I would certainly encourage any colleague or indeed anybody making comments around sensitive foreign policy matters to pose a couple of questions, is the making of those comments in a public way necessary? Is it helpful to Australia's national interests?

Simon Birmingham

Categorized in : World

We're not doing this as some sort of lapdog of the United States, you'll see there are some marked differences between some of the things that the Australian Government has said and some of the commentary coming out of the United States and that's because we take our own analysis, our own evidence, our own advice and we will take this issue through to the World Health Assembly.

Simon Birmingham

They believe they are viable and have strong cash positions ... but we want to make sure we maintain that confidence in the airlines.

Simon Birmingham