Australia's AuManufacturing, April 7, 2022 reports:
"PATRICK ATTACKS SUBS CONSTRUCTION BACKFLIP"
Independent Senator [for Adelaide dominated, South Australia] Rex Patrick has criticised an apparent backflip by the federal government in their plans to build nuclear powered submarines in Adelaide.
According to a report in The Australian [current] Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that the nuclear submarines being acquired by Australia under the Aukus pact may be imported.
Morrison said that the need to have a submarine deterrent quickly trumped any need to favour local construction.
Senator Patrick, a former submariner, took to social media to criticise the backflip."
Pete Comment
Given submarine building in Adelaide has been a sacred right since time immemorial (well, since the late 1970s) Morrison raising the issue of building the submarines overseas can only be seen as a pre-Election wedge tactic - to embugger the Opposition.
It was Submarine Matters that first raised the potential of nuclear submarines to drive a political wedge between Australia's main Opposition Greens and Labor parties and more damaging between the pro-nuke sub and anti-nuclear wings of Labor.
Morrison and his henchman/rival Peter Dutton (together they are "Mutton") have to date been frustrated that Labor has used the "small target" bi-partisan tactic of passively agreeing with the Morrison government's nuclear sub policy.
Mutton, by naming 3 east-coast nuclear sub base possibilities, attempted, with limited success, in inducing the Labor wings to argue. But my hero, Labor leader Anthony "Albo" Albanese managed to hose down the most loathsome inter-wing disagreements.
Now Mutton's extra-ordinary statement that the nuke subs might be built overseas, where there are no Australian voters, can be seen as a gamble to extract comments from Albanese and the pro-nuke subs wing that "nuclear subs should be built in Adelaide".
Mutton then hopes that "Nuclear NIMBY (NN)" elements of the Labor movement will then contradict Albo's sound, manly and dare I say, fair, pro-nuclear sentiments.
Mutton is banking on tame reporters asking every Labor person in sight whether they agree/disagree that Australia's future nuclear subs should be built overseas.
Whether Mutton succeeds the ensuing weeks, up to the May Election, will tell.