Downer McClelland Debate

Downer: Labor are soft on people smuggling. Our bilateral trade agreements are awesome [not really]. We need to fight poverty in our regions (by not increasing the proportion of GDP as aid). Tries to take credit for drop in east Asian poverty. starts bashing Rudd. Keeps bashing Rudd. Labor hates developing countries and wants to plunge them into poverty. Nonsense about Peter Garrett was right. [muffled laughter from audience at Downer]. Claims Labor loves Bali bombers. [hahahaha], claims Iraq is improving. His voice breaks as he lies and cherry picks ridiculous statistics. We are winning the war on turr. Labor criticise us for being too tough. Claims we are a leader on climate change [hahaha god the man's a laugh a minute]. More rubbish [seriously, do they think they can just keep repeating things and they'll become true?]. Claims that giving the Indonesian govt. a pot of money will stop deforestation [haha]. Claims his foreign policy is built on Australian interests [oh, like aw?]. Blah blah, Labor inexperience, not only do the libs have special magic fairy dust to keep the economy growing they have magic dust to keep the terrorist at bay.

McClelland: Foreign policy has been bipartisan in the past. The first thing they did was stop being a good international citizen. We've lost our reputation, that's bad. Failed to ratify Kyoto, they've made us international pariahs. National security? Invading Iraq made us less safe. A better mate keeps his mates out of stupid fights. No WMD, a little wise counsel could have prevented this. 600,000 dead, 4 million displaced for Downer's “success”. Iraq is a terrorism hotbed. They knew it was going to increase terrorism (Csgrove and Keelty). What happened to months instead of years? They never had a plan for the mission. WMD to democracy, to protecting the Japanese, to oil to everything else. We're the only govt. that doesn't have a plan. Busts out AWB! 300 million had been paid by the AWB to Saddam right when our troops were risking their lives in the gulf. Downer was the minister responsible and is to blame for rorting sanctions. Downer claims he didn't know anything. We were Saddam's biggest bribers, no one has been held accountable. Frazer said awb wouldn't have happened on his watch because there was ministerial accountability.Iif Labor is elected we'll make sure we have our own voice and we'll focus on our region.

Sandra O'Malley AAP: Downer, you talked about international relationships? Will you stay on longer than you have?

Downer: I've been around for a long time... blathers on. Claims McCelland has no vision, says he has exciting visions for the future [who shall I bribe next?]

McClelland: Leadership speculation.

Brendan Nicholson, Age: Downer, when you've talked about Iraq you say, whatever you might think of our decision to go in, do you have any personal regrets? if you had to do it over again, would you? McClelland, I'm too dumb to realise you plan on removing only combat troops, please explain.

Downer: it was all about removing Saddam, things in iraq are wonderful! That's why I have to visit secretly! Invading Iraq was an awesome idea, everyone should get behind the US!

McClelland: Iraq has been a massive disaster, humanitarian, strategic, made terrorists bolder etc. Total clusterfuck. We're withdrawing our combat troops. We'll be keeping transport stuff, aricraft and ships.

Jeff barkers fin rev: A whole bunch of people argued for the elimination of nukes. Downer, you got rid of Labor's Canberra Commission initiative to get rid of nukes. You're a lot of talk about ending nukes but you sell uranium to non-NPT nations.

Downer bitches about not getting a turn previously. He did but he's a whiny little so and so. his thin, reedy wails continue till the moderator tells he had his turn.

Downer: Waffles and lies. We didn't get rid of the Canberra commission, we ignored it. More nonsense about the nuclear test ban treaty, violated by France, Pakistan and India. [Downer rejects your reality and substitutes his own]. We can't tell our best friends to talk about getting rid of nukes, [Despite saying that we could use our influence in his opening speech].

McClelland: we should be trying to ban nukes.

Graham Develle? Australian: Fiji, Solomons, PNG all basket cases. what are you going to about it?

