Downgrading Down Under

Press, 1 April 1989, Page 20

Downgrading Down Under

From

lAN BRODIE

in Washington for the “Daily Telegraph”

GIVEN the importance of Australia to Washington, it would seem prudent to send an American diplomat of high calibre to Canberra. Australia is a strategically crucial ally. Missiletracking stations in the Outback are designed to double the warning time, from 15 to 30 minutes, of a Soviet nuclear attack on the American mainland.

Yet the man President Bush has chosen as his ambassador has no experience of these matters, nor of the delicate balance that needs to be nurtured with Mr Bob Hawke’s Labour government on economic affairs.

The appointee is Mr Mel Sembler, 58, a property developer who has built 30 shopping, centres in Florida. Having never set foot in Australia, his qualifications for the job are pecuniary. He gave at least SUSIOO,OOO to the Bush election fund and helped to raise another SUS3O million for the campaign and

inauguration celebrations. He cannot claim to be a close friend of the President, but he did dine with him once at a steak-house in Tampa. Australia, by contrast, sends fast-track career diplomats to run its embassy in Washington, but raised no protest when President Reagan reciprocated with a Cadillac dealer followed by the publisher of a leisure magazine. Now, however, Australians despair of the ambassadorship ever being treated as more than a sinecure for the President’s rich and loyal supporters. They are not alone. True to custom, and to the concern of professional diplomats, President Bush is appointing amateur ambassadors at a steady clip. Of the 22 envoys announced so far, only nine are career diplomats.

The outsiders include: Mr Peter Secchia, a Republican leader who fought off the election threat to Mr Bush in Michi-

gan from the television evangelist, Pat Robertson, and is being rewarded with the Rome posting; the investment banker Mr Walter Curley, a major New York fundraiser, who goes to Paris; and the Rev. Jerry Moore, a 70-year-old Baptist pastor who organised other black clergy for Bush, who is off to Lesotho.

A delightful posting awaits the hapless Mr Chic Hecht, who last year lost his senate seat for Nevada, where he once confused nuclear waste depositories with suppositories. He assumes the undemanding role of His Excellency at the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas.

By comparison, Britain must consider itself lucky to be getting Henry Catto. A distinguished commentator, director of television stations, newspapers and banks, he has also served as an executive at the Pentagon and director of protocol at the State Department.