry will examine is the likely cost and fiscal impact of the project. The Australian government has budgeted for spending some A$368 billion – close to £200 billion – for eight submarines. The Australian Submarine Agency website says that the United States “intends to sell Australia 3 Virginia Class SSNs (nuclear-powered submarines) from as soon as the early 2030s”. It also says that a new nuclear-powered submarine type, SSN-AUKUS, will be based on the UK’s next-generation design incorporating US technology. It proposes long construction periods, saying the UK will build its new submarines at Barrow-in-Furness from the late 2020s for delivery from the late 2030s, while Australia will also begin building some in Adelaide in the late 2020s for delivery from the early 2040s.
Given those timescales and the fact that the submarines have not yet even been designed, there is understandable scepticism about the budgeted final costs. Even if the estimates can be taken at face value, an obvious question for the inquiry is whether that scale of funding could be more usefully applied elsewhere.
Strategy and sovereignty
The second question concerns the strategic rationale for the project: would owning and operating eight nuclear-powered submarines genuinely enhance Australia security? I participated in a one-day seminar run by the Submarine Institute of Australia before the AUKUS agreement was negotiated. The submariners were clearly divided about the question of whether the next generation of submarines should be nuclear-powered. While they could operate away from base for longer periods and at greater depth than conventional submarines, their size would prevent them operating in the comparatively shallow waters around Australia’s northern coastline, making them less useful for defending our territory.
That observation poses an obvious related question about sovereignty and independence. Would the AUKUS arrangement move Australia away from being an independent middle-sized country like Japan or Indonesia, locking us into the US war machine and increasing the risk of being dragged into great-power conflict with China, our major trading partner? Some observers fear that AUKUS could actually make Australia a nuclear target.
Legal and environmental impact
A set of questions arise from the specific problems of nuclear-powered boats. If nuclear technology is transferred from the United States and the UK to Australia to allow submarines to be built here using weapons-grade uranium, does that contravene the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? What are the environmental risks of operating nuclear-powered submarines in Australian waters? Some technologists who are quite enthusiastic about nuclear power stations are worried about installing reactors in vessels which an enemy would understandably try to destroy in any serious conflict.
The final issue under this heading is the long-term problem of managing the radioactive waste when the submarines reach the end of their lives. The AUKUS agreement makes Australia responsible for waste management. That poses a huge problem. The Australian government has made three unsuccessful attempts to establish a repository for the comparatively benign low-level radioactive waste that has resulted from nuclear medicine and industrial applications. In every case, the proposals have been opposed by local First Nations groups, their memories shaped by the experience of the Menzies government allowing the British military to test nuclear weapons on their country between 1952 and 1963.
But the problem of managing the waste from nuclear submarines is orders of magnitude more difficult. The small reactors use highly enriched uranium, weapons-grade material, which produces a much more intractable set of waste products than emerges from nuclear power stations. The United States and the UK have been operating nuclear submarines for more than sixty years, but have still not worked out how to manage the wastes. Not one of the 23 nuclear-powered submarines decommissioned by the Royal Navy since 1980 and clogging the royal dockyards at Devonport and Rosyth has yet been fully dismantled.
Assuming Australians do prove able to solve the problem and develop a system for managing the waste, it is likely to add another huge sum to the overall costs of the project. In 2015, a South Australian Royal Commission considered the possibility of going into business managing the waste from nuclear power stations in Asian nations that do not have suitably stable geology for long-term secure containment. I was a member of that inquiry’s expert advisory committee. We sponsored a serious study of the likely cost of building a secure repository for high-level radioactive waste from power stations. The consultants came up with an estimate of A$141 billion; adjusting that total to 2026 costs gives a figure of about A$190 billion, or about £100 billion. It is stating the obvious to observe that accepting the responsibility for managing the wastes will mean a further eye-watering cost burden on future generations.
Alternatives
The final question the inquiry will consider is whether credible and less costly alternatives to the AUKUS project were properly assessed before the decision was made. Given the secrecy of the discussions and the need it produced for our leaders to lie to the French government, there is understandable suspicion that the need for thorough impartial assessment of the options might not have occurred.
As a former member of our parliament said, “So many questions, so few answers. The Australian public deserve more than Cold War rhetoric to justify the mind-boggling expenditure”. British taxpayers, who will be picking up the tab for the Barrow-in-Furness part of the operation, should be watching the inquiry with interest.
Ian Lowe is an emeritus professor in the School of Environment and Science at Griffith University in Queensland, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, and co-president of the Australian Peace and Security Forum.
Submissions to the Public Inquiry are encouraged from all Australians and those abroad. The portal for submissions can be found here.
The views and opinions expressed in posts on the Rethinking Security blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the network and its broader membership.
Image Credit: Australian Peace and Security Forum. Peter Garrett and other Commissioners of the AUKUS Public Inquiry at its launch, Parliament House, Canberra, 02 June 2026.
