Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer is a Liberal, which means he's a conservative. Things are upside down in Australia.
Turns out it’s not just American liberals who expect the government to solve all their problems.
Alexander Downer, former Australian Foreign Minister, wrote a scathing and hilarious column that ran in all the Aussie papers last week. Here’s part of what he said:
After about 10 minutes as foreign minister I was a little surprised to learn I was “responsible” for miscreant Australians who got into trouble in foreign countries.
No, no, no, don’t get it wrong – drug traffickers, drunks, kleptomaniacs and fraudsters weren’t responsible for their own stupidity – I was.
It’s about time that great nanny in Canberra, the Federal Government, turned around and told people they are responsible for their own decisions.
Downer tells the story of Australia evacuating 5000 of its citizens from Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah war:
We were lucky. The Australian ambassador, a petite, charming professional called Lyndall Sachs, worked day and night chartering ferries and providing comfort to the evacuees, who hadn’t cared about the travel advisories, and whisked them to safety.
It was one of the great achievements of an Australian diplomat. Almost single handedly, she managed to get around 5000 Australians to Cyprus and Turkey.
We then chartered planes to take them back to Australia. I hope they built shrines to her. Some did, at least metaphorically.
But some just whinged (complained). They felt seasick on the ferry and that was our fault. Could they get frequent flyer points for the free flight back to Australia? And all this cost around $30 million dollars – your dollars.
I’ll tell you this – I didn’t get 5000 emails of thanks but I got plenty of abuse because we weren’t fast enough, the ferries didn’t go from their port of choice and we were slow because we were racist, and so on. I mean, we’d warned them and told them not to go to the south of Lebanon. They went all the same. And when the proverbial hit the fan it was, you guessed it, “our fault”.
To paraphrase Downer’s bottom line: Shut up, grow up, and if you’re in a foreign country, don’t act up.
Good advice for Americans who travel overseas. Or to New Orleans.
Source: AdelaideNow.com
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Sure, but the occassions when the federal government has intervened have, generally, been extraordinary.
For example, a 36 year old mum was recently arrested in Thailand and served with a 6 month prison sentence for stealing a bar mat. The Aussie government contacted the Thai authorities and she was allowed to return home.
Earlier this year another Aussie, author Harry Nicolaides, was sentenced to three years (down from an initial six) because a passage in his book allegedly insulted the Thai monarchy.
Then there’s the ‘Bali 9′, heroin smugglers who were travelling to Indonesia. Australian Federal Police knew they were carrying drugs overseas, tipped off the Indonesian authorities, and now they face death, probably by firing squad.
Not all laws are equal, and personally I believe the government is obligated to intervene when its citizens are threatened with punishment that, by reasonable standards, is excessive.
Sure, it’s important to follow each country’s laws and customs when overseas, but sometimes the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.
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The F@#$ing Adminsitrators are little muslim B****es
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Okay, Nathan, now you see what you did? You were doing okay on this other article until you started flipping out this morning over there. And now the real you is coming out. I’ll leave this comment here so people can see what our university system is producing.