Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the question from the Leader of the Opposition. I would have thought the first responsibility of a government of any political persuasion is to ensure that our principal foreign relationships are in good working order. Therefore, one of the first decisions undertaken by this government, within a week or so of taking office, was to travel to Indonesia. For what purpose? To ratify the Kyoto protocol, something which I seem to recall it took you a long, long time not to do.

The second decision that the government took was to visit Dili in East Timor. That was important because, when it came to the challenges of security for that country and the further deployment of military personnel and police personnel, it was absolutely the responsible thing to do to assist our nearest neighbour in need. Then it came to our neighbourhood—that is, the South Pacific—which the honourable member for Mayo has displayed such a comprehensive lack of interest in for the last decade or so.

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