The Chaser Report - Well, This Is AUKUS | Emma Shortis | The Shot Podcast

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

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The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to the Chaser Report with Charles and Dom. My name is producer Lachlan. And as Charles teased in yesterday's episode, we have a special treat for you today, dear listener, for those familiar with the Chaser's sister site, the shot, they've actually got their own podcast now, hosted by Dave Milner and Joe Dyer. And look, if you enjoy the episodes of The Chaser Report where Charles goes on those long, detailed political rants where he shares theories and insider knowledge that I suspect someone's told him not to share, but alas, he's gotten in front of a microphone and shared them anyway.

If you enjoy those episodes of The Chaser Report, then the shot podcast will be right up your alley in the episode that we're sharing an excerpt from today, US expert and friend of the show, friend of the show. show Emma Shortus joins Joe and Dave, along with Andrew Fowler, and together they discuss what the future of Orcus is and what's going to happen to that lovely little submarine deal now that a certain someone is in the White House. So let's hear what they all think right after this. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.

Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at FIS.ca. On to our topic, though, Dejure, which really is the one that had to be grappled with on a, I think in a really kind of rigorous and forensic way, what the hell is going on geopolitical? now that we have a rogue state, or America has become a rogue state, if you like.

Emma, can you talk, what we thought we'd do is talk a little bit about Orcus as it was, the ideas behind it in the first place, and then talk about, well, if it was a bad idea, then, what the hell is it now? So the origin story of Orcus, there's all. all sorts of different angles from which we could come at this. But perhaps if you can talk us through really how it came about after we had signed the contract with the French, the French thought this was going to be a brave new world of the Australia-France relationship, what it might have meant for us in terms

of a more independent approach to certainly our region, but also globally and then how it kind of went so horribly wrong. Sure, it has gone horribly wrong, hasn't it, Joe, entirely predictably, I have to say. I think, you know, you outlined the French submarine deal, which was a really significant deal for Australia, you know, to, as you say, to, I suppose, enhance our relationship with France, which was also turning more towards the Indo-Pacific as well. So it was quite a step change in Australian defence policy and that it was. wasn't an agreement with the United States. And quite clearly there were people in the Morrison

government and in defence as well who were pretty uncomfortable with that, you know, who want Australia to be tied really closely to the United States. And so all of that noise about the French deal being, you know, behind and over budget, while true, that is true, almost universally of every single defence project ever done. Every single defence project anyone's ever done. It's how the entire industry works. Exactly, you know, defence is just not subject to the same kind of accountability that any other projects are they are universally, you know, I have a colleague who says any defence budget, you've got to at least triple it, and then you'll get close to what they'll actually be spending on, you know, whatever it is. And of course, you can't guarantee that whatever it is works at the end of it, generally, with defence. It's already obsolete by the time it finally arrives. Exactly, which is, you know, going to be one of the many problems with the orchestra deal. And so then we have this pivot to what was the Trump administration with the Morrison government

and this idea that Australia needed nuclear-powered submarines, which, you know, is a debate that we can have, but, you know, clearly there were powerful people who decided to pursue this, who negotiated first with Boris Johnson in the UK and then went to the US with this proposal. And Australia has been knocked back a few times around acquiring nuclear technology, but clearly there was an openness in the administration because of basically China, China Hawks, you know, and the sort of settled bipartisan consensus in the United States that China is an existential threat to American power.

So that was the context, and it's kind of, it's lost now, but when Orchus was announced back in 2021, it was described as the revival of the Anglo-Sphere. Yeah. And that's what it is. You know, that really kind of encapsulates what, what Orcas is about it. It's a dramatic change in Australian defence policy.

