Scott Morrison has been accused of leaking private text messages between himself and French President Emmanuel Macron in an extraordinary escalation of the diplomatic crisis.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.
…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.”
…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 Australian is in full damage-control mode for the Liar from the Shire today:
Notice that most of it is attempted deflection or blame-shifting not journalism.
The truth of it is obvious, captured neatly by Peter Hartcher:
When the great strategist Sun Tzu wrote that “all warfare is based on deception”, he meant the deception of the enemy.
Scott Morrison is in the unhappy position of being accused of deceiving Australia’s friends. Not just one but two.
Within two days, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and the US President, Joe Biden, separately said or implied that Morrison had misled or deceived them. And they said so publicly.
For the Prime Minister to have a public clash with the leader of one ally over an alleged deception is uncomfortable yet contestable. There are two sides to every dispute, after all.
To have public clashes with two at the same time is a politico-diplomatic disaster. It’s then a three-sided argument, and the other two sides are united against Morrison.
It’s harmful to Morrison’s personal credibility, to the standing of his government, to Australia’s reputation and to the common cause that the three nations have pledged to serve – to show that democracies can work together to defeat China’s destabilising grabs for territory and hegemony.
In fact, China is the only winner from this first-class fiasco. Xi Jinping must be laughing up his sleeve.
News wraps the Morrison Government response:
Let’s not over-egg this. All leaders lie, especially to other leaders. And France will get over it. There’s no upside in warring with Australia as China closes in on Pacific interests.
The real issue here is domestic politics. On that front this is another in a long line of blunders by the Liar from the Shire. Together they are a political disaster.
There are moments when a man’s and a government’s character is fully exposed to the world. Prime Minister Scott Morrison has had many of those over the last two years and all are consistent:
- He went to Hawaii as the nation burned then gaslighted everybody when he got back.
- He manufactured a rape protection racket for himself, even using his own family as a human shield, then buried the issue in parliamentary fog, gaslighting everybody.
- He botched just about every pandemic decision before being pushed in the right direction by Labor or state leaders including stimulus, quaratine, vaccine procurement and federal relations, gaslighting joyfully as he went.
- He handed us a double-dip recession as a result, gaslighting merrily throughout it.
- He has bribed, porked, misallocated ceaselessly to the tune of billions, gaslighting non-stop.
- He has gutted Australian decarbonisation while describing a gaslighted vision of environmental success.
And on the few occasions and issues he has got it right, such as telling China to get stuffed, Australia was just lucky that Morrison’s titanic capacity for gaslighting was turned on an enemy and it had a glass jaw.
Scott Morrison is the gaslighter-in-chief. He is the master of the one-liner and devoid of public policy process. This matches perfectly his personality disorder, not the national interest. His government is the most destructive of my lifetime to the Australian political economy and that is saying something. It is also, I’d guess, why the likes of Gladys Berejilkian describe Morrison as “evil”.
Emmanual Macron and Joe Biden doubtless have their own domestic political motives in the fracas. But they have summed up our PM perfectly and it will resonate in the bones of Australians come election day.
