An interview with Australia's Defence Industry Minister
Pat Conroy discusses defence spending, AUKUS, support for Ukraine and populist politics.
On Thursday, the Australian government will release the National Defence Strategy and announce a long-overdue boost to Australia’s defence spending. The headline is 3 per cent of GDP by 2033 and $14 billion over the next four years.
But scrutiny will be required of both the calculations and the planned mix of private and public spending behind this headline number, and more importantly, what capabilities it will fund.
Expect an update after we hear from the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, who will address the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday lunchtime, Australia time and then hold a briefing with journalists afterwards.
Ahead of the speech, I thought it might be a good idea to bring you up to speed by publishing an interview that I conducted with Pat Conroy, who serves as Australia’s Defence Industry Minister.
(Overseas watchers of Australian politics, Conroy is a big up-and-comer in Cabinet, impressing colleagues, stakeholders and the media with his policy depth, communication style and willingness to take on the Labor base to argue for strong national security policies, including AUKUS.)
I conducted this interview from Kharkiv, Ukraine, when the Minister was recently in London and just before the start of the war in Iran.
Latika M Bourke, Kharkiv, Ukraine: Firstly, I guess I want to ask you about the new funding that you’ve given to the UK here.
It is starting to look like AUKUS is a money pit that’s just going everywhere else.
Where is the balance between getting these jobs and growing Australian defence industry rather than subsidising legacy companies that have dubious records on delivering their projects at best?
Pat Conroy, Australia House, London: Well, a couple of points to make are that I stood up with the Prime Minister and announced the $30 billion investment at Osborne only two weeks ago, so that is a huge commitment, and that will drive nearly 5000 jobs in the construction phase. And once the port is built, it’ll be five and a half thousand jobs building the submarines.
Equally, on Friday, last week, I announced two contracts with $5 billion for Aussie shipbuilders to build landing craft in Henderson, so it won’t surprise you, but I do reject the premise of your question, Latika.
LMB: So, you think the pie is being shared equally enough?
PC: Well, I’ll give you an example. Employment in the Australian defence industry grew by 15 per cent in the first two years of our government, so the sector is growing in terms of employment.
Last year, we spent a record amount on the Australian defence industry. I’ll get you an exact figure, but it’s about $22 billion.
I’ll ask my team to confirm that figure, but it was around $22 billion more than has ever been spent before in the Australian defence industry.
And importantly, we look through the ABN to where the activity occurs, so it’s not just a name that qualifies the Australian Defence industry. So I think that’s important.
The announcement I made was about $310 million for the long lead items for our first two reactors. I was up at Derby Tuesday at Rolls-Royce seeing — I saw parts that are being made right now for our first two reactors, so that’s a necessary investment.
The whole ground, like a key part of AUKUS, is that the reactors would be built by Rolls-Royce because they’ve had 70 years of experience doing it.
So, that’s a necessary expenditure in the UK, but we’re balancing that with a huge ramp-up in Australia.
LMB: One of the problems we also have, and I certainly accept and see and acknowledge that your government has raised defence spending in your time.
But one of the problems with every expert and I know you will have seen the same assessments, is that AUKUS is cannibalising the entire budget, so it is shortchanging some of our other capabilities.
Are you at the point yet, now that you’ve been re-elected with this whopping majority, where you can now look at increasing the overall spend so that projects other than AUKUS can also rise up?
PC: This sort of narrative is out there, I completely acknowledge that, but it’s not grounded in truth for a couple of reasons.
Our defence spending is at 2.8 per cent of GDP by NATO measurements. So higher than the UK, higher than every European nation except Poland and the Nordic countries, from memory.
And it’s growing. So that 2.8 per cent measurement is before you even include the announcement of the $12 billion for Henderson, and our trajectory had defence spending growing by another 0.3 per cent of GDP into the early 2030s.
And it’s not all gone on AUKUS, so if I can give you a couple of examples?
We’re more than doubling the size of the Surface Fleet of the Navy, and we’ll have our first Mogami-class delivered by 2029, so there’s a huge investment in the Surface Fleet occurring.
But the Perth contracts or Henderson contracts were about landing craft. They’re all massive investments that are additional to AUKUS and are growing supply, like we’ve made hard decisions.
