Posted on October 22, 2009
AAP
APC CANBERRA, Oct 22 AAP - About $1 million will be spent ferrying foreign officials about on Sydney Harbour and accommodating them in top notch hotels, a parliamentary hearing has been told.
Liberal senator Russell Trood has declared the Asia-Pacific Community Conference "an exercise in the prime minister's foreign policy vanity".
More than 100 officials and experts are being brought to Australia for the conference in December, at the expense of taxpayers.
"The idea of an Asia-Pacific Community has received no support around the region, and is dead in the water as far as most of our neighbours and friends are concerned," Senator Trood said.
"Notwithstanding the fact that there is no indication as to how this proposal would relate to the already existing elements of the regional architecture, President Obama's representative to the region has all but dismissed the idea of the US joining APC."
A Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade bureaucrat admitted to the Senate estimates hearing that the officials visiting for the conference would stay in "very, very nice" hotels.
Senator Trood warned the conference would run down the already skinny departmental budget.
"But it is foolish and irresponsible to spend the taxpayers' money on a hopeless venture Mr Rudd does not have the good grace to walk away from.
"Only an idealistic multilateralist with the arrogance of Kevin Rudd would seriously imagine that Australia is capable of winning over regional support for such a grandiose plan."
AAP pv/sb/apm
(c) 2009 Australian Associated Press Pty Ltd.