(Image: Tom Red/Private Media)

The enormity of the disaster created by Scott Morrison’s submarines decision is now becoming apparent — as is the fact that, no matter who wins the coming election, the colossal mess is going to have be cleaned up in the next term of Parliament.

Yesterday Malcolm Turnbull, who signed the now-binned deal with Naval Group in 2016, forensically took apart his successor’s decision. He pointed out that we now have no submarine program of any kind, the lack of a sovereign capability in relation to nuclear-powered boats that have to be maintained overseas, the lack of evidence around the ability to simply let a reactor using highly enriched uranium run without servicing for 35 years, the better safety standards of French nuclear submarines (which Australia spurned), the years-long delays that the decision will inflict on our naval capacity and, in particular, Morrison’s trashing of Australia’s reputation for fair dealing — and trashing it with France, which is both a major European power and a Pacific power.

Morrison had damaged Australia’s national security with his deception and betrayal of the French, Turnbull said.

As a frequent critic of his successor, and as the man who signed the Naval Group deal with the Macron government, Turnbull could be expected to say such things. But he was followed up by Greg Sheridan in The Australian today. Sheridan explored the inanities of the decision (such as why the British are in the mix), the problems of trying to build the things ourselves, and, most of all, exactly how long Australia could realistically wait for its new generation of submarines to be operational. Sheridan suggests more 2061 than 2040.

Pretty much anyone who’s a significant contributor to this debate is likely to be dead come the 2060s, having left it to another generation to solve the problems created by Morrison’s decision.

But some of the problems identified by Turnbull and Sheridan will need to be addressed a lot earlier — by whoever is prime minister after the next election, be it Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese.

The key problem to resolve is the tension between building a significant part of the program (at least 40%) in Adelaide, and the mammoth costs and delays that that will entail. The Coalition currently trails Labor by 17 points in 2PP terms in South Australia, so there’s no political possibility of this being resolved before the election.

But after the election, the next government will have to decide whether it seeks to accelerate the proposed nuclear submarine deal by purchasing ones fully manufactured elsewhere — likely Virginia and Connecticut — rather than in Adelaide, or resolve the problem of having museum-piece Collins class vessels defending Australia in the 2040s and 2050s. What are the odds of an off-the-shelf submarine buy in the interim, to fill the gap between the 2030s and the 2060s?

Whoever is PM after the election will also need to start rebuilding Australia’s reputation, particularly but not only with the French. As Turnbull points out, Australia now has an international reputation as untrustworthy. Who would enter a major defence deal with Australia — or accept Australian commitments on free trade, or emissions abatement — without being aware we could break our word on a political whim, that all our promises amount to nothing?

Scott Morrison is poorly placed to rehabilitate Australia’s reputation, and not just because he was the one who damaged it. As is surely apparent in other capitals now, if it wasn’t before, Scott Morrison lies routinely, over matters large and small.

He was busy assuring the French that the Naval Group contract was going ahead, and that there were no problems with it, right up until the AUKUS announcement. And he assured the Biden administration that he would properly communicate the AUKUS announcement to Macron — rather than sending a text a few hours before, leaving the Americans to have to clean up the mess with the French.

That’s all of a piece with Morrison’s enthusiasm for lying constantly to Australians, usually about his own words and actions, rather than his opponents. Morrison is a man you simply can’t believe and can’t trust. Emmanuel Macron now knows that, and is unlikely to forget it — which is presumably why the government’s strategy to restore relations is to hope that Macron is defeated in next April’s presidential election.

A Dutton or an Albanese would be better placed to start rebuilding Australia’s reputation — and to make the tough calls that will be needed on a major gap in our defences once the parochial imperatives of the election are out of the way.