Size of UK’s nuclear submarine fleet could double under Aukus plans

First of new vessels expected to be seaworthy by the end of 2030s, with Australia receiving theirs in early 2040s

The UK’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet could double in size as plans were revealed for the new “Aukus” vessels to be based on a British design.

In a bid to counter the growing threat from China, the UK’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, vowed alongside his US and Australian counterparts to stand “shoulder to shoulder” to protect peace in the Indo-Pacific given its implications for security across the world.

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Aukus: nuclear submarines deal will cost Australia up to $368bn

‘Rotational forces’ of US and UK nuclear-powered submarines set to visit Australia from 2027 as part of landmark pact

Australia is to embark on one of its most significant, expensive and geopolitically consequential military tasks in a century: the push to acquire, operate – and eventually build – nuclear-powered submarines.

The program is forecast to cost $268bn to $368bn between now and the mid 2050s, most of it beyond the first four-year budget period, and will depend on help from the US and the UK.

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Peter Dutton says Coalition would support NDIS cuts to pay for Aukus submarines

Liberal leader offers bipartisan backing for ‘sustainable’ savings for the next generation defence scheme

Peter Dutton has suggested the Coalition would offer bipartisan support for cuts to the National Disability Insurance Scheme to keep it “sustainable” and pay for the Aukus nuclear submarine acquisition.

The former defence minister and opposition leader offered bipartisanship on budget savings ahead of Anthony Albanese announcing the submarine plan on Tuesday morning AEDT, with the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and the US president, Joe Biden.

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Albanese meets with UK PM ahead of submarine deal unveiling – As it happened

Severe flooding continued in Queensland; PM to meet Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak to announce Aukus terms. This blog is now closed

Circling back to the interview with Tammy Tyrrell. Tyrrell wants to see the government invest at least 4% of its multibillion-dollar social housing plan in Tasmania. She says it’s only fair, as a government survey shows 4.6% of people most in need of housing support are in Tasmania.

Tyrrell says she will be meeting next week with the housing minister, Julie Collins, about the request.

They haven’t shut me down. They haven’t said no, but they haven’t said yes.

It’s absolutely fundamental to everything that I do. My job is to represent the people of Indi in the federal parliament and in doing that, I try my darnedest to connect policy to the people to the policy, every single time.

So I go to them when I have to make a decision about a piece of legislation I may not be clear on. And I go to them and explain why I’ve made the decision I have once that legislation is through the parliament.

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No clunkers: Australia buying ‘highest quality’ secondhand submarines from US, congressman says

Senior US lawmaker confident Virginia Class nuclear vessels can be delivered and concerns about joint crewing are ‘overhyped’

Australia buying up to five secondhand Virginia class nuclear submarines would not amount to the US “foisting off clunkers” on to its ally, a senior US lawmaker has said.

On Sunday congressman Joe Courtney, the ranking member of the house seapower subcommittee and the second highest ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, also sought to reassure Australia that concern about joint crewing of nuclear submarines was “overhyped”.

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Sunak heads to US to unveil latest news on Australian nuclear sub deal

Latest phase of Aukus scheme comes amid concerns about growing threat from China

Rishi Sunak will fly to San Diego on Sunday to unveil plans for supplying Australia with nuclear-powered submarines under the Aukus scheme amid concerns about the growing threat from China.

A major announcement 18 months in the making is expected when the UK prime minister meets his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, and US president Joe Biden.

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Drawing closer to US while seeking warmer China ties leaves Australia with a tough balancing act

Bid to maintain ‘strategic equilibrium’ through the Aukus pact and a better relationship with Beijing is quite the needle to thread

There was a moment in federal parliament this week when the seriousness of the looming Aukus announcement seemed to dawn on the defence minister, Richard Marles.

“It is difficult to overstate the step that, as a nation, we are about to take,” Marles, in the acting prime minister’s chair, solemnly told the chamber on Thursday.

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Aukus submarine deal: Australia expected to choose UK design, sources say

Rishi Sunak said to have been ‘buzzing’ about result of 18-month negotiations, part of Aukus defence pact with US

An enthusiastic Rishi Sunak has told ministers to expect a positive outcome next week when he travels to San Diego to unveil a deal to supply nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as part of the Aukus pact with the US.

