France can ‘trust me’, says Aussie PM after submarine deal stoush
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hasn’t ruled out formally apologising to French President Emmanuel Macron over a submarine furore, saying ‘‘everyone should be able to trust me’’.
Albanese was to have a one-onone meeting with Macron over lunch at the Elysee Palace in Paris overnight as he seeks to repair the relationship, which was damaged after Australia dumped a A$90 billion (NZ$99.4b) submarine contract with a French shipbuilder.
Albanese didn’t directly answer when asked yesterday if he would say sorry to France over the cancelled contract.
‘‘I look forward to having a constructive relationship with President Macron,’’ he said. ‘‘I’ve made it very clear what my position is about the way in which Australia engaged at a leadership level with friends.
‘‘What I want to do, though, is to make sure that we can move forward . . . It should be a relationship where we can rely upon each other . . . in which we can trust each other and mutually benefit.’’
Asked if French businesses could trust him after the ‘‘betrayal’’ and ‘‘deception’’ over the submarine contract under the previous coalition government, Albanese said: ‘‘Absolutely.’’
Former prime minister Scott Morrison’s government decided to scrap the contract with Naval
Group last year in favour of nuclearpowered submarines, under the
AUKUS partnership with Britain and the United States.
Macron later told Australian journalists ‘‘I don’t think, I know’’ when asked if he thought Morrison had lied to him in his handling of the issue.
In his first phone call with Albanese after the May federal election, Macron reminded him of what Paris described as a ‘‘severe breach of trust’’.
Albanese said it was time for the relationship between Paris and Canberra
to ‘‘enter a new dawn’’ after a ‘‘breakdown’’.
‘‘President Macron wants to have a good relationship with Australia, and Australia wants to have a good relationship with him.’’
A decision on whether Australia would choose American- or Britishmade nuclear submarines had no ‘‘obvious choices‘‘, Defence Minister Richard Marles said.
He said the government was looking to make a decision quickly on which nuclear vessels Australia would acquire. ‘‘There’s a process that’s being worked through with both the United Kingdom and the United States.’’
It is expected that Australia’s first nuclear submarine won’t be operational until 2040.
While there had been talks from the previous government that USbuilt nuclear submarines could be bought to fill Australia’s naval capability gap in the interim, those suggestions have been rebuked.