About every quarter now, I am obliged to respond to your columnist Alexander Downer over some distortion in reference to me, or another spray of acid. But Monday’s piece (“Asia focus doesn’t mean disengaging with the Pacific”, December 19) is particularly nasty.

He opens by saying that the foreign policy of the Keating government was run by slogans – the main slogan proclaiming Australia’s foreign policy would be engagement with Asia. He goes on to say Paul Keating “didn’t know much about history and his discovery of Asia was evidence of that”. But went on further to say that Keating was not aware of Australia’s engagement in World War II.