Julie Bishop’s unintentional comment on a sunken island turns into blunder

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop arrived to lead Australian negotiations at the final stage of the UN climate conference in Paris on Sunday, but one of her international counterparts was already waiting to correct her blunder of misidentifying the Eneko island as sunken Anebok even before she landed.

In a parliamentary session last week, Bishop had mocked her opposition counterpart Tanya Plibersek, saying that the latter had fabricated a story about Anebok, which sank due to rising sea levels and was a “beautiful and accessible beach gateway” when it still existed. Bishop accompanied her claims along with pictures of the island Eneko, which still exists.

“You can rent a bungalow for $50 a night. It is in good condition, we’re told. There are houses, lawns, gardens, there is a toilet block and there are picnic tables,” the Australian foreign minister stated.

It was later found that there was an error in the transcript in Plibersek’s interview with the ABC. She had in fact, talked about the sunken island, but Bishop misunderstood Eneko as Anebok. Although it seems Bishop made an unintentional mistake, the opposition party mistook it as a sarcastic comment from her side.

Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum over the weekend told journalists in Paris that Australians have not yet quit their tendency to crack jokes on serious issues. He said that he would have a conversation with the foreign minister so that the matter could be sorted out.

“Australia still has still not learned they should not mess with the islands and make jokes about the islands and climate change,” the Guardian reported him as saying on Saturday, ahead of Bishop’s arrival. De Brum also said that the spellings of both the islands – Anebok and Eneko – were very close and the “Australians haven’t spoken English for years and probably don’t know how to pronounce those names properly.”

The above issue was reported following Immigration Minister Peter Dutton making fun at the Pacific Islanders endangered by global warming, which was accidently caught on camera.

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