Emma Alberici and Julian Burnside must have read the same strategy book, one in which distorting your opponents’ views and values is perfectly acceptable.

What Tony Abbott actually said:

The last thing anyone should want is to have Australia’s relationship with Indonesia defined by this boats issue, which I am sure will be but a passing irritant.

What the ABC’s Emma Alberici, interviewing the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, says Abbott said:

How do you feel about a world leader describing asylum seekers as “irritants”?

What the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights dutifully replies:

I am appalled.

As should we all be, but not with Tony Abbott.