Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

First, I appreciate the honourable member’s question and warmly thank him for the opportunity to deal with an issue that I notice he has raised in what I would have thought—if I may put forward the judgement—was an excessively partisan manner over recent times. If I may say so, it misjudges the Australian public. That is the mistake he makes: he misjudges the Australian public. I do stand by those statements that I made. We have of course reduced the number of military we have on the ground in East Timor quite substantially since that time. I think it would have been—

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