US and UK to now furnish Australia with nuclear submarines.

You can be sure they will pursue the de facto existence of one.

Commentary in Australia tends to agree with the opinion of France24. Morrison has acted beyond his office by not getting parliamentary ascent for many aspects of the announcement this week. I remain convinced American built or supplied as technology submarines will never operate with the RAN.

The Sydney Morning Herald were definitely hugely critical :

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australia-s-foreign-policy-is-getting-clumsy-and-arrogant-20210918-p58ssr.html

Things escalating, maybe a new sausage war is on the horizon 😂😂😂

Opinion piece in the SMH are pretty much a textbook example of "commentary in Australia".

There are separate but overlapping discussions to be had about (a) whether the decision to call off the French project and start again with a nuclear submarine project is the right choice for Australia, and (b) whether the decision has been well-executed. Most of the discussion in Australia so far is about question (a), but I think there's a growing sense that on question (b) the government's performance has been poor.

What I'm hearing is that the Aussies approached the UK about getting nuclear subs based on the UK's; the UK said the US would have to be involved so they were brought into the loop; the US said that the Aussies should talk to the French; the Aussies told the US that the French new the existing project wasn't working and would be read for the fact that it would be terminated; the Americans believed this; it turns out not to be true. The French are now spitting; the US are very ticked off about this — they have no reason to pick and unnecessary fight with the French — and they blame the Aussies.

Yes, it's not the actual loss of the contract so much that is bothering the French. It's more the way the US and Australia went about things, effectively lying to them and stringing them along, something that has left them taken aback.

I think what I was trying to say, is that one can cherry-pick a few opinion pieces and use that as an example or 'commentary in Australia is against this deal' to frame it in a negative light. Australia is a democracy so of course people will air their opinions and give their view on it.

However, broadly most people welcome the deal itself. A poll even has Labour voters pretty evenly spit at agreeing with the deal, while LNP voters are very much in favour of it.

As per how the deal was made, I have not read that and would like to know the source of it, as there are plenty of rumours.

France is mad, because it wants a seat at the table where the Indo-Pacific will be the main theatre of power for the next 100 years. But they have been sidelined in an embarrassing fashion.

The French do put on a good show when they think they are wronged. OK, maybe it wasn't handled the best, but it is not as if the existing contract Australia had with Naval Group was going that well. Naval Group, which is owned by the French government were treating the Australians like a gold mine. For example, it was alleged that when training documents and engineering manuals were sent by the French to Adelaide, they were written in French. When they were asked to translate them to English to wouldn't do so unless they paid to do so. I guess that is how a contract of $40 billion can spiral to $90 in a few years.

Think our Children's hospital and issues with BAM acting up and charging extra for everything, but by a factor of x100. At least at the end of that, we will get a world-class children's hospital. If the Aussies went ahead with the French deal they would have ended up with a poor product for the guts of $100 Billion spent.

Perth WA just built a world class childrens hospital. Probably best for ones blood pressure to not compare the costs.

The investors definition of a gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top, so probably very apt. Having lived next to the director of a gold mining company and seen him hiding from process servers and having foolishly invested in a couple, that description is 100% accurate.

A French minister was asked why they only recalled ambassadors from Aus & US and not UK. The answer was essentially that the UK was irrelevant in this matter.

Presumably all sides will at some point want to patch this up. Would France agree to join the others in this newly formed Pacific pact?

They do get involved a lot though. They tend to have a presence (if small) in a lot major conflicts as an ally.