Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
France’s Ambassador to Australia Accuses Morrison of Deceit in Submarine Deal
Posted
November 4, 2021
Views
651
Likes
10
Comments
4
Engagement
November 4, 2021
651
10
4
2.15%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
1:55Now PlayingFrance’s ambassador to Australia, Jean-Pierre Thebault, said that Australia leaking President Emmanuel Macron's text messages to the media was a 'new low.'" He said that PM Scott Morrison’s government was guilty of a “stab in the back” over its scrapped $67 billion nuclear submarine deal.
“The deceit was intentional,” Thebault told the National Press Club in Canberra. “These are not things which are done between partners, even less between friends. Especially in view of the strong historical ties that exist between our people and our strong political, strategic common interests for our citizens in this region.”
The ambassador’s comments come after Morrison denied French leader Emmanuel Macron’s accusation that he lied about the submarine deal, while saying he would defend his nation from “slurs.” Thebault was recalled for about three weeks after the Indo-Pacific partnership with the the U.S. and the U.K. was announced in September.
Macron has said France was unfairly kept in the dark about the the new partnership, which scuppered Australia’s 2016 deal with a French shipbuilder Naval Group to build up to 12 submarines.
He went on the attack at the weekend, telling Australian reporters on the fringes of the Group of 20 meeting in Rome that Morrison had lied to him about the submarine pact. “I don’t think” he lied, Macron said, “I know” he did. The French leader added that he had a lot of respect for Australia and its people.
Morrison shot back, telling reporters on the sidelines COP26 climate summit in Glasgow that Macron’s comments were slurs against Australia.
“The statements that were made questioning Australia’s integrity and the slurs that have been placed on Australia -- not me, I’ve got broad shoulders, I can deal with that -- but those slurs, I’m not going to cop sledging at Australia,” he said.
The tit-for-tat comments show the lingering fallout from the defense accord struck between the three English-speaking nations. The U.S. is now selling nuclear-powered submarines to Australia -- something French diplomats said Paris could’ve also done.
The spat has also cast doubt on Morrison’s credibility ahead of elections that must be held by May, with polls showing his conservative government trails to the main Labor opposition.
Amid international criticism that his government isn’t doing enough to implement hard targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it’s also cast some doubt on the prime minister’s aspirations for Australia to take a leadership role on the global world stage. Morrison has been seeking to rally so-called “like-minded democracies” to form multilateral buffers against Chinese expansionism in the Indo-Pacific.
When asked about the spat at a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said: “Australia should not only give honest answers to its partner’s questioning, but also honestly face up to the international community’s concerns, earnestly fulfill its non-proliferation obligations, and stop such irresponsible behavior as creating bloc confrontation and proliferation risks.”
Morrison, who has seen relations with Australia’s largest trading partner China nosedive under his watch, said on Monday the deal with France was scrapped in part because of delays in the project and surging costs.
“These were matters that we raised quite regularly and indeed I raised with President Macron at each opportunity when we either spoke over the phone or we had our bilateral meetings going over a number of years,” he said.
Still, diplomatic eyebrows have been raised in Paris and Washington after text messages sent from Macron to Morrison in the lead up to the announcement that the submarine deal was being scuppered appeared in Australian newspapers this week.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Subscribe to our newest channel Quicktake Explained
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Have a story to tell? Fill out this survey for a chance to have it featured on Bloomberg Quicktake
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
