I also think workforce and skills could be the big issue. They say it takes 10 years to create an expert but we are even futher behind the eight ball than that. At this stage you have UniSA and Flinders rushing to put together courses. Even putting together a university course is a huge undertaking.
Flinders University is partnering with the University of Manchester in order to fast track the development of these courses. UniSA is looking at partners from the USA and UK to kick start its courses.
Having said that I think AUKUS is too big to fail. It has already survived one change of government. Looking at Nuclear Submarines, which is just one aspect of AUKUS, it appears Australia will get SSNs regardless of whether or not we can actually ever build them ourselves. Initially we get three subs. We have options for another two which could give us extra breathing space should things fail to kick off as expected. After that who knows, perhaps we just continue buying overseas submarines until we get our act together.
Other industries such as Aerospace and IT will also have big demands made of them although these industries are better placed to deal with these demands than our non-existent nuclear industry.
