Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Hansard source

I can tell you why it was on an upward trajectory: I put it there and I left some propositions for the previous Prime Minister to pursue. He did nothing about them. I know that for a fact, because they were propositions which I set down, invitations which I arranged for him to receive which he never took up. That is not something that I imagined. That is something I know I did on behalf of this country, and I thought it was a useful thing. I was rather hoping it would not be that Prime Minister who took up the invitation, because I was hoping we would win the election, but, when we lost, I was looking forward to Prime Minister Howard taking it up and he never did. I thought it was a very sad event and I feel really disappointed about it. But the relationship was on an upward trajectory, and they were underplayed, underestimated and undersupported for a decade until we saw, shortly after the United States saw it, the fact that we might be able to sell some uranium there. It was never a central element of the modern strategic assessment of the previous government.

If you look at anybody who has taken a sensible analysis of any country’s position in the 21st century, particularly Australia’s, the key relationships are the North-east Asian relationships that we fundamentally need to focus on and our friends in Asia and South Asia. We finally have to recognise that we are an Indian Ocean country with significant relationships with the countries of South Asia. It has unfortunately been left to us to repair that decade of neglect, and I am determined to do that. It is not going to be built on a one-issue strategy of saying, ‘We have a brilliant idea. We’re going to sell uranium to India,’ which will fail. I think that internationally that was never going to be a successful proposition. But I really deplore the attitude of the previous government to India, and to come now with this bit of cant and pretend that there was some great relationship with India which is being underplayed—

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