Doorstop, Geelong

SUBJECTS: Australia-UK Defence Relationship; The Geelong Treaty; AUKUS

RICHARD MARLES, DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER: Well, welcome everyone here today. It has been an enormous honour for me to be able to welcome the UK Secretary of Defence, John Healey, here to Geelong. And I really want to thank him for coming to Geelong. It's a really wonderful gesture on his part, which has enabled us to sign the Geelong Treaty right here at the Geelong Art Gallery. This Treaty is as significant a treaty as has been signed between Australia and the United Kingdom since Federation. It underpins the joint development by the United Kingdom and by Australia of the same class of submarine, which both countries will operate from the early 2040s. It is a project which will see the development of thousands of jobs in Australia and the most high‑tech production line in Australia. It is a bilateral treaty which sits within the framework of AUKUS; itself underpinned by a trilateral treaty that I signed with the United Kingdom and the United States in Washington DC, in August of last year. Now, what the bilateral treaty does, what the Geelong Treaty will do, has really three dimensions. The first is that it will facilitate the development of our people in respect of this project; that is both submariners being able to train in the United Kingdom on Astute class submarines as they get ready to operate our future nuclear‑powered submarine capability, but also those people who work on maintaining and sustaining Astute class submarines and nuclear‑powered submarines, giving them the vital skills that will be needed in order to have this capability in Australia. The second is it will facilitate the development of our infrastructure. At the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, there will be a construction facility there for the building of this class of submarine, which will also, as I say, be built in Barrow-in-Furness in the United Kingdom. And there will be a collaboration between the United Kingdom and Australia in terms of that infrastructure in Adelaide, as there will also be a collaboration in relation to infrastructure at HMAS Stirling, at Rockingham in Western Australia, which is where we will see Astute class submarines operate as part of the Submarine Rotational Force – West. And finally, what the Treaty does is create a seamless defence industrial base between the United Kingdom and Australia. This project is going to see Australian companies supplying into Great Britain for the building of submarines at Barrow-in-Furness in the UK. It will see British companies supply into Australia for the building of our own submarines here in Adelaide. In order to allow this to happen in what is a very controlled space, this Treaty will underpin the seamlessness of that defence industrial base. It really is the document which makes possible the pursuit of AUKUS, and particularly the bilateral elements of that, between Australia and the United Kingdom. So, I said just before, AUKUS is going to see 20,000 jobs created in Australia. It is the most significant industrial endeavour that our country has ever undertaken, eclipsing that even of the Snowy Hydro scheme. It will see the establishment of a 7,000 strong workplace at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide, and at the Henderson Defence Precinct in Perth, a workplace of 3,000 to 4,000 people who are involved in, amongst other things, the contingency and depot level maintenance of submarines. In military terms, this represents the most significant leap in our military capability since the establishment of the Navy in 1913. We will become just the seventh country in the world to operate nuclear‑powered submarines. We have never operated in terms of military capability in such elite company as that. I really want to thank, as I did there, all of those officials from both Australia and the United Kingdom who have done an enormous amount of work to bring this Treaty to fruition, to enable the signing of this Treaty today. Again, I really want to extend my thanks to John Healey. He's done me a single honour in coming to Geelong in order to sign this Treaty here. And I really– we are deeply grateful to the way in which we are collaborating with the United Kingdom, but as we've been saying over the last couple of days, we're very, very grateful for the very deep and personal, trusted relationships that we have with those in the UK. John Healey is a fantastic Secretary of Defence, a very good friend and a fantastic counterpart with which to work on this project. 

JOURNALIST: Deputy Prime Minister, was this Treaty made necessary by wavering support in the US for AUKUS, the Pentagon review, in order to reassure and to continue the development of this program?

MARLES: This Treaty has been worked on for a long time. It is a critical milestone in the pursuit of bringing to fruition AUKUS. It is the natural evolution of what we've agreed and really in terms of what's in the Treaty, it is putting into treaty form what had already been agreed between our two countries. But it also comes and sits under the trilateral treaty that was signed between our three countries in August of last year. I think the way to look at this, is this is another step forward down the AUKUS path. It's another demonstration of the fact that AUKUS is happening. And it is happening on time, and we are delivering it, and that can be evidenced through the work that we're doing at Osborne in Adelaide, what we're doing at Henderson, what we're doing at Stirling in Western Australia, but what we are doing in terms of developing the agreements between our two countries and our three countries.

JOURNALIST: What is the biggest regional threat that AUKUS is designed to address for Australia?

MARLES: AUKUS is about giving our country the best capability that we can have. And in the Defence Strategic Review, we have been very clear in articulating what our strategic challenges are and what kind of a defence force we need in order to meet those challenges. It is absolutely essential that Australia and our Defence Force has the capability to give pause for thought for any potential adversary that would seek to coerce us. It is absolutely essential that we have a Defence Force that can play Australia's part in contributing to the collective security of the region in which we live. Our capability is fundamentally about maintaining peace and about providing for the collective security of the region in which we live. But all of that requires a defence force with the capability to project, and first and foremost in respect of that is having a long‑term, long‑range, highly capable submarine, and that's what AUKUS is delivering.

