Downer unfit for job, says Latham - Election 2004 - www.smh.com.au

Alexander Downer: The Worst Public Speaker In The World

Sometimes you really screw up:

The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, was unfit to hold his job after saying Indonesia could make pre-emptive strikes at Australia, Opposition Leader Mark Latham said today.

His comments come after Mr Downer was asked on Darwin radio if he would expect another country to take pre-emptive action on Australian soil. Mr Downer said: "Absolutely, by the way, absolutely."

"If the Indonesians rang us up and said, 'there's a terrorist group in the Kimberleys who are planning to launch an attack on Kupang', and we said, 'well we don't really care; that's your problem, pal and we're not going to do anything about it', and they sent an F-16 over and bombed the terrorist group, you could understand that," Mr Downer added.

I love that this was on "Darwin radio."

Now, honestly, the Australian government has been our finest friend in the GWOT. They, and the UK, have been unfailing in their support. The Howard government, of which Downer is a member, is far more likely to support the U.S. than the Labor opposition, which has run on cutting back cooperation with America.

All the same, I have to say, Downer is a consistently lousy diplomat.

Last week, all this "pre-emptive strike" business arose after PM Howard stated that he was going to form "flying squads" to address terrorist groups in the region. He explained that he was moving to a pre-emptive strike model, following the Jakarta bombing of the Aussie embassy.

Downer, challenged by Malaysia and Indonesia to explain this position, managed to refine his boss' statement into a pure hypothetical -- in fact, he said, it was just campaign rhetoric:

But imagine a situation, it's not likely to be Indonesia or a country which has a strong counter-terrorism capability, but a failed state in the South Pacific, as the Solomons once was and is not now, and a situation where a terrorist was about to attack and the country involved either didn't want to or in their case couldn't do anything to stop it, we would have to go and do it ourselves.... We're talking about a situation where, and it's a hypothetical situation, where somebody would not stop a terrorist attack on Australia, someone refused to stop a terrorist attack on Australia, wherever it might be in the world – not in Indonesia, but anywhere in the world, and I can assure you this Government would stop it if we knew it was going to happen.

Isn't this the same Mr. Downer who said that his department "never" issued hypothetical statements about such things? I seem to remember he said that just lately. I believe it was in regard to the issue raised in this article, "Aussies Not Cowards: MOFA"

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday said that it never called Australians "moral cowards" but had urged the Australian government to be even-handed in dealing with relations between Taiwan and China....

Downer, during a visit to Beijing last month, spoke of a new strategic partnership between Australia and China extending beyond commercial interests and into the political sphere. Downer said Australia would not necessarily side with the US against China in support of Taiwan if hostilities broke out.

When our own Secretary of State pointed out that Australia had a treaty obligation to do just that, Mr. Downer replied that they didn't do hypotheticals -- except, it seems, when they do.

John Howard had to spurn his own FM in public over that remark, and now Mr. Downer is trying to "help" again. I can only hope that Howard survives the elections, and that he immediately dispenses with this particularly inept diplomat.