Scott Morrison has rejected claims that his rhetoric about red lines in Solomon Islands has backfired, while saying he still does not know the final cost of scrapping the French submarine contract.
The prime minister, making a defence industry funding announcement in Western Australia on Friday, also defended the scrapping of an armed drones program that the government had previously praised and would have delivered capability soon.
The continued pressure on the cost of defence projects comes as Morrison sought to ride out an intervention in the political debate from his predecessor Malcolm Turnbull, who observed from New York that disgruntled Liberals were abandoning the party for teal independents.
Morrison was in the marginal Labor-held WA seat of Cowan to promise to train an extra 1,500 Australians for jobs in the defence manufacturing and technology industry, with a $108.5m expansion of an existing pilot program.
Later on Friday, Morrison pledged $1bn for the second stage of a project to “equip Australia’s special operations forces with cutting edge equipment and technology”. It is part of a long-term program known as Project Greyfin, which was first announced in 2019.
While the Coalition is seeking to project a tough-on-national-security message, Morrison continued to face questions over China’s security deal with Solomon Islands and the resulting rift with his counterpart, Manasseh Sogavare.
Nearly two weeks ago, Morrison said Australia and the US shared the same “red line” when it came to opposing a Chinese military base in Solomon Islands, without specifying what action might be triggered if that line was crossed.
Sogavare told parliament this week that Solomon Islands was being treated like kindergarten children and he deplored how countries concerned about the deal had implied a “warning of military intervention” if their national and strategic interests were undermined.
Asked on Friday whether his rhetoric about a red line had put Australia’s national security more at risk, Morrison said: “No, I don’t believe it has.”
The prime minister said he had always been “very clear” about Australia’s national security interests and about the “very high levels of support” that Australia had provided to both the people and the government of Solomon Islands.
“When it comes to dealing with the coercion that we see from the Chinese government – whether here in our region, in the south-west Pacific, or anywhere else across the Indo-Pacific, there is no government, there is no prime minister, that has been more forward-leaning in standing up to that coercion in face of the world,” Morrison said.
Morrison said that the cancellation of the French conventional submarines program last September was one of the most difficult decisions he had had to make, as it would carry “pretty serious ramifications” including a diplomatic rift “with a good friend and partner”.
But the prime minister was unable to say what the likely total cost of that cancellation would be, noting the negotiations with France’s Naval Group had not yet concluded.
“I’m not going to pre-empt any such commercial negotiation. That would be foolish. That would be reckless.”
Defence officials told Senate estimates on 1 April that Naval Group had indicated how much it was seeking “without prejudice”, but it remained subject to negotiation.
Asked about Turnbull’s intervention and division in the Liberal party, Morrison told reporters in Perth he “[doesn’t] share his view”. He warned electing independents would cause “chaos” – but declined two opportunities to say if he would resign in the event of a hung parliament.
Although Morrison stressed that he “always treated former prime ministers of both political persuasions with the utmost of dignity and respect”, the deputy prime minister, Barnaby Joyce, took a more aggressive tack against Turnbull.
“Mr Turnbull’s approach is that … if he doesn’t get every present under the tree, he’s going to create a form of chaos that makes this nation where we stand, weaker,” Joyce told Sky News.
“It’s not about Mr Turnbull just tossing out his former allegiance to the party that made him the PM of Australia, it’s the fact that … he’s inherently going to inspire a process that makes our nation weaker.”
Morrison was also pressed on the quiet scrapping of a $1.3bn armed drones program to partly offset the cost of the March budget’s cybersecurity package dubbed Redspice.
Labor has promised, if elected, to urgently review the Coalition’s “bewildering” decision to scrap the armed drones program, but Morrison said there were “always difficult choices to be made in defence”.
Earlier on Friday, Anthony Albanese toughed out an increasingly aggressive press conference seeking to relitigate the fairness of questions asking him to recite the six points of Labor’s national disability insurance scheme policy.
“People are entitled to ask questions,” he said, after arguing on Thursday evening the media were too focused on “soundbites”.
Albanese brushed off interjections, telling reporters “I’m in charge” and “you had your opportunity and now it is my turn to answer” as they peppered him with questions about his recovery from Covid and the NDIS.
“Let me tell you what the NDIS is about. It is not about gotcha questions.
“What leadership is about is determining when there is a problem, identifying it, and then coming up with solutions.
“We did that in government. We created the NDIS. We are doing that from opposition under Bill Shorten who … is coming up with solutions to stop the cuts and to put people back at the centre of the NDIS.”
Albanese forcefully rejected the suggestion the answer didn’t rule out cuts, rounding on the media for pressing him on that point. “This is an example of what is putting people off politics. You cannot have a clearer answer than that.”
Albanese described holding a royal commission into Covid as a “very important” idea but refused to give a commitment on timing, noting the pandemic is “still having an impact”, with 50 people dead on just one of the days he had been in isolation.
Later, Morrison noted government officials had attended hearings of the Covid Senate committee over its two years of operation.
“My focus is on continuing to manage Australia’s response to the pandemic,” he said. “And there’ll be a time to address those issues once the pandemic has concluded.”
