The Demands · Three

A Royal Commission into AUKUS

We want a full, independent Royal Commission into AUKUS and Australia’s defence strategy — not a press release, not an internal review, but an inquiry with the power to compel evidence and a duty to report to the people.

What we’re asking

• Realign AUKUS to serve Australia’s own defence — our nation, our people, on our terms.
• Review our defence and logistics plans for the real threat — a disruption or blockade of the sea lanes we live on.
• Put it in the open — how much of our sovereignty we’ve signed over to the United States and the United Kingdom, and what it takes to win it back.

Why now

The money’s going out. Nothing’s come in.

AUKUS is costed at up to A$368 billion over three decades. Billions have already been spent or committed — an estimated $11–13 billion by 2027 — without a single submarine in the water. Around US$2 billion of that has been paid offshore, into American and British shipyards. And before AUKUS, roughly $4 billion was already sunk cancelling the French submarine deal.

America is putting America first.

After a Pentagon “America First” review, the deal was revised in May 2026 down to three second-hand Virginia-class boats — and even those depend on a future US president certifying that America can spare them. The first wouldn’t arrive until the 2030s; our own build runs into the 2040s. We are paying full price for a maybe.

It answers the wrong threat.

Australia imports about 90% of its refined fuel and moves about 99% of its trade by sea, and we hold among the lowest fuel reserves in the developed world — diesel cover sits near 30 days. Nuclear submarines win a naval battle; they cannot lift a blockade of a continent. The deal also welds our defence, intelligence and industry into US and UK systems for decades, and points us toward a war we may never choose to fight.

The government won’t review its own deal.

Both major parties are locked in. An independent, citizen-led AUKUS Public Inquiry had to be set up in 2026 precisely because official scrutiny was blocked for years. A citizens’ panel can ask the questions — only a Royal Commission can force the answers.

What a Royal Commission does

A Royal Commission is the inquiry with teeth: it can compel documents and testimony, and it must report to the nation. This isn’t about tearing up the alliance. It’s about looking, honestly and in the open, at whether the biggest defence commitment in our history actually serves Australia — and building the mandate for the government to act on what it finds. Realign, not cancel.

Nobody’s vassal — not Washington’s, not Beijing’s. An independent Australia, a peacemaker in its own region. That’s the destination: AUASIA.

Go deeper

The full case is set out in the Modern Movement memos:

• America First, Australia Loses. The net assessment of the war plan — why the platforms answer the wrong war, and why a middle power can’t “win” a regional war it’s dragged into. Read the memo →
• Defence Through Nation Building. Reposition AUKUS and redirect the spend to sovereign capability — fuel, manufacturing, unmanned systems. Read the memo →
• The Proof of the Hormuz Pudding. The Asia-Pacific war scenarios — why a regional war can’t be won, and how the 2026 closure of the Strait of Hormuz proved a blockade strangles an import-dependent economy (and that submarines can’t lift one). Read the memo →
• The AUKUS Public Inquiry. The independent, citizen-led inquiry — proof the government won’t review its own deal. Visit the inquiry →

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