Multiple sources said they believed the UK had succeeded in its bid to sell British-designed nuclear submarines to Australia, a deal that will safeguard the long-term future of the shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness.

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Australia will put nuclear safety ‘above all else’ as it builds submarines, vice admiral says

In interview with Guardian Australia, Jonathan Mead moves to allay concerns as Aukus partners prepare to announce detailed plans

Australia will put nuclear safety “above all else” as it begins the “generational challenge” of building and operating nuclear-powered submarines under the Aukus pact, the government’s top adviser has said.

Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead has moved to allay concerns – both at home and across the region – about nuclear safety as Australia, the US and the UK prepare to announce their detailed plans within days.

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UK, US or a hybrid? Intense speculation as Australia’s $170bn nuclear submarine choice looms

UK and Australian ministers have been hinting at a trilateral design for the eight boats, but all options are still on the table in Australia’s biggest defence purchase

Australia is set to within a couple of weeks learn some basic details about a program that could cost more than $170bn and will run for decades.

The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, this week warned against opting for a new UK design. For now though, the Aukus submarine program is a “black box”, says Tom Corben, a foreign policy and defence research fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre.

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Opposition criticises super proposal – as it happened

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‘Really clear’ wages are not driving inflation, Tony Burke says

Circling back to the interview with employment relations minister, Tony Burke. He’s asked about soaring corporate profits, which were up more than 10% in the December quarter compared to wages which rose 2.6%, and whether that demonstrates that it’s corporate profits driving inflation – as the union movement is arguing – not wages.

It is really clear that wages are not driving inflation, are not the principal driver of inflation here. It’s really clear we don’t have some sort of spiral of inflation being caused by high wage growth. It’s also really clear we don’t have high wage growth.

I was pleased that the last wage price increase got up to 3.3%. To the extent that that’s the highest it’s been for some time and had we not taken actions that we took last year, particularly with respect to the minimum wage and awards, you wouldn’t have got to figure as high as but it’s still much, much lower than inflation.

Supermax prisoners are served better food than the workers building Snowy Hydro 2.0.

You have workers living, literally locked up in a camp with limited recreational facilities in the middle of nowhere, being fed maggot-infested food.

The problem is the joint venture who was awarded the contract is pinching every penny they can to try and improve their profit margin.

The whole site’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

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Australia’s defence force faces once in a generation shake-up – but to what purpose?

Key strategists say military needs to focus on maritime and long-range strike capabilities to defend Australia’s interests across a wider region

As the Australian government considers the biggest defence shake-up in nearly four decades, it faces a blunt warning from a key strategist.

Australia’s security outlook has worsened substantially, warns the former defence official Paul Dibb, who carried out the landmark 1985-86 defence review for the then Hawke government. He believes the structure of the Australian defence force needs a significant overhaul to match the times.

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Strict new security rules for Adelaide nuclear submarine-building facility in bid to protect military secrets

Operators of Osborne naval shipyard ordered to guard against ‘deliberate or accidental manipulation’ of critical components

The Australian government has imposed strict new security rules at the Adelaide site where nuclear-powered submarines will be built, moving to reassure allies that sensitive military secrets will be protected.

The new rules require four operators at the Osborne naval shipyard, including those building the Hunter-class frigates and offshore patrol vessels, to guard against espionage and foreign interference.

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Australia news live: defence pursuing joint patrols with Philippines in South China Sea, Marles says

It comes as Anthony Albanese grilled on balance of power under Aukus after press club address. Follow the day’s news live

Chalmers highlights importance of sustainability of superannuation

Treasurer Jim Chalmers isn’t ruling in or out whether there will be any changes on superannuation tax concessions in the May budget.

I’ll tell you what I think. I gave a longish speech about this on Monday, where I said the priority [of] super is and should be nailing down the objective. For too long, the lack of an agreed objective has meant that our predecessors could mess with superannuation when it came to all kinds of ideological pursuits. We want to take that out of the system.

