HMAS Stirling

End quote.

And AUKUS further surrenders Australian sovereignty, the report notes, by allowing a new de facto US naval base to be established at HMAS Stirling near Perth as part of US warfighting plans, over which Australia has absolutely no say at all, but in which the international law of armed conflict would nonetheless deem us a belligerent simply by virtue of hosting it.

As the commissioners bluntly state, quote, becoming automatically involved in supporting the US to contain or militarily engage China, our major trading partner, including in a dispute over Taiwan, is a nightmare to be avoided at all costs.

The great deception that is AUKUS locks us into this nightmare.

The federal government has announced an additional $88 million to grow, train and keep a domestic workforce it says is needed to deliver AUKUS.

Defence Minister Richard Marles launched a six-year plan called the 2026 Nuclear Powered Submarine Workforce Strategy at HMAS Stirling in Western Australia.

He says the funding is about planning for the future workforce in Western Australia and South Australia by expanding training and employment pathways in the submarine and shipbuilding industries.

What it does is highlight that over the coming decades, AUKUS will directly employ 20,000 Australians.

And Linda Reynolds, who's a Western Australian, confirmed that, in fact, Stirling would be a likely nuclear target.

As soon as we built Stirling, HMAS Stirling, it became a target.

And Henderson now increasingly, because we've got the naval shipbuilders there.

I mean, these were astonishing statements to be made by people that were in favour.

No, I don't, because the Democrats, AUKUS was engineered under a Democratic administration, and then there was the subsequent fear about what happened, whether Trump would support it or not, and then he's all steam, full steam ahead.

This time last week or last Wednesday, I went to Perth to Fleet Base West, Garden Island, to see the arrival of USS Colorado, which is a Virginia-class submarine that's going to be based there or, sorry, stationed there as part of a rotational force from early next year – sorry, late next year.

So the rubber's starting to really hit the road with AUKUS.

Yeah.

First US nuclear sub arrives in Perth.

The first of the US nuclear submarines that will be based at HMAS Stirling, south of Perth, under the AUKUS deal Submarine Rotation Force West, SRF West, arrived last week.

The USS Colorado, with 160 crew, docked at Garden Island facility on Tuesday, for a program of maintenance on the boat.

SRF West does not start until next year, when the USS Colorado will return, with crew and their families.

It was fascinating.

I went over to HMAS Stirling, the naval base over there, to see the arrival of the USS Colorado and go on board

the

USS Colorado, which is a Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine, attack submarine.

It's there at the moment for maintenance, which will be conducted by people from ASC, formerly the Australian Submarine Corporation, which built the Collins-class submarines.

So that'll take a month, and then it'll return in late 2027, late next year, to be part of Submarine Rotational Force West, which is a rotating...

US and UK submarines going through HMAS Stirling, which is on Garden Island in just south of Perth.

And the strategic benefit for the US and the UK is they are obviously close to the Indo-Pacific For maintenance, they don't need to go all the way back to their base in Pearl Harbour or all the way back to the mainland US.