Scott Morrison “Deliberately Misled” France: Former Australian Prime Minister On Submarine Deal.
The government of former Australian leader Malcolm Turnbulls had approved the submarine deal with France in 2016.
Former Australian leader Malcolm Turnbull said Wednesday that his successor “deliberately misled” France when he scrapped a billion-euro submarine deal with Paris in favor of US or British nuclear-powered alternatives. Turnbull, whose government approved the submarine deal with France in 2016, was scathing about how Prime Minister Scott Morrison handled the change, which was part of a new strategic alliance with the United States and Britain.
“Morrison has not acted in good faith. He deliberately misled France. He makes no defense of his conduct other than to say that he was in the national interest of Australia,” Turnbull told the National Press Club in Canberra. “France believes that it has been deceived and humiliated, and it was. This betrayal of trust will haunt our relations with Europe for years,” he added.
“The Australian government has treated the French Republic with contempt.”
Turnbull said that despite the new defense partnership between the United States, Britain and Australia, no contract has been signed for Australia to purchase nuclear-powered submarines, which are expected to be Britains Astute or the largest Virginia class from the United States.
“Australia now doesn’t have any new submarine programs,” he said. “The only certainty is that we will not have new submarines for 20 years and their cost will be much higher than that of French-designed submarines.”
Morrison has said that the decision to switch to nuclear-powered submarines was driven by changing dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region, where China’s rising military might is increasingly asserting its claims over nearly the entire South China Sea. But Paris reacted furiously to the change, saying it had lost an original contract worth A $ 50 billion ($ 36.5 billion, € 31 billion).
Describing the cancellation as a “stab in the back,” France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia.
Since then, French President Emmanuel Macron has held talks with his US counterpart Joe Biden to begin fixing relations and instructed his ambassador to return to Washington this week.
However, there have been no announcements regarding the return of the French ambassador to Canberra, and no talks were reported between Macron and Morrison.
Morrison and Turnbull are rivals within the Liberal Party of Australia. Morrison took office as prime minister in August 2018 when Turnbull was ousted by a hardline conservative faction of the party.
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