Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to frame the disagreement as a national rather than personal dispute. The leak was not just a significant breach of diplomatic protocol, the ambassador said. Leaked texts make diplomatic corps nervousĪfter the speech, Mr Thebault fielded the inevitable questions about the leaked text messages from Mr Macron. Who would rejoice in these developments? That is the question that we have to ask ourselves."īut right now any sign of reconciliation looks distant. "Our situation does not allow for the luxury of this dispute to continue between partners. "We are concerned by the current state of affairs between Australia and France because our security situation in the Indo-Pacific grows ever more severe, year after year," Mr Yamagami told the ABC. Japan's ambassador to Australia Yamagami Shingo says his country understands that France is disappointed that it lost the submarine contract, but he's worried the deepening dispute threatens cooperation between like-minded democracies in the region. Other senior diplomats are simply pressing the two countries to find a way forward - and quickly. They might fault the Morrison government's handling of the announcement, but they also believe the furious French response has been disproportionate and damaging. "Insightful presentation by Ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault today on French assessment of the current state of affairs," said the European Union's Ambassador in Canberra Michael Pulcht, in a rather pointed tweet.īut some diplomats are just aghast at the way the relationship has collapsed. Some European countries also sympathise deeply with Paris, and a few diplomats from the continent were keen to signal their support for the ambassador. There are good reasons why the speech was closely watched by so many in Canberra.įrance - with its sprawling territories and substantial military presence in the Pacific - is an Indo-Pacific power, and the bitter dispute between Australia and France will feed into some key regional dynamics. "As an unprecedented act of trust, it was bringing our relationship with Australia to a level never reached before, politically and technologically." "When you agree to transfer the technology of your own core national defence capability, which are vital elements of your national deterrence force … you entrust your partner with vital elements of your own national security," Mr Thebault said. The cancelled submarine deal was not just a commercial contract, he said. Mr Thebault spent much of the address trying to make the case that Paris was deadly serious and utterly sincere. Some Australian government sources have implied that the French anger is partly performative, and that Mr Macron's public display of fury was made with one eye on the approaching presidential election in April next year. Mr Thebault spent his address trying to make clear that Paris was sincere in its outrage. Phones buzzed relentlessly when Mr Thebault was at the podium and in the following hours as foreign policy watchers in Canberra - Australian officials, diplomats and journalists - traded notes and quips. Some speculated Mr Thebault would be keen to look forward rather than back, and sketch out how Australia could rebuild trust with France in the wake of what the French Foreign Minister famously labelled a "stab in the back" on submarines.īut fury in Paris over the leaked text messages curdled any prospects - however dim - of rapprochement. The speech was always going to be mandatory viewing for the diplomatic corps, even before the dispute took its late twist in Rome. The newspapers stories and predictable headlines emblazoned above - "Liar Liar France on Fire" - landed only one day before the French ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault was due to front the National Press Club to lay out his vision for the future of the relationship. Within hours they took the extraordinary step of breaking an ironclad diplomatic convention and leaking to Australian media outlets private messages from Mr Macron, which they believed would fatally undermine his accusation that Mr Morrison lied. There was also, presumably, a moment when Mr Morrison and his lieutenants, after weighing up how he should respond, decided they should also go nuclear.
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