The DSR recommended, and we accepted that that there wasn’t a justification for 450 fighting infantry vehicles, we should only get 129 and use the money from that, as well as increasing defence budget to transform the Australian Army into one focused on littoral manoeuver and long-range strike, hence getting 26 landing craft, medium and heavy and a very high number of HIMARS, launchers.
So, another example in the Air Force. So, to give you lots of them, but we’re increasing the maintenance budget for the Air Force by 30 per cent over the forward estimates, so we’re doing lots of things at the same time. AUKUS is a big expenditure, but it’s not the only expenditure.
LMB: So, are you telling me that we don’t need to raise our defence spending levels in the next budgetary year?
PC: Well, I’m saying we’re increasing them. So, we’ve already provided,
LMB: But that’s until now.
PC: Well, it’s now that they kick in, like they continue, so it’s not as if we’ve just done a one-off.
LMB: No but what I’m talking about is funding above what you’ve already committed. Are you telling me?
PC: Yeah, you want to know, are we going to increase the trajectory even further? Well, I’m not really making defence budget announcements from London in February.
LMB: But is it your belief that we need to?
PC: Well, what my belief is, is what the PM has said, which is that if defence can make the case for additional capabilities, we will fund them.
We did that with Henderson. So Henderson was an additional announcement of $12 billion on top of that $70 billion already.
We’ll just see what comes out of the May budget.
LMB: Are you arguing for it, though, Minister?
PC: What I’m arguing for is an integrated investment program that responds to our strategic challenges.
And you’ll see that in the 26th National Defence Strategy and the 26th Integrated Investment Program (IIP), but I’m not going to foreshadow it now.
LMB: I understand. So I wanted to move to another topic. So, I understand you were given a proposal by the Ukrainians to jointly develop unmanned marine systems. Is this something – I think that was given to you around September last year – is it something you’re interested in?
PC: Well, we’re focused on a couple of things with Ukraine. One is supporting what they’re doing, and we’ve announced a number of packages. We’re up to $1.7 billion in support. We’re also focused on learning the lessons from the Ukrainian conflict and that informs both our doctrine but also our equipment.
So we’ll keep talking to them about that. I’m not in a position to talk about that specific proposal, but we are intent on learning the lessons.
And if there’s scope for industrial cooperation in areas where we’re very open to that, where we’re talking to them about the Armyt reconnaissance helicopter, the Tigers, for example, and whether they’re interested in those, that is another example, but that cooperation is something that I can’t talk about now.
LMB: But do we want to co-build with them? One of the things I’ve learned being here, actually, just this week, speaking to frontline commanders, is not suitable, and in fact, they’re stockpiling it, it’s crap, and they need to build it because the iteration of how fast the developments on the battlefront are now are happening by the week by the month, and they’ve got the tech.
But what they don’t have is the mass and scale, which obviously Russia does.
So, I’m just wondering when you say that, we’re willing to learn the lessons. Is it something that you’re willing to do materially on the ground here through joint ventures, or are we just going to keep doing what we’re doing, which is giving them old stuff that we don’t want and then continuing, building our new technological advances almost without this kind of deep integration with the Ukrainians?
PC: Well, a couple of points. One is, of course, I’m open to cooperating where it makes sense for both sides on future capability development.
The second one is not everything we have given is in stock with us; a lot of it is new.
LMB: Yep.
PC: So, for example, I made a big announcement about drones a couple of years ago, being supplied by Australian companies to Ukraine.
And that’s an example of where we just don’t write a cheque, and then they deliver the drones, and it disappears.
There’s actually feedback in that. So when we deliver the first tranche of those drones, the Ukrainian military let us know, and let the company know, we have to make these tweaks, we need to respond to a new threat, and that goes into the development cycle for the next iteration of that.
So, we are doing what you’re talking about right now, Latika with those drones that we’ve been supplying, and I’ve had briefings both of this trip and previous trips to Ukraine, what they’ve been doing because obviously they’ve been leading on the Drone Coalition and the rapid development cycle and you’ve got UK MOD officials on Project Kindred, working very quickly and closely with Ukrainian military.
LMB: Would you be willing to send under Operation Interflex, any movement to in-country training? I know this has kind of been considered for a while, and we’ve kind of baulked at or haven’t moved on, but one of the things, the other thing that the Ukrainians are telling me is that actually they have a lot of training they can give us now. As opposed to us, always training them and in-country would make this a lot easier for them. Is it something that we would consider, and when?
