Global Courant
PARIS – Former Australian leader Scott Morrison hid plans to cancel a contract with a French submarine out of fear an enraged Paris would find a way to “kill” his new deal with the United States and the United Kingdom, reveals he in a forthcoming book seen by AFP.
The scandal, in which Mr Morrison secretly collaborated with London and Washington to procure nuclear submarines before breaking the contract with Paris, highlighted the fragility of transatlantic trust, with ties still recovering from the 2021 revelation.
“Our strategy was that if we’re going to do this, we shouldn’t let the French know – in case it hurts the French deal. So we had to build Chinese walls – pardon the pun – around our discussions,” Morrison said of the two years of subterfuge.
Mr Morrison was interviewed extensively for a new chapter of The Secret History Of The Five Eyes, a book about journalist Richard Kerbaj’s international espionage network, in which Mr Morrison reveals new details about how he deceived Mr Macron – while claiming that he not telling him was “not the same as lying to him”.
Mr Macron was the first foreign leader to congratulate Mr Morrison on his surprise election victory in 2019, a sign of the importance of the $36.5 billion (S$49 billion) deal, dubbed the “contract of the century” called, in which the French Naval Group would build 12 conventionally powered submarines for Australia.
However, concerned about production delays and a growing security threat from China in the South China Sea, Mr Morrison said he realized that “if there was ever a time to try to get nuclear submarines, it’s now or never used to be”. .
And so in late 2019 he began devising what he called a Plan B to form an alliance with London and Washington to supply Australia – a non-nuclear state – with nuclear-powered submarines.
“Australian techies flew back and forth to Washington” in 2020, Morrison said.
In an anecdote, he describes how an unwitting Mr. Macron approached him to discuss the submarine contract when he emerged from a secret meeting on the new deal with US President Joe Biden and then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the sidelines of a meeting of the Group of Seven. in June 2021.
At a dinner between Mr Macron and Mr Morrison at the Elysee Palace in Paris a few days later, Mr Morrison said he was “quite clear” about Mr Macron’s concerns about the submarine deal.
“Not telling him is not the same as lying to him,” he told Mr. Kerbaj.
“I think Emmanuel thought I was… looking for leverage on the contract. Maybe he thought I was bluffing,” Morrison said in the updated book edition, which will be out July 6 in Europe and July 11 in Australia and New Zealand.
