Professor Clinton Fernandes, a former Army major and intelligence officer, is now an author and academic teaching specialist courses at the University of NSW Canberra campus. He has also taught for the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Professor Clinton was in Newcastle at the weekend to address an annual Hunter Broad Left gathering, the third such time the socialist-leaning group has invited him to speak.

"I'm not 'left' in the usual sense," the 50-year-old told the Newcastle Herald yesterday.

"If I were to characterise myself, I'd say that I am a child of The Enlightenment."

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Even so, his message - that the AUKUS agreement is more about "Australia proving its relevance to the United States than it is about defending the nation" - went down well with the 60 or so people who listened to him at the Hunter Workers building.

As he has argued recently in various places including his new book, Sub-Imperial Power, Australia in the International Arena, Professor Clinton says we would be far better off buying more "conventional" or "air-independent propulsion" (AIP) submarines than becoming involved with nuclear technology through AUKUS.

He said nuclear subs could stay underwater, theoretically, for ever, but the "psychological limit" of a sub crew was "six to eight weeks" submerged. Conventional subs were quiet and both had diving limits of 200 to 300 metres.

He said AUKUS had a "life of vessel" cost of $170 billion for eight craft, but Australia could buy 20 AIP subs off the shelf for $30 billion.

The French contract for 12 vessels ran to $90 billion because Australia had ordered a nuclear model to be converted to AIP diesel.

He believed subs were "absolutely essential" to the defence of Australia, an island nation dependent on trade by sea.

Their surveillance capabilities that meant they could be truly defensive assets without being used in "offense".

"I'm not saying don't do or do this, but the government has to be honest with the Australian public about what we are doing," Professor Fernandes said.

"Tell them what we're really doing and that China does not take a benign view of its encirclement by the US Indo-Pacific Command and Australia.

"Tell the public that many other countries that are otherwise friendly to Australia do not agree with us or with the US about the militarisation of the South China Sea exclusive economic zone.

"Let the parliament vote on whether we should be conducting these activities. Perhaps the public will agree with the policy - but that has clearly not been tested."

In September, the 2014-18 chief of navy, Vice-Admiral (Retired) Tim Barrett, made his own "personal" call for an AUKUS debate.

He told the Hunter Defence Conference that AUKUS would bring Australia into "the nuclear club".

He said Australia would need a specialist nuclear workforce, and said using nuclear power for electricity could help "defray" the AUKUS costs.

But Professor Clinton said AUKUS nuclear technology would be handled by the US or UK - depending on which subs we acquired.

To do otherwise would breach the same Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that was being used to justify keeping nuclear technology away from Iran and other nations.

AUKUS has an added significance in the Hunter because Carrington Basin in the Port of Newcastle is one of three sites shortlisted by the former Morrison government for a new east coast submarine base.

Hunter Broad Left spokesperson Rod Noble pointed to Newcastle's status as a declared "nuclear-free zone", declared by Newcastle council in 1982 and re-affirmed by the present council in June last year.

Professor Fernandes said the AUKUS contracts had not been signed.

There was an AUKUS task force of 250 working on a scoping study, but we were not yet at a point where we were with France, where Australia paid a reported $835 million to break the contract.

Answering a question, he said those concerned could contact their local federal members to show their opposition and to push for a parliamentary debate.

But he noted that Australian public support for the American alliance was unquestionably strong, with 74 per cent the lowest approval rating since the 1980s.

He went on to point out that a lot of the world did not see America as a friend.

He said the global "rules-based order" had been developed by the US coming out of WWII, and as England saw itself "as an island off Europe", so American policy was designed with the idea of the US being "an island off Eurasia. NATO was designed to "keep Russia out, Germany down, and the US in".

He said the US was extremely democratic domestically but it exported "investor rights rather than democracy" abroad. The American public had far greater access to government documents than here.

He said US congressional committees had "some limits" on what they could examine, but Australia's Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security has been specifically barred since 2001 from reviewing "past, present or future" intelligence operations.

Describing the term "sub-imperial", he said Australia was not a vassal state or "exploited neo-colony" but "an eager participant in the US-led order".

"Like Israel, Australia has a capable, technologically advanced military, and intelligence agencies operating in the region, and far afield, to uphold the US-led order," Professor Fernandes said.

An example was Australia's supposedly benign "freedom of navigation" voyages into the South China Sea - exposed when the South China Morning Post published photos of an RAAF aircraft dropping "sonobuoys" into the water, forcing Australia to confirm its actions soon after.

The sonobuoys recorded "accoustic signatures that could be built into "libraries" of signatures of another country's subs.

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