Defence is supposed to provide ‘cradle to grave’ costings for proposed capability before a procurement is approved. That doesn’t seem to have happened for AUKUS nuclear waste storage and disposal. Transparency Warrior Rex Patrick is pursuing answers.
A simple request
Imagine for a moment that you were the defence minister, and knowing that all defence capabilities must be costed from cradle to grave, you asked the Australian Submarine Agency for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS.
You’d expect that it might take a day or two to get the message to Defence and to get a response back to the ministerial wing of Parliament House.
In July 2025 MWM requested access under Freedom of Information laws to the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS. The Agency did not answer the FOI request and its lack of response was referred to the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioner is trying to encourage the ASA to engage in a little bit of transparency. But … the Agency just can’t find a latest costing.
We’re disorganised
In a response to an engagement with MWM, the Agency has recently advised:
Preliminary searches have been carried out within one branch of one division of the ASA to identify documents falling within the scope of your request. That branch has advised that approximately 3,000 documents are potentially in scope. They would require manual examination to determine whether they contain information relating to the scope of your request. The documents within this set vary significantly in length and format and may comprise multiple pages requiring individual review.
Further, any cost information in relation to the scope of your request is likely to be dispersed across multiple documents and along timeframes, may appear in differing levels of detail, and may not be directly comparable. As a result, identifying which documents contain relevant cost information would require extensive searching, detailed examination, contextual analysis, and judgment.
Quite unbelievable!
Or is it unbelievable?
ASA is looking after a $368B project. And the Agency is in a mess.
In November 2024 the Government asked Boston Consulting Group to take a look at the organisational structure of the Australian Submarine Agency (ASA). A contract was signed for 2.7. million. In April 2025 it was amended to $7.4 million. Three months later it was amended again to a whopping $12.1 million.
In parallel the defence minister asked former Defence Secretary Dennis Richardson to undertake an urgent top-to-bottom review of the ASA amid serious concerns about how it was managing AUKUS.
None of that seems to have helped.
Budget up just to keep up
The Government’s National Defence Strategy and Integrated Investment Program was released on the same day that ASA advised MWM that it had no idea where to find its AUKUS high level radioactive waste costs.
The Integrated Investment Proposal laid out the Government’s estimates of, amongst other programs, the AUKUS and Collins Class submarine costs for the coming decade.
The 53-to-63 billion dollar AUKUS budget published in 2024 has grown to 71-to-96 billion (a change of 52% for the upper band). The 4-to-5 billion dollar Collins Submarine upgrade costs has grown to 8-to-11 billion dollar (change of 120% for the upper band).
Any thought that the Government is increasing the Defence budget to expand the Defence Force’s capabilities is illusory. The increase will struggle just to deal with cost blow outs.
2024 forward estimates versus 2026 forward estimates (Source: Defence)
Or implausible?
The numbers associated with the very long term disposal of AUKUS nuclear waste will be big. If the Minister asked for the latest cost estimates for a solution for the treatment and storage of high-level radioactive waste from AUKUS he’d get it almost instantly.
The estimate must exist.
The approach taken by the ASA in responding to MWM’s request reminds me of a teenager trying hid a bad school report from their parents. The kid simply doesn’t realise that mum and dad will find out eventually.
MWM is not about to give up.
Of course, there is a small possibility that we are wrong and there is no estimate. Maybe the Minister has told the ASA he won’t ask for one and they shouldn’t generate one.
I guess we’ll find out.
Trillion dollar AUKUS subs plus nuclear waste in perpetuity?