THE HON ANDREW HASTIE MP
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE INDUSTRY
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DEFENCE PERSONNEL
FEDERAL MEMBER FOR CANNING

KEYNOTE SPEECH AT INDIAN OCEAN DEFENCE & SECURITY CONFERENCE 2024
PERTH CONVENTION AND EXHIBITION CENTRE

THURSDAY 25 JULY 2024

Thank you for having me to speak today.

For many of you, it’s a long way to come.

Over the weekend, I travelled home with my young family from Nashville, Tennessee, and I was reminded of how far away we are.

I was reminded of how fundamental geography, and real estate, are to AUKUS.

So, it’s good you’ve come so far, and made the house call, to see things for yourself.

You can judge for yourself how far AUKUS has come and how far we still must go.

You don’t need to take anyone’s word for it.

Our otherwise quiet family reunion in the United States took place at a time of high drama.

There was frenzied speculation about President Biden’s future when we landed.

There was the violent attempt on President Trump’s life at the middle of our trip.

And President Biden pulled out of the race when we arrived home.

We stayed in Franklin, a quiet patch of Tennessee.

In the first week, there were scattered campaign signs along the roadside and in front yards.

That changed after shots were fired at President Trump. Suddenly, you saw more and more signs sprouting up across the front lawns of quiet, orderly neighbourhoods.

Support for Trump was breaking cover.

His fist pumps awoke the animal spirits.

With President Biden’s decision to leave the campaign, and with the Democratic Party energising around Vice-President Harris, the race for the Presidency has changed again.

Who can say with confidence what will happen in November. It’s entirely uncertain.

We’ve seen how the tilt of a head, mid-speech, can be a hinge of history.

And it can affect the AUKUS project, and everything we’re trying to do right here.

This contingency on human events reminds us that AUKUS is primarily a political project.

Yes, it’s about nuclear submarines.

Yes, it’s a nation building endeavour.

Yes, it’s an industrial and technological enterprise.

Yes, there’s the physics and the funding.

But fundamentally, it is a political project.

And for this political project to endure, we need to understand political and national interests.

It was inevitable that my family vacation would become part-political field trip…

Bookstores in Tennessee had sold out of Vice-Presidential nominee Senator J.D. Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy.

I opted for the audio book instead—read by the author—and listened to it on the flight home.

I heard Senator Vance’s call for an America that is loved by its citizens—without shame, and is respected by its allies—without those allies shirking their responsibilities.

Another book that was selling was Dr. Peter Navarro’s The New Maga Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Policy Platform.

Dr Navarro was President Trump’s Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy in the previous administration, and received a rockstar welcome at the Republican National Convention last week.

Navarro is dead serious, and I like to take people at their word. His book explains the strategic and economic instincts of a potential Trump administration at a popular level. It is retail economics, and I enjoyed reading it.

Very simply, Trump—according to Navarro—will bring factories and supply chains back onshore.

They will be much tougher on trade partners.

They will demand more of allies—like Australia. There will be no free ride.

Navarro’s book is not official policy.

But regular Americans are buying it, and reading it.

This has implications for Australia, and for AUKUS.

If Trump returns, there will be no free lunch.

We will be asked, what does Australia bring to the table?

We will be expected to prove our worth, and step up our defence industrial commitments.

We will need to spend more, spend sooner, and spend smarter. None of this is new, really.

In 2022, my colleague, Senator James Paterson, and I met with Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri—who the New Yorker identified as part of the emerging New Right, along with Senator J.D. Vance. Their piece on the RNC last week is worth a read.

We had a good time with Senator Hawley. But it was what he said about national security that stuck with me: ‘we’ve got a lot happening here in the US; you need to step up and take care of business in your neck of the woods.’

That view is now mainstream in the Republican Party, which should cure us of any apathy on AUKUS.

So where to from here?

History remains a sure guide in times of uncertainty.

And history’s hard truths can teach us enduring realities.

Here are a few hard truths with AUKUS in mind:

Hard truth 1: Alliances will always matter to Australia—we are a trading nation and vulnerable to threats to the international system.

We have always sought to build security coalitions with other democratic maritime powers—especially the United Kingdom and the United States—so we have consistently supported our friends' wider strategic efforts, including in major wars and limited campaigns.

With the goal of deterring the next major war, AUKUS is the latest commitment in this tradition of cooperation. The wars of the 20^th century reminds us of why it is so important.

Hard truth 2: Our naval power must be strong enough to force an adversary to change their battle plans.

We can learn from the Royal Australian Navy prior to the First World War.

After the 1909 Imperial Conference, Australia invested heavily in its own Fleet Unit, centred on the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, which arrived in Sydney in late 1913.

The battlecruiser was supported by light cruisers, destroyers, and submarines.

The deterrent impact of that investment changed the war plans of the German East Asiatic Squadron, which stayed well clear of our waters, fearing an engagement with our new battle cruiser!

Hard truth 3: We must be able to survive a surprise first strike by an adversary.

We must not forget the surprise attack on Darwin on 19 February, 1942.

It should inspire our strategic imagination to consider what a modern-day surprise first strike might look like, and what damage Australia might expect to sustain.

The reach of missiles, drones, submarines, and cyber capabilities means we can’t limit our imagination to our northern approaches.

The Maginot Line in France and Fort Siloso in Singapore remind us that our adversaries rarely accept our planning assumptions—especially those ossified in Defence White Papers.

Hard truth 4: We know how to provide strategic depth to our partners.

The US Navy operated massive submarine bases out of Perth and Albany during the Second World War.

We conducted battle damage repairs on HMS Illustrious—a Royal Navy aircraft carrier—out of the Captain Cook graving dock in Sydney during 1945.

We also hosted up to a million US military personnel, including General Douglas MacArthur, as they staged for victory in the Pacific.

We have an abundance of land and natural supplies. Our comparative advantage has always been in the provision of strategic depth.

And—as many of you have discovered—our great distance gives allied bases here a degree of safety and warning.

Pine Gap, the US Marine Corps presence in Darwin, and the national lay down of AUKUS show this to be true.

Real estate and geography remain fundamental.

Hard truth 5: We must be able to manufacture military equipment.

Ever since the decline and death of the car industry in Australia—the workers, the skills, the factories, the supply chains—we’ve had a crisis of confidence about our ability to make complex things as a nation.

We must regain this lost confidence and capacity—at speed and at scale. I know many in Australian defence industry are leading this push. It’s been done before. Essington Lewis showed us how we can fire up the foundries of freedom in the Second World War. We can do it again. But the Commonwealth must back our people and businesses. Political leadership matters.

In conclusion, let’s be bold.

For our part, here in Perth, it must be said:

Australians have always punched above our weight.

But now is the time for us to bulk up, and grow our weight.

Much has been achieved between us for AUKUS already. But there is much more to be done. You won’t see a great deal of physical evidence yet—but it is progressing.

And so, let’s be bold. Let’s do what must be done.

AUKUS needs us to spend more, spend sooner, and spend smarter.

The alternative costs, when deterrence fails, are unaffordable in comparison.

AUKUS turns three in September.

And soon the President and two Prime Ministers who founded it, will have left office.

I said before that AUKUS is a political project, and the political realities are constantly changing, as we saw in Butler, Pennsylvania twelve days ago.

That’s why we can’t take AUKUS for granted; we must work to align our mutual interests, and keep building upon them, even as the politics shifts with electoral cycles.

No one said this would be easy. Thank you.

ENDS