Of all the places to drop a bombshell about Australia’s quest for new submarines, could Defence Minister Richard Marles have picked a worse one than Paris, Sam Roggeveen* writes in the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter The question put to Marles in yesterday’s joint press conference with Foreign Minister Penny Wong and their French counterparts was whether France had any hope of securing a contract for an interim submarine, in light of the fact that Australia’s nuclear-powered boats are likely to arrive too late to prevent a gap after the retirement of the existing Collins-class boats.
