So it seems that Australia's third richest person, Anthony Pratt, (net worth some $24.30b ranking him as the 213th wealthiest individual globally), may have known about AUKUS months before the Australian public.
Former US president Donald Trump allegedly disclosed classified information on US submarines to Australian packaging mogul Anthony Pratt in April 2021, according to a report published by America’s ABC News.
It’s alleged that Pratt relayed the information to “scores of others” including “more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists”, ABC News reported.
Pratt, who runs packaging firm Pratt Industries, allegedly spoke to Trump during an April 2021 meeting, five months before the US, Australia and UK announced the formation of AUKUS, an extensive defence alliance under which Australia will buy US built nuclear-powered submarines.
The alleged disclosure was said to be reported to Justice Department special prosecutor Jack Smith’s team as it investigates Trump’s storing of classified documents at his Florida home Mar-a-Lago, ABC US reported, citing “sources familiar with the matter”.
ABC US reported that prosecutors and FBI agents have interviewed Pratt, who is a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, at least twice. Trump and Pratt developed a relationship after Trump won power in 2016 and Pratt joined Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s members club in Florida in 2017. “Over the next few years, Pratt visited Mar-a-Lago about 10 times, interacting with Trump on several occasions, once even having dinner with Trump and a US senator at another Trump-owned property nearby, Pratt told investigators, according to sources”.
“Pratt also visited the White House in 2018, when Trump was meeting with Australia’s then-prime minister, according to online records.”
In 2019, Trump attended the opening of a Pratt Industries plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio, also attended by Scott Morrison, then the Australian prime minister. Of Pratt, Trump said “this man is No 1 in Australia, they say”, adding in formal remarks: “We’re here to celebrate a great opening and a great gentleman … one of the most successful men in the world – perhaps Australia’s most successful man.”
At their April 2021 meeting “Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump – “leaning” toward Pratt as if to be discreet – then told Pratt two pieces of information about US submarines: the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected,” sources told ABC US.
Pratt then allegedly described Trump’s comments to “at least 45 others, including six journalists, 11 of his company’s employees, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers”, sources allegedly told ABC US News.
John Howard, Malcolm Turnbull, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and Paul Keating have all now ruled themselves out as having such a conversation with Pratt. Which leaves Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said Pratt and he had not discussed the businessman's conversations with Trump.
“Trump did ask me in early 2017 why [we] were buying French rather than US subs,” Turnbull said.
"I explained that it was important that they be a sovereign capability, and that we did not have the means at that stage to sustain and maintain nuclear-powered submarines ourselves."
Pratt is a well known Trump supporter, one of the few who backed his chances of winning the 2016 presidential election, and has extensive connections with US Republicans. The vice-president Mike Pence opened another of Pratt's plants, in 2016.
Major political donor Pratt, whose corrugated packaging firm, Pratt Industries, is US-based, allegedly insisted to investigators he disclosed his meeting with Trump to demonstrate how he was advocating for Australia with the US, ABC US reported.
Simon Birmingham, who was a senior minister in Scott Morrison’s government when it negotiated the AUKUS security partnership with the Biden administration, said he and other members of Australia’s national security committee (NSC) were expected to keep operational details secret “for the rest of our lives”.
Birmingham said he could not “prejudge exactly what took place in these discussions” between Trump and Pratt, but observed that US nuclear submarine technologies were “the most advanced in the world”.
“They are the the most treasured, if you like, prized asset of parts of the US defence establishment,” Birmingham told Sky News Australia.
“It’s why it was such a big breakthrough for Australia to be in a position to have them shared with us. But it’s also why I’m sure many in the United States will take very, very seriously the suggestion that these types of technologies and the capabilities associated with them could be subject to discussions outside of those confined spaces, such as, in our case, the Australian NSC.”
Recall a story in July 2021 that states "with not even a hint of shame, the finance minister [then Birmingham] declared that voters approved of the Morrison government's rorting and corruption."
Apparently Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May 2024 in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Florida. The account that Mr. Trump discussed some of the country’s most sensitive nuclear secrets with him in a cavalier fashion could help prosecutors establish that the former president had a long habit of recklessly handling classified information.
Joe Hockey, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, sought to play down Mr. Trump’s disclosures to Mr. Pratt in a phone interview on Thursday 5 October 2023. “If that’s all that was discussed, we already know all that,” Mr. Hockey said. “We have had Australians serving with Americans on U.S. submarines for years, and we share the same technology and the same weapons as the U.S. Navy.” Recall that in March 2023 it was reported that Hockey's "advisory firm Bondi Partners ... is well set up to take advantage of the AUKUS deal."
So it appears that Pratt's wealth put him in a position to have direct discussions with a US President about Australia's interest in nuclear submarines even though, since signing French contracts in 2016, Australia had committed to the non-nuclear French submarines that Australia had already spent some A$2.4 billion on.
Pratt's influence in matters politic seems to be pretty wide.
So why would a (significant political donor) cardboard box manufacturer have discussions with a former US President in April 2021 about nuclear submarines and then share the content of those discussions far and wide?
So a major political donor multi-billionaire cardboard box manufacturer has discussions with a former US President about nuclear subs. then divulges them to all and sundry including [now] "former prime ministers". Five months later now former PM Scomo cancels the $90b French contract with the Naval Group- mainly owned by the French State (62.49%) (wasting some $3b Australian taxpayers' money in the process) and signs on to a US contract worth $368b (also taxpayers money) with 100% profits ultimately going to very wealthy private investors (e.g. via BlackRock and Vanguard) that are majority shareholders in the arms industry firms that will benefit.
Some dots deserve to be joined here.
The Pratt story demonstrates Australia’s two-speed democracy, in which donors get privileged access to decision-makers while the rest of us make do with a vote every three years and sending letters to MPs. But Pratt — courtesy of his “superpower”, money — is in another world of access altogether, enough to make regular donors blanch.
All of this has occurred in plain sight. It hasn’t taken a prosecution of a corrupt politician to expose Pratt’s top-notch influence game. It’s been plain in records of his perfectly legal donations, press coverage and media photos. And it’s been accepted as normal by the political class.
If none of the slew of Australian politicians close to Pratt have had the ethical vacuum and poor judgment of Trump, it remains a live question of what information Pratt obtained while spending extensive time with them, information that wasn’t available to voters or commercial competitors.
Pratt hasn’t figured in the discussions about political donation caps triggered by Clive Palmer hurling tens of millions of his own cash at his own party in a mostly unsuccessful effort to impose dolts and dullards on Parliament. Pratt has the sheen of the Melbourne establishment to protect him, unlike the garish Queenslander, and by any standard has been in a far better position to wield influence than Palmer.
Labor has been talking about some long-overdue donation reforms — lowering the disclosure threshold, real-time reporting — since it was elected, but apart from a flurry of speculation when the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters reported earlier this year, there’s been nothing concrete from Special Minister of State Don Farrell.
Donation caps alarm teal MPs who benefited from Climate 200 donations, and the suspicion that the major parties will ensure the fix is in to preserve their diminishing grasp on Parliament looms large. But as the efforts of Pratt make clear, the current donation system allows the mega-rich to traffic in influence at the highest levels — especially if they’re a storied member of the Australian business community.
Comments
Post a Comment