AUKUS doesn’t need protection from politics

The government wants to create a new parliamentary joint committee with a special focus on defence oversight. The aim, in the words of Assistant Minister for Defence Peter Khalil last week when introducing legislation in support of the proposal, is to create a forum “above partisan politics and petty point scoring.”

On the surface this appears a reasonable ambition. Defence spending is growing, with massive outlays for the AUKUS nuclear submarine project adding to an already complex budget area. The idea of a new committee separate from foreign affairs and trade areas draws from a recommendation of a 2023 parliamentary inquiry into how Australia decides to go to war and was also recently debated in the opposition ranks.

Extra scrutiny seems a no-brainer.

But why would adding another layer of oversight be any less political than existing arrangements? More importantly, why is politics regarded as a bad thing?

Intriguingly, the opposition, under Peter Dutton, chose not to support the proposal for a new defence-only committee ahead of the last election. Partly this may have been out of spite. Dutton was warring with his shadow defence spokesman Andrew Hastie at the time, and Hastie had championed the idea. According to extracts of a forthcoming book by columnist Niki Savva, Dutton was also wary of Greens or independent MPs playing a role.

Whatever the reason, Dutton was right to be sceptical.

The plan for a new committee appears to reflect a belief that national security policy should remain the preserve of a privileged few. That somewhere, carefully tucked away, sits a locked chest containing the “national interest” in a form understood and uncontested. Like paeans to the value of bipartisanship or the cliché that “politics stops at the water’s edge”, this is a cute rhetorical trick commonly deployed by both sides of politics in a bid to bludgeon opponents into accepting a particular view.

But the good of the country is always improved by testing the quality of ideas. Democracy’s strength lies in debate.

The genesis of AUKUS itself warns of dangers in narrow decision-making, with the 2021 surprise announcement blindsiding France and creating major diplomatic fallout, not just for Australia but also the United States. Hurdles now being encountered in the project – from workforce challenges to shipyard limitations – might have been avoided, or at least better anticipated, had the idea been tested through public debate.

Part of the challenge is in dealing with classified information in a parliamentary setting. This is delicate for any government, and the technical details for nuclear submarines are especially sensitive. And while the new committee will hold some open hearings, special emphasis is being put on “proceedings [that] will be conducted in a private and appropriately secure setting” to allow the committee to request and receive classified information and briefings. Khalil set out a series of measures for the new committee in handling classified material and criminal penalties for leaks. He pointed to the operation of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security as a model.

Again, however, the aim seems co-option rather than openness. The new committee will not take away budget scrutiny from the existing Senate Estimates process. Intelligence functions of Defence will continue to be considered elsewhere. It will be limited in its ability to report to parliament about any information considered a risk of causing “significant harm”. What the new committee will do, however, is inculcate a few hand-picked MPs into the world of classified information carefully curated by the government of the day, reinforcing the notion of privilege. Criticism coming from MPs cut out of these briefings can be dismissed with a simple, “Ah, if only they knew.”

In defence debates, the problem is not so much politics but the lack of transparency – and that won’t be solved by setting up another committee able to hold hearings in secret. Open debate will ensure better policy.