PC: On the broader issue, as I said at the start, we are learning from what is going to Ukraine that involves personnel being briefed on that and understanding that on that broader question that’s in Richard Marle’s portfolio, I don’t think he’d appreciate me commenting on that. I respect the division of labour.
LMB: When you say we’re learning and we’re being briefed, is that it? Like, we’re just getting briefings, we’re not seeing it, doing it, experiencing it?
PC: Well, those briefings, I’m using briefing in the very broadest terms. That briefing might include Australian personnel in-country or may not involve that, so I’m not talking about a PowerPoint slide. I’m talking about the Australian Defence Force getting a deep understanding of the nature of war over there and the relevance for Australia.
LMB: And what is the relevance?
PC: Well, again, I’m not a military officer, so I won’t go into detail. But from, from my point of view, obviously, the rise of autonomy is the key thing that we have to deal with.
The rapid technology cycle, the sort of prevalence of drones, ubiquity of drones making the front line incredibly dangerous for human beings to be anywhere near.
So those things we are learning, and we’re building that into how we do things.
Now, first, we should say as big as Ukraine it’s a different scenario to Australia and maritime surrounds.
But we’re learning it, and I’ll give you an example. So, Land 156, which is our counter-drone project that I’m driving, which is the first genuine counter-drone project the Australian military‘s got, over a billion dollars, but we’re doing it in a spiral cycle.
We’re not just propping a billion dollars into Aussie industry and having a solution for 10 years; we’re doing iterations where we bring something to service.
We learn from both technology developments in Australia and around the world, and what Ukraine is doing, then we upgrade.
So that sort of upgrade cycle using open architecture is where we’ve learnt from Ukraine, and we’re doing that for both drones and counter-drone acquisitions.
LMB: That’s very cool.
So this thing that we’re testing for the British on our ranges is this long-range capability, because obviously, this is the enormous shortfall in Ukraine’s capabilities and Europe’s, is that they don’t have enough stock of long-range missiles and, and we’re having a lot of trouble getting it to them is that what we’re testing a new capability like this?
PC: I don’t want to be too specific for operational reasons, but it is on the spectrum of long-range.
LMB: I mean, that’s exciting. That’s really important.
PC: It is exciting. The things you test in Woomera are — well, Woomera is a very good testing range for a range of things, but particularly long range, so, but again, I’m not going to get into what, how to define that.
eLMB: That’s fine, but I’m just more wondering, like, do you think it’s something that potentially could be a game-changer for this war? Is that the kind of level we’re looking at, or…
PC: I’m going to be very boring about that and…
LMB: How long have we been testing? Is this just something this year that’s starting, like, is it …
PC: No, we haven’t started yet.
LMB: Oh, okay.
PC: It’s about putting in place the architecture to do that.
LMB: Okay, and do you know how, kind of, what time frame we’re looking at for having that tested and…?
PC: No, again, for operational security reasons, I’m not going to do that either. We’ve all seen how aggressive Russia has been in this space, and so I’ve got no desire to provide information that might be useful to them.
LMB: And can I ask why we’ve been chosen to test that? I mean, it’s so far away from the continent. I’m kind of curious as to why it’s us?
PC: Well, I think a couple of reasons. One, one is obviously, we’re the biggest non-NATO contributor of military equipment to Ukraine.
So we’re very deeply committed to supporting their struggle.
And secondly, the Woomera test range is, if not unique, it’s one of the rare number of ranges that can do a lot of very interesting things in a way that’s away from a lot of prying eyes. So there’s an advantage to doing those things in Woomera.
LMB: Okay, this is when it’s good to be Australian at the other corner of the earth.
Minister, I also want to draw your attention back to AUKUS, please.
Phil Mathias, who was the ex-nuclear submarine commander, has said that this element of the UK is going to fail, and he’s very clearly outlined why, and it’s not that it’s political will. It’s just they don’t have the capability to build what they need in Barrow.
I’m sure you’re aware of these concerns. What have you built in for Australia so that if the UK does fail or falls a bit short, as he certainly says it will? What’s our protection? Do we get any of this money back? Do we have contractual obligations with the British that they must hit the time frame and then if they don’t something happens? What is that for us?
PC: Well, I’ll make a couple of points. One: I don’t think it’ll fail.
