EDITORIAL: UK Defence Minister John Healey’s resignation casts shadow on AUKUS
EDITORIAL: UK Defence Secretary John Healey’s resignation was of the type we don’t see much these days — one motivated by principle.
UK Defence Secretary John Healey’s resignation was of the type we don’t see much these days — one motivated by principle.
As he wrote in his letter of resignation to soon-to-be-former Prime Minister Keir Starmer, he could no longer do his job with the meagre defence budget allocated to him. So, he quit.
It was a matter of bad luck that he did so mere hours before he was scheduled to tour a Portsmouth naval base with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. It was supposed to show that the relationship between the two nations — bound by history and by blood — was as strong and as important as ever, galvanised by the AUKUS pact.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.Instead, it showed Australians just how precarious a position one of our most important allies finds itself in.
As Mr Healey outlined in his letter, the UK’s defence budget has been hollowed out, diverted to other spending priorities deemed more likely to keep Sir Keir’s tenuous grip on power intact.
“You have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats,” Mr Healey told the PM.
The figure which had been scraped together amounted to a funding increase of just 0.08 per cent of GDP — a level which Mr Healey said “falls well short of what is required for defence and for the country at this dangerous time”.
Indeed, these are dangerous times.
Wars rage in Europe and the Middle East — wars which directly affect us by driving up prices and cutting off trade and transport routes. An truculent China looks unlikely to be dissuaded from its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan, threatening to trigger a conflict uncomfortably close to home.
Despite this, and constant stream of chatter about global uncertainty, much like the Brits, we do not feel unsafe in our daily lives. We grumble about paying more for food and fuel and energy, but we don’t feel war’s most terrible costs.
And that makes us complacent.
Australia suffers the same reluctance to properly fund its defence as afflicts the UK. The Government has pledged to lift defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2033. But that comes with some clever accounting tricks. It blends spending on things such as housing, health care and pensions in with the core business of defence infrastructure, salaries and materiel.
In the immediate term, Mr Healey’s dramatic mic drop moment casts doubt on whether the UK will be able to deliver on its promises as part of the AUKUS triumvirate, which includes the co-design and construction of SSN-AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines to be used by the navies of both Australia and the UK.
This isn’t the first setback faced by the AUKUS program. Throughout previous challenges, Mr Marles has managed to plaster on a happy face, such as when he argued that it had been Australia’s preference all along to receive second-hand, rather than new Virginia-class subs from the US.
Not this time. Mr Marles cancelled his media engagements after news of Mr Healey’s resignation broke.
This setback, it appears, was enough to sink even his spirits.
