Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Secretary Dennis Richardson says it took “some weeks” for America to provide a proper briefing on what would be exposed in the cables relating to Australia.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contacted Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd on November 25 to express her regrets the material had been compromised, Mr Richardson said.
But it was a long time before Australian officials were given a more detailed briefing, he said.
“We did in the end,” he told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra today.
“It took a frustrating amount of time.”
Australia pressed the issue vigorously but the US was not initially responsive.
“I think it was a result of the sheer dimensions of the problem they were faced with,” Mr Richardson said.
“They had multiple countries coming at them from different directions and I think they needed to work through very carefully a consistency of approach.
“That was probably the reason for the delay. I don’t think it was any more than that.”
Mr Richardson said he understood the reasons for the delay.
“Whatever frustrations I felt – and I felt a lot – and however robustly I pursued the matter – and I pursued it very robustly – I nonetheless did understand the sheer scale of their challenge.”
The US embassy briefing to DFAT and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet ultimately occurred in Canberra.
US officials outlined the issues in the documents they believed may be of concern to Australia.
“The Americans endeavoured to flag broad areas of sensitivity as they saw it,” Mr Richardson said.
But they declined to actually show Australian officials copies of the documents that had been leaked.
DFAT sought copies of the documents but their success could be rated as a “zero out of ten”.
“We were as spectacularly unsuccessful as every other country,” Mr Richardson said.
Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is presently in Britain fighting extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
Mr Assange’s mother Christine has accused the Australian Government of failing to provide her son with proper assistance since his December arrest.
In a letter to Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd she wrote: “Julian did not even get the laptop you had publicly promised him which he needed to prepare for his case while he was in Wandsworth Prison.”
But senior DFAT consular official Jon Philp said Australia did endeavour to help Mr Assange with his request for a laptop.
“Mr Assange was able to initiate the process to acquire a laptop and chose not to do so,” Mr Philp told the committee.
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US ‘Frustratingly Slow’ On WikiLeaks – DFAT