Australia and the AUKUS nuclear waste-dump clause

Australia has entered into a toxic agreement that can only leave us – and the planet – worse off than the sum of our greatest fears.

There may be times when friendships with powerful and dangerous entities, who may also be bullies, can be advantageous. But like most perilous alliances, they will eventually benefit the bully over the weaker link.

This is overtly true in the school playground and carries over in a less obvious way into the adult world. While most of us learn early on that bullies need to be called out and are best avoided, some oppressors are able to amass enough power so as to be almost indiscernible. This is true of vested interests dictating government policy – such as the enormously powerful fossil fuel lobby – and the strategic alliances we form with superpowers, such as the AUKUS agreement.

In this way, the very grown-up (in terms of size and strength) and obscenely well-funded fossil fuel and arms corporations, and foreign superpowers are the same as schoolyard bullies: they target the insecurities of others to advance their own interests.

In the case of the AUKUS agreement, Australia is the little kid with the obvious insecurities that must do the bullies’ bidding.

AUKUS cements U.S. interests and endangers Australia's security

Anthony Albanese’s photo opportunity with President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in San Diego ranks as one of the more grotesque and expensive the world has seen.

Australia, a nation that has historically sought protection for perceived insecurities from its allies, following them into endless conflicts and geopolitical strategies, is now careering into freefall with an agreement that is, by definition, poisonous at its core. The AUKUS agreement demands of Australia more than it can ever deliver. This is because its power brokers are known world bullies, supported by massive corporations with a hunger for money and power that no amount of nuclear submarine production or blind allegiance can ever assuage.

So, we are not only expected to spend as much as $368 billion over two decades, or $14,000 for every person in Australia, on nuclear submarines that will be obsolete before they are completed. We are not only expected to follow our masters into any bloody conflict they deem necessary. But we are also expected to dispose of any unwanted toxic waste, as commanded.

This means that:

'As a responsible nuclear steward, Australia will manage all radioactive waste generated by its own Virginia Class and SSN-AUKUS submarines, including radioactive waste generated through operations, maintenance and decommissioning.'

A strange use of the term "responsible", but considering we will be creating this radioactive waste, this section seems reasonable.

However, the arrangement may also mean, that should our AUKUS masters decide they have generated more of their own nuclear waste than they can be bothered dealing with, they can unceremoniously dump it on our shores. After all, what are willing sidekicks for but to do the dirty work for their bosses?

While Defence Minister Richard Marles has said the Government would not accept nuclear waste from other nations, in a bizarre fine-print clause, the AUKUS legislation deals with 'managing, storing or disposing of radioactive waste from an AUKUS submarine' — defining an AUKUS submarine as 'an Australian or a UK/U.S. submarine'.

Given the inability of our tougher associates to deal with their own toxic radioactive waste, this is not the first time they have tried to dump it here, of course, usually covertly encouraged by Coalition governments cosying up to the big boys, as we have detailed over the years.

Now, with the AUKUS covenant extending well into the future and taking into account the Coalition's nuclear zealotry, not to mention an undercurrent of U.S. political instability that may well see Trump reinstated, they may well succeed.

Like radioactive waste, the Coalition's waste dump plan will not die

A dubious Coalition plan to temporarily dump nuclear waste for a future government to re-locate, 100 years later, at another undecided location is long-lived and toxic.

As Australian Conservation Foundation's anti-nuclear campaigner, Dave Sweeney, so aptly described it, our bigger tougher friends could well turn Australia into their very own "radioactive terra nullius”.

And as Sweeney has detailed in IA: