Comments on nuclear submarine choice ‘irresponsible’ ahead of AUKUS announcement -defence minister

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s former defence minister said on Wednesday he favoured Australia choosing a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine over a British model in its AUKUS alliance, comments swiftly labelled “irresponsible” by the government, which expects to announce a decision within weeks.

Leaders from Australia and Britain are expected to travel to Washington this month to announce how Australia will acquire nuclear subs, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described as “the single biggest leap in our defence capability in our history”.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who was defence minister when the AUKUS partnership between Australia, the United States and Britain was formed in 2021, told reporters at the Avalon Air Show he favoured the American Virginia-class submarine.

“It was a proven design, it gave us interoperability with the Americans, and there’ll be more American subs in the

Indo-Pacific than there will be British submarines, who will concentrate, quite rightly, particularly given the Russian threat, to continental Europe,” he said.

“I worry that if the government’s taken a decision to go for a cheaper design, that it will delay the delivery of those submarines,” he added, when asked about defence industry speculation that a British submarine would be chosen.

Minister for Defence Industry Pat Conroy, who last week visited the British submarine shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness, said that Dutton’s comments were “incredibly irresponsible” and that his predecessor was “not privy to the latest information”.

“I’ve got a full briefing on what the United Kingdom is doing. I stay in regular contact with the U.S. Navy, and we’ll make announcements very shortly about the optimal path forward on our nuclear propelled submarines,” he said.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham. Editing by Gerry Doyle)