What’s the rush, Richard Marles, sorry, Deputy Prime Minister?
You and your government have been telling us for months that the Trump administration’s review of AUKUS is nothing to worry about. Now we have a trip organised so hastily that you missed the start of a parliamentary sitting.
Then it emerged that Marles travelled to DC without securing a meeting with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth. This is amateur hour. I’ve had my luggage lost on the way to Washington several times. I’d had meetings in the Pentagon in a scratchy, ill-fitting suit bought on arrival, but I always had my meetings planned in advance.
That’s what competent allies working in good standing with their partners do – plan meetings, communicate clearly, understand each other’s intentions.
And that’s what the Albanese government is failing to do. It’s allowing its distaste for President Donald Trump to get in the way of practical alliance co-operation.
A cancelled press conference after a brief photo opportunity with Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance tells me this visit didn’t deliver substance. Neither did it give Marles the hope he was looking for that AUKUS is on track in American thinking.
Now, Marles is heading home, mission not accomplished. What a disaster. The remaining impression is that Anthony Albanese would rather personally snub Trump than front up to a meeting bringing an adequate level of defence spending.
Marles has been at pains in recent speeches and media performances to say defence spending, currently a hair-breadth above 2 per cent of GDP, represents “the largest peacetime increase in defence spending in Australia’s history”. That may be true in pure dollar terms; in fact, most areas of spending under the Albanese government are at their largest in Australia’s history.
But as a proportion of the economy, Australian governments routinely spent 3 per cent of GDP or more on defence during the Cold War. No one other than Marles, his understudy Pat Conroy and a handful of Albanese’s ministers believes the level of defence spending is enough to deliver the military strength we need in this strategic environment. The Americans have delivered this message clearly, with Hegseth saying Australia should aim to spend 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence.
Marles surely didn’t charge off to Washington expecting to be told the AUKUS review concluded that, alone among America’s allies, Australia is doing brilliantly on defence. The penny has finally dropped – AUKUS is in trouble.
The Americans think we are under-investing in defence, that our preparations for the nuclear-powered submarines are insufficient and that we differ on how to deal with an increasingly aggressive China.
This much has been obvious since the election of Trump. The failure of Albanese to meet the President and of Marles to engage substantively with Hegseth to address these differences is a disaster for our alliance.
I understand that an immediate reason for Marles’s trip is to rescue the next Australia-US Ministerial Consultations meeting, due to be held in Australia in September. That’s the annual meeting of the foreign and defence ministers with their US counterparts.
Two or three meetings have been missed in 35 years – the 1990 Gulf War and Covid caused cancellations. But AUSMIN is the key alliance management meeting. In 2025, given the emerging differences between Australia and the US, it is essential.
My sense is that the Americans think we are so underperforming on defence and security that they are holding back on holding AUSMIN and questioning our reliability on AUKUS. No one should be surprised by that.
Would anyone expect Hegseth and Rubio to fly 24 hours to Australia to be lectured by Penny Wong on the value of recognising Palestine, by Albanese on our “stabilised” relationship with China, and by Marles on how our 2 per cent defence spend is better directed than any other ally?
There is a high likelihood that the AUKUS review, being led by the Pentagon’s Elbridge Colby, will decide the US will not sell Virginia-class nuclear subs to Australia. The US may conclude it has more need of the subs itself and that it is uncertain of Albanese’s commitment to the alliance in the event of a conflict with China over Taiwan.
It is bizarre beyond words that Albanese and his national security team seem to hope that Australia can sit out a strategic challenge of this magnitude to American power in Asia. Even worse is the failure of Marles to play a central role in getting the Albanese and Trump people into a serious discussion about how to keep the alliance in good order. Marles seems to think that low-key plans to lift an American military presence in northern Australia is enough of a down payment for alliance solidarity.
But it is not enough when the partners can’t even agree to exchange thinking on the balance of war and peace in Asia, and how to deter China from its planned course to become the dominant military power in the region.
Here’s the truth of the matter: Albanese, Marles and Wong are not taking security seriously.
They are misreading the leadership intent in Beijing and Washington and failing to see the obvious signs of the quickening pathway to conflict.
Marles has overseen a disastrous decline in our military capabilities. The Australian Defence Force is being weakened to pay for submarines we won’t see for years. Our efforts to prepare for becoming a nuclear submarine navy are inadequate, notwithstanding the government and Defence constantly congratulating themselves on progress.
The benefits of so-called AUKUS pillar two co-operation on technologies ranging from hypersonic missiles to artificial intelligence and quantum computing have produced nothing of military value.
The government’s arrogance and overconfidence is blinding it to the reality of a serious alliance split with the US.
Hubris – the sort of overweening pride that has Marles demanding to be called Deputy Prime Minister by all who meet him – is making the country vulnerable, weakening our defences and destroying our alliance.
This article appeared in the Australian on Thursday August 28, 2025.