There’s something a little undignified about former ministers and prime ministers lecturing their successors. After all, their successors operate in a different environment from their predecessors. What’s more, when you reflect on the past you somehow remember things more favourably than they were.
So let me be really positive about my Liberal successor, Julie Bishop. She took a courageous decision to oppose outright the biased resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate why Israeli troops had fired on and killed about 60 Palestinians on the Israel/Gaza border.
In doing that, she applied the test I always applied to the numerous Middle East resolutions put up in every imaginable UN forum; support the resolution if you think it will help the peace process. If you don’t and, what’s more, if it’s just a political stunt, then oppose it.
So let’s try to understand what’s going on here.
Read the article by Alexander Downer in the Australian Financial Review.