These submarines aren't designed to defend the Australian mainland. They're designed to go a long way from Australia. Emma, is this really about submarines? Because it doesn't feel like it's about submarines. I'm not a defence expert. It feels like we're paying mafia-style protection money almost. And that's without guarantees, basically. Totally, Dave, you know, Australian foreign and defence policy for 70 years has been driven

by a pretty craven desire to guarantee protection from the United States. So Australia will preemptively commit to American wars, will buy, you know, spend as much money as we can on American defence material in order to try and elicit this promise that the United States will come to save us if we ever need them. And that is what Orcus is about as well. it's about tying, it's not just about trying Australia to the United States, about tying the United States to Australia and keeping them in the region. You know, there's a whole history of Australian governments getting really angsty

when they think the United States isn't paying enough attention to us or to our region. So that as well is a big part of the motivation for August. The submarines are kind of incidental. You know, even when the deal was announced back in 2021, there was no actual plan for how it would work. That came like 18 months later. What's the psychology behind that, behind needing this big protecting force in America without any, you know, I don't want to,

I don't want to play things down, but without any substantial concrete threats constantly. I mean, no one said we want to invade Australia. The newspapers say everyone wants to invade Australia, but no one's actually said that. Yeah. No, that's totally true. I think David said it's a deep kind of cultural, historical psychology where Australia was founded on dispossession and genocide and has been driven by a fear ever since

that people who don't look like our government are coming back, coming to steal what we stole. That's a kind of crude way of putting it, but I think that is the psychology. And, you know, you can trace that back to our abandonment by the empire, by Britain in the Second World War and then, you know, they're seeking out of another great white protector. You know, I don't think we can underestimate the racism

that drives that desire for, for a far away protector. And in this instance, it's a very expensive form of racism, isn't it? It's so expensive, Dave. It is kind of, it's almost impossible to conceive how much this will end up costing. You know, the estimate for the Yorker submarines

is $368 billion. If you triple that, as you usually do with defence projects, I'm not very good at maths, but that's like, what, a trillion at least, for some submarines that we're likely never to see. You know, this deal is so flawed that the likelihood first that the United States will hand over the Virginia-class submarines to us, which is part of the optimal pathway that they describe it as, is incredibly slim. The US President has all kinds of get-out clauses for that, so we're unlikely to get them.

If we do, they'll come with some pretty significant conditions. And then, of course, there's the actual Orcus submarines, which are supposed to be designed by Australian, Australia and Britain, and delivered by the British submarine industry, which also can't keep up with its own projects. So the way it was described to me once was that every link in the chain is weak. The question is just which one snaps first. And there actually have been just in the last couple of days, a lot of the senior Trump administration defence people

who was saying, you know, we love Australia, it's nothing to do with Australia, but that the idea that they will give over these submarines when, as you say, they're so behind in building, their own, that the only point at which they will hand them over is when they are ready, with all of theirs are ready and they have entrenched their capacity and that that is just looking so unlikely any time within the next sort of few decades, that as you say, the chances of us getting these submarines are becoming smaller and smaller with every day, let alone every year. Totally. And I mean, you have to, I think you have to argue, you know, why would

the United States hand over those submarines, why it wouldn't be in their interest? And that's not a criticism, you know, that it's the job of the US President to look after the United States in the best way that he sees fit. And so, you know, why would they hand them over? But I think my concern as well, Joe, is that if they do, if in the slim chance that they do, what conditions does that come with? You know, they're not just going to hand them over and say, do what you will. there would be an implicit understanding that, you know, we would hand them back or we would be involved in whatever missions the US president decides that we need to be involved in. And so the way that would tie what's left of Australian independent decision-making

to a US administration is really pretty frightening. And in terms of military strategy, submarines that we have and that exist seem more effective than ones that we don't ever have and that don't exist. And I just, no one on TV seems to want to ask that question, these. Yeah? Look, I think it's that straightforward, you know. The defence policy in Australia is so locked up. You know, you're not supposed to talk about it unless you have a kind of deep,

intricate knowledge of how nuclear-powered submarines work. But it is that simple, Dave, you know, the Collins-class submarines that we do have are really old. They need a whole, basically, they're getting a life of type extension, which means a complete overhaul so they can operate beyond when they were supposed to. that hasn't even started yet. And so the likelihood that this deal leaves us with nothing, with no submarines, is actually really quite high. In terms of the, sorry, Joe.

