Re your post which included; "Lapdog, not sure why Abbott didn't take the approach Obama did as suggested by shorten, is it that he doesn't like the idea of taking good advise from some one on principle. ..."
Thank goodness Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is still making the effort to give Tony Abbott yet another chance to get his act together.
To his credit, SBY has now delivered his letter to Abbott and hopefully Abbott will stop the chest-beating and reply as per the suggestions I made earlier on this thread.
Thus far Abbott has failed Diplomacy 101 very badly; I hope he doesn't now also fail Diplomatic Letter Writing 301.
If his response is OK we should expect to see a quick reversal of actions already taken by Indonesia. If not my guess is that Abbott's letter will be made public throughout Indonesia and mark the beginning of a prolonged period of very frosty relations.
Realistically it's hard to see how an urgent private meeting between Abbott and SBY can be avoided for there to be an enduring and comprehensive resolution of the matter.
In the months ahead if we see major concessions to Indonesia we'll know that Abbott turned to jelly under pressure - and so will the entire world!
