Former Australian leader Malcolm Turnbull said Wednesday his successor “deliberately deceived” France when he scrapped a multi-billion-euro submarine affect Paris in favour of nuclear-powered US or British alternatives.
Turnbull, whose government approved the submarine affect France in 2016, was scathing about the way Prime Minister Scott Morrison handled the switch, which was a part of a replacement strategic alliance with the us and Britain.

“Morrison has not acted in straightness . He deliberately deceived France. He makes no defence of his conduct aside from to mention it had been in Australia’s national interest,” Turnbull told the National Press Club in Canberra.

“France believes it’s been deceived and humiliated, and she or he was. This betrayal of trust will dog our relationships with Europe for years,” he added.

“The Australian government has treated the France with contempt.”

Turnbull said that despite the new US-Britain-Australia defence partnership, there was no contract signed for Australia to shop for nuclear-powered submarines, expected to be either Britain’s Astute or the larger US Virginia class.

“Australia now has no new submarine programme in the least ,” he said. “The only certainty is that we cannot have new submarines for 20 years and their cost are going to be tons quite the French-designed subs.”

Morrison has said the choice to modify to nuclear-powered submarines was driven by changing dynamics within the Asia-Pacific region, where rising military power China is increasingly asserting its claims to almost the whole South China Sea.

But Paris reacted with fury to the switch, saying it’s lost a contract originally worth Aus$50 billion ($36.5 billion, 31 billion euros).

Describing the cancellation as a “stab within the back”, France recalled its ambassadors to the us and Australia.

French President Emmanuel Macron has since held talks together with his US counterpart Joe Biden to start out patching up relations and instructed his ambassador to return to Washington in the week .

There has been no announcement on the return of the French ambassador to Canberra, however, and no talks reported between Macron and Morrison.

Morrison and Turnbull are rivals within Australia’s Liberal Party . Morrison took over as prime minister in August 2018 when Turnbull was ousted by a hardline conservative faction of the party.