The Panda round of talks at APEC has finished and a deal has been struck.
Mr Downer said he played a pivotal role in securing the pandas so that they could breed in Australia as part of a global survival program.
“I love animals and I think the giant panda is one of the truly great animals of the world – they’re an endangered species,” Mr Downer told the Nine Network.
“It is true that I’ve been working with the Chinese in my position not only as an Adelaide MP, but also as the Foreign Minister, to try to get them to lend to us, an Australian zoo, two giant pandas.
“And they’ve agreed to do it to my own home zoo which my own grandfather was once the president of, so I’m kind of excited about it.”
It’s a win win. What will be the next big deal announced?
Ha! It won’t look like such a good deal when the whole country is wracked with panda flu! It’s inevitable, y’know – we won’t put them through quarantine, for fear of offending an Important Trading Partner. Stock up on vaccine now, before it’s too late!
â??I love animals and I think the giant panda is one of the truly great animals of the world – theyâ??re an endangered species,â?? Mr Downer told the Nine Network.
Extinction empathy.
Maybe this one…& friends
http://cixar.com/tale/art/monster/panda-assassin-400.png
Try the pork barrel.
Na , that won’t work, their onto us.
What about pandering to the electorate?
Go for it Lexy. We gotta do something.
Does Australia have the bamboo forest required?
Phil:
Geez!!!!
With all the experts on things Chinese at the government’s beck-and-call, with all the DFAT staff who have had postings to China, with all the brilliant strategists in Treasury, Defence and whatever …. surely somebody could have briefed Mr A Downer that such an offer might emerge [especially if he was the one encouraged to make the request!] and what the implications would be and what options were available to him. Surely all of them weren’t suffering from severe shyness or all out-to-lunch?
b.t.w., thought it was three you needed, not just two …. but then I’m no zoologist.
Phil; they will have three,the third will be Alexander, Panda lover extrodinaire. Just to see the three of them romping in the bamboo will bring visitors to Adelaide in their thousands – well one or two any-way.
A spot of animal husbandry will take Alexanders tiny brain away from the contemplation of life without foreign affairs and thus save him from serious self harm.
Has anyone else noticed how Adelaide is fast becoming the AisaPac epicenter of the US military-industrial complex? The whole SA economy seems to be riding on military contruction and espionage deals. God only knows what’s happening out around Woomera these days.
Don’t tell me someone drew Lord Downer’s attention to the documents about the panda exchange? I thought he was much too busy to be worrying about things like that.
Kevin Rudd has upstaged anything Downer has done with his speech of welcome to Hu Jintao partly in Mandarin. (Seeth seeth Dolly and Ratty)
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22373556-2,00.html
Chinese delegation all beaming with delight so it’s been reported. An ang moh leader with some class at international gatherings with the Middle Kingdom in attendance: at last.
Downer ruined the panda story with his traditional buffoonery and gaucherie:
Hope the Chinese don’t make an alliterative mistake with the 3rd last word. (But 89898989 to Mr Downer–just a Chinese saying.)
Kow-towing to our new masters, are we, Peter? You’d be pleased with that.
What tribute do you think we should pay to the Middle Kingdom, as is the convention of diplomatic relations with them?
But I s’pose one gaucherie deserves another:
It’s not a question anymore Dolly of “who you know” for panda breeding, it’s a question of Hu Yabang.
That’s easy GregM, John Howard’s head!
How the worm has turned Greg M. I thought that these same masters had produced the economic growth that your mates Howard and Costello claim as their own.
You don’t get high and write for the GG occasionally do you Greg M?
Well, Peter, when you’re kow-towing just remember to keep your head down and your bum up. But you know that already, don’t you, with your affinity with totalitarian regimes.
Adelaide:
the city of corpses, serial killer capital of the world, the one that salman rushdie declared “a perfect setting for a Stephen King novel or horror film”;
the one with highest number of missing persons/unsolved murders per capita than any other city;
the setting of the “Children’s Zoo Massacre” in ’85 when someone broke in one night, slaughtered ALL, repeat ALL the animals, hung them upside-down and left pentagrams in their blood all over the place. They never caught the people that did it.
SA: Snowtown, the Beaumont Children, Truro, The Family, Dr Duncan, the Bartholomews.
And Alexander Downer.
There must be something in the water to account for the prevalence of these monstrosities. It can’t be the Coopers.
If I were those pandas, I’d be afraid, very afraid.
And if I were Kev, whom Downer loathes with a near-psychotic fascination, in Annabelle Crabbes observation, I’d be making some security plans in case of winning: Alex could very well ose it, and when they go off the rails in South Australia, they really do, see above.
So true. A true child of Adelaide.
Your strawman GregM, you knock it down.
An appreciation of China’s increasing clout in the world, understanding its culture, its past (and weaknesses) and its language will be a great boon to Australia when Rudd likely becomes the leader of this country.
I saw some of the beginnings of China’s internal development leading to the astronomical export boom when I worked there in the early 1990s. These guys will be the world’s next super power within the next 10 or so years. Their businesspeople will never allow China to revert to the ideological crap of a recycled Mao–the smell of the hard currency by exports is too strong. The co-opting of such business people into government is proceeding rapidly–very similar to Singapore and the PAP, for which China has been an avid pupil.
It appears that GregM like Downer, Howard et al possibly suffers from what Chinese call the red eye disease—pure envy. That Rudd has upstaged Howard and Dolly at APEC.
So GregM, we should stop doing business with a reforming but yes “totalitarian” regime which has saved your mate Howard’s economic hide? Ditto ditch the pseudo democracy of Singapore where the PAP party always gets 95% of the seats? (Personally I think Singapore’s political chicanery sucks and the Asian values stuff from Lee/Goh Chock Tong/Lee minor is disingenuous BUT their business savvy is sublime.)
