What I do when I wake up in the morning. I look for things that are in the newspapers, things that are taking place in the Senate or in the House.
Rex Patrick is a former Senator from South Australia. Before that, he was a sub mariner in the Navy. These days, he devotes himself to making government more transparent, which he does by launching an obsessive number of freedom of information request and scrutinizing what comes back.
Now, I have been keeping a close watch on ORCUST. I saw something come up referencing Orcust Commands and I thought that's really interesting. There were no details available publicly, and so I put in a request to both the Australian Submarine Agency and the Australian Federal Police in June last year, seeking access to information about the command, how it came, about, what its objects were and so forth.
When the FLIS came back, a lot had been redacted. Rex was looking at pages and pages of blacked out text. But from what wasn't bothered out, he started the former picture of ORCUST Command, a specialized arm of the Australian Federal Police being used to protect submarines and other military assets, but also to crack down on dissent. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today Rex Patrick on
the Australian Federal Police. The new powers to protect America's interests in Australia are what it means for the future of protest. It's Monday, January nineteenth. Rex. Tell me about the afpg's ORCST Command. Who are they and what will they be doing? So?
The ORCST Command is a new command within the AFP, set up over the last six months, and its function is to provide a secure ADO overlay to Orcus submarines, that is US and UK submarines operating out of Western
Australia and other Australian ports. But actually, more broadly, what the document showed is that the REMIT goes much much broader than what I've just talked about, And in actual fact, there's an MLU and a memorandum of understanding that's been signed between the Australian Federal Police and not the Australian Submarine Agency but the Department of Defense, so much broader and so it's planned at least at this stage, that the AFP will have four teams of people who will
look after things like when a submarine comes in, making sure they're escorted. The documents show that the force will have a marine asset of some form of boat with training Coxin's on board jet skis remotely piloted aircraft and that will allow the police to provide a protective service for submarines that are transiting in and out of Hma Stirling. But the brief makes it very clear that what the government wants to do is build up a capability to
deal with outrage from the public. So public order management are the words that are used, and they talk about the deployment of munitions associated with public disturbances. One presumes that things like tear gas, potentially battens, potentially shields, other assets that can be used in the face of protesters.
So there's a pretty big shopping list in terms of the resources going into this command. What kind of budget are we talking about here.
Well, there's a fair bit of money sitting behind this. This wasn't revealed in the documents, but the documents did talk about a submission for MAIFO, which is the midyear budget statement if you like, which took place in descent. I've gone and looked at that now and we can see that home affairs for the AFP Command are getting an extra seventy three million dollars this year at about one hundred and twenty three or thereabouts million next year.
So that's two hundred million dollars over the next year and a half. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of capability that they're building.
I just want to ask a few questions on recruiting, and I understand that AFP has some recruiting commitments under ORCUS.
And in fact at centain Essence. I note that Senator David Pocock asked questions in relation to the ORCUST Command talking about numbers of potentially up to eight hundred members of the AFP and being involved. That's quite significant.
The AFP has been given the responsibility to put to implement the protective overlay in relation to UCUS, particularly around australia sovereign nuclear powered submarines capability. We are currently implementing the protective service overlay.
And in some sense it's a bit that's a little bit disturbing about this because it hasn't been talked about. Yeah, we've got to respect that there will be controversy over nuclear powered submarines. People have a right to protest, and that protest might include over where and how nuclear waste is going to be handled, for example, things that reasonably people in as members of the public have a right to know about and a right to be concerned about, and a right to object to if they wish to.
So.
I find that there's a sort of a strong contrast between the level of secrecy that's been engaged to date and the fact that it involves interaction with the public. Everyone gets that there are secrets around submarines. I'm a former submariner and I respect secrecy in relation to military capability.
But where it intersects with the public being either safety or waste or the ability to protest, I think the government has a duty, has an obligation to share their concerns with the public and be opening up front about any remedies they have in respect of those concerns.
Coming up. What could anti ORCUS protest in Australia look like? Rex, How would you describe the scale of anti ORCHUS protests in Australia so far?
Well, this stage, much of the protest about UCUS has taken place in relatively small groups, and of course, there are people who are very concerned, even myself. I'm a submariner. I understand the benefit of submarines, but I just think that spending three hundred and sixty eight billion dollars on one single capability, particularly where there's huge risk involved, is
hugely problematic. I write about UCUS all the time in that context, but I suspect as time marches on, as we start to see more and more submarines turning up, there may well be a right in the number of protests associated with these deployments, and as the number of US forces pick up, particularly in circumstances where we're seeing the United States walking away from things like a rules based order, engaging in discussions like attacking Denmark, attacking Panama,
and indeed going into a sovereign jurisdiction and taking a president from that country to post charges in the United States. So people are actually a little bit concerned about these things, and I'm talking about people who normally would sit on the right side of politics. We may well see a rise in protest and respect of the United States. And the fact is that government has seen this coming and have formed the Orchest Command REX.
There's no doubt that you love a freedom of information request. You spend a lot of time challenging the government on the need for transparency. At the same time, as you've mentioned, is obviously also a legitimate need for some defense information to remain secret. So what do you think the public needs to know about the creation of this AFP task force?
Again, because it intersects with the public. So, you know, if I were asking for information about how deep Virginia class submarines go, or how fast they go, or how to override the interlocks on the torpedos, I would expect properly for the Department of Events to say, sorry, Rex, you're not allowed to have access to that. That's not in the public interest to have access to that sort
of information. And of course I've accept that, and I think everyone appreciates that when you are dealing with nuclear powered submarrange, you do have to provide appropriate security. We would expect that to occur in Australia. I've been to Pearl Harbor, I've sailed on US nuclear powered submarines, and they have a commensurate level of security at their basis to make sure that these nuclear assets are properly protected.
But you know, a clear example where I say there's intersection with the public is where they're going to store the high level nuclear waste. Now, whether you are in favor of Aucus or against Aucus, I think one would reasonably say that public have a right to know what is your approach to dealing with nuclear waste. I'm currently in the federal court trying to get access to a document that describes how they're going to select the location, and I think that that's a document that ought to
be made public. We ought to be talking about it because it intersects very closely with the public. Other areas might be safety, nuclear safety. The public have a right to scrutinize what's happening in relation to AUCUST and nuclear safety.
August we know is going to last for fifty years, and indeed we can see in this instance it doesn't matter that the die from the AFP was six months, because it's still very relevant and as well, moving forward, there are a number of issues that I think the publics have a right to know, things like the cost of the program breaking down and telling us exactly how we get to some of these very large numbers. I'm not engaging any defense secrets in saying to the government.
Please provide details of what your success has been so far in that endeavor, and that's just about holding government to account.
Looks Patrick. Thank you so much for speaking with us again.
You're most welcome.
Also in the news, the government will split its hate speech and gun and reform laws into separate bills. The Prime Minister has confirmed as in the Albinezi can seize. The omnibus bill dealing with both reforms, designed in the wake of the Bondai terror attack, does not have the
support parliament. Neither the Coalition or the Greens were prepared to pass the bill in the Senate due to concerns over the hate speech legislation, but Green's leader Larissa Waters has signaled her party would work with the government on gun reform. Parliament returns today and will be following the developments on seven AM this week, and the Liberal Party's review into its historically bad election result won't be made
public as planned due to legal concerns. The ABC is reporting that Peter Dutton has seen the report and believed that that fames him. There's concern that releasing the report in its current form would carry legal risks for the Liberal Party given the chance Dutton could sue. The review was conducted by party veterans Prue Goward and Nick Minchin after the Liberal Party saw a collapse in support at the twenty twenty five election. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.
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