I think that the UK government is putting in huge resources. I was in Barrow yesterday, and I was really impressed with the ramp-up of production at the BAE yard for their own submarine needs.
LMB: But they’ll need another line at least to build us as well, won’t they? And they don’t.
PC: Well we’re not building our submarines in Barrow, that’s an important to make a point.
We’re building our submarines in Osborne, so the whole philosophy of this endeavour is 1-1-2, One to design, One: Build and strategy, Two: Yards.
And just to give you an idea of their ramp-up. When I visited last in February 2023, they had 11,000 employees and now have up to 16,000 employees.
It’s a huge increase in not just the number of workers but productivity, but we’re building them in Osborne.
And the protections we’ve got around schedule is that we plan on the timeline for how long it’ll take for us to build a nuclear-powered submarine. An SSN-AUKUS is two years longer than the current schedule for a UK one, which makes sense given it will be the first one we’re building.
And they will have built a number before we build ours. So they’re due to have their first delivered in the late 2030s.
LMB: Okay
PC: And our first will be delivered in the 2040s.
LMB: Okay.
PC: So they’ll have a number of boats built before we build our first finish, our first, which means that when Aussie production engineers encounter a challenge, they’ll ring Barrow and say, ‘How did you deal with this?’ and they’ll say, ‘Well, we fixed it in Boat One and Two in this way.’
So we’ve got this design strategy, which is learning from the mistakes of both past Australian acquisitions and international acquisitions, where you don’t want to be the first of type, you don’t want to go into production before the design is ready, and you want to have sufficient buffer to deal with challenges.
And we’ve built all that in. But I just want to reemphasise that our submarine will be built at the yard in Osborne.
Obviously, the reactor components will come from Rolls-Royce, and they’ll be common parts in the supply chain that will be either built in Australia or the UK and be shipped to the two shipyards for consolidation, but we’re building ours in Australia.
LMB: And there’s a lot of argument that it would be very simple if we just continued to lease or buy boats from the Virginia-class, rather than going ahead with SSN-AUKUS, for all the reasons that you’ve discussed. What is the rationale for having two different types of nuclear submarines, when we’ve been incapable of building one on our own?
PC: Well, the optimal pathway, so the acquisition of the Virginias is because, and I’ll be political for a moment, but I’m a politician, so I think I’m allowed to be, is that the last government failed to find a solution for submarines.
So, without those Virginias, we would have a capability gap in the 2030s, so that’s why.
LMB: But why not just stick with the Virginias because we’ll be getting them?
PC: Because the essence of AUKUS is an industrial undertaking.
It’s not about us just getting some submarines from a foreign production line.
It’s about the three countries going from three shipyards across the three countries, able to make nuclear-powered submarines to four. And Osborne will be the only shipyard in the southern hemisphere, able to make nuclear-powered submarines.
So, this is not some make-work scheme for Australia. This is an industrial undertaking to expand the industrial base of the three countries, principally through the Australian effort.
And then integrating our Aussie manufacturers into the supply chain, not only to supply us, but to help with the bottlenecks and challenges the UK, United States have, and to get economies of scale.
So, by having a common boat, we’ll be supplying parts and the UK. will be supplying parts for 17 boats rather than 12 if it was just the UK or five for us.
So, this is an industrial undertaking as much as a strategic undertaking.
LMB: So I get that. But why wouldn’t we do that with the Americans?
PC: You mean build Virginia production in Australia?
LMB: Yep, exactly.
PC: I don’t think the United States has — I want to be careful here — as far as I’m aware, that hasn’t been canvassed…
LMB: Right.
PC: Or of interest. Their offer of selling us Virginias was very generous of them, and it was after strong work together, but that’s about plugging the capability gap rather than as a long-term solution for AUKUS.
LMB: Just, finally, this is going to be, you know, you’re pro, you’re saying, I don’t think AUKUS will fail. The truth is, you may be long gone from the political scene by the time we’re even getting to our first SSN-AUKUS.
Don’t you think we need better rigour and commitment to transparency and oversight of the AUKUS project at a societal and political level. And how would you …
PC: Well, what sort of things are you talking about?
LMB: Like, so, I mean, for instance, the defence committee, we were looking at setting up an intelligence-style committee to oversee it.
I think there’s not a lot of … I think you guys have changed in the last six months, but there’s not been a lot of communication about the progress.
