Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Labor members interject, ‘What about now?’ They are suffering enough already. Why is it that the Leader of the Opposition would wish them to suffer more by the precipitate withdrawal of American troops? As the Prime Minister has pointed out, when the Leader of the Opposition—and before he was Leader of the Opposition, by the way, when he was the spokesman on foreign affairs—is asked, ‘What would be the consequences of an American withdrawal?’ he always ducks the question. On 17 October he was asked that question eight times and he decided it was not convenient to answer that question. Of course I know while I have been away he has been asked that question and has continued to duck it. He came up with this thought bubble that he might quote the Iraq Study Group, and so he ran that line. He would not answer the question—

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