schlomo,there's no smoke without...

schlomo,there's no smoke without fire
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Bush-bashing blunder leaves Rudd red faced

4th November 2008, 15:00 WST
The Australian with most to gain from a change of political complexion in the White House this week is probably Kevin Rudd. While the political dialogue is naturally friendlier between Labor and the Democrats, Mr Rudd has fouled his relationship with the Republican incumbent in a diplomatic blue that reveals significant weaknesses in the Australian Prime Minister.

Mr Rudd is being held responsible for the publication on the front page of a national newspaper on October 25 of embarrassing details from a private discussion he had with George Bush about the global financial crisis.

That it has taken so long for this matter to come to a head is a measure of the continuing infatuation with Mr Rudd by many in the Canberra press gallery.

Just look at this exchange on Sunday on the ABC’s The Insiders between host Barrie Cassidy, a former long-standing press secretary to prime minister Bob Hawke, and political reporter Chris Uhlmann.

Cassidy: “How can the Prime Minister or somebody close to him disclose a private and confidential conversation with the President of the United States and, let’s face it, basically to set him up as a bit of an idiot, and yet a week on nobody in the Australian media has asked him about it?”

Uhlmann: “Yes Barrie, this certainly did deserve a lot more coverage than it’s got but perhaps it’s a bit of a sleeper and it might get some more coverage from now on.”

Cassidy’s censorious question is important because of his understanding of how prime ministers should operate. Uhlmann commented that diplomats in Canberra were “horrified” by the article.

That report by chief political correspondent Matthew Franklin began with Mr Rudd entertaining guests at Kirribilli House at 10.40pm on October 10 when Mr Bush rang. It did not say that one of the guests was the editor-in-chief of the Australian, Chris Mitchell.

Franklin gives a breathless recitation of our Prime Minister lecturing Mr Bush on why plans to handle the financial crisis through the G7 group of industrialised nations were wrong.

“Sources said Bush spent the first third of the conversation attempting to keep Rudd at bay,” the Australian reported. “‘He was like a bull terrier,’ said one source. ‘He was polite but firm. He was not deferential at all. I could not have imagined John Howard talking to Bush like that.’”

Mr Rudd reportedly argued that a better vehicle was the G20, which includes China, nations from South America and the Middle East, and Australia.

Then came the clanger: “Rudd was then stunned to hear Bush say: ‘What’s the G20?’”

While the Canberra press gallery has taken a hands-off approach, conservative commentator Andrew Bolt, who writes for the Australian’s sister paper in Melbourne, the Herald-Sun, dived in on October 29:

“Kevin Rudd blabs. Kevin Rudd betrays. What’s more, Kevin Rudd appears to make things up. … he betrayed Bush by retelling their conversation in ways to make the President seem a donkey, and Rudd the genius who trained him to behave. And Bush has noticed.”

So, it’s evident that Bolt, who is not a Canberra insider, had been told that the Americans were upset by the report.

We now know that the White House went to the trouble of briefing the Washington Post that the embarrassing G20 line was wrong. “A US official who monitored the call denied that Bush made any such remark,” the Post reported.

The PM’s office was subsequently forced to disown the remark in an October 30 opinion piece by the Australian’s foreign editor.

It is of concern that Mr Rudd has form in this area. Readers of this column with long memories might remember that Mr Rudd tittle-tattled about a heated exchange he witnessed between Mr Bush and Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony which he speculated was about the problems in Georgia.

Alarm bells rang back then. Serious leaders don’t behave like that. It had a “Gee whiz, I’m sitting with the big boys” element.

Cut ahead to last weekend and a report in Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph by Canberra journalist Glenn Milne, who, incidentally also has a regular column in the Australian.

“The leaking of a sensitive phone call between Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and US President George W. Bush, and inaccuracies about what was said, will have ongoing consequences for relationships between the two countries,” Milne reported.

“Senior diplomats at the highest levels of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have confirmed … that Mr Rudd’s indiscretions have put at risk Australia’s alliance with the US.”

Milne ended by breaking the news that Mitchell was one of the guests at the Kirribilli House dinner party that night and had not returned phone calls on Saturday which were obviously intended to ask about the origins of the published story.

There was no mention of the weekend debate about the contentious report in the Australian yesterday.

Readers of this column with long memories might also remember that Mitchell had difficulty last year disclosing in his paper the extent of his relationship with Mr Rudd. It eventually became public that the PM is godfather to one of his children.

While Mr Bush will be gone by January, the diplomats and senior civil servants who have had to paper over this mess go on forever. As a result, Barack Obama might be careful about what he says on the phone to Canberra. And Mr Rudd needs to work out which of his friends is the more important to Australia.

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