Penny Wong is VERY available today, which shows you just how excited Labor is over Peter Dutton’s latest over reach.

She was on Sky News this morning where she was asked:

Q: So what conversations have you had with your counterpart and what assurances have you been given?

Wong:

Good to be with you Pete. Well, we’ve learnt two things yesterday. One through the outreach of Richard and myself as well as our diplomats, it was confirmed by Indonesia that they are not contemplating any so-called Russian base or any Russian assets operating out of Indonesian territory. So that was made very clear to us. The second thing though that was confirmed is that Peter Dutton is really too aggro and too reckless to be Australia’s Prime Minister, because the most concerning thing about yesterday was the fact that he was willing to fabricate a statement by the President of Indonesia in order to make a domestic political point. Now, I think that is an extraordinarily reckless thing for a man who wants to be Prime Minister to do.

Q: When you say that Indonesia is not contemplating, does that mean a request was made or not by Russia?

Wong:

Well, I’ve made two points about that –first is, I’m obviously not going to go into all the discussions we have diplomatically. We don’t do that through the media. But I would say this to you, it is the case that there has been a longstanding relationship between Indonesia and Russia. It’s an historic relationship. They have had engagement. They’ve had engagement in terms of not just diplomatically, but also in terms of military equipment and hardware. So we’re well aware of the historic relationship. But what is important is to ensure we have a relationship with Indonesia where we can engage on issues, including the sorts of things that you saw yesterday. That’s what we’ve done. And it is so disappointing to see Mr Dutton prepared to be so reckless as to make the whole statement about what was said by the President of Indonesia.