Mclelland: The govt.'s tried but they haven't been able to develop ministerial level relationships. No one in our region likes us. We should stop reacting and sit down and develop progressive solutions with them. We have a partnership centre so we can cooperate.

Downer: Those Polys only respect power! You don't want to look weak or the nig nogs will walk all over you. Claims that he's proud he's pissed off all our neighbours because you have to teach them what's what. [I can't see how patronising ,states fiji has a 'coup culture', our neighbours hasn't worked]. He wrote Somare a letter [wow]. You need to bash these people around. [the man is a policy disaster area, South Australians should be even more ashamed of themselves].

unknown: What are acceptable means for interrogating terrorist suspects? Torture?

Downer: We have our own standards, [yes, ask David Hicks]. Blah blah, [ignores the fact that we keep handing them over to be tortured]. We're better than the terrorists. so long as we aren't sawing people's heads off on tv, we're the good guys.

McClelland: All torture does is create recruits. Even the Israeli supreme court ruled it illegal. Terrorists can only kill and destroy, only we can destroy our countries.

Unknown: Downer, you said you can speak French. Please speak some [hahahahaha] [laughter].

Downer: I can't speak French, ducks and weaves. He obviously can't speak a word of the language. Oh my god, what a wanker. He's twisting himself into knots. This is hilarious! claims he doesn't want to show off and impress us with his leet Francais SKILLZ. says [couldn't hear, double checked on video] "it's true if you speak French but I'm the minister for foreign affairs in Australia and he must speak French if you are Australian". [I knew it. You'd get thrown out of my standard 6 French class for something like that. And the pronounciation! Tourist French. It's an insight into how much of a pompous, self inflated, bumptious arse Downer is that he feels he can hold a candle to someone who can actually speak a language fluently while he is barely at schoolboy level] Everyone claps because they have no idea what he said, least of all Downer. His knowledge of the French language could be written on a very small matchbox.

McClelland: Europe is important.

unknown: will you accept Vietnam was a mistake? do you also agree in Iraq and 'nam intelligence was doctored. Since you dodged the previous question, would you do Iraq over again?

Downer: I did answer the question. I thought Iraq was the right decision. I'd kill all those people all over again. if Saddam had reestablished his doom nuke he could have strapped it to Godzilla and used it to threaten the world. Vietnam, dodges the question. The Liberals, we'd probably still be in Vietnam now.

McClelland: even the secdef in the US has said Iraq is a mistake. Hans Blix wanted a few more weeks to possibly save millions of lives. Iraq has been a disaster. thinks we have a right to mid-east oil.

unknown: [keep yelling at the radio]. You've lost interest in our region thanks to Iraq. McClelland, will we have a more independent foreign policy?

McClelland: Iraq has been a distraction. What about turr in the Philippines? most of al'Qaeda is in our region. We aim to be an independent voice for Australia. it'll be a partnership between equals.

downer: I'm always talking about Asia. we've given lots of money to Indonesia [that's part of the problem]. Claims there's been less turr in Asia [wha??]. Boring waffle.

closing:

McClelland: We'll reflect the values of the Australian people [please don't, i'm not interested in eternal war every time someone gets pick pocketed in Bali]. we'll do Kyoto and get rid of nukes, blah blah climate change. blah blah, we love America.

Downer: Everything's fine. Only we have the magic fairy dust that keeps everything fine. we'll tell you when it's safe to change. Booga booga union bosses. Begs voters to 'keep the team'.

Well that was painful. South Australia, fuck you. Stop voting in half-witted Downers. Please god, tell me he'll be retiring. and McClelland is even more boring than Stephen Smith. Are Labor really serious about foreign policy if they have a piece of beige linoleum tile as spokesman? I mean I know the Liberals just need someone to hold Bush's cheeks open for our dear leader but I was hoping for better from Labor. 0 points. I hope you ingrates appreciate that I'll never get that hour back. (If someone has some information about McClelland that'll really wow me, please let me know).