[bettem]

It’s a terrible deal as Australia initially had France redesign a nuclear powered submarine to be Diesel Electric. There was also massive negotiations and posturing from both governments about building the submarines locally.

Fast forward a few years and the Australian Government had announced one of the driving factors of this deal is nuclear power rather than diesel electric. We’re also building [reportedly] even less of the Submarine locally now. Not to mention the delivery delays this will cause & our lack of servicing capability.

Even as an Australian I can see how this would really annoy France.

[thinkingemote]

I think the point was that, apparently, the official position of the Australian opposition (who should be more critical of the government) was that the US couldn't fight themselves out of a paper bag, rather than France was better and honour should be important. Perhaps there's no such thing as honour anymore?

But this is just my very limited European view of the news, and news is something that I restrict myself on.

[throwawaylinux]

> Perhaps there's no such thing as honour anymore?

Among governments though? That's rich. They treat their own citizens worse than this. They're happy to move industry and jobs offshore, change policies and legislation at a moments notice.

[hash872]

France was reportedly stumbling on their end of actually delivering the modified Barracudas though. Here, this is an excellent, very very detailed blog post on the whole topic https://corporalfrisk.com/2021/09/17/a-pounding-in-the-pacif...

[contravariant]

Is it too early at this point to wonder if there isn't some kind of underhanded deal going on?

[mmerlin]

No it's not too early. We know the French deal was absolutely crappy to begin.

Follow the money. Christopher Pyne brokered this $50Bn deal to get re-elected (some boatbuilding would happen in SA) which blew out to $90Bn and rising.

Pyne immediately retired (got his pollie-perks-for-life golden ticket stamped) and then immediately became "employed" as a consult with the people profiting massively from this twisted deal against the public interest.

Pyne followed the same slimy playbook as Andrew Robb (4) who sneakily slipped the 99-year Darwin Port dodgy deal across the line, and then he got a free $880k "job" with them the day he left parliament shortly thereafter.

Borderline treasonous behavior is rife with our political elite (both sides stink badly)

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/04/would-you-employ-ch...

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2019/07/pyne-poisons-ey/

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2020/01/audit-office-torped...

(4) https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/06/chinese-sell-andrew...

[throwawaylinux]

Sounds like a good thing the government is scrapping the deal. Hopefully next they can redistribute the Darwin Port to those whose needs are greater.

[bilbo0s]

The actions of the US government the past few decades have flat out confused me at times, so I don't really try to understand them any longer. But the more and more I know about the details of this particular deal, the less I understand what exactly Australia is doing here?

I wish there was a reliable place you could go for objective analysis in cases like this, but I'll have to settle for simple confusion for now I guess.

[bettem]

This is just my speculation, but I wouldn’t put it past the Australian Prime Minister making a “Captains Call” here. He’s notoriously stubborn and doesn’t listen to experts in all circumstances he should.

[drevil-v2]

You are conflating actions of different governments over decades into one singular action.

The world has changed a lot and if the government of the day feels it needs to alter a $90 billion purchase (which was initially $40 billion by the way before cost overruns) to better protect their citizens then it is their right as elected officials.

Also don't focus on the PR sideshow of the submarines, this is about the alliance itself.

[bettem]

It’s the same government that did the original deal.

[drevil-v2]

It was Turnbull government that did the deal with France; since then the Liberal party has had a change of leadership and there has been a national election.