Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles says Paul Keating’s criticism of AUKUS is an unfair characterization as he promised the security deal would not turn Australia into a nuclear waste dump .
Former Prime Minister Keating — a between – appeared on the ABC 7:30 p.m. show on Thursday night and claimed Australia risks losing its autonomy by being part of AUKUS.
“AUKUS is really, in American terms, about military control of Australia. I mean, what happened? Our policy is likely to make Australia the 51st state of the United States,” he said. he declared.
“The only threat that could arise for us is that we have an aggressive ally because of AUKUS.”
But Marles – also defense minister – appeared on ABC News Breakfast on Friday and said that was “not a fair description” of what the federal government was doing.
He said Australia had undergone a thorough process of assessing the security situation in the region.
“It’s a sentence, but it’s nothing more,” Marles said of Keating’s remark.
Marles added that he believed nothing Keating said was news because the former prime minister had already made his opposition clear.
“I don’t agree with that, but I absolutely recognize that as a former Prime Minister and a great Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating has the right to express his views in public discourse, and that is what he does,” Marles said. ABC News Breakfast.
Under the AUKUS deal, Australia will purchase three Virginia-class ships from the United States before Australian-built nuclear submarines begin operating.
This $368 billion plan will put eight nuclear-powered submarines into service by the 2050s.
The terms of the initial March 2023 agreement authorized “the exchange of information on naval nuclear propulsion.”
But Australia has now signed an update that officially allows it to accept nuclear materials for the purchase of nuclear submarines.
Asked about what critics called a “radioactive waste loophole”, Marles said there was “zero chance” nuclear waste would arrive in Australia.
“We will process our own nuclear waste, as we announced in March last year,” Marles told ABC News Breakfast.
“What we signed earlier this week constitutes the legal basis, the treaty level agreement, which underpins the AUKUS arrangements that we announced in March last year.”
With the Australian Associated Press.
