Who is really lying in Scott Morrison, Emmanuel Macron’s French submarine feud

The leaders of Australia and France have been accused of leaking and lying as the diplomatic rift escalates, but who is in the wrong may not be so clear.

ANALYSIS

The golden rule of the darkest arts of propaganda is that if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.

How then to assess French President Emmanuel Macron’s public claim that he “doesn’t think, I know” that Prime Minister Scott Morrison lied to him over a $90 billion submarine contract?

And what to make of claims Mr Morrison’s leaked texts “prove” President Macron knew the submarine deal was in trouble all along?

The Prime Minister’s office, via the private text messages helpfully provided to Australian media outlets, wants you to believe that Mr Macron is a whinging French crybaby, whose claims to have been in the dark over the subs contract have been “torpedoed” — get it ? — by his own private texts.

But the texts, sent just two days before the big deal was announced, also show he didn’t know exactly what was being announced because Mr Macron asked Mr Morrison, “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?”

Hardly evidence of someone who knew exactly what was going on.

So, who is telling the truth?

Let’s start with the text messages.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and French President Emmanuel Macron talk before the G20 leaders make a short visit to the Fontana di Trevi. Picture: Adam Taylor

It’s an interesting place to start because if you have been following this story closely, you may recall there was a kerfuffle about text messages right at the beginning.

One month ago, the Prime Minister announced a new alliance, called AUKUS, which will see the US, the UK and Australia share technologies with each other. It may also involve us buying some nuclear submarines although nothing is written in stone.

Mr Morrison insisted that he had been in touch with Mr Macron to tell him the bad news. But a few days later, after being coy about exactly how this was communicated, he revealed he dumped the French deal via text because Mr Macron wouldn’t take his calls.

He also insisted that he told the French President in June that Canberra could walk away from the contract.

“I made it very clear, we had a lengthy dinner there in Paris, about our very significant concerns about the capabilities of conventional submarines to deal with the new strategic environment we’re faced with,” Mr Morrison said.

The French President disagrees. And yet it also seems obvious he had some idea and was refusing to take the PM’s calls on purpose.

And then on Monday night, after Mr Morrison was publicly accused of being a liar, he was accused of leaking private text messages between himself and Mr Macron in an extraordinary escalation of the diplomatic crisis.

A mock-up of the text message sent from Emmanual Macron to Scott Morrison.

The text messages, published in The Daily Telegraph on Monday night at 6pm and shortly after by the Australian Financial Review, were provided as evidence, by an unnamed source, to prove that Mr Macron knew long ago the subs deal was in trouble but “he just didn’t want to hear it”.

“The Daily Telegraph also understands that two days before the AUKUS arrangement was announced, Macron messaged the Prime Minister to say that he was not available at the time Australia was seeking for a call and said, ‘Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?’,’’ the report states.

Any decision by the Prime Minister’s office to leak private correspondence between Mr Morrison and the Mr Macron for domestic consumption would be an extraordinary diplomatic move.

Speaking in Glasgow, the Prime Minister was challenged directly on whether or not his own office had leaked the text messages by the ABC’s political editor Andrew Probyn and didn’t deny the text messages were accurate.

At the end of the day, given they come from his personal phone, there’s not really a long line of suspects who could have leaked them.

“Why did you decide to leak that text message,’’ Mr Morrison was asked.

He did not deny they were leaked but said he was “not going to indulge your editorial on it.”

France's President Emmanuel Macron. Picture: Ludovic Marin / AFP

The other question is this: was the Prime Minister really in any position to take President Macron fully into his confidence about dumping the French and doing a deal with the United States to go nuclear?

The short answer is no, he wasn’t able to be completely open with Mr Macron for national security reasons. If you’re privately negotiating with the US and the UK for a historic nuclear technology sharing deal you don’t go around spraying those details to others.

And he knew that Mr Macron was never going to take the cancellation of a $90 billion contract lying down, even if it was an entirely reasonable decision in the Australian national interest.

So from that perspective, Mr Morrison was in a difficult position.

But the main thrust of the Prime Minister’s press conference on Monday was to mount a baseless, jingoistic argument that Mr Macron’s attack on him for lying was an attack on all Australians.

They clearly were not, they were far more personal. Mr Macron was at pains to praise Australians in his comments. He was attacking Mr Morrison.

“I’m not going to cop sledging on Australia,” Mr Morrison told reporters, perhaps hoping that they and voters would never bother to check what Mr Macron actually said.

PM Scott Morrison addresses the media.

As for US president Joe Biden’s claim that he didn’t know what was happening with Australia and the French, that’s in dispute too.

According to The Australian’s Cameron Stewart, “there is a confidential 15-page document that raises serious doubts about the President’s claim that he believed France knew ahead of time that its $90 billion contract with Australia would be terminated.”

“The document shows Joe Biden’s advisers in the White House National Security Council were fully aware France had not been told ahead of the announcement of the new Australia-US-UK AUKUS pact in September that its contract to build French Attack-class submarines was doomed,’’ the report states.

“Mr Biden told French President Emmanuel Macron at the G20 leader’s meeting in Rome: ‘I was under the impression that France had been informed long before that the (French) deal would not come through. I honest to God did not know you had not.’.

“The document, which Mr Biden’s closest advisers signed off on, made it clear Australia would tell France on that day, September 16.”

Perhaps, there is an unpalatable conclusion from the evidence assembled before us. None of them are telling the truth.

Originally published as Who is really lying in Scott Morrison, Emmanuel Macron’s French submarine feud