No, no, you go. You just, you mentioned this before, I know about the types of submarines that we're typed and that these are not great for protecting shallow waters around Australia. These are basically what Paul Keating said at the press club, that these submarines are specifically designed for, let's say, I don't want to name anybody, but just sort of hanging around China, maybe, hypothetically.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe. I think one of the other interesting geopolitical things was that coming out of Boris Johnson's memoirs was that he argued, or he said blatantly, that part of the reason that he embraced Orcas was just to fuck over the French, to get revenge on Macron.

And these very unsurious people that we had, We had Johnson in Downing Street. We had, of course, Morrison here and Trump in the White House at the time in the early stages of the development, not by the time it was launched. But very unserious people playing stupid games with issues that were going to have extraordinary long-term effects on our geopolitical strategy, relationships and security. I mean, to be fair quickly, though, the English have operated on that, let's fuck over the French principle for a couple hundred years.

Like, that's, again, that's how. they do think. That is the way they do think. Yeah, men and their feelings, hey? Yeah. So, look, I think, I mean, we, I think we can just note that it was an appalling error on the part of the Labor Party to sign up for Orcus within about a minute and a half of hearing about it in order to avoid a khaki election and then not to announce some kind of review of it once they got into power. part of that is that there are so many people on the Labour front bench who just love America generally

but it just seemed such a superficial approach to one of the most significant issues and it's no wonder that people like Paul Keating are apoplectic about it but I think what we can perhaps move on to now is that if it was a bad idea generally and really undermined an independent Australia and the sorts of relationships that we had been developing within our region.

Now that we have Trump in the White House, the geopolitical ramifications of what's going on there make it an even worse decision. Perhaps if we can just talk a little bit about the last couple of weeks and the way Trump has unended world order, we've already talked a bit about on the shot how it's no longer really a rules-based. world. We've just got strong men trying to do deals that they perceive to be in their

interests. But it is reshaping Europe. We've already seen the UK start cleaving closer to Europe and that too will have implications for Auckland as the Brits start looking to Europe again for their security. And then this week China entered the chat about you know, everything that was going on, particularly around Ukraine. Can you perhaps talk first a little bit about Europe, Emma, and how they've had to respond so quickly to essentially the American betrayal of Ukraine? And it is, I think we can't, Joe, underestimate the depth of the betrayal. You know, we knew it was coming.

Trump and J.D. Vance in particular have been signalling this for a really long time. but the depth of it and the humiliation with which it came, I think, was extraordinary. You know, to watch 70 years of European security kind of disappear in the matter of moments was extraordinary. And it is that big. You know, I think instinctively people could see that what that meeting meant could feel how significant it was and it is. But I think Europe, the way Europe is responding is quite extraordinary, you know,

to have the incoming German Chancellor who is a... Christian Democrat, a conservative, say that, you know, it's clear that the United States is indifferent to the fate of Europe and we have to chart our own independent path. And then to literally say, I cannot believe I am saying this, but this is the situation we're in, you know, that is extraordinary. So the reaction from Europe is really significant and it's happening on the ground too. So polling in France, for example, has suggested that a huge number of people, a majority, I'm pretty sure now no longer see the United States as an ally and that's reflected in Denmark, unsurprisingly,

given what Trump said about Greenland. So the ground is shifting really quickly there in Europe and this may well be the thing that finally pushes Europe towards a kind of unity on security that has been talked about for such a long time and which the United States has often actually been a block on. So the withdrawal of the United States, you know, as horrifying as it is, may be.

be an opportunity to reset European security in a more sustainable way. But the way that that happens is potentially really dangerous because for better or worse, Europe has relied on American security and American defence material for such a long time. And of course, we see that happening in Ukraine, which is relying on USA that has been paused. So what emerges out of all of this is very, very difficult to predict. Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore?

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