We still don’t have a single project under Pillar II; it’s been five years. Why are we spending all this money, and no one can see any tangible benefits, and we don’t even have good oversight over it if we wanted to?
PC: Yeah, well, on Pillar II there’ve been a number of projects that we’ve worked on together.
LMB: What are they?
PC: Well, I’ll give you an example, we’ve developed systems to share algorithms for our P-8 fleets together to make sub-hunting more effective. We’ve done a series of autonomous trials together.
Now that sounds a bit, I acknowledge it sounds a bit, so it’s not like, here’s a giant new platform, there’s AUKUS Pillar II.
LMB: It’s a bit hard to sell, Pat.
PC: They’re important tech-sharing initiatives. But also, the nature of some of this is classified.
And I know that’s seen as a cop-out for Defence Ministers, but some of this is the crown jewels of technologies, so we have to be very careful. On the broader…
LMB: Hang on, can I go back to that because I do think it’s really important we say to the public, we’re achieving things, if we are.
So, can you tell me a capability or something we can do as a result of Pillar II that we couldn’t do before?
PC: So we’ve got more effective P-8 submarine-hunting fleets because of the AUKUS Pillar II work.
LMB: What’s PA, sorry?
PC: The P-8 Poseidons.
LMB: Oh, sorry.
PC: So they’re maritime fleet, so they’re more effective as a product of AUKUS Pillar II.
We’re making advances in autonomy, particularly autonomous underwater warfare, due to the trials where we’re working together. That has been really useful, as we develop both Ghost Shark and Spear Tooth. So that’s another example.
But on the broader oversight, we’re really committed to the classified defence committee. I think that’s really important to give public confidence through their elected representatives, and we’ll do regular reporting.
But we are hitting every major milestone of AUKUS. Like the thing that gives me the irrits is that AUKUS has been declared dead, like 15 times.
LMB: I’ve never done that, just so you know?
PC: You never have, and I respect you for that!
And people quote, like every six months, we’d get a report from the equivalent of the Parliamentary Library in the United States. And that’s somehow portrayed by certain parts of the media as Congress questioning AUKUS. That’s complete rubbish.
It’s a report by researchers saying the US has options, well, of course, they do. But Congress is deeply committed to AUKUS.
But every major milestone has been hit. Every submarine maintenance period from visiting US submarines and now, the Astute Class is doing more work in Australia.
We’ve got 200 people in Pearl Harbour from Australian Submarine Company learning how to maintain submarines. We’ve got 25 embeds in BAE. We’ve announced the $30 billion dollars work has begun at Osborne already. Huge amounts of work has been done at HMAS Stirling, as Senator Kaine talked about when he was out.
So every major milestone is being hit, and I wish to critics – I’ve seen our first two boats under construction right now.
The reactors are the things that you start on first with nuclear-reactor-powered boats. Construction has begun on the boats we’re receiving in the early 2040s, so we are hitting every major milestone.
We need to be accountable to the Australian people. Through Parliament and through scrutiny through journalists, we’ll continue to do that while getting the balance right with classified information.
Because this is the crown jewels on what the US and UK are sharing with us, so we’re always going to be a bit circumspect, but I wish the critics would pay attention to what we’re actually doing rather than just repeating the same old, tired cliches.
LMB: Finally, minister, you’re in the UK, you’ve no doubt been able to observe closely the political situation there.
As someone who went through it all, saw it all firsthand and realises where it all leads, was there anything that you observed about the current situation of British Labour that you feel you could pass on a bit of life experience to them about?
PC: Well, I made a habit in life not to be a political commentator. I’ll wait until,
LMB: But it’s not commentating, I mean, it’s, to use a defence term, what is it, shared knowledge, transfer of knowledge?
PC: Shared knowledge yeah, yeah. I’ve been really focused on my portfolio in my interactions with my counterparts. They’re obviously in a different political system and they’ll deal with their challenges, just as we deal with ours.
LMB: So one of the similarities is obviously this rise of populism.
The last time the PM was in [the UK] you know, it wasn’t there, and he was able to say, I don’t want to meet Nigel Farage, I don’t want to see populist parties rising. Now, we’ve got this on our own front door in One Nation.
Are you taking away any learnings about how populism is, I guess, manifesting itself in Europe and how it’s now suddenly surging in Australia?
