Dan Tehan’s French sojourn has not been fruitful. In Paris for an OECD ministerial meeting, the trade minister was snubbed by his French counterpart and some senior business leaders as the fallout from Australia’s hasty decision to cancel its submarine contract with Naval Group continues.
And while France’s ambassador, recalled in the aftermath of the AUKUS pivot, will now return to Canberra, Tehan’s visit shows how far relations with France, and Europe in general, have soured.
From subs to snubs
Last week France’s Trade Minister Franck Riester formally rejected Tehan’s request for a meeting.
“We can’t go on as if it was business as usual,” he said.
Despite efforts from ambassador Gillian Bird to secure a meeting so Tehan could explain why Australia’s shift was “in the national interest”, he was snubbed.
And the snubbing continued. The next round of negotiations with the European Commission over a planned free trade agreement, a key reason for Tehan’s visit, was also delayed, possibly by a month, possibly longer. While the commission didn’t explicitly give a reason for the delay, the subtext was clear.
Anger at Australia has also spilled into the business community. MEDEF, a key French corporate lobby group which met Prime Minister Scott Morrison in June, also cancelled a meeting with Tehan.
Meanwhile US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held high-level meetings, including with French President Emmanuel Macron. Although the submarine contract was torn up to facilitate a security pact with the United States and Great Britain, Australia bears the brunt of France’s anger.
As Tehan was receiving the silent treatment, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault would return to Canberra to “help redefine the terms” of the bilateral relationship.
That Thebault’s return represents a minor cooling in tensions is a sign of just how much the relationship has deteriorated in just a few weeks. In August, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton held inaugural 2+2 dialogues with their French counterparts, where they spoke of “shared values” and a commitment to deepening defence industry cooperation.
Times have really changed.
Biden administration backs away
It’s also becoming clear that, from the American perspective, Australia cancelling the French submarine contract and announcing AUKUS was a deep diplomatic bungle.
According to Axios, Australia and the UK first approached the Biden administration about AUKUS in February, promising to cancel the French submarine contract. The administration wanted assurances cancelling the contract with the French was a done deal, and in June Australia reportedly told the Americans there had been direct conversations between Macron and Morrison to that effect.
That doesn’t cohere entirely with the account from Morrison. Last month he said he’d had a lengthy discussion with Macron in June, where he described the “very real issues” with conventional submarine capacity. He later confirmed he’d told Macron the contract would be torn up the night before the announcement, although it’s still unclear whether the pair actually spoke.
The Biden administration, meanwhile, is quickly backing away from Australia’s abrupt cancellation of the contract. Speaking on French TV yesterday, US special envoy for climate John Kerry said Biden “literally had not been aware of what had transpired” between Australia and France ahead of the AUKUS announcement.
Do you think it’s time the French got over it, or do they have reason to snub Australia? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
In The Gathering Storm, Churchill mentioned in passing on the importance of not humiliating an enemy; how much more important not to humiliate a friend and ally, as our government has done to France. I cannot yet discern any covert reason that necessitated this Pearl Harboring of the contract that would outweigh the inevitable blowback. Yet I find it almost impossible to imagine that the mode of doing this was merely the result of common-or-garden incompetence on the part of the Government of Australia. Oh, wait…..
The “MoMo” factor at play, why be truthful when lying is so much more fun?
And, when caught out, lying about having lied.
I understand why you’d think it hard to believe it’s garden variety incompetence. It’s a supreme effort if it is. On the other hand I can’t imagine anything strategic behind this, so the common or garden variety incompetence must be considered. Given that incompetence is the one thing this government has in unlimited supply, I have to fall back on it as the main reason for this debacle.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if you wanted meetings with influential people on the other side of the world, wouldn’t you have them arranged before you left?
Did Tehan go to France on the off chance he could get a meeting or were meetings arranged and subsequently cancelled. The article makes it seem like it was on the off chance. If so, that is just ridiculous.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap though. What a dud!
We might have thought he would have learned something from the continued refusal of the Chinese to take his calls. Like the rest of the LNP government front bench he is a very slow learner.
The meetings were either cancelled or postponed indefinitely.
The only reason I can see for Dan Tehan to have rocked in to France was if he was looking for a long dead ancestor, just as MoMo’s visit to Cornwall was really all about his ancestry.
Australia, now punching below its weight!
Makes a change from punching below the belt…..
Not mutually exclusive!
But then it doesn’t hurt quite as much.
Why would you want to meet the surly looking clod anyway? Perhaps the French have researched and know what an inept flunky he is? Just pathetic. As for Australia’s national interest, I’mn beggared if I know how it is the national interest to have NO submarines. I thought perhaps they should have used French nuclear ones.
Well I think it will well be in our interest to spend those billions on something slightly more worthwhile like I dunno, environmental restoration and protection, social housing, health, climate change responses. It makes me both mad and sad that we have unlimited $$$ for war toys and SFA for everything else.
Especially when the retired defence chiefs (who are now free to say what they really think) have recently said the greatest national defence threat facing Australia is climate change.
In 30 yrs they will be obsolete-just boys toys and political props
Which means they’ll be obsolete before we get them.
I’d suggest they’re obsolete now. Sadly, from what I read, the future is missiles delivering whatever they want delivered.
We just blew a gazillion on covid so I guess that means we can stump up for health.
The sense of entitlement of this mob completely blinds them to the benefits of diplomacy. What an amateur hour performance! Morrison only after local headlines and beating up for a khaki election.
Ungifted amateurs in our case.
Not sure if the term amateur can be accurately applied to people who are paid so much.