“Given what we face,” said Defence Minister Richard Marles at the ALP conference, “[AUKUS] is a modest step”.
Labor’s greatest disasters are self-inflicted. Two stark examples are the ideological Labor split of 1955, which kept it out of office for 17 years, and the fratricidal Rudd-Gillard-Rudd convulsions that ushered it out for nine. The party sends clear signals when it’s unelectable.
A successful conference doesn’t affect Labor’s electoral standing; a failed one certainly can. It’s like driving a car. Doing it successfully is taken for granted. Crash and you’re disqualified. Anticipating the debate, Richard Marles, one of the key figures in Labor’s right faction as well as being deputy prime minister and defence minister, told a private meeting of his faction’s delegates that the conference vote on AUKUS would be one of the most important decisions that Labor’s national conference had ever taken.
He hadn’t noticed, apparently, that the Liberals need no such wedge – they are already committing to nuclear power in Australia. With the Liberals moving to nuclear reactors on Australian soil and the Greens opposed to AUKUS outright, Labor’s position of pro-AUKUS but anti-nuclear energy establishes it firmly at the political centre.
“So I urge delegates to heed the tradition of John Curtin who, in the 1930s, when Menzies was arguing for appeasement and tried to cut defence funding, John Curtin was the one who argued for a massive investment in our air force and navy to deter aggressors in our region.
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