Peter Dutton’s memory is slightly wanting when it comes to ‘reckless’ foreign ministers

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton made great strides this week in his ongoing mission to push the Liberal Party past “right wing” to “right out of its damn mind”. He described Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s statements on Palestinian statehood as the most “reckless act of a foreign [affairs] minister I have seen in my 22 years”, which is an interesting way to refer to the longstanding bipartisan policy that a two-state solution is the best way to guarantee lasting peace between Israel and its neighbours. He also compared the societal impact of the October 9 pro-Palestine rally at the Sydney Opera House to that of the mass shooting in Port Arthur in 1996.

But even if we limit it to Dutton’s time in Parliament, we can think of some competition in the reckless foreign minister stakes.

Alexander Downer

A recommitment to what everyone already says they want — undertaken, most likely, as a distraction from Labor’s other failures in its policy towards the horror in Gaza — would be a strange target for such ire at the best of times. But Dutton’s contention that it’s the worst he’s heard in all his days is particularly bizarre given he was elected in 2001, at a time when Australia was hurtling towards some of the most catastrophic acts of foreign policy since Federation: the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Crikey has exhaustively reported, the right to declare war is ludicrously concentrated in Australia; so while there was cursory debate about the decision to join the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, nothing was going to stop then PM John Howard and then foreign minister Alexander Downer.

Among other things, in 2006 it was revealed that chemical weapons expert Dr John Gee, who worked with the US-led weapons hunter the Iraq Survey Group, resigned in March 2004 via a letter that warned the federal government that the hunt was “fundamentally flawed” and there was a “reluctance on the part of many here and in Washington to face the facts” that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. This joins a long list of warnings that the war was being undertaken on false pretexts that Howard and Downer received and, dare we say, recklessly disregarded.

You probably know the outcome — hundreds of thousands of dead, trillions of dollars wasted, the rise of ISIS and more.

Allegedly ordering the bugging of the Timor-Leste cabinet in 2004 may not count as reckless, given how powerless the tiny island nation was at the time, having recently come out of a long and brutal civil war. But maybe taking a job with Woodside — the primary beneficiary of the bugging — after leaving office does?

Stephen Smith and Bob Carr

In 2009, then foreign minister Stephen Smith hammered the Coalition both in Parliament and on the ABC with the accusation that it had put asylum seeker “children behind barbed wire”. Doesn’t sound that reckless, but at the time, any humane rhetoric made you a hostage to what your successors might decide is politically expedient.

Subsequent minister Bob Carr, meanwhile, made a similarly reckless declaration in 2012 that Julian Assange was releasing secrets “for the sake of being released without inherent justification”. He would eventually come to the view that we had a “right to know” what Assange helped reveal.

Marise Payne

Speaking of incendiary responses to bipartisan comments — in the early days of the COVID outbreak, then foreign minister Marise Payne called for an international inquiry into the origins of pandemic. It was backed by Labor and amplified with typical grace by the then PM Scott Morrison (who called for “weapons inspector” style investigations). China was predictably furious, accusing the government of “pandering” and sticking tariffs on Australian exports. It was the start of a very strained period between the Morrison government and Australia’s biggest trading partner that would last until the 2022 election.

Where do Wong’s comments sit in the history of ‘reckless’ actions by Australian foreign ministers? Any contenders we missed? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.