WASHINGTON - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives on Thursday and said he hoped Congress would pass legislation related to the Aukus submarine project in 2023.
Mr Albanese, who held summit talks with US President Joe Biden in Washington on Wednesday, met the new Speaker, Mr Mike Johnson, on Capitol Hill a day after Mr Johnson’s election following protracted wrangling among House Republicans.
“We, of course, have important legislation required for Aukus,” Mr Albanese told Mr Johnson at the start of their meeting. “We are certainly hoping that the Congress can pass that legislation this year.”
Aukus provides for the sale of US nuclear-powered submarines and the sharing of nuclear-propulsion technology with Australia, as well as joint development of high-tech weaponry. The three-way pact between Australia, the United States and Britain is the biggest defence project in Australian history and a response to China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific.
Budget wrangling and the lack of a Speaker for several weeks until Mr Johnson’s appointment interrupted the US legislative process in Congress, and Australian officials have expressed concern about delays in approving legislation needed to move the Aukus project forward.
Mr Biden told Mr Albanese on Wednesday that both Democrats and Republicans understood the strategic value of Aukus, and also urged Congress to pass his administration’s legislation to facilitate the project in 2023.
At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, a senior Pentagon official stressed the need for Congress to approve proposals to authorise the transfer of submarines to Australia, to allow maintenance of US submarines in Australia and Britain, and to authorise Australian funding for US shipyards and training of Australian workers in them.
Dr Mara Karlin, Mr Biden’s acting Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also highlighted the need to pass a fourth proposal to streamline defence trade among the three Aukus partners. Officials and experts say this is important for the success of Aukus, given the need to share US technology, both in the submarine project and a second Aukus pillar involving three-way cooperation on high-tech weaponry.
There was no immediate comment from Mr Johnson on his meeting with Mr Albanese, but Democratic Representative Joe Courtney, a co-chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus in Congress, said he was “heartened” that the new Speaker had included in his priorities for the current congressional session the National Defence Authorisation Act that includes the Aukus legislation.
“I think we’re still in actually pretty good shape to hit an end-of-December deadline,” Mr Courtney told a news briefing.
In July, 25 US Republican lawmakers urged Mr Biden to increase funding for the US submarine fleet, saying that the plan under Aukus to sell Australia Virginia-class nuclear-power submarines would “unacceptably weaken” the US fleet without a clear plan to replace them.
The three representatives of the US Navy who testified at Wednesday’s hearing urged Congress to move ahead on a supplemental budget request from Mr Biden last Friday that earmarks US$3.4 billion (S$4.66 billion) for further investments in the US submarine industrial base. REUTERS
