In the leaked text,believed to have been released by the Australian side,Mr Macron asked:“Should I expect good or bad news for our joint submarines ambitions?”

Mr Morrison responded by seeking a phone call with Mr Macron,but the conversation never occurred,which meant the President found out about the cancellation and the AUKUS alliance by text and letter. The alliance was announced on September 15.

US President Joe Biden said last Friday that thehandling of the decision was “clumsy”,but did not say whether that reflected on the Australian government,his own administration or both.

The accusation of dishonesty has made headlines in Australia and France after reporters asked Mr Macron in Rome on Monday whether he thought Mr Morrison had lied to him.

Mr Macron responded:“I don’t think,I know.”

The Prime Minister hit back by saying he could not accept “sledging” and “slurs against Australia”.

But Mr Macron made no slurs against Australia in his remarks to Australian journalists on Sunday,emphasising the friendship between the two countries while he criticised the government and the Prime Minister.

With world leaders flying into Glasgow for the United Nations COP26 climate summit,Mr Morrison held a press conference at a BAE Systems shipyard in Glasgow to rebut the French President’s claims and highlight the shift to the AUKUS alliance.

BAE makes frigates for Australia and also builds the Astute-class nuclear submarine for the British navy,one of the options for Australia under the AUKUS deal.

Mr Morrison said the search for an alternative had been under way with the Australian Defence Force for 18 months,but intensified when Naval Group of France failed to meet a deadline for part of the project last year.

“We were supposed to have gone through the Scope Two projects gate the previous December and those marks were missed,” he said. “Ironically,had that been achieved,then quite likely all of this would have been moot.

“That opened up a further opportunity for us to pursue our alternative,which I did,in Australia’s interest,and I make no apology for it.”

Mr Morrison said he discussed the alliance with Mr Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the G7 summit in Cornwall in June this year and had dinner with Mr Macron several days later in Paris where he told him Australia was considering alternatives to the Attack-class submarines meant to be built by Naval Group.

“At our dinner I gave the opportunity for the French to respond to the matters I had raised and that took place over the next few months,” Mr Morrison said.

“Now,we eventually formed the view that we would agree to disagree and the Attack-class submarine would not meet our requirements and we decided,finally,only in the days before the announcement of the AUKUS arrangement and going forward with that decision on nuclear submarines,was that decision finally made.

“And that occurred at the same time that I could be assured that we had a clear path forward for a nuclear submarine.

“I was not going to leave Australia stranded between two projects.”

Mr Morrison defended his handling of the affair by saying Australia was able to secure access to nuclear submarine technology possessed by only two other countries,the US and the UK.

The technology fits a nuclear reactor to a submarine without needing replacement or additional nuclear fuel during decades of service,a vital difference with the French model because it means Australia would not need a civil nuclear industry to maintain the vessel.

Mr Morrison noted that Mr Macron sent a French admiral to Australia after the dinner in Paris and the French defence industry mobilised to try to save the deal,proof in his view that the French knew the contract could be cancelled.

“There was a three-month period when the issues that had been raised were being discussed between French and Australian officials and the Naval Group,” he said.

“There’s no easy way to say to a contractor that you are going to not proceed through the next gate of the contract.”

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