![]() ![]() Phones buzzed relentlessly when Mr Thebault was at the podium and in the following hours as foreign policy watchers in Canberra - Australian officials, diplomats and journalists - traded notes and quips. Some speculated Mr Thebault would be keen to look forward rather than back, and sketch out how Australia could rebuild trust with France in the wake of what the French Foreign Minister famously labelled a "stab in the back" on submarines.īut fury in Paris over the leaked text messages curdled any prospects - however dim - of rapprochement. The speech was always going to be mandatory viewing for the diplomatic corps, even before the dispute took its late twist in Rome. The newspapers stories and predictable headlines emblazoned above - "Liar Liar France on Fire" - landed only one day before the French ambassador Jean-Pierre Thebault was due to front the National Press Club to lay out his vision for the future of the relationship. ![]() Within hours they took the extraordinary step of breaking an ironclad diplomatic convention and leaking to Australian media outlets private messages from Mr Macron, which they believed would fatally undermine his accusation that Mr Morrison lied. There was also, presumably, a moment when Mr Morrison and his lieutenants, after weighing up how he should respond, decided they should also go nuclear.
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