AUKUS Deal

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:54): I rise to speak on a related topic in fact. I think not for the last time we will be reflecting upon what the leadership of Donald Trump means for our nation. It is often said in politics that if you want a friend, you should get a dog. Well, little did we know that some of our friends in politics are there because of a dog.

AUKUS is a dog of a deal: 49 per cent of Australians post the election of Donald Trump have responded to the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) survey saying that they want us to take a second look at the dud deal of AUKUS. Fortunately for South Australians and Australians, there is an opportunity right now to have your say. In South Australia, you can go to the YourSAy website and have your say and that is open to all South Australians until March. At a federal level, there is a similar process online.

I want to reflect today on what Australia has really signed up to with AUKUS and how we got here. In fact, we do not really know how we got here. We know it was a deal done in the dead of night and we know that 'that fellow Down Under', as Biden called Morrison way back then, was a very useful, some might say, idiot in the whole process. We also know that we have made friends with the AUKUS agreement at the expense of our relationship with countries like France, and yet we have tied ourselves to somebody like Donald Trump, who is threatening Canada and Mexico with illegal tariffs, threatening Canada with annexation, says he has not even read Project 2025, yet two-thirds of his initial executive orders reflect those 900 pages of Project 2025.

Indeed, we are here in Australia as the tail being wagged by a dog of a deal. I want to share a story not just with the council today but with the people of South Australia that is now reflected in former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson's recently published autobiography, and it is why AUKUS really is a dog of a deal because actually it was all about a dog according to Boris Johnson. I am not sure that I will be the first person or the last person to describe AUKUS as a dog of a deal but as then Prime Minister Boris Johnson reflected, it is a very accurate description. To quote from BoJo's memoir:

When Scott Morrison explained the idea of AUKUS to me, it was clear there was one big problem: it must begin by breaking off a massively lucrative submarine deal for the French and going with the Anglosphere.

He goes on:

So the big question was: would Biden be willing to collaborate on a project—no matter how ultimately beneficial to America and the world—if at first it meant pretty massively cheesing off the French?

One has to ask if Johnson, in writing this, had any reservations? Well, not a bit. In fact, he himself says in his autobiography, 'I had, myself, not the slightest inhibitions.' And why? He goes on to speak about his love for the French but his frayed relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron. Johnson goes on in his autobiography to list several instances where Macron and he clashed on an interpersonal level over Boris Johnson's dog. I quote the autobiography:

We put on a flypast and a guard of honour in Horse Guards—which was only spoiled by Dilyn [the name of the dog] having hysterics in the Downing Street garden. 'Is zat your duerg?' said Macron incredulously.

Which Boris has spelt with 'zat' and 'duerg' (for the benefit of Hansard), upon which former Prime Minister Boris Johnson was incredibly offended because he had offered him the honour of holding Dilyn himself, which he had mysteriously declined.

We should have declined the AUKUS deal. When you read about where our so-called leadership came from in putting this together in the dead of night, how there has been no conversation with the Australian people, how we have absolutely tied ourselves to these leaders of some ill repute—indeed, with friends like this, who needs enemies? I think we are our own biggest enemy unless we stop this dud deal.