Day 71 Saturday 29 August 2026 Cooloongup, WA by Brett Murrell

PERTH NUCLEAR RISK

AUKUS will FUKUS.

Were the Australian people ever consulted?

Blast and fallout simulation map centred on Garden Island near Rockingham, with the plume drifting north-east across Perth towards Midland, Gidgegannup and Northam. — A blast-and-fallout simulation centred on Garden Island, the plume running north-east straight over Perth. An illustration of a weapon strike, not a prediction and not a reactor scenario — but that is the map nobody in government has ever put in front of you.

Look at where the pin sits. Then look at where the plume goes.

That is not some remote outback range. That is Cockburn Sound, forty-odd kilometres from the Perth CBD, with Rockingham, Kwinana and Mandurah all inside the first ring. Half a million people live under that yellow.

What is actually coming

From 2027, HMAS Stirling on Garden Island hosts Submarine Rotational Force – West: one British Astute-class and up to four American Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, on rotation, with around 2,300 US defence personnel. The base expansion is budgeted at up to $8 billion, and Western Australian authorities said in August 2026 that more than $6 billion of construction was already underway. Access for the Americans is now confirmed as enduring — it does not stop after the first five years.

These boats are conventionally armed. They are not carrying nuclear weapons, and I am not going to pretend otherwise, because the real argument does not need it.

Conventionally armed — for now

That word “conventionally” is doing a lot of work, and it has a use-by date.

The United States is building a nuclear warhead for the Virginia class right now. It is called SLCM-N — a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile. It was proposed in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. The Biden administration tried to cancel it in 2022. Congress refused, and the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act ordered the program started. The National Nuclear Security Administration plans to use the W80 warhead family. Prototype design contracts went out in 2025, along with contracts for the launcher and canister. In December 2025 the NNSA moved staff off a completed warhead program to accelerate this one. The Navy’s procurement milestone decision falls in the current fiscal year.

Congress has mandated limited deployment by 2032. Delivery is targeted at 2034. The director of the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs has named it one of his three top warfighting priorities, and says the work in hand includes a concept of operations to manage the impact on the attack boats. The attack boats. The Virginias. The ones coming to Garden Island.

Now put the two calendars side by side. Submarine Rotational Force – West starts at Stirling in 2027. Australia’s own Virginia-class boats arrive from the early 2030s. SLCM-N is mandated for deployment by 2032. Those are not separate stories. They are the same story, and they meet inside Cockburn Sound.

So no, there is no American nuclear weapon in Western Australia today — the last sea-based tactical nuclear weapons came off US submarines in 1992 and were retired outright in 2013, and SLCM-N is still being designed. I want to be straight about that, because the accurate version is worse.

Here is the accurate version. Within the working life of the base being built at Stirling right now, the submarines tied up there will be able to carry nuclear weapons. And the United States operates a policy of neither confirming nor denying whether nuclear weapons are aboard any given vessel, anywhere, ever. That policy applies in Australian waters.

Which means the day comes when nobody can tell you. Not the Premier. Not the Prime Minister. Not the ADF. The honest answer any Australian official will be able to give a Western Australian family asking what is parked forty kilometres from their house will be: we are not permitted to say.

Was that ever put to the Australian people either?

Here is the real argument. Each of those submarines is a nuclear reactor, tied up in Cockburn Sound. Each one produces waste — the Australian Submarine Agency has told a parliamentary committee it expects roughly two cubic metres of packaged low-level waste per submarine per year, accumulating in temporary storage on site, with no permanent destination named. And a base hosting five allied nuclear attack submarines and a US support force is a first-order military target in any serious conflict. You do not get to host that and also be a quiet suburb of Perth. Perth becomes a place on somebody else’s list.

Now the question

Were we asked? No.

There was no referendum. There was no election fought on it. AUKUS was announced in September 2021 and the pathway locked in by March 2023, and the people who will live under that plume were told, not consulted.

It gets worse. The Medical Association for the Prevention of War told a parliamentary committee that the public has been denied access to the AUKUS agreement itself, to the Australian Submarine Agency’s licence application to the radiation regulator, to the submissions the regulator received, and to any modelling of accident scenarios at HMAS Stirling.

Read that last one again. There is modelling. You are not allowed to see it. Which is why the only map on this page is one a member of the public had to generate himself.

That is not a security requirement. That is a government that does not want the argument.

If the player does not load, watch it on YouTube.

Publish the accident modelling. Publish the agreement. Publish the licence application and the submissions. Then let Western Australians decide whether they want it.

Question everything.

Where the party stands: Defence · Defence Restructure · Compare — AUKUS.

#AUKUS #AUSPOL #PERTH

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