Shoebridge, Sen David

Senator SHOEBRIDGE ( New South Wales ) ( 12:04 ): I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate we oppose the Customs Tariff Amendment (Geelong Treaty Implementation) Bill 2025, which follows on from the treaty signed between the UK and Australia on 26 July 2025 as part of AUKUS. If you want Australia to go and join the next US war, if you want Australia to spend billions of dollars trying to bail out the UK's failing meltdown of a nuclear submarine industry, if you want to see $375 billion of Australian taxpayers' money not spent on schools, housing, dealing with the climate catastrophe or making sure kids have enough to eat, if you want to hand over our sovereignty to decisions made in Washington, if you want to expand US bases on this continent and build the United States an $8 billion or $9 billion submarine base off of Perth, if you want to make Australia a nuclear target by expanding US bases in Pine Gap, Tindall and Stirling and building the US an east-coast submarine base in Newcastle or Wollongong—if you want those outcomes, then vote for this bill. That's what this bill does. It takes us down that path, to the beat of the drums of warmongers in Washington and the war parties here, Labor and the coalition. If you want to go down the path of joining the next US war, with a lawless, increasingly fascist regime in Washington that has no interest in the so-called rules based order, that's selling out its allies as we speak and that is about as trustworthy as—well—Donald Trump, support this bill. That's what this bill does. This bill implements aspects of the UK-Australia agreement, specifically article 21 of the treaty, which requires the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Australia not to impose value added taxes, excise, custom duties and other similar charges on imports and exports of goods in connection with that treaty—basically, largely, AUKUS related stuff. In one view, this doesn't really matter, because there's next to zero chance that the UK's failing industrial capacity will produce nuclear reactors or come close to producing an SSN-AUKUS submarine. Their own audit office says that their projects are in meltdown, their defence budget is in collapse, their economy is failing and their politics are fraying. Who would choose the UK as a partner for security in the Indo-Pacific now? Only someone who is ignorant of the reality of the UK's budget, economy and position in the world. So, in one view, this might not be relevant, because there's Buckley's chance of this actually coming into play. The problem is in the pretence that the UK can be a meaningful security partner for Australia in the Indo-Pacific in 2025. To remind the chamber, this isn't 1925, when they had an empire in this region, which was about as popular as a fart in an elevator. They got eventually thrown out by independence movements in our region, which wanted the UK out of the region and not to return— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator O'Neill ): Senator Shoebridge, I'll interrupt you for a moment, if you could take a seat. I'm going to commence by saying you haven't technically broken any of the rules of the Senate. With this being a week when we're trying to manage respectful practice and also respectful language, I'd just ask you to review some of the more colourful phrases that have popped into your contribution. I give you the floor again. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: The British empire in our region was not only unpopular; it was antidemocratic, it was imposed by martial law, and it stole from the people of the region their wealth, their dignity and their self-determination. They traded knowingly in drugs in China, in a global opium trade, knowing the damage it caused for about a century, to destroy people's lives, millions of people's lives, in China. They did it purely for profit. When I say it's about as popular as a fart in an elevator, that is about the nicest possible term I can apply to the UK's empire in this region. When the people in our region see us wanting to bring the UK back into the region—they finally got rid of them through independence movements, and we're inviting them back—we look like some throwback to the 19th century. It's like we're trying to reimagine the Anglosphere, with a white colonial lens over our relations with the region. When our neighbours, whether it's Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand or China, see us inviting the former imperial power back into the region, they say, 'Who the hell are you?' Why won't Australia realise we live in the region in the 21st century? Our neighbours in the region loathe the idea of us inviting the UK back into the region with nuclear submarines and defence plans. If we take that cultural hit, that diplomatic hit, that people-to-people hit, what do we get in return? We get to bail out a failing meltdown of a nuclear submarine industry in the UK that pretty much every informed observer says has Buckley's chance of producing a nuclear reactor or meaningfully contributing to our defence via nuclear submarines. We're literally bailing out the sick man of Europe in 2025, inviting them back into their former empire and saying to our region: 'We don't understand that we belong in the region. We want to bring back the UK and the US as some kind of Anglosphere military domination of the region.' Our region loathes that, and that's what this treaty does. If you want to do that, if that's your plan for Australia's future, vote for this bill. The Greens reject that future. We say we should be proudly part of our region. We should be engaging not with some fading, economically spiralling former imperial power on a modest sized island off Europe for our future; we should be engaging with our region. Our future security—our future economic relations and our future as a prosperous and positive nation—lies in our region, not in inviting Queen Bess back to ride in with a 21st century battleship to try and protect us in 2025. This treaty sets in stone and makes clear that Australia is at the bottom rung of AUKUS as well, with the UK making all critical decisions on the design of the yet-to-be-built AUKUS nuclear submarines and Australia once again funnelling billions and billions of dollars into it. For those following along at home, we've already paid billions of dollars to the UK, and who has that money gone to? Instead of spending it on schools and hospitals and putting food on the table for Australians, the Albanese Labor government has given billions and billions of dollars to Rolls-Royce in the UK. That's who's getting the money from Labor—Rolls-Royce. That's what this bill intends to facilitate—more money going to Rolls-Royce. It's obscene! When you read about this deal—the so-called Geelong treaty, which is obviously some kind of ego driven term that is aimed to appease the august Deputy Prime Minister—it makes clear that Australia will be responsible for high-, low- and intermediate-level nuclear waste from UK submarines in Australia. We'll take their waste. There's the limited exception of spent nuclear fuel, but all the other waste produced by UK nuclear submarines—we'll take it, for the hundreds and thousands of years that it's toxic. The deal also sees Australia waive all claims of liability on the transfer of AUKUS nuclear submarines. So they can sell us duds—they can have a meltdown in Sydney Harbour—and the UK can just whistle at us: 'Sorry, former colony; you can't get anything from us, but thanks very much for the billions. We really liked it. The executives in Rolls-Royce are very grateful.' My colleague Senator Whish-Wilson sat on the inquiry into this treaty, and I thank him for the work that he did. The Greens also issued a dissenting report to the consideration of the treaty and this bill. The majority report from the war parties, Labor and the coalition, contained a bunch of recommendations basically proposing that we implement the bill. But it has been made abundantly clear— The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Shoebridge, you will be in continuation. It being 12.15, we will proceed to senators' statements.