Defence hawks are getting rattled by the intense scepticism surrounding the AUKUS submarine plan. Navy chief Vice Admiral Mark Hammond last week attacked critics of the program, saying “the conversation around AUKUS is still being hijacked by people with other specific agendas”. The term “hijack” was clearly intended to suggest bad faith on the part of AUKUS critics, whose ranks include former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Paul Keating. If the Navy’s approach to scepticism is ad hominem attacks on critics, Hammond would do better to keep his trap shut.
Now the defence think tank Lowy Institute has released a pamphlet
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