Edward Snowden's revelations of systematic and routinised five-power (US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ) electronic spying on friendly government leaders and politicians create a new policy environment in which 'neither confirm nor deny' no longer works as a policy response.
President Obama's initially hesitant responses to Angela Merkel's outraged public response to The Guardian's revelations of US eavesdropping on her phone damaged US-German relations, but Obama quickly corrected his error. The sincerity and appropriate language of his subsequent apologies to Merkel safely limited the damage.
Now Australian-Indonesian relations are going through a similarly testing experience.
Tony Abbott's reply in Parliament to Adam Bandt may have seemed a balanced, well-crafted answer but it was way too clever. Indonesian anger against Australia continues to grow. These events will harden already strong views in Jakarta of Australia as a false friend to Indonesia, as a nation whose only true affinities are with its four fellow members of the five-power Anglo-Saxon club.
It is Australia's Indonesian friends in politics who are hurt most politically, and most wounded personally, by the Snowden revelations: SBY, Natalegawa, and their current ambassador in Canberra.
Of course, it is no accident that our spies are keen to spy on persons who are our best political friends. It is the nuances of these persons' ongoing views about day-by-day ups and downs in the bilateral relationship that are of most interest. We know or can predict what our enemies think of us. We are less interested in spying on them.
Spies have the technology to spy, so they do it. They have no self-denying ordinances or protocols except those imposed by their political masters. They cannot be expected to modulate their targeting by considerations of interstate protocols or interpersonal good manners between heads of state. It is not their job to make these judgements. A watchdog's job and instinct is to bark at intruders, a spy's job and instinct is to spy on others.
It falls to the wisdom and discretion of presidents and prime ministers to set limits, to instruct our intelligence agencies that they will not eavesdrop on the private telephone conversations of our best friends except at rare moments when major national interests are decided to be at stake. Those should be political decisions.
Both Obama initially with Merkel, and now Abbott with SBY's family, signally failed to rise to this challenge. Both Washington and Canberra let the dogs loose.
The adverse consequences will only mount for Abbott.