Mark Textor stokes fire with Indonesian Foreign Minister 'porn star' gibe; sack him, says Malcolm Fraser

November 21, 2013

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.''