PM accused of leaking Macron texts

The French president said, “I don’t think, I know,” on Monday when quizzed by journalists if he thought the Prime Minister had lied to him about the cancellation of the $90bn submarine contract with Australia.

Less than 24 hours after the French President publicly accused the Prime Minister of lying, private text correspondence promptly emerged undermining Mr Macron’s account.

The text messages, published in The Daily Telegraph on Monday night at 6pm, were provided as evidence by an unnamed source to prove that Macron knew long ago the subs deal was in trouble.

“Macron messaged the Prime Minister to say that he was not available at the time Australia was seeking for a call and said, “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarine ambitions?,’’ the report stated.

Any decision by the Prime Minister’s office to leak private correspondence between Scott Morrison and the French President for domestic consumption would be an extraordinary diplomatic move.

Speaking in Glasgow, the Prime Minister was challenged directly by the ABC’s political editor Andrew Probyn whether he or his own office at his instruction had leaked the private text messages.

“Why did you decide to leak that text message,’’ the Prime Minister was asked.

After dodging the question, the Prime Minister was asked a second time “why the messages were leaked.”

Mr Morrison did not deny they were leaked but said, “I am not going to indulge your editorial on it.”

“What I will simply say is this. We were contacted when we were trying to set up the call. (The French President) made it pretty clear he was concerned that this would be a phone call that could result in a decision by Australia not to proceed.”

He was also asked in the press conference whether he replied to the reported text message from Mr Macron, effectively confirming the text messages as reported were accurate by saying that he had.

The leaked text messages, which were designed to challenge the French President’s claim that the Prime Minister is a liar, were also published by The Australian Financial Review on Monday night.

But texts also appear to confirm the French President was in the dark about the AUKUS deal and the cancellation two days before it was announced on live TV.

The AFR report, published at 8.55pm, also stated that the French President told Scott Morrison in June “I don’t like losing” after the Prime Minister informed him over dinner that Australia felt the French submarines were not fit for purpose.

The report replicated, word for word, the text messages The Daily Telegraph had earlier claimed to have been sent in September by the French President, two days before Mr Morrison announced the formation of the AUKUS alliance.

The report also stated that Mr Macron messaged the Prime Minister to ask: “Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarine ambitions?,’’ citing unnamed government sources.

During the press conference in Glasgow, Mr Morrison provided the most comprehensive public account to date on his thinking behind breaking the contract with France and his attempts to explain to the French President that the contract was in trouble.

“I have no interest in personalising these matters. But I thought it would be good to give some of the background,’’ he said.

“The (French) submarine contract was a significant investment decision taken five years ago. At that point, given the strategic circumstance, time and technology available to Australia the attack class submarine was the right decision.

“But there have been significant changes that have occurred in our strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific, which completely changed the game.”

The Prime Minister provided a blow-by-blow of when he raised concerns, touching on when he raised issues with the French contract, including significant delays.

“This submarine was not the submarine that Australia needed,” he said.

Mr Macron and Mr Morrison met at the G20 summit in Rome over the weekend, the first time the men had met since the submarine deal was cancelled.

Earlier, Acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce urged the French to get some perspective.

“We didn’t steal an island, we didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower. It was a contract,” Mr Joyce said.

The Prime Minister said he did not wish to “personalise the spat” but would not accept “statements questioning Australia’s integrity”.

“I’m not going to cop sledging on Australia,” he said.

“I have to put Australia’s interests before any interests that involved potentially offending others,” he said.

But former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also weighed in on the furore saying the French were sledging the Prime Minister, not Australians.

“No Scotty. Macron was not attacking Australia. In fact the reverse,’’ he said.

“Macron was attacking you – your honesty, your slipperiness, you being lose with the truth. And Biden agrees. So what does Scotty do? He wraps himself in the flag!”