Albanese must make Trump an offer he can't refuse

The Age

12-06-2025

And it's in that second option, change, that there is an opportunity for Anthony Albanese and the Labor government to cement the deal.
Put simply, Albanese needs to make AUKUS great again by super-sizing the deal and offering the Trump administration more than was agreed to under Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden.
As a former Defence official, who asked not to be named so they could speak freely, puts it, Trump's view is that the AUKUS deal began to be negotiated during his first term before Biden took over and closed the deal.
Instinctively, Trump supports AUKUS because of the advantages it offers the United States in terms of additional basing in the Indo-Pacific theatre but 'it now needs to be bigger than the Biden plan', according to the official.
'We can't just offer them more money [Australia has promised to pay the US about $4.5 billion to help ramp up production of the submarines], it has to be bigger than that,' the official said.
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'The way to get support for it is to make Trump feel like it is his again. Australia will need to offer something like better facilities at Henderson [the submarine base in Western Australia]; a second graving yard, though they are expensive, would be ideal as it offers maintenance on US submarines and would take the pressure off Guam and Pearl Harbour.'
Top US officials, including AUKUS skeptic Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's Deputy Under Secretary of Defence, have spoken recently about the need for increased submarine availability - that is, for the US fleet submarines to be able to spend more time in the water and less time in maintenance.
That's where the graving yard - a dry dock that raises submarines out of the water for more involved maintenance work - comes in. One is planned for the Henderson submarine base already but increasing the offer to two, so that US submarines can be serviced in Australia - and spend more time in the water and on duty - is the sort of offer the US would welcome.
Albanese's first face-to-face meeting with Trump is expected to take place next week at the G7 summit in Canada. Between now and then, the prime minister and defence officials will be crafting an offer for the US president to consider while the review takes place.
The prime minister will not be willing to cede any ground on the sovereign control of the US-made submarines and nor would he be willing to settle for a deal that sees US submarines rotate through Australian ports but for us to miss out on the submarine capability.
But if Albanese comes up with an offer to make AUKUS great again, there will be little to worry about in terms of the subs deal proceeding.