"I've never heard more hogwash in my life," was one haymaker. "It's the old story - the Left is great at narrative of how bad everybody else is," was another.

Australia's top diplomat was introduced by Stephen Deady, the former top trade negotiator who now directs DFAT's operations in New South Wales and will play a big role in arranging next year's APEC meetings.

Minister Downer gave us an insight into the formulation of a more interventionist policy in the troubled South Pacific after decades of Canberra pouring in money but mostly leaving the region to find its own way. The change came in a matter of months as events in the Solomon Islands in 2003 shifted the government from being a nail-biting observer of the mayhem in Honiara to becoming the leader of a 2,200-strong international intervention force that rushed up Honiara's historic Red Beach with a mandate to save the former British colony from itself.

Before the first military engagement in the South Pacific since the Second World War, Minister Downer had rejected the notion of sending in troops. "The fundamental problem is that foreigners don't have answers for the deep-seated problems afflicting the Solomon Islands," Minister Downer said. "And for how many years would such an occupation have to continue? What would be the exit strategy?" What changed his mind was a tipping point where not doing anything seemed worse than doing something. "It's heartbreaking that you have resources that you could use but you can't use them," he said, noting the flak the West received for acting late on Rwanda, the Balkans and Sudan.

"I think this more activist approach has its downsides, has its disadvantages -- I don't walk away from that -- but on the other hand I think the alternatives are even worse, so we just have to sort of stick it out and just keep working to make it happen." The Solomons adventure went surprisingly well at first, but eventually ran into the sorts of I-told-you-so problems that were foreseen.

"We get politically attacked, abused, denigrated," Minister Downer admitted. "A lot of the political elite hate us for it but the ordinary people would just be appalled if we left and let the country disintegrate. I also know that ordinary people appreciate enormously what ordinary Australians do." What seemed certain from Downer's unburdening is that an enormous amount of thought would go into any intervention in Papua New Guinea. Helping the half-million in the Solomons is proving very difficult and very expensive and politically quite costly. The pitfalls of intervening to help the 5 million in PNG must now look very forbidding.