How Scott Morrison kept $90b secret at dinner with Emmanuel Macron

Scott Morrison held back at a high stakes dinner with Emmanuel Macron in a move that severed relationships with France.

Scott Morrison dined with French President Emmanuel Macron while sitting on a plan to walk away from a $90 billion submarine deal with France before the AUKUS deal was signed, the former prime minister has revealed.

Mr Morrison revealed withheld the $90 billion secret over a cordial dinner at the Elysee Palace, during the final episode of ABC docuseries Nemesis.

Nemesis tells the inside story of the Coalition’s nine years in power and the leadership battles between the three Liberal prime ministers — Mr Morrison, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.

The dinner occurred in June 2021 after Mr Morrison travelled to the G7 summit in Cornwall in the UK where he had pitched his AUKUS concept to then British prime minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden.

The triliteral military deal would see Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines from US and UK, and was signed on September 15 of that year.

The high stakes dinner took place on the terrace overlooking the Elysee Palace garden. Picture: Adam Taylor

Sitting under white umbrellas on the terrace overlooking the garden at the Elysee Palace Mr Morrison said in the docuseries that he deliberately withheld his AUKUS plan.

“I couldn’t tell him that we had completed the agreement (with the US and Britain) because we hadn’t,” he said.

“I mean, this thing could all still go pear-shaped.”

Mr Morrison and Mr Macron in better times. Picture: Adam Taylor

Mr Morrison defended the decision to cancel the French submarine deal because the “strategic situation with China had changed”.

“My concern was that these subs would be obsolete before they even got wet …(I thought) if the French sub program falls over, we are going to need a plan B,” he said.

“I was very clear that the situation in China had deteriorated significantly since we’d signed the contract for the diesel submarines. I was very clear (they) could no longer do that job we wanted them to do.”

Mr Morrison says he told the French President he was concerned about the delay in the diesel subs project.

AUKUS caused a rift between Australia and French relations. Picture: Getty

“I said that we were considering other options. I can’t tell you what they are, but obviously we need a nuclear-powered submarine capability to be able to address these strategic issues. And I said, ‘I can’t tell you who we’re doing it with,” Mr Morrison said. “Now, I expected the dinner to end about there.”

But the dinner did not end there.

“He was a generous host,” he recounted. “He actually showed me around (the palace), showed me some document signed by Napoleon himself, which was pretty cool.”

Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak hold a press conference after a trilateral meeting during the AUKUS summit on March 13, 2023. Picture: Getty Images

The partnership with the UK and US and the cancellation of the French deal caused a deep diplomatic rift between Australia and France.

France’s ambassador to Australia Jean-Pierre Thebault accused the Australian government of “deceit” describing it as “stab in the back”.

Nemesis also explored Mr Morrison’s “women problem” as prime minister.

Mr Morrison admitted his language around the Brittany Higgins case was clumsy and said his wife would agree with that analysis, but he rejected the proposition that he treated women poorly.

Former ministers Karen Andrews and Marise Payne agreed with his interpretation though Ms Andrews argued he would have fared better politically had he not surrounded himself with male advisers.