One of the Liberal Party's most senior
advisers has issued a series of
embarrassing and racially loaded
remarks about top Indonesian
government figures just as Tony Abbott
was trying to limit the damage from the
phone tapping affair.

The comments threatened to inflame
sensitive relations between Canberra
and Jakarta at a time when Mr Abbott
was moving to reassure his
counterpart, President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono, that Australia regrets any
offence caused by the reports of phone
tapping.

With the row between the two countries
escalating, Liberal Party pollster and
prominent conservative barracker Mark
Textor published a succession of
abusive comments, with one likening
Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister
Marty Natalegawa to a ''1970s porn
star''.

In the comment on Twitter, since
deleted by the self-styled digital shock-
jock, Mr Textor attacked the Indonesian
Foreign Minister: ''Apology demanded
from Australia by a bloke who looks like
a 1970s Pilipino [sic] porn star and has
ethics to match,'' he tweeted, along
with the hashtag ''#Fairfax demands
appeasement''.

In another, the opinionated Liberal
insider asked: ''What sort of head of
state communicates with a head of a
neighbouring government by twitter
FFS? SBY''.

In a further tweet on the microblogging
site, Mr Textor pointed out that the
2009 phone tapping incident revealed
by the whistleblower Edward Snowden
had occurred on Labor's watch,
suggesting crudely, ''Maybe SBY uses
some sort of weird-ass ancient
calendar''.

But he also appeared to justify the
phone tapping of the Indonesian
President and his wife as well as eight
other senior figures with the tweet:
''Last time I looked no Indonesians were
ever bombed in Australia.''

He published pictures of the Bali
bombers under the tweet: ''Nothing to
see here.''

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman
Tanya Plibersek slammed the
comments and immediately called for
Mr Abbott to distance himself and the
government from the Textor remarks.
''These comments are disgraceful,'' she
told Fairfax Media.

''The Prime Minister must disassociate
himself, the Liberal Party, and the
Australian government from them
immediately and unequivocally.''
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm
Fraser also weighed in on Twitter,
demanding that Mr Textor be sacked as
the Liberals' pollster.

Mr Textor has himself advocated the
use of Twitter by employers as a way of
gauging a person's true character.
''Inevitably, Twitter users publish
content about things that interest
them. So instead of reading a CV with
the usual list of interests - reading,
movies and current affairs - you can
drill down to what they actually think.''

www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/mark-textor-stokes-fire-with-indonesian-foreign-minister-porn-star-gibe-sack-him-says-malcolm-fraser-20131120-2xvy5.html