Around 200 people attended a forum hosted by the No AUKUS Coalition at Victorian Trades Hall on the evening of 23 June. Speakers included former Labor MP Peter Garrett, Dr Margie Beavis from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, the manufacturing workers’ union state secretary, Tony Mavromatis, and Arthur Rorris, secretary of the NSW South Coast Trades and Labour Council.

Garrett began the speeches and narrowed in on Australia’s “national interests”, saying that we need a robust relationship with the United States and that Australia could not defend its interests by staying neutral. The threat of China’s rise was a problem that should be considered.

Garrett argued that the main challenge for those who oppose AUKUS—a military pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States—is not explaining to people the cost of the deal or pointing out the problems with the US. The main challenge, he said, was “describing a world where defence is taken seriously” without the AUKUS relationship. He argued that we have to “save the national interests of the country from its leaders”.

Garrett is not opposed to an Australian alliance with US imperialism. He is merely concerned about “interoperability” with the US military. It has been encouraging to see Garrett and others from the ALP coming out against AUKUS. But arguments like this lead us down the wrong path.

Beavis argued that AUKUS passes neither “the pub test” nor a cost-benefit analysis. She spoke about the financial cost of the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal—which will cost up to $400 billion—and all manner of things we could spend that money on instead, from acting on the climate crisis to spending money on schools, hospitals and welfare. She also argued that AUKUS leads us down the path of a dangerous arms race and locks Australia into an agreement with a nation that has caused too many wars.

Left unnamed was the “nation” that Beavis was referring to.

The omission highlights some of the problems of the forum. The main danger of AUKUS, aside from nuclear waste and weapons, was mostly left unsaid: there was very little discussion about the threat of Australia joining a US-led war against China. No-one questioned the way that AUKUS strengthens the already problematic US alliance. And most of the speakers argued for a strong military strategy to defend “Australia’s interests”.

That came most strongly from Garrett and Mavromatis. Mavromatis, while outlining some of the problems of AUKUS, focused mostly on the questions of jobs, training and apprenticeships. This sectional view—narrowly focused on the perceived immediate interests of manufacturing workers—resulted in Mavromatis arguing that the government ought to buy the Williamstown shipyards to set up a conventional submarine industry in Victoria.

It was important to hear from Arthur Rorris, who closed the speeches. He focused on the risk to communities in the Illawarra and the need to resist the war machine. Speaking about the potential impact of a submarine base at Port Kembla, Rorris argued that the AUKUS deal is damaging, dangerous and must be opposed.

Rorris, who helped to lead a May Day protest against military bases at Port Kembla this year, finished on a defiant note: “You can’t stand by and do nothing ... It’s workers’ blood that is spilled in wars. They want to conscript us into their war machine. But this community [Port Kembla] won’t be conscripted ... Peace is union business!”

We will need to build a broad movement to challenge the march to war. People will oppose the government’s expensive submarine agreement for different reasons. However, it is important that the campaign make a strident anti-war argument and not succumb to right-wing talking points about “national defence”: Australia is one of the most aggressive imperialist powers in all of Asia.

Arguing for a national submarine industry gives credence to the argument that China is a military threat to Australia. But China would pose no threat to these shores if there were no AUKUS agreement and no military alliance with the US. It’s unfortunate that this was not raised at the forum.