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

But apparently the gravity of such a decision did not weigh on the Leader of the Opposition, who rushes to a media conference, because that is what is really important to the Leader of the Opposition, without any sincere concern about what may or may not be happening with the government’s deployments.

It is part of a pattern of a kind of instant policymaking in foreign affairs by the opposition under this Leader of the Opposition. He pretends to be some sort of an expert on international relations—that is part of the marketing that he does with the media and elsewhere—but the reality is that there is a pattern of ad hoc media based decision making. He was going to China to fix up relations with China on climate change and suddenly he decided to cancel that trip because of so-called scheduling problems. We know it was nothing to do with scheduling problems. The pattern is there. The opposition leader stands before the nation as somebody who went out there and supported 300 troops being deployed—who were not being deployed—without even bothering to check. Given the gravity of the deployment of troops, that demonstrates the sort of person we are dealing with in the Leader of the Opposition.

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