CANBERRA — Ed Husic warned during a closed-door Labor caucus meeting in Canberra on Tuesday that Australia needs a backup plan for the Aukus submarine agreement due to sluggish U.S. submarine production rates and concerns about the Trump administration’s transactional approach. He said, “We need to be open as a nation that we are not going to get the deal that was promised to us.”
Husic, a Labor MP, cited U.S. shipyard output of only 1.1 to 1.2 Virginia-class submarines per year—well below the 2.33 annual rate required for the Aukus timeline to proceed as planned. He added, “It won’t be a renegotiation; it’s a reality about the production rates and whether or not we’ll get them. What’s the contingency? What’s the plan B?”
He also raised concerns about potential U.S. leverage over Australia’s strategic autonomy. “Given how transactional the Trump administration is, you can almost imagine them saying ‘we give you these, you will do this with them’, and so there’s an active sovereignty question there,” Husic said.
His remarks followed Defense Minister Richard Marles’s recent agreement to accept three second-hand Virginia-class nuclear submarines from the U.S., abandoning an earlier plan that included both new and used vessels. Marles said the shift would streamline training and servicing because Australian crews would operate only one type of American-made submarine before the bespoke SSN-Aukus model enters service in 2042.
Shadow Defence Minister James Paterson said Husic’s intervention represented a “full-on Labor revolt.” Paterson demanded that Marles rein in Husic and reaffirm the government’s commitment to Aukus. He also questioned the government’s claim that second-hand submarines would be cheaper and easier to operate.
The Aukus deal, valued at $368 billion, was agreed to by the Morrison government in 2021 and endorsed by the then-Labor opposition. The first U.S. submarine is scheduled to arrive in Australia in 2032, with subsequent deliveries every four years before the Australian-built SSN-Aukus model becomes operational.