Boondoggle: “An informal term for an expensive and wasteful project, especially one funded by the public.” – Cambridge Dictionary.
I’d come across the American word ‘boondoggle’ and was puzzled by this bizarre verbal mishmash. What did this weird word mean?
I looked it up, and found the word was used by Americans to describe wasteful and expensive government projects. It was a political word invented to critique the wasteful misuse of public funds by governments and corporations.
It caused me to wonder: Was AUKUS a giant boondoggle?
The AUKUS hijack
The AUKUS Submarine Project is an enormously expensive and controversial project that will impact the Australian economy for decades, the most expensive government project ever undertaken.
It was denounced by former Prime Minister Paul Keating as “the worst deal ever.” Former submariner and Senator, Rex Patrick predicted, “The AUKUS nuclear submarine project will bleed the Australian Defence Force white.”
Surprisingly, the Worst Deal Ever began life in 2009 as the Future Submarine Program, a sensible and modest proposal to purchase twenty off-the-shelf conventional submarines for $30 billion to replace Australia’s ageing Collins-Class submarines, which were due for retirement in 2024.
Japan, Germany and France were identified as potential suppliers, and were given 15 months to submit their proposals, which Australia would evaluate before awarding the contract to the successful bidder to begin manufacture in 2016, with delivery starting in 2024. Tony Abbott, then PM, favoured the Japan proposal.
However, Scott Morrison and Malcolm Turnbull were busy sharpening the knives. Abbott’s political assassination by their forces resulted in the Future Submarine contract being unexpectedly awarded to France, resulting in a further three-year delay.
Following the AUKUS deal, Tony Abbott’s former Chief of Staff, Peta Credlin, contrasted Morrison’s AUKUS deal with Abbott’s Future Submarine Project. If Morrison had not betrayed Abbott in 2016, Credlin said, the Japanese submarine deal would have gone ahead, and 20 conventional submarines would be arriving at the modest cost of $50 billion: Morrison’s economy-crippling AUKUS deal cost $368 billion for eight nuclear submarines that may or not arrive until the 2040s.
As Paul Keating argued, the advantage of nuclear submarines over conventional submarines is they can stay submerged for lengthy periods, hiding in deep ocean trenches to unleash a devastating surprise nuclear attack. They serve as part of US nuclear strategy.
Australia does not have nuclear weapons. Our defence relies on what Professor John Mearsheimer calls “the stopping power of water”. We are surrounded by nations of fish to the north, east, south and west. Human invaders face the almost impossible task of transporting an army of a million or so soldiers thousands of kilometres across water.
Such a massive armada would be best repelled with missiles, drones and conventional submarines that can operate in shallow continental waters and are many times more affordable than nuclear submarines.
Buying three conventional submarines instead of one nuclear submarine would be much less expensive and more effective, Hugh White argues.
When Morrison became Prime Minister in 2019, the Future Submarine Project was running well behind time, and Americans voices were whispering about ditching the French deal and accepting the worst deal ever.
Pompeo’s proxy
In his book, Morrison’s Mission, Paul Kelly reveals that Mike Pompeo – the US Secretary of State in Donald Trump’s first administration – was the US voice who collaborated with Morrison in planning AUKUS. Evangelical Christians both, the two men spoke every week about Jesus while plotting AUKUS.
As they drew closer, Morrison, a geostrategic lightweight, became Pompeo’s protégé and was co-opted by Pompeo into the US strategic architecture. As Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Hudson Institute, Mike Pompeo invited Morrison to join the Board in November 2022.
The major originator of the AUKUS strategy was Mike Pompeo, who highjacked Australia’s Future Submarine Project and turned it into AUKUS. His strategy was to lock Australia into a global war allied with the US and UK against China, not an Australian-based strategy of deterring invasion.
There was little public discussion of AUKUS in parliament, or in cabinet. Australia’s new security architecture was hatched largely in secret by Pompeo and Morrison. It was clearly aimed at China, Australia’s major trading partner, though the name ‘China’ was as unmentionable as Voldemort. As ABC-TV’s Utopia crew explained in 2023, AUKUS was about interrupting the trade routes of our major trading partner!
Selling AUKUS was a tremendous triumph for Pompeo. Hundreds of billions of dollars would flow to US weapon makers to fund a war against Australia’s major trading partner; a war AUKUS’s other architect, Scott Morrison, campaigned for in the 2022 election.
Presenting AUKUS as a fait accompli allowed Morrison to wedge Labor for being ‘soft on China’ ahead of the 2022 federal election.
The ‘China Scare’ – fearmongering about China – played a significant role in Morrison’s 2022 campaign.
Morrison accused his Labor opponent Anthony Albanese of being “the Chinese government’s pick at the election”. He went further, describing Labor’s deputy leader as a “Manchurian candidate.”
The wedge proved unsuccessful as Labor timidly folded and supported AUKUS, allowing Albanese to become PM.
Morrison departed Parliament in January 2024, disappearing through the revolving door that promotes your career from former PM to US think-tanker, and took roles on various global strategic advisory boards.
Drawing on the Pompeo connection, he joined DYNE Ventures (which employed Mike Pompeo as a strategic advisor), who said they “expected to profit” from Mr Morrison’s role as architect of AUKUS.
Shortly after Morrison’s resignation from Parliament, the Australian Citizens Party (ACP) wrote to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), requesting they investigate former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s decision to join private companies who will profit from the massive defence expenditure resulting from his decision to establish AUKUS.
ACP Research Director Robbie Barwick explained the NACC referral was because Morrison was climbing aboard the AUKUS gravy train to cash in on the policy he created.
Smells like boondoggle!