If AUKUS were NDIS? Rising cost of elusive subs submerged in budget

While the price of the AUKUS submarine program is rising, the chances of the submarines being delivered are decreasing. Rex Patrick About budget subsidy spending.

It is difficult, even impossible, to calculate how much the AUKUS submarine program has cost taxpayers.

We will start with the activities of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). Total appropriations to run the ASA over the next four years (FY 2026-27 and forward-looking estimates) are $2.35 billion; This is above last year’s budget and forward estimates of $1.71 billion.

This is a 37% increase.

If the ASA were the NDIS, the Government would announce key cuts “to secure its future so it can grow sustainably”.

However, without a specific breakdown to AUKUS, there are a number of additional costs spread across other budgets. For example, the cost of running the Australian Federal Police’s AUKUS protective security command was revealed as follows: MWM earlier this year.

Revealed: Australia’s secret Anti-Protest Force for US War Department

Added to this is the cost of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) providing expert advice, the Australian Radioactive Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) providing safety research, advice, codes and standards.

The Attorney-General spends money on legal services to ensure AUKUS complies with Australia’s non-proliferation obligations; And the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is spending $43 million on diplomacy this year and $44 million next year to try to persuade the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare the AUKUS program compatible with Australia’s Comprehensive (Nuclear) Safeguards Agreement.

Funding is also provided to the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, the Department of Education, the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, the new National Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Finance.

almost everyone gets a piece of the action.

Program progress

More money has been allocated for the actual delivery of talent; The total amount of money spent increased from $2.9 billion in 2024-25 to $8.2 billion in 2025-26. Much of this new spending went to the United States and Britain to employ Americans and British and develop their shipyards.

By June 2027, we will have spent $11 billion on AUKUS without even a periscope to show for it.

The defense spends the money as quickly as possible; faster than they and the government tell the public. They may have learned something from the French Attack Class programme, which was canceled by Scott Morrison after burning $4 billion of taxpayers’ money; The lesson here is that $4 billion in sunk costs is not enough to prevent the termination of a program.

By the end of next year, Defense will have spent more than $13 billion. Of course, no government would cancel a program after spending this much money!

On the submarine construction and infrastructure support front, the Government was keen to announce billions of dollars spent on submarine facilities, but later put budget amounts ‘not for publication’ in budget documents; Announcements are good…budget details are bad!

There is no backup for us…

One of the few good things about the US system of government is that Congress is a completely separate branch of government from the executive branch.

The US Congress appropriates all the money to the government (as does Australia), but because Secretaries (the equivalent of ministers) do not sit in Congress, they force the Agencies to disclose much more detail in their budgets.

In our budget documents we see one column of a table describing the procurement of Virginia Class nuclear-powered submarines; There are 20 pages in the US Defense budget document.

There is no indication in our budget documents of when the Royal Australian Navy will receive a Virginia Class submarine. In the U.S. Defense Budget document, each Virginia subdelivery date is specified by month.

US Virginia Class Submarine Deliveries (Source: Defense Budget)

What the US Defense budget documents say, other than delivery dates, is that the best the US can hope for is a submarine delivery rate of 1.7 boats per year over the next decade; This is short of the 2 boats per year needed to meet their needs, let alone Australia.

US law states that the Navy cannot transfer a submarine to Australia if it would adversely affect its own undersea warfare capabilities.

Despite the billions we spend, no submarines come to Australia from the USA.

Delivery of AUKUS SSN subscribers from the UK also looks unlikely, according to a new UK Parliament report, but the Ministry of Defense is continuing to spend in the hope that this will be its primary procurement risk mitigation strategy.

US war on Iran exposes Australia’s weak defenses, AUKUS further

No retirement for Collins

In 2009, the Rudd Government announced that we would purchase 12 new submarines to replace the 6 Collins Class submarines that will be retired in 2025. However, they cannot be retired because

Defense has delivered absolutely zero submarines to the Navy in those 17 years.

So this year we will spend $921 million to keep our Collin submarines at sea. That’s less than the $1 billion spent last year, but it’s quite expensive compared to other submarine forces around the world. As anyone who’s tried to keep an old car on the road with no source of spare parts knows, it’s expensive.

And the annual cost of keeping submarines at sea does not include Type Life Extension (LOTE) to deal with obsolescence. This is a separate program that has cost taxpayers $519 million so far and will cost us another $262 million over the next 12 months. LOTE’s total spending could reach $11 billion.

And if the cost of inadequate capabilities wasn’t enough, the potential cost of storing nuclear waste could run into the hundreds of billions. At least this will not happen if the subscribers are not visible…

Where are AUKUS’ nuclear waste costs (landfills aside)?

Rex Patrick is a former South Australian Senator and formerly a submariner in the armed forces. Known as an anti-corruption and transparency warrior, Rex is also known as “Transparency Warrior“