The revelations by Ms Adamson during an extraordinary Senate estimates hearing on Thursday morning constituted the final piece of a puzzle, confirming that not one government official had been consulted about the major foreign policy shift. Not only did the decision - which virtually all close observers say privately was driven by the Wentworth byelection - receive no input from bureaucratic expertise, it left Australia’s diplomats just hours to soften the ground with key countries such as Indonesia and even less time for military chiefs to ensure their protection levels for troops in the Middle East were adequate. The timeline, laid out in full detail for the first time on Thursday, prompted angry astonishment from Labor, notably its foreign affairs spokeswoman and interrogator in the Senate hearing, Penny Wong. Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Frances Adamson, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Marise Payne, during the Senate estimates hearing. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Senator Payne of the plan by phone on Sunday October 14 - less than 48 hours later they announced it together. He spoke individually to other members of cabinet’s national security committee. Senator Payne refused to say whether she and Mr Morrison discussed the Wentworth byelection in relation to the Middle East announcement.

The next morning in Canberra, the government’s leadership group - which includes Mr Morrison, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and Defence Minister Christopher Pyne - discussed the plan and agreed to go ahead with it. "The Prime Minister said these were issues he wanted to examine," Senator Payne said. Illustration: Matt Golding Credit: Senator Wong asked: "We can infer from the fact that Ms Adamson wasn’t even aware of the decision until … that [Monday] afternoon, which is after the decision has been taken by the leadership group, that there was no brief from DFAT?" "That’s correct," Senator Payne replied.

Nor was there input from Mr Morrison’s own department. Officials from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had already testified earlier this week that they learnt on the Monday morning of the plan - after the leadership group meeting. But that was better than the Defence Department, which heard mid-afternoon from the Prime Minister’s department. It was evening before the acting Chief of the Defence Force, Vice Admiral David Johnston, was told and even longer before the permanent Chief Angus Campbell learnt when disembarked a flight to Washington. For her part, Ms Adamson, on hearing the news, called her Middle East team together shortly after 1.30pm and her department “swang into action”, she said, as it prepared for the bombshell announcement. It had just hours to inform up to 20 countries. The results were mixed. Most strikingly, the first direct contact between Senator Payne and her Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi was initiated by the latter, who was not happy. As the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia is sensitive about the status of Palestinians.

Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Ms Marsudi had learnt about the planned announcement from Australia’s Ambassador in Jakarta, Gary Quinlan, about 9pm on Monday night, Australian time. She sent a string of late-night WhatsApp messages - subsequently leaked to Seven News - warning that Australia's talk of recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital would be a "really big blow" that would "affect bilateral relations" and would "slap Indonesia's face on the Palestine issue". Senator Payne only spoke to Ms Marsudi the next day, after the announcement had been made. She has repeatedly described that conversation as "constructive". On Thursday she said the ministers who formed the plan had considered its effects on key relationships such as that with Jakarta. Both Foreign Affairs and Defence officials maintained that the late notice had given them enough time to prepare for the announcement. In the wake of its defeat in Wentworth, the government has very much emphasised the point that this is just a review.

Ms Adamson said the Foreign Affairs department had not helped draft the official statement on the policy shift by Mr Morrison and Senator Payne, which had specifically mentioned Dave Sharma, the Liberal candidate in Wentworth, as being the inspiration for the government’s fresh look at its Jerusalem position. The department had seen the statement before it went out, another official said. Loading Senator Payne repeatedly said the government had every right to review major policies and was merely being transparent about it. The alternative was to do it "in some clandestine way", she said. But the exact process for deciding whether Australia will follow US President Donald Trump in relocating its embassy to Jerusalem remains unclear. The Iran review will be carried out by senior Prime Minister’s department official Caroline Millar and be done by December. Happily enough, her team started work yesterday morning just as the much-anticipated Senate hearing kicked off.