Turnbull Tells Inquiry AUKUS Submarines Probably Won't Arrive — Here's Why

Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has told a public inquiry that the AUKUS nuclear-submarine deal will probably deliver no submarines at all for Australia — his bluntest assessment yet of a pact he has been criticising since leaving office.

Turnbull called faith in the AUKUS submarine agreement "stark staring bonkers" (The Guardian, 10 August 2026). His case rests on three connected problems with the US production pipeline: the Americans can't build enough submarines for their own navy, US law blocks any sale that would make that shortfall worse, and the production gap shows no sign of closing.

The numbers tell the story. The US currently builds about 1.2 submarines per year but needs to nearly double that to 2.3 just to meet its own fleet requirements. Turnbull told the inquiry that US submarine-building capacity has stayed "stubbornly laggard." American legislation prevents the US from selling submarines to Australia if doing so would reduce its own fleet numbers. So the arithmetic is straightforward: if Washington can't meet its own demand at current build rates, there's no spare hull to hand over.

This is not a new line from Turnbull, but the language has hardened. In March 2024, he said the US would not make its own submarine deficit worse by giving or selling boats to Australia (The Guardian, 12 March 2024). In March 2023, he said the AUKUS project would take longer and cost more than the conventional submarine plan Australia had abandoned with France (Reuters, 15 March 2023). He told a parliamentary joint committee on 2 October 2025 that the deal commits Australia to a US-led military competition with China and warrants a full, open and independent inquiry (Parliamentary Hansard, 2 October 2025).

In May 2026, speaking at Chatham House in London, Turnbull called AUKUS "a huge wealth transfer from the Australian government to the US and UK" (Chatham House, 15 May 2026). Federal funding already committed includes $9 billion for the nuclear-powered submarine program and $4.1 billion for long-range strike capabilities (Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee). Submarine crews from the US and UK are set to begin rotating through HMAS Stirling in Western Australia from 2027 (Hansard). That means the allied presence Turnbull flags as a strategic entanglement begins in months, not decades.

Turnbull has also linked the nuclear-submarine debate to the domestic nuclear energy conversation. In a submission to the House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy, he stated that nuclear power's "only utility" is as a means of supporting fossil fuels by delaying and distracting from the transition to renewables (Parliamentary submission).

The broader context here is that Turnbull's critique covers both the strategy and the industrial delivery of AUKUS. On strategy, he argues the submarines lock Australia into a US confrontation with China that the country has not properly debated. On delivery, he points to a US industrial base that has missed every production target thrown at it, an Australian shipyard workforce that does not yet exist at the required scale, and a legal framework in Washington that puts US Navy requirements ahead of ally expectations. These are not new observations within defence circles. What has changed is the bluntness: a former prime minister, on the record, telling a public inquiry that the most expensive defence program in Australian history will probably deliver nothing.

The word "probably" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and Turnbull knows it. He is not predicting certain failure. He is saying the probability of Australia receiving nuclear-powered submarines under the current arrangement is low enough that treating the deal as a real capability is, in his word, bonkers. The government's own timeline has the first US Virginia-class transfer happening in the 2030s, contingent on US production hitting targets it has consistently missed.

For anyone who has followed this file, the trajectory of Turnbull's language tells its own story. From measured cost-and-schedule criticisms in 2023, to "mugged by reality" in 2024, to "wealth transfer" at Chatham House in 2026, to "stark staring bonkers" now. Each step tracks the same underlying facts: US build rates have not improved, the legal constraint has not been lifted, and Australian taxpayers are spending billions on a timeline that the loudest critic in the country — a man who signed the original national-security agreements with the US and UK as prime minister — now says will probably produce no submarines at all.