Turnbull: Don’t move embassy
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has warned the Government to expect a negative reaction from Indonesia if Australia follows the United States by shifting its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Turnbull spoke to reporters after meeting Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo on Bali to discuss a bilateral free trade deal.
“The President expressed to me . . . the very serious concern held in Indonesia about the prospect of the Australian Embassy in Israel being moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Turnbull told ABC in an interview aired yesterday. “There’s no question that were that move to occur, it would be met with a very negative reaction in Indonesia.” He added: “This is after all the largest . . . majority-Muslim country in the world, so we have to be very clear-eyed about that and we have to take into account Australia’s national interest and our interests in the region when we . . . consider decisions like this.”
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday that no decision had been made yet on the embassy’s location.
Morrison sent his predecessor to represent Australia at a climate change conference in Bali because of Turnbull’s close personal rapport with the Indonesian leader, who had been disappointed that Turnbull’s Government colleagues replaced him in August in response to poor opinion polling.
Turnbull said Australia should stick with a policy of more than 40 years that its embassy should be in Tel Aviv.
Morrison, a long-time ally of Turnbull who had argued against replacing him in a leadership ballot of government lawmakers, floated the idea of shifting the embassy days before a byelection in a Sydney electorate with a large Jewish population.
The Government lost the byelection, forced by Turnbull’s resignation from Parliament, and its singleseat majority in the House of Representatives.
“Australia will always make our decisions on our foreign policy based on our interests and we’ll do that as a sovereign nation,” Morrison said. “We’ll consult, we’ll listen to others, but at the end of the day . . . I will always put our interests first.”