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Peter Dutton denies he made false statements after being accused of verballing the Indonesian president over reports Russia wants to station war planes in Australia’s northern neighbour.
to Australian ministers and diplomats, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said, following a report Moscow had sought permission from Jakarta to station military planes.
But before any statements had been made by the Indonesian president, Dutton incorrectly insinuated Prabowo Subianto had publicly announced the request before adding he’d seen commentary from an Indonesian spokesperson.
The Opposition leader asked on Tuesday: “Did the prime minister know about this before it was publicly announced by the president of Indonesia?”
Dutton said on Wednesday he was referring to a report on the military website Janes, which claimed Russia asked to base long-range aircraft at the Manuhua air force base on an island in Indonesia’s Papua province.
“The reference I made was obviously to what is a very credible military website and that talked about government sources and the Prabowo government sources,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
Indonesia said the report was incorrect and the Kremlin declined to comment on the matter directly, saying there was a lot of fake news.
The Liberals sought to attack the government for overseeing a diplomatic failure and scrambling to confirm media reports rather than being on the front foot as senior frontbenchers dodged questions about Dutton’s comments.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese rebutted the criticism, saying: “you’re assuming the Janes report is correct and there is no basis for you assuming that”.
Albanese went on the attack against Dutton for falsely claiming the Indonesian president had made a statement when he hadn’t.
“What we saw from Peter Dutton yesterday was an extraordinary overreach, he verballed the president of Indonesia,” he said.
Dutton “consistently dials it up to 11 at every opportunity”, Albanese added, while Wong accused him of being “too aggro and too reckless to be Australia’s prime minister” as he lied about a statement to make a political point.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers went further, saying: “it’s a disqualifying moment whenever he lies in ways that are bordering on the pathological”.
“Peter Dutton is too risky, he’s too reckless at the worst possible time.”
Dutton responded “no” when asked if his comments were irresponsible.
But Albanese, Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles all refused to definitively answer whether Indonesia confirmed Russia made a request.
Albanese said he wouldn’t provide running commentary on private talks, while the two ministers said details of diplomatic conversations wouldn’t be canvassed in public after confirming they had been told Indonesia wasn’t considering a base.
Liberal campaign spokesperson James Paterson said earlier it was appropriate Dutton responded to questions at a press conference about the issue in a political campaign, but sidestepped questions about whether he should have waited to be briefed.
“Peter was referring to media reports in a breaking news story,” Paterson said.
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