The big, unspoken issue that drives our strong feelings about second-hand submarines

June 5, 2026 — 5:00am

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In public relations terms, it wasn’t a great week for AUKUS. On the weekend, Defence Minister Richard Marles told us that all three of the nuclear-powered submarines we’d get next decade from the US would be second-hand. Previously, we’d heard one of them would be new. By Tuesday, Peter Garrett and Chris Barrie – respectively a former Labor minister and a former chief of the defence force – announced they’d be launching a “people’s inquiry” into AUKUS, made possible by crowdfunded donations.

Neither development is terribly significant in and of itself. Even together, they will not change the government’s course of action, and will make little difference to whatever Australia’s defence arsenal ends up being. But they are more significant for what they symbolise, and that is important because AUKUS is now crystallising into an argument over competing worldviews, and Labor is caught between them.

Take the matter of used subs. The government now insists it is better for Australia to receive only used submarines, and was in fact what we wanted all along. That’s counterintuitive, but it isn’t as silly as it sounds. It costs less. The used subs will require a smaller crew, which is no small benefit when we have a shortage of personnel. We’d also be acquiring them after they’ve had their first maintenance, meaning the teething problems should have been ironed out. Throwing a brand-new submarine into the mix would have meant training crew in the workings of a whole new ship.

Meanwhile, the benefits any new submarine........

© The Sydney Morning Herald