John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

You asked me a question about last night. I will give you an answer about last night. I first encountered Mr Smith when he was the Australian ambassador in Beijing when I visited that capital in 1997. He did an outstanding job in looking after the interests of Australia in the wake of the Bali attack when he was the ambassador in Jakarta and over the past three and a bit years he has served very effectively as the Secretary to the Department of Defence. I do not know whether there were any other parties going on, but after that, I went off to address a magnificent group of small business men and women, the pharmacists of Australia. The pharmacists of Australia have no better friend than the Howard government. I made that very plain to them last night.

As for our troops overseas, I would hope that it was the bipartisan concern that our troops overseas would always be respected, would always be supported and would always be honoured irrespective of who was in power. I have to say that that cheap attempt by the member for Wills to suggest that in some way some of my colleagues were less than supportive of the troops overseas is absolutely contemptible.

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