Prime Minister Scott Morrison has denied that Australia broke with the Biden Administration when it decided not to consult Labor about its momentous decision to scrap the French submarine program and unveil an ambitious new plan to build nuclear-powered submarines with the UK and the US.
Labor has pounced on reports that the Biden Administration wanted Scott Morrison and his top minister to brief the opposition about the agreement some five months before the AUKUS announcement in September last year. Instead the ALP was only brought into the tent the day before the pact was unveiled.
But this morning Scott Morrison declared that claim was "absolutely false" and suggested that Labor might have leaked information about AUKUS if it was briefed earlier, pointing to a series of meetings between ALP frontbencher Richard Marles and Chinese diplomats.
"[This is] one of the most secure and highly confidential agreements the Australian Government had entered into since ANZUS" he told journalists.
"I find it passing strange that you think that we wouldn't have maintained absolute discretion, as we did with so many [members] of our own cabinet.
"AUKUS is a ground-breaking agreement, the most significant defence security agreement Australia has entered into in over 70 years. And I was not going to risk that on the Labor Party."
This morning the Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said Labor would not have leaked confidential information about the agreement if it had been consulted earlier, taking a swipe at Mr Morrison's decision to leak private text messages from French President Emmanuel Macron.
"Labor laid the foundations for the US alliance during the Second World War, when Australia turned to Labor in its darkest hour. We have been supporters of the US alliance ever since," he said.
"What I haven't done is ever release private text messages between people let alone between leaders of other countries, which this Prime Minister quite clearly has done."
The ALP has thrown its support behind the AUKUS agreement but has accused the Coalition of trying to squeeze political advantage out of the pact by refusing to loop it into the delicate negotiations.
"Even though Labor could not have been more clear, more decisive, or more certain about our support for AUKUS, this Prime Minister has continued to play politics and to suggest that that wasn't the case at each and every opportunity," Mr Albanese said.
"The problem for this Prime Minister is that he's always looking for a conflict and a division. That's what he feeds off."
Mr Morrison did not say exactly what sort of bipartisan consultation the US requested the Coalition undertake ahead of the AUKUS announcement, but said the government had "absolutely complied with all of the issues that needed to be addressed informing that partnership."
On the weekend, Defence Minister Peter Dutton made a similar point, saying the deal had gone ahead even if Labor had only been consulted very late in the piece.
"If the United States had conditioned the AUKUS agreement on there being a briefing for the Australian Labor Party, then clearly the deal wouldn't have gone ahead," he said.
The federal government also indicated it was always confident that Labor would throw its weight behind the announcement, and that its judgement was ultimately vindicated by the ALP's decision to lend support.
