.
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor - The Australian - November 03, 2010
WHAT on earth is Julia Gillard up to?
Has any new prime minister ever had an initial Southeast Asian tour quite so forlorn as this?
It is not Gillard's fault that Malaysia's Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, caught chickenpox and couldn't see her.
Nor is it her fault that Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, would rather visit volcano victims in Central Java than have the dinner with her that he was supposed to have. But what a dismal figure Gillard has cut as she continues to try to sell her asylum-seeker processing centre in East Timor even as she refuses to offer the slightest rationale about how it would work and how it would possibly deter, rather than increase, the number of illegal immigrants smuggled around the region.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin naturally wouldn't offer any support for the Australian proposal and said there were outstanding issues to be resolved before Kuala Lumpur would state its position.
A fairly simple and obvious question to Gillard at the following press conference was what the outstanding issues were that the Malaysians were referring to?
Do you think Gillard could answer?
What followed was a truly tortuous process in which Gillard was asked the same question - what are the outstanding issues - and kept repeating the same non-response, that she would engage in ongoing dialogue.
Gillard has a very weird and disconcerting habit at press conferences when she gets a question she thinks difficult.
She simply declines to answer and takes refuge in a robotic repetition of some pre-minted cliche, in this case an endless version of ". . . further share information and to continue the dialogue".
This followed an earlier press conference on the tour in which Gillard had been asked whether, like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she would raise human rights with Vietnam.
We will have dialogue across all the range of issues for dialogue, or words to that effect, was Gillard's non-response, whereas a yes or no was the only answer that would have satisfied the requirements of the English language and simple political self-respect.
After Malaysia came Indonesia, and it didn't get any better.
Dr Yudhoyono was polite but gave zero commitment.
When asked beforehand whether she would raise allegations of torture in West Papua with the Indonesian President she replied that Dr Yudhoyono had already announced an inquiry into that matter.
OK, so was she satisfied with this inquiry, and therefore would not raise the matter?
Or was she going to raise it anyway?
No chance we'd get an answer to that question, just the ridiculous repetition of the Yes Minister defensive cliche of the day.
Why Gillard is wasting precious leadership time in Southeast Asia with her vague and meaningless East Timor proposal is anybody's guess.
.
Greg Sheridan, Foreign editor - The Australian - November 03, 2010
WHAT on earth is Julia Gillard up to?
Has any new prime minister ever had an initial Southeast Asian tour quite so forlorn as this?
It is not Gillard's fault that Malaysia's Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, caught chickenpox and couldn't see her.
Nor is it her fault that Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, would rather visit volcano victims in Central Java than have the dinner with her that he was supposed to have. But what a dismal figure Gillard has cut as she continues to try to sell her asylum-seeker processing centre in East Timor even as she refuses to offer the slightest rationale about how it would work and how it would possibly deter, rather than increase, the number of illegal immigrants smuggled around the region.
Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin naturally wouldn't offer any support for the Australian proposal and said there were outstanding issues to be resolved before Kuala Lumpur would state its position.
A fairly simple and obvious question to Gillard at the following press conference was what the outstanding issues were that the Malaysians were referring to?
Do you think Gillard could answer?
What followed was a truly tortuous process in which Gillard was asked the same question - what are the outstanding issues - and kept repeating the same non-response, that she would engage in ongoing dialogue.
Gillard has a very weird and disconcerting habit at press conferences when she gets a question she thinks difficult.
She simply declines to answer and takes refuge in a robotic repetition of some pre-minted cliche, in this case an endless version of ". . . further share information and to continue the dialogue".
This followed an earlier press conference on the tour in which Gillard had been asked whether, like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she would raise human rights with Vietnam.
We will have dialogue across all the range of issues for dialogue, or words to that effect, was Gillard's non-response, whereas a yes or no was the only answer that would have satisfied the requirements of the English language and simple political self-respect.
After Malaysia came Indonesia, and it didn't get any better.
Dr Yudhoyono was polite but gave zero commitment.
When asked beforehand whether she would raise allegations of torture in West Papua with the Indonesian President she replied that Dr Yudhoyono had already announced an inquiry into that matter.
OK, so was she satisfied with this inquiry, and therefore would not raise the matter?
Or was she going to raise it anyway?
No chance we'd get an answer to that question, just the ridiculous repetition of the Yes Minister defensive cliche of the day.
Why Gillard is wasting precious leadership time in Southeast Asia with her vague and meaningless East Timor proposal is anybody's guess.
.
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