What a difference a day or two makes

On Monday in The Australian they were urging Kevin Rudd, in quite an hysterical fashion, to start talking tough to the Chinese Government on behalf of the wrongly imprisoned Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu. This morning the paper’s national affairs correspondent Jennifer Hewett is cautioning that the moderate words Mr Rudd did utter on the subject yesterday “will make it even harder for any possible resolution to be quietly negotiated through diplomatic channels.”