Rudd had been looking for overseas governments to provide a direction that it has avoided sticking its neck out trying to generate at home.

While Rudd’s Indonesian solution looks like Howard’s Pacific one in practice, in political terms it indicates a shift.

Before a sunrise, there has to be a sunset.

Highlighting the coalition’s hypocrisy by contrasting its response to Hick’s detention at Guantanamo is a good example, but surely Dr Haneef’s case is a better one.

The media has followed the usual course when an Australian is detained anywhere north of here; that naturally they must be innocent and that international legal standards of decency, remarkably similar to our own, have been contravened.

Flashpoint No. 2

Friday, 10 July 2009   International relations   8 comments 

The detention by the Chinese government of an Australian businessman poses far more difficulties for Rudd than would be immediately apparent in the polls.

The coalition is desperately trying to hold on to a more fundamental plank in its policy than China-baiting.

The media has missed that it is not the illegal refugees that is the issue as much as the international context in which it is happening.

Chris Uhlmann must have clearly enjoyed London because even his anti-government cynicism was swept away by what came out of the G20. It is hard to see why.

If it is clear that there has a failure to find an international solution, it is bad news for Rudd because he doesn’t really have anything on the domestic front by way of a counter-crisis strategy.

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