JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, is the deployment of 15 troops to Sudan a preliminary deployment? Are there going to be more?

PRIME MINISTER: Well I wouldn�t rule out more but equally by saying that I�m not concealing the fact that we have already decided to send more. You get my meaning? You�ve got to be careful with these things.

- Press conference, Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, 20.4.05

This is the only reference I can find of John Winston Howard discussing the crisis in Sudan anywhere over the past twelve months. And that piece of doublespeak only when a reporter brought it up. A search for "darfur" on either the Prime Ministerial website or under speeches etc by Howard in Federal Parliament comes up blank.

And yes, the Australian Government has contributed a massive 15 troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Sudan. Here's the press release from April 20 issued by Defence Minister Senator Robert "it was an interview not an interrogation" Hill and Global Village Idiot Alexander Downer. (And the bipartisan support from the ALP.)

Our Prime Minister does so much (or, in reality, so little) that we as Australians have every right to be ashamed about. His apathy towards the world's worst humanitarian crisis is but one of them.