Former prime minister Paul Keating (Image: AAP)
Former prime minister Paul Keating (Image: AAP)

This deal is getting worse all the time.

Courtesy of the latest details of the AUKUS agreement tabled yesterday in Parliament, we now know that the moment it becomes inconvenient for the Americans or the Brits, there’ll be no submarines for Australia:

Cooperation under the agreement is to be carried out in such a manner as to not adversely affect the ability of the United States and the United Kingdom to meet their respective military requirements and to not degrade their respective naval nuclear propulsion programs.

Those programs, as even ardent defenders of the program admit, are already pretty degraded.