SUBJECTS: Australia’s relationship with France and the United States; diplomacy; national security.

LISA MILLAR, HOST: Well, plenty happening in Federal politics at the moment, as the Prime Minister heads home from the G20 and Glasgow Climate Summit. One issue won't go away, and that's the tensions between Australia and France over the scrapped submarine deal. All this just months out from the next Federal election. Federal Opposition Leader, Anthony Albanese, joins us now from Melbourne. Good morning to you. Welcome to News Breakfast.

ANTHONY ALBANESE, LEADER OF THE AUSTRALIAN LABOR PARTY: Good morning. Thanks for having me on the program.

MILLAR: The Prime Minister says it's time to move on, that there's nothing to be gained from continuing this brawl. Do you think it can be put to rest?

ALBANESE: Well, it needs some repair done, quite clearly. It's quite extraordinary for the leader of a major nation, like France, to say the Australian Prime Minister lied to them. And it's quite extraordinary for then, in response, for the Australian Prime Minister to release a private text message that doesn't really show much. But it's an extraordinary breach of protocol for that to occur. As is the dispute over whether the United States was properly informed about what had occurred between Australia and France, and President Biden's comments are also, I think, pretty serious. As is the then leaking of the security information and details and timeline from the United States. I think that the Prime Minister really needs to engage in a more diplomatic way with our friends and allies. And the United States and France have been great friends of Australia for a long period of time.

MILLAR: Well, we've got the French Ambassador saying that the relationships have dropped to a new low. I have been speaking to contacts in France before we went to air this morning. They're suggesting that a whole lot of things could be at risk, including the FTA. What would you be doing right now? What needs to be done to get this relationship back on track?

ALBANESE: Well, I wouldn't be leaking private text messages, for a start.

MILLAR: Barnaby Joyce says that's not as bad as calling a leader a liar.

ALBANESE: Well, Barnaby Joyce, I wouldn't be taking any lessons from on diplomacy, frankly. Barnaby Joyce, as Acting Prime Minister, is something that should concern most Australians, frankly. And he probably still is in that position at the moment. What we need is diplomatic arrangements between countries. And leaking private text messages don't come into that. I can't recall something like that occurring ever between an Australian leader and the leader of another major country.

MILLAR: Mr Albanese, this morning on Radio National, your foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, has compared Scott Morrison to Donald Trump. Is that how the Labor Party views him as a leader?

ALBANESE: Well, Scott Morrison, of course, went to the US and went to a Donald Trump campaign rally. And part of the problem, I think, with politics and the alienation that people feel is that you can say anything based upon a 24-hour time frame and not be accountable for what you've said. And there is a pattern with Scott Morrison of firstly denying that there's a problem, then eventually, when it's acknowledged, blaming someone else, then changing positions, and then pretending that he never held the counter position previously for a long period of time. We see that on climate, with his attitude towards electric vehicles ending the weekend, battery storage for renewable energy being as useful as the Big Banana and the Big Prawn, opposing net zero by 2050. All of these are positions that he's held that he pretends he hasn't. And, similarly, he pretends, for example, that he didn't say, ‘It wasn't a race’, the rollout of the vaccine, whereas he said that on multiple occasions.

MILLAR: I just want to stick with the situation with France, though, at the moment, Anthony Albanese, because the French Ambassador is basically sending a message. This is a serious situation. The French Ambassador is sending a message to other countries, saying, ‘Beware. Beware of how they deal with Australia.’ That's not entirely diplomatic either, is it?

ALBANESE: No, it's not at all. But that's why you don't leak a private text message from the president of another nation to your private phone. You don't do that. And that's why you need to, I think, engage in a diplomatic way. And that hasn't occurred here. And it is a real concern. I've expressed my concern about the briefing-out that occurred from the Prime Minister's office on the day that I received a national security briefing about the submarines issue. I travelled to Canberra for a national security briefing with the heads of all the agencies and with Scott Morrison. And I didn't detail any of what occurred in that room. I kept it there and didn't even tell anyone, of course, that that was happening. That was appropriate. But the Prime Minister's office briefed out that we had been briefed and been informed about a major announcement at 7am the next day. And that put us in a position then of being asked ‘was that true?’ and refusing to comment on any of those matters. We didn't breach the confidence that was given. And you've got to engage in a fair-dinkum way with people. When it comes to national security, you can't play short-term politics. And I'm sure that that's what Penny Wong's comments went to. That's why Penny Wong will make an outstanding Foreign Minister for Australia if we're successful after the next election.

MILLAR: Anthony Albanese, thanks for your time this morning.

ALBANESE: Thanks very much.

ENDS