Andrew Hastie has hit back at Richard Marles after the Defence Secretary made the “childish” comment that AUKUS was just a “thought bubble” when the Labour Party came to power.
During Question Time on Monday, Mr Marles lashed out at the Coalition, claiming the Labor government was responsible for the entire AUKUS plan and had made it a “reality”.
“When we came to power, AUKUS was actually little more than a thought bubble, but since then we have made it a reality,” he said to a chorus of groans from the opposition.
“We have laid out the concrete path by which Australia will achieve the capability to operate nuclear-powered submarines.”
He said Labor had significantly increased the budget for defence and “much, much more”, again attacking the Coalition, which he claimed had not provided the necessary funding.
“Today we see that they are no better in opposition – the Albanese government is doing the detailed work and making the difficult decisions to implement AUKUS and keep Australians safe.”
Mr Hastie criticised the comments as a “cheap political power play” and defended the coalition’s record on AUKUS as the “most substantive decision” it had taken during its time in office.
“It’s a national endeavour, it’s cross-party, it’s multi-generational and it has to go beyond cheap political point-scoring and that’s exactly what Richard Marles has done in Parliament today,” he told Sky News presenter Peta Credlin.
“We need to work together to make this happen. It’s his job to make it happen, and we support the project on a bipartisan basis.”
Mr Marles argued that the defence minister needed to concentrate on the task at hand rather than “landing cheap blows in Parliament”.
“I can tell you there is a lot of work to be done, not just with the federal government but also with the Western Australian state government.
“And I asked them last week to appoint an AUKUS minister in the State Cabinet to get the ball rolling because the Labour Party has failed on AUKUS.”
On Monday, details of a revised AUKUS agreement were presented to Parliament, replacing the deal negotiated under the Morrison government in February 2022.
Under the agreement, the US and UK can pull out of the deal with just one year’s notice if they conclude that their own production of nuclear submarines is at risk.
The revised agreement also provides for the transfer of naval nuclear materials to Australia and replaces the provisions of the previous treaty, which allowed for the exchange of “naval nuclear propulsion information”.