JOURNALIST: What was the significance of bringing the Defence Secretary here to Geelong to sign the Treaty?

MARLES: Well, look, I feel very honoured that John has come here to Geelong today. I mean, I've known John a long time, but the first meeting that he and I had on his becoming UK Defence Secretary after the election in the UK in July of last year was in Sheffield, in his electorate. He was very keen to return the favour and come and visit me here in Geelong, so we had always planned that as part of this four day visit as part of AUKMIN, that we would come to Geelong. And it was in the context of that that we both felt that this would be a really appropriate and significant place in which to sign what is a critical document between our two countries. But to have John in my hometown and to be able to sign this agreement here is a real honour and I very much thank John for that.

JOURNALIST: Minister Marles, did you ask the United States to come to Australia as part of this so it could be the full trilateral agreement?

MARLES: So to be really clear, there is a trilateral treaty which exists between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. And that treaty was signed in Washington DC, in August of last year. Now sitting under that are going to be a number of bilateral arrangements. I mean, in order to see AUKUS come to fruition, it is the three of us working together, but there'll be moments where we are working closely with the United States, where we're working closely with the United Kingdom, where the United Kingdom and the United States are working closely with each other. And so underpinning the trilateral agreement is a number of bilateral arrangements, and what we are signing today is the most significant of those in respect of our bilateral arrangements with Australia and the United Kingdom. We do a whole lot of work, obviously, in terms of our bilateral engagement with the United States in the context of AUKUS, and we do it as a group of three. And the fundamental head treaty, as I say, was signed in Washington DC, last year. But this is a bilateral exercise sitting under that architecture between ourselves and the United Kingdom.

JOURNALIST: Elbridge Colby, who's heading up the AUKUS review in the United States, has expressed frustration that we won't take a stronger stance on China, particularly over any future possible action on Taiwan. Can you say today what these nuclear submarines specifically could be used for?

MARLES: The last thing I'm going to do is speculate about future contingencies and that's not what we should be doing. What I've made clear in answer to the previous question is the capabilities that we need in terms of the strategic challenges that we see, and they were set out very clearly in the Defence Strategic Review. The ability to be able to project, to have a long-range submarine capability is fundamental to a trading island nation like Australia which heavily depends upon our sea lines of communication. It's fundamental to playing our role in providing for the peace and collective security of the regions in which we live, and that is the strategic intent behind developing this capability, and that's why we are moving down this path. But you only need to look at the map to understand how fundamental a long‑range submarine capability is to a country such as Australia, which is why AUKUS is so significant for us. And when you look at the particular bilateral role that's being played between Australia and the UK in terms of delivering the overall AUKUS package, it again underpins just how significant the Geelong Treaty is that we have signed today. 

JOURNALIST: There's been reports that Australia is perhaps under equipped to defend our northern borders. Do you think that that's an area that we need to further invest in?

MARLES: Well, look, firstly, Australians should have a sense of confidence that we have a highly capable Defence Force, which is right now on display in Exercise Talisman Sabre, which is the most important exercise that our Defence Force undertakes every two years. We are building a defence force which will meet the strategic challenges of the future, and I outlined them before; giving pause for thought for any potential adversary that might seek to coerce us, providing Australia's contribution to the collective peace and security of the region in which we live. And I'm really confident that we have the agency to do this, and that we will be doing it. And I think what you can see here in the progress of AUKUS is a really important example of that. 

JOURNALIST: You spoke about the sharing of technology and training up the Australian personnel. Can Australia achieve the aims of AUKUS without the US?

MARLES: Look AUKUS is a trilateral arrangement. It's a trilateral arrangement between Australia, the US and the UK, which is underpinned by a treaty which, as I said, we signed in Washington DC last year. And the United States is fundamental to AUKUS. And there are a whole lot of elements of the optimal pathway. We've been talking today about the way in which Australia and the UK will jointly develop a future class of submarine that we will both operate, but in the early 2030s part of the optimal pathway is Australia acquiring Virginia class submarines from the United States. That is just one example of an utterly essential role that America plays in bringing this to bear. But I'd also make this point, what AUKUS does in terms of all three countries, is to build each of our capabilities. It's clearly building Australia's capability. But in the contributions that we are making to the US defence industrial base– the financial contributions, in the 120 odd Australians who are right now in Pearl Harbor working on getting US Virginia class submarines out to sea in the US Navy. All of this is also contributing to US capability. And the future SSN-AUKUS class of submarine will contribute to UK capability. It is a three-way agreement which is in the strategic interest of all three countries and which bolsters the capability of all three countries.