STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Mr JOYCE (New England) (13:30): Si vis pacem, para bellum: if you want to have peace, prepare for war. That was by a bloke by the name of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, but you can just call him Vegetius; that's how he was known. Of course, that could have been said by Plato, by Thucydides, by Dwight Eisenhower or by Winston Churchill.

We have got to understand that the recent intimations from the Labor Party that they are going to get out of AUKUS are incredibly dangerous. I want to run some names past you: Senator Roger Wicker, Senator Jack Reed, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, former senator Jon Tester and Elbridge Colby. They also don't want Australia in AUKUS.

I always thought there would be problems from them—problems from the United States—or problems from England. I didn't realise it was going to be problems from the Australian Labor Party. The division that they have now put out there about our position, which was supposed to be unanimous on AUKUS, is incredibly dangerous for us.

AUKUS is not there, really, to look after a situation where a totalitarian regime is attacking the United Kingdom or the United States. It's there to protect us, and now we're the ones that are in the bill. The Prime Minister must come out today and unequivocally support this.