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Features Australia

Apology and appeasement

Tony Abbott will be the latest Australian prime minister to kowtow to Jakarta

23 November 2013

9:00 AM

23 November 2013

9:00 AM

Who knew that when Tony Abbott promised to focus Australia’s attention away from Geneva and on to Jakarta he actually meant the satellite dishes and microwave antennae of the Australian Signals Directorate? Or that having praised the departing former PM Kevin Rudd for his apology to the Stolen Generation, that Abbott would so soon be digging his heels in, refusing to say sorry with a shell-backed obstinacy that would have done his mentor John Howard proud?

One could almost feel sorry for the new guy, who wasn’t running the shop in 2009 when Australia’s surprisingly large and aggressive intelligence apparatus decided...

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John Birmingham is a novelist in Brisbane. He wrote the Quarterly Essay ‘Appeasing Jakarta: Australia’s Complicity in the East Timor Tragedy’ (June 2001).

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