Confucian values reign in both nations–spitting the dummy and applying labels of “totalitarian” changes nothing. Only engagement, recognition of their legitimate national interests (trade, Taiwan) and embracing their students, language, business people (who link all over the world); and most importantly historical baggage will result in long term benefits for all. Containment can never work against China. Students from Beijing University however loveable and democratic can never run China.
(On the Mandate of Heaven theory of Chinese governance, there is a Ratty version BTW, the inherited Mandate from “Ming” Heaven.)
Chonnguor hen how!!!
Goodness no, Peter. If you have ever read anything I have written on this blog you will have seen that I am a champion of China’s growth and our part in it. It is the greatest example of people rising out of dire poverty in the history of the world. I applaud it and it makes me happy.
I don’t, however, think that to be part of it we should place our heads on the ground and our bums in the air, as you seem to do. Then I am a realist and not a romantic like you. I have my self respect and dignity and I intend to keep it.
You, of course, are quite entitled to take a different path.
Peter Kemp [at 7:45pm]:
Was that 98 98 98 ?
No, that’s an exclusive prerogative of neocons and Ratty, towards Bush.
Shorter GregM: Watch me perform “the warming glow” of the oh so self righteous.
Grahame it’s 898989 ie pronounced “ba jiu” and repeated has a Chinese mandarin meaning which in English would be represented by the letters U and F, but not necessarily in that order
(Used for texting on the mobile phone or English letters to Mandarin speakers [not recommended] when you are not happy.)
Peter said:
All except for 23 million Taiwanese people who have the audacity to expect some measure of self-determination, Peter. That they already have an ‘independent’ state in all but name would seem to me grounds to at least consider their “legitimate national interest” also. Call me a hopeless romantic if you will, but your “everybody wins!” boosterism obscures some pretty stark choices in which everybody certainly does not win.
(And as you end your post with “Chonnguor hen how!!!” [ä¸å?½å¾?好 ï¼?China is great!], I don’t think I’m being unfair to call it boosterism.)
Which is not to say I disagree about engaging with China! I am fluent in Mandarin, have lived in China and Taiwan for five of the last seven years, majored in Chinese history at university, and have a great appreciation for the country and its people. I just think doing away with the polite fiction of an actually-existing “One China” – said by the PRC to exist in the present rather than the future – would make resolving the issue a bit more tractable.
yet…
The students from BeiDa be devastated when they find out, as they and their colleagues from other elite institutions are just that fearless managerial business elite you were lauding above! That you think they can do one, but have no chance (‘never’) of doing the other is a little confusing for me. And the latter sentence is as simplistic (the protests in May-June 1989 were not simply about parachuting in ‘democracy’) as it is patronising (‘lovable’). I applaud your obvious interest and passion in China, homilies to China’s embrace of western consumerism on the one hand vs. the intractability of ‘Oriental Despotism’ on the other hand doesn’t really get us past the crudest kind of stereotypes.
that last sentence is missing a ‘but’ and the ‘doesn’t’ should be a ‘don’t’. Sorry, its late…
Pandas are notorious for being difficult fuckers, in every sense of the term.
If this Downer-enabled couple don’t get it on, will we be treated to sight of our Foreign Minister edging into their enclosure, a turkey baster of rare ursine ejectulation held gamely in front of him and with one eye and twice the smile aimed at the cameras? Cooing seductively to them in fishnet stockings?
I mean of course the Foreign Minister is in fishnet stockings, not the pandas. Obviously.
Convincing the mainland of that will take some doing Scott and it will be interesting to see Rudd’s take on it in future. Perhaps someone here will do a “China everything” post here soon (hint hint) and I could respond without derailing this Panda thread further. My theory is that China is much too big and intractable to be a democracy anytime soon. The best that could be hoped for is some sort of Singapore style, Confucian flavoured pseudo-democratic autocracy (with opposition cruelled by defamation suits.) Interesting that Taiwan became democratic despite the KMT.
Back to Pandas, I like your scenario Nabs but wouldn’t he have to do something with a male Panda first, twice as funny, if not criminal, in a Monica Lewinsky sense?
Oh Dear, seems like the two pandas had previously been promised to the Gold Coast. Looks like the Ministers are working against each other.
Oh now that is funny. Just about this Govt does at the moment turns to shit electorally so wouldn’t it be funny if the Coalition lost critical Qld votes over this Panda gazzumping?
Pandagate 11?
Heh!
Here’s one for the nostalgic:
<img src="http://www.ausculture.com/blog/images/PANDAGATE(2).jpg"
Nice work Kim. I managed to track down the transcript of yesterdays of The World at Noon, on Pandagate 11. Seems that Lexys grandaddy was President of the zoo and more.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2007/s2025763.htm
KEVIN EVANS: These are very young animals, one the female is only 12 months old. She isn’t even sexually mature yet. So when they arrive we certainly will be doing everything to ensure they have conditions to breed successfully here.
NICK HARMSEN: But they may require some encouragement. The animals are notoriously shy, and zoo staff overseas have tried all sorts of things to promote panda procreation including artificial insemination and even pornography.
Underage panda action and panda prOn. Has this thang been thought out?
Has Steve Fielding been alerted?
joe2, I guess I should post a link for those who missed Pandagate 1:
http://www.redrag.net/topic/pandagate/
It’s not for the fainthearted though!
Good Kim, like the serious bloggy journos we are, not only do we need to break the cutting edge stories but also provide the critical background, as well.
Heh!
Aaaah, the golden days of blogging.
Peter Kemp:
My oath not in that order!
L-O-L
Nabakov [at 12:06]:
Excellent. Three’s company. You can sell the tickets to the event if I can have the softdrink-and-lollies concession and the film rights; we’ll make a fortune!