Bush envoy poised to pick up diplomatic ball

Geoff Elliott meets the long-awaited new US ambassador to Australia, who may cause ripples at the MCG

29 Jul 2006 // It is only when sport is mentioned that Robert McCallum, George W. Bush's pick for ambassador to Australia, starts to lighten up. For more than 30 minutes in an interview with Australian media this week at the US Department of State, he sits rigidly in his chair, hands clasped before him. He barely moves until, finally, the ice is broken when AFL is mentioned.

"I want you to explain to me the rules and strategy of Australian rules football," says McCallum, an American football fan, suddenly animated. Has he seen it? "Oh, it's on the television here in DC. Gosh, those guys are huge and they have no pads and they are beating each other up. And there's a referee that's all of a sudden pointing at all these different people (McCallum's hands unclasp and he does a reasonable approximation of a goal umpire signalling a major) and I'm not sure whether he's scoring or whether they have committed a foul and they are being penalised."

McCallum, 60, a lawyer who grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, is sporting rimless thick glasses, a blue pinstripe suit and a twin US-Australia flag lapel pin.

A friend of Bush since he was 19, when they met at Yale University, McCallum has not been to Australia or seen much of Asia save for trips to Hong Kong, China and Japan.

But his appointment finally plugs an embarrassing 18-month absence of a US ambassador in Canberra to replace Tom Schieffer. Three earlier picks from Bush dropped out rather than face the daunting congressional nomination vetting process, which includes intense due diligence into a nominee's financial affairs.

"I recognise there has not been an ambassador since January 2005 and so I want to get there as quickly as I can," says McCallum, whose own appointment was held up amid a probe into how he handled a government prosecution of a tobacco case.

He stood accused of interfering with an anti-racketeering case at the end of an eight-month trial by requiring US Department of Justice lawyers to cut their demands for damages from $US130 billion ($170 billion) to $US10 billion. He was an assistant attorney-general.

McCallum explains to the Australian media that his decision had nothing to do with interference but was made to conform to another court ruling that dealt a "body blow" to the case. Senators dropped their objections when the justice department's Office of Professional Responsibility looked into it and found no wrongdoing.

In his interview, McCallum sticks closely to the diplomatic script, avoiding treading on any toes and extending the hand of friendship to everyone - even Australian Greens senator Bob Brown, who interrupted Bush at Parliament House in 2003, by the sounds of it - so he can land in Australia with his wife, Mimi, on August18 unencumbered with any controversy.

"I'm confident I will develop relationships with members of parliament who are active in all of the different parties," he says.

"Maybe I'll put out my hand to someone and they will refuse it, but that will be my loss if they do. One of my roles is to be available to receive from all corners of the political spectrum of Australia and the candid views of a particular political party, and I intend to make myself available to do so."

Asked how he regards former ambassador Schieffer's intervention into the Australian domestic political scene when he criticised former Opposition leader Mark Latham's stance on bringing home the troops from Iraq, McCallum plays - to use a sporting metaphor that would also cause the American some confusion - a straight bat.

"Internal Australian political affairs are just that," he says. "I'm confident no matter what political party happens to form the government in the commonwealth of Australia, we'll continue to have a very candid, robust and vigorous dialogue between our two counties and a very close relationship."

McCallum has been in intense "ambassador training", including state department sessions earlier this year after he was nominated. US-based academics with intimate knowledge of Australia gave McCallum a crash course.

Sources say McCallum took copious notes on everything from the AWB Iraq wheat scandal and optional preferential ballots to indigenous policies and Australian foreign policy. His tutors included Marvin Ott of the National Defence University, Robert Sutter of Georgetown University, John Higley from the University of Texas at Austin and Rhonda Evans Case at California's Claremont McKenna College.

"I feel that (from the seminars) I have got a good grounding in the fundamentals of what is going on in a very, very important relationship to the US with Australia and I'm eager to learn and experience that first hand," he says.

McCallum, a Rhodes scholar, rates his most important job while ambassador to be the "continued enhancement and nourishing of the military and intelligence areas between our

two countries".

"We are both vitally interested in economic prosperity and political stability and the enhancing of efforts to prevent terrorism within not just the east Asian-Pacific Islands theatre but around the world. We have in the past, and will in the future, co-operate very closely together in that joint effort."