Slurs, lies and sledges: is Macron or Morrison telling the whole story?

Glasgow: At the heart of the collapse of Emmanuel Macron and Scott Morrison’s relationship are two questions: did the Australian Prime Minister lie to the French President; and are both leaders now telling the whole story in their high-stakes slanging match?

Macron’s charge is that the federal government systematically duped France while plotting to torpedo a $90 billion submarine contract. The French President’s simmering anger burst into the open in Rome on Sunday night when he took the extraordinary step of branding Morrison a liar.

A visibly agitated Morrison denied the allegation and then sharpened his attack the next morning in Glasgow. Macron had more than enough information to know the contract was in jeopardy, Morrison insisted. And for the first time, he also cited problems with the mammoth contract as a factor behind the decision to ditch it in favour of a nuclear submarine pact with the United States and United Kingdom.

Having been labelled a liar on the world stage, Morrison was more than entitled to fire back and many colleagues believe the Prime Minister’s candid tone should have been deployed in September when the AUKUS pact first went public and the French went ballistic.

The problem is that the Prime Minister’s defence in Glasgow contained contradictions and inconsistencies.

The biggest is his claim that Macron used “slurs” against Australia when he was bailed up by reporters at the G20. “I’m not going to cop sledging at Australia. I’m not going to cop that on behalf of Australians,” Morrison said.

This is a potent message which will resonate with many back home. But the truth is Macron went out of his way to stress his beef was with Morrison, not the nation as a whole. “I have a lot of respect for your country, a lot of respect and friendship for your people,” Macron told reporters in Rome.

“Your country was shoulder-to-shoulder with us during the wars, you had fighters with us when our freedom was at stake. We do have the same values. We have to honour this common path and these common values.”

Morrison’s disclosure that dissatisfaction with the way French shipbuilder Naval Group was carrying out the submarine contract was also at odds with the government’s public position in September and October, which was that the rise of China was behind the need to acquire nuclear-powered submarines and that costs and delays were not behind the decision to strip the French of the work.

On the same day that the French submarine deal collapsed, the Defence Department sent Naval Group a letter saying it was satisfied with the company’s performance. To cap it off, Gillian Bird, Australia’s ambassador to France, stressed the decision to axe Naval Group “in no way reflects on the powers of the Naval Group and the French defence industry, which are recognised worldwide as market leaders”.

These public statements at the time rang hollow because anyone even remotely plugged into Canberra knew Morrison and Defence Minister Peter Dutton were increasingly worried about the company’s performance. But the government went ahead and told the public the opposite.

We don’t know what the apparent problems with Naval Group were because Morrison and Dutton haven’t really said. What we do know is that at Senate estimates last week, Rear Admiral Gregory Sammut said the program had not suffered any cost blowouts. He also said Naval Group had presented an affordable and acceptable offer to proceed to the next phase of the design contract.

So did Morrison lie, as Macron alleges? It is not in doubt that the government seriously misled an ally and military partner. Australia, the US and UK conducted months of secret negotiations to strike a new nuclear submarine deal and never told France what they were up to. Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Dutton met their French counterparts two weeks before the AUKUS deal was unveiled and not only said nothing, but released a public statement singing the praises of the French partnership.

This doesn’t mean France was blind to the reality that something was up. The Prime Minister told Macron at a dinner at the Elysee Palace in June that Australia was looking at alternatives to the French-designed diesel submarines, although never said he was negotiating the AUKUS nuclear deal. Morrison says this should have been enough for Macron to join the dots about what was to come.

President of France Emmanuel Macron responds to questions from Australian journalists.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In an attempt to demonstrate that Macron knew the submarine contract was in peril, someone with access to Morrison’s mobile phone handed over a text message to News Corp publications this week in which the French President enquired whether “good or bad news” was coming about the $90 billion deal. But as my colleague David Crowe pointed out to Morrison, rather than proving Macron had long known the deal was dead, the text actually suggests he did not know that the AUKUS deal was imminent.

Australian officials insist there is much more to this story which would reflect poorly on France if made public. The French say much the same and note they also have texts from Morrison.

At this low point, full disclosure from all sides probably couldn’t make this already extraordinarily serious situation much worse.

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