Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday denied that he lied to French President Emmanuel Macron while secretly negotiating a submarine deal with the US and the UK, an accusation that has escalated a rift over Canberra’s surprise cancelation of a French deal.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce suggested France was overreacting, saying: “We didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower.”
Australia in September dropped the five-year-old, A$90 million (US$67.5 million) contract with majority French state-owned Naval Group to build 12 conventional diesel-electric submarines. Instead, Australia formed an alliance with Britain and the US to acquire a fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines built with US technology.
Photo: AP
Macron told Australian reporters late on Sunday in Rome, where he and Morrison attended the G20 summit, that the new alliance was “very bad news for the credibility of Australia and very bad news for the trust that great partners can have with Australia.”
Answering a reporter’s question about whether he thinks Morrison lied to him, Macron replied: “I don’t think, I know.”
Morrison said he did not lie to Macron, while senior Australian government ministers criticized the French leader for escalating the dispute through the personal slight.
“We didn’t steal an island, we didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower, it was a contract,” Joyce said.
“Contracts have terms and conditions, and one of those terms and conditions and propositions is that you might get out of the contract. We got out of that contract,” Joyce added.
Joyce’s office could not say whether “steal an island” was a reference to the English Channel’s tiny Sark Island, which unemployed French nuclear physicist Andre Gardes attempted to overthrow with an assault rifle in 1990.
Australian Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management David Littleproud described Macron’s criticism of Morrison as “unreasonable.”
Morrison could not reveal that Washington had offered Australia nuclear-propulsion technology when the two leaders dined together in June for national security reasons, Littleproud said.
“I was very clear that the conventional submarines were not going to be able to meet our strategic interests,” Morrison said.
Macron refused to take Morrison’s telephone calls after the submarine furor broke until hours before the Australian leader was to fly to Rome last week.
The pair did not hold a bilateral meeting in Rome, but Morrison said they had “spoken several times” and would likely do so more in the coming days.
Both leaders are attending the UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, this week.
US President Joe Biden told Macron last week that the US had been “clumsy” in its handling of the Australian submarine alliance.
Biden said he thought Macron had been informed long before the deal was announced.
Asked by a reporter if Australia could have “handled it better,” Joyce replied: “With hindsight.”
He then drew an analogy to the Melbourne Cup, Australia’s best-known horse race, which will be run today.
“If only I could put a bet on last year’s one, geez, I’d make some money,” Joyce said.
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