What Hu's family must have thought of Australia's Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, rushing off to a meeting of non-aligned nations in Cairo in the middle of the increasingly ugly diplomatic stand-off with China over their husband and father can only be imagined.
But nothing was deterring Smith, or more properly Rudd. Forget Hu. Smith was dispatched to Cairo with one preconditioned riding instruction: to lobby UN members at the non-aligned conference for votes in Rudd's bid to secure his Security Council seat.
In Rudd's foreign policy firmament, Hu apparently came a distant second to the UNSC priority. Smith was left to remain in touch with the Australian public regarding the fate of one of its own via Sky News.