AUKUS is likely to dominate coverage of this week’s meetings between Australian and British foreign and defence ministers (AUKMIN) in London. All four ministers should use the opportunity to take back the narrative on the trilateral partnership while reminding everyone that there is more substance to Australia–Britain cooperation than AUKUS.
The demand for clear communication about AUKUS has never been greater. Australia’s defence debate has been swamped by former politicians, retired sailors and US alliance naysayers who agree on little except that they all hate AUKUS. Many commentators have focused their critiques on technicalities, such as the lifespan of second-hand submarines versus new ones. As important as those debates are, they baffle the public and overlook the strategic significance of AUKUS.
Ministers shouldn’t shy away from concerns about delivery timeframes. Indeed, they need to say more about how the partnership is strengthening each partner country’s industrial bases. Delivering military capability is the necessary outcome of AUKUS, but the defence partnership and the Australia–Britain relationship are built around something more important: a commitment to shared values, a vision of international community based on rules and the collective resolve to face up to bullies. That was the common theme of the Shangri-La Dialogue, held in late May and attended by both Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles and British Defence Secretary John Healey.
AUKUS put defence cooperation at the centre of the bilateral relationship and rejuvenated AUKMIN, which at times had seemed adrift without a clear purpose. Immediately after last year’s meetings, Marles and Healey signed the Geelong Treaty, which will facilitate the joint production of a new class of nuclear-powered submarine, SSN-AUKUS. In the year since, a refreshed version of the Australia–UK Defence Industry Dialogue has explored further cooperation within and beyond AUKUS, including in radar, uncrewed aircraft and more integrated supply chains and sustainment.
At this year’s AUKMIN, ministers need to explain why AUKUS matters for long-term security and how it is already delivering results. Progress is being made, including this month’s announcement of a Pillar Two ‘signature project’ to co-develop payloads for uncrewed submarines. Britain’s 2025 Strategic Defence Review also committed to an ambitious uplift in crewed-submarine production, which Australia will play a crucial role in delivering.
The risks to AUKUS need not be sugar-coated. Transparency is advantageous in bringing the public on what will be a long and, at times, bumpy journey. An April report by the House of Commons Defence Committee identified that in Britain AUKUS would need more consistent political leadership, better public communications and funding certainty. Hopefully, the committee’s advice will be heeded when Britain eventually publishes its overdue defence investment plan. A similar approach would help quell hints of revolt against AUKUS on the parliamentary backbenches in Canberra. Australia may need a senior official dedicated to realising the whole-of-nation effort AUKUS requires. Britain’s AUKUS tsar, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, told ASPI in 2025 that he’d like to have counterparts in the United States and Australia.
Penny Wong and her British counterpart, Yvette Cooper, can use their broader remit as foreign ministers to elevate the AUKUS debate and remind us of the project’s epochal significance. AUKUS is an intergenerational contribution to winning the contest against China, Russia and other authoritarians with revisionist aims and a coercive playbook. As AUKMIN is being held, President Xi Jinping will be in North Korea plotting with its leader, Kim Jong-un. The longevity of AUKUS as a strategic partnership protecting liberal values over authoritarian objectives is more significant than a single capability.
The contest is already being fought in the economic and technology domains. Cooper has written about foreign policy in the era of geoeconomics. Her views align with Wong’s advocacy for statecraft – coordinating all arms of national power for strategic ends. This meeting of minds could translate into a comprehensive bilateral agenda for economic security. Some groundwork has already been done, including a 2024 statement of intent on critical minerals and growing cooperation on artificial intelligence. But an ambitious Australia–Britain partnership needs more than a piecemeal approach. The Australia–Japan economic security declaration, signed in May, shows how to aim higher.
As vital as the US is to Australia and Britain, an advantage of AUKMIN is that America doesn’t share the stage. It reminds the public that both countries share interests not brokered through Washington. It’s also an opportunity to put on record priorities that the US administration has neglected, such as human rights and support for Ukraine. That matters when London needs to justify deploying scarce military assets to Australia. It also helps prevent foreign policy debates becoming votes of confidence in the US alliance, as is often the case in Australia.
With the US not above scrutiny, let’s hope the ministers also speak openly about China in their public remarks. The July 2025 AUKMIN joint statement listed many concerns about Beijing’s conduct, but only the British ministers mentioned China in front of the media. Encouragingly, Australia has increasingly called out Beijing’s aggression since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to China that same month. Just last week, Wong condemned China’s ban on four New Zealand parliamentarians who had visited Taiwan. This support for fellow democracies – from Taiwan and New Zealand to the Philippines and Ukraine – is something on which AUKMIN can lead.
This AUKMIN will also set the tone for the next bilateral leaders’ meeting, which could be as soon as next month if Albanese accepts his invitation to the NATO summit in Turkey. The current turbulence in British politics doesn’t affect the rationale for engagement. As Joseph Stalin reputedly said, leaders come and go, but the people remain.