From the home city of The Foreign Minister of Australia the Vice President of America has been coordinating his aid business into Iraq. This makes it surprising that Downer and Cheney will not be discussing the aid scandal of AWB.

It\s understandable however, that Cheney, hiding for years from his dual positions by claiming that his Halliburton fees were "deferred payments," would not be seen dead talking to somebody up to their neck in tarnish about mis-spending public money about paying bribes to Saddam. Given all the trouble that Halliburton/KBR have been getting into for overspending from the public purse (most recently including spending $600 a day per security guard at Mid East offices) Downer probably feels the same way.

I can imagine part of the conversation:

Dick: So are you out of trouble yet?
Lex: From the Aussie end there's no worries. How many sugars in your tea? Yep, we screwed 'em with the terms of reference and came up smelling like a rose.
Dick: So nobody's worried about Adelaide then ?
Lex: They haven't got a clue. All Halliburton's international aid work being run right under their noses and nobody has a clue. There have been a couple of leftist conspiracy theorsits making a bit of noise, but in a one-newspaper town, and Murdoch in charge, nobody's got a chance of finding out anything. I've got to say, Dick, that when people find out that Halliburton have been laundering their aid figures through the Australian economy it's going to make the AWB mess look like a fart in a baked-bean factory.
Dicik: Good-o. Now we've gotta organise your reward for pulling this off. It doesn't look like we can give you the IAEA any more, so I was wondering how you'd feel about being Groundskeeper at Camp David?
Downer: Thanks, but I've already picked up a nice little earner polishing Condi's piano stool.