The only mistake Scott Morrison has made in the way he’s handled the French submarine contract is that he should have cancelled it sooner.

It’s been obvious for years even to those with absolutely no expertise in the examination of the minutiae of $90 billion defence contracts that the deal was a dud. The government spending $250,000 of taxpayers’ money on legal fees in a fight to keep secret the cost to taxpayers of the largest defence procurement in the nation’s history did little to inspire confidence that anyone involved in the project knew what they were doing.