Reminder: AUKUS and Australia's Future

La Trobe Ideas and Society event in partnership with La Trobe Asia

Today, 16th July 5.00-6.30pm (online)

Bookings here

Ideas and Society Program in partnership with La Trobe Asia presents AUKUS and Australia's Future. The conversation will discuss agreement of both the US and the UK to supply Australia with nuclear-powered submarines and what it means for the three countries involved.

La Trobe's Vice-Chancellor Professor Theo Farrell will introduce the session, which will be chaired by Professor of International Relations, Bec Strating, with guest speakers Emeritus Professor Hugh White AO and Professor Peter Dean.

About the speakers: Professor Bec Strating, La Trobe University Professor of International Relations. Professor Strating is program lead for the "Blue Security" program focused on maritime security issues in the Indo-Pacific, funded by Australia's DFAT and has authored several books, including Girt by Sea, co-authored with Professor Joanne Wallis, released this year.

Professor Peter Dean, Director Foreign Policy and Defence at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney. He was the University of Western Australia's (UWA) first Chair of Defence Studies and the inaugural director of the UWA Defence and Security Institute. He served as a Pro Vice-Chancellor at UWA and held a number of senior roles at the Australian National University's College of Asia and the Pacific and Strategic and Defence Studies Centre.

Emeritus Professor Hugh White AO, Professor White has worked on Australian and regional strategic, defence and foreign policy issues since 1980. He has been an intelligence analyst, journalist, ministerial adviser, departmental official, think tanker and academic. In the 1990s he served as International Relations Adviser to Prime Minister Bob Hawke and as Deputy Secretary of Defence for Strategy and Intelligence.

Some of the questions the panel will address include:

1. Is there now any significant difference between the defence policies of the Coalition and Labor?
2. What exactly are the motives of the three governments involved in the AUKUS agreement--the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia?
3. How likely is it that Australia will in fact be supplied with the nuclear-powered submarines in the terms and in the timeline specified in the AUKUS agreement?
4. Is it accurate to describe AUKUS as a part of a United States-led "containment" strategy in the Indo-Pacific that is aimed against China?
5. Given the nature of the AUKUS agreement, is it now inevitable that if there is war between the USA and China over, say, Taiwan, Australia will be obliged to be involved?

To register follow this link.