PC: Well, we can always take lessons from what is occurring around the world, but I think what I’d say is that we’re focused on delivering for the Australian people.
There are some people who are dissatisfied with the political system and we respect that, and the best way we win them back is by delivering on cost of living and healthcare.
Now, I understand that’s some political talk, but it’s genuinely,
LMB: But it’s, but it’s more than that Minister. Like, it’s not just, it’s not regular. This is, almost, I mean, outpacing your opposition — support for One Nation — I mean that’s not what we grew up with.
PC: Well in public polling. And people are expressing, like, I understand why people are expressing dissatisfaction with how the Coalition is running their show. They just knocked off their first female leader after nine months?
LMB: So is that what you think, is that what you think it is? Its the right, reacting as opposed to dissatisfaction in you as well?
PC: Well, I believe that the vast majority of the people that in public polling are expressing support for One Nation are disaffected Coalition voters and those other minor parties are the right aggregating.
I’m sure that there could well be people who voted for Labor at the last election that are always thinking about … well, I think probably the best way of saying is, we’ve got to continue to earn their support, and we’ll continue to do that.
But I think the rise of One Nation in public polling is a reaction to the Coalition.
LMB: Yeah, right.
PC: And their failure to be an opposition, but as Penny Wong said, you can’t out-Pauline, Pauline.
LMB: No, no, totally, totally. I think my worry for you guys, though, is that as if you’re looking in Europe and then, particularly in the UK, actually, Reform is stealing a lot of Labour votes, and it has been for some time, and I worry that maybe that happens to you, you know?
PC: Well, that might be the case in the UK I’m not a UK specialist.
What I can say to you in Australia is you win in elections from the middle and you govern from the middle, and you deliver for the Australian people.
And I’m confident as long as we focus on addressing the priorities of the Australian people, which is, cost of living, investing more in health, making sure people have good jobs, and we build manufacturing, that our government will continue to be supported.
LMB: And finally, finally. I was really struck by this line you used in your Monday presser.
You know, when I moved to the UK in 2016, we didn’t really talk about the UK ever in terms of security. We talked about Five Eyes intelligence, but it certainly wasn’t the way we talk about it now. If anything, it was a people-to-people relationship.
In your view, do you think the UK has forever changed in the way we grade it as an alliance in terms of security? Is it something quite monumental that you think’s happened?
PC: Well, it is. The AUKUS partnership is a partnership of decades; like, you think about it, it’s a partnership that will last at least 30 years, but it’s inconceivable that it will dissipate after that.
That industrial undertaking in technology sharing has elevated the relationship, and it’s a sign of a renewed relationship that we haven’t seen for a long, long time.
And that reflects the strategic circumstances we both face. Like, I represented the Australian government at the Munich Security Conference a couple of years ago.
LMB: I know I interviewed you there!
PC: I know, I remember that!
My main message is that what happens in Europe affects us in the Indo-Pacific? What happens in Indo-Pacific affects those in Europe.
LMB: How does it affect us in the Indo-Pacific, how?
PC: Well, because what we’re seeing in Ukraine by the Russian invasion is a deliberate rejection of the rules-based order and an argument that might is right.
And we don’t want that in Europe, and we don’t want that Indo-Pacific, and that’s partly what’s been driving the relationship between United Kingdom and Australia.
LMB: Mmm, I thought though, I mean, AUKUS is about China primarily for us, right?
PC: Well, it’s about us projecting the greatest deterrents to avoid conflict. I won’t get into that particular endeavour, but…
LMB: Why, why do you not though? I mean, Trump was willing to say it. I don’t get why we’re shy about saying, of course it’s about China, it’s obvious. It’s not Vietnam, we’re hedging against, is it? I mean –
PC: Well, I don’t engage in megaphone diplomacy. What we’re focused on is deterring conflict. We’ve seen the biggest military buildup in the region since 1945.
We’ve seen China developing their military without transparency and strategic assurance. And we say that publicly, but this is about giving the Australian Defence Force (ADF) the best equipment it can have deter conflict with anyone, full stop, end of story.
LMB: Okay, full stop, end of story. I just got the wrap. Thanks for your time. I’m so sorry I’ve missed you in the UK. I would have loved to see you and do this in person, but…
PC: It would have been great, maybe next time.
LMB: Maybe next time.