Chinga
tu madre,
Señor

Downer the DFAT brat gets revenge
Harold Hark
3 May 2002

Alexander "Little Lord" Downer stamped his little foot at Santiago's International Airport in March last year screaming, "Where's my carriage? I demand to know where my carriage is!" Adjusting the fish net stockings concealed under his trousers--the wretched things were always wedging up his tender arse, not to mention cramping his tee-hee-hee-hee's--Australia's Foreign Minister resolved then and there to sack career diplomat and Australia's Ambassador to Chile, John Campbell, for failing to greet him in the manner he was accustomed to. "I'll show him," the incensed dignitary muttered.

Stepping gingerly into the back seat of a--shudder--taxi for the long ride into the city, Lord Downer was assailed by the stench of humanity that reeked from its every crevice. He was about to weep from the humiliation of it all when he remembered how much he had actually enjoyed being humiliated during hazing rituals at Newcastle-on-Tyne all those years ago. A fugue state of flushed reminiscence was soon cut short by the sudden ache of his "hee-hees" owing to the expansion of his wilful "tee-hee" in the cramped quarters of those darn fish nets. His moans of painful ecstasy changed to moans of indignity at the present circumstance, and especially from the hangover he was enduring from a tango party in Buenos Aires the night before.

The dreadful mix-up had started that morning when fog at the airport back in Argentina had forced cancellation of his scheduled flight. An earlier flight was about to depart but, as all champagne class tickets were booked, Master Downer was forced to fly--the word can barely be uttered--economy class. Stamping his little foot for the first time that day, he shrieked, "I can't possibly be seen in what amounts to steerage. Don't you know who I am?" "No, Señor," answered the ticket seller. "Well, for your information I am the representative of the Queen's colony in Australia and, as such, I am not allowed to be treated this way." "¡Qué pena, Señor!" sympathised the man handing him his ticket. "But it says economy class!" "Si, Señor."

Little Lord Downer stamped his foot again and flounced down the tunnel with grand hauteur, just like he'd always imagined a the Queen would do under such circumstances. Glancing disdainfully at the swarthy riffraff all around him, he muttered, "We don't allow your sort back home."

Sadly, Ambassador Campbell, unaware of the flight change, was sitting patiently with his wife and a few Chilean officials at Santiago airport awaiting Lord Downer's arrival, when a protocol officer rushed in to inform him that the Grand Ponce had arrived half an hour earlier.

For his unwitting inattentiveness, Campbell was removed from his post the following September and has subsequently been refused further diplomatic roles. This to a man who held eight diplomatic posts in 36 years, including Ambassadorships to Israel, Geneva, and Laos.

It seems that in spite of glowing endorsements of Campbell from staff at the Santiago mission, as well as from Finance and Administration Minister Nick Minchin, who visited afterwards, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, allegedly through the intervention of Alexander "Little Lord" Downer saw fit to recall him.

As Cameron Stewart says, "In short, Campbell believes that a mix-up over a taxi ended his diplomatic career, which began when Downer was a boy in high school."

(Based on an article by Cameron Stewart, "Last Tango in Santiago", The Australian, 20-21/4/02.)

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