Ideally, we’d want to get some kind of broad agreement amongst the industry in the community … about what super is for, so that we can build from that. And as part of that speech, I pointed out the fact … that the cost of superannuation tax concessions will overtake the cost of the pension. That’s a fact.

Not necessarily.

I just think as part of a broader assessment of where our superannuation system is at and how we locked down the objective of super so that we can provide more certainty and security around its purpose, as part of that I acknowledged earlier in the week, that these concessions in the superannuation system, they’re not cheap. I don’t think it’s especially controversial to acknowledge that.

Well, as I keep saying, we haven’t changed their view. We haven’t taken any decisions.

We haven’t determined that.

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Richard Marles insists Aukus submarine deal will not erode Australia’s military sovereignty

Defence minister to tell parliament agreement with US and UK will not limit Australia’s independence on deployment decisions

Richard Marles insists Australia will always make its own decisions on military deployments, hitting back at Malcolm Turnbull’s and Paul Keating’s claims the Aukus deal will erode the country’s sovereignty.

The defence minister will tell parliament on Thursday that acquiring at least eight nuclear-powered submarines will “dramatically enhance” Australia’s sovereignty, rather than undermine it.

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US hails progress in getting Australia nuclear-powered submarines ‘at the earliest possible date’

Defence minister Richard Marles says Aukus partners will all benefit from ‘three-way ecosystem’ as he meets with US counterpart Lloyd Austin

Australia and the US have made “significant progress” towards getting Australia a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines “at the earliest possible date”, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said on Saturday.

The federal government is set to announce its Aukus submarine plans by the end of March, amid mounting concerns that the US could struggle to provide them, and a push for President Joe Biden to fast-track research into submarines that use non-weapons grade uranium.

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Coles and Woolworths ordered to dump more than 5,200 tonnes of soft plastic into landfill – as it happened

This blog is now closed. Follow our next Australia news live blog here when it launches

The government has been accused of deliberately withholding detail on its push to enshrine an Indigenous voice in the constitution for political reasons.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton and shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser were briefed by the referendum working group after calling for more information on the proposed voice’s make-up and function.

Like all Australians, we want to see a better outcome for the Indigenous people of our country.

We are willing to look at any measure to do that. There are lots of questions around the voice and lots of detail that hasn’t yet been provided.

It’s not the airlines that do the turn backs that you should be worried about. It’s the airlines that keep on going to the destination and don’t make that turn back.

This is what happens with aviation across the world. And it’s an important part of the safety management system. I would rather there be not, but again I encourage our pilots to do this. I applaud them when they do it.

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James Cleverly rebuffs Australian minister over UK colonialism remarks

Foreign secretary rejects suggestion by Penny Wong that Britain needs to do more to confront its colonial past

James Cleverly has rejected suggestions Britain needs to do more to confront its colonial past, pointing out that he is “the black foreign secretary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain”.

He was responding to questions after a speech by the Australian foreign minister, Penny Wong, while on a visit to London this week in which she said Britain needed to reflect on its past.

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Australia news live: voice working group says Dutton committed to ‘further talks’; Alice Springs report may not be made public until next week

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Australian batter Usman Khawaja has been cleared to join his teammates in India after his visa issues were sorted, AAP reports.

Pakistan-born Khawaja will fly out of Melbourne today, more than a day later than planned, after an anxious wait for his visa to be approved.

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Anthony Albanese says he would have likely signed up to Aukus if he had been PM at the time

Exclusive: The prime minister’s assessment pits him against Paul Keating, who has urged Labor to walk away from the controversial pact

Anthony Albanese says it is likely he would have pursued the Aukus agreement had Labor been in power during the Morrison era because the bonds between the three nations are enduring, and defence officials would have supplied the same advice.

The upbeat assessment during an interview with the Guardian’s Australian Politics podcast pits Albanese against Paul Keating, who has urged Labor to walk away from the controversial agreement with the US and Britain. Keating argues the plan to acquire nuclear-powered submarines will see Australia’s strategic sovereignty “outsourced to another state” – a critique echoed by the former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

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