Category: General Musings

It appears we still have a lot of work to do to help our fellow Aussies, the Aborigines, to come out of the Stone Age. Telstra, only eight weeks away from connecting Mornington Island to high speed computer access, have had to stop work while The Carpentaria Land Council are demanding more than $300 a day for cultural monitors. Yep, thats what it says ‘cultural monitors’ What the hell are cultural monitors? Luddites with the role of keeping these poor bastards in the Stone Age. $300 a day is stuff-all but the principle is huge. Whoever thought of the cultural monitor scam needs to be locked in an outback dunney with a big angry red roo. I know kids are going to play computer games when the link finally over-rides ‘cultural issues’ but maybe, just maybe, someone will access the internet, the greatest library since Alexander’s time, in the search of knowledge. For foreign readers, Mornington Island is as remote a location as you might see anywhere in the western world and the thought that they were about to get internet access was great until cultural tom-foolery came to the fore. Bourke Shire councilers are furious and flying to Brisbane to confront the State Government about ‘cultural issues’. The person who had handled the issue for the Carpentaria Land Council was ‘on leave’ and no-one else was prepared to comment. Independant Federal MP, Bob Katter, who should know, says the issue is all about deciding which Aboriginal group/tribe had rights to which area. They are also fighting among themselves over who belongs to which tribe. Bob puts a kind spin on it but I think the fight is over who belong to whom and which tribe stands to get the best ‘sit down’ money. Mining companies with associated jobs and income for Aborigies are falling over themselves to leave the area for politically stable new sites and I don’t blame them. Poor fella my country indeed. Update: Dave, a reader, comments $300 per diem may be stuff all but not when paid to every local tribesman This article underlines the problem and makes further mockery of ‘cultural issues’. Can we do something to stop this…..NOW!

Tim Blair links to an article in todays Age by Mark Forbes and John Silvester. It deals with how the AFP and the Indonesian police got onto the Bali Bombers. It’s a great piece of reporting and you should read it in full. I have included the direct link below to save your mouse finger. Over the years I’ve had a lot of comments from people that are against training Indonesians in our military and police institutions. I’ve always argued that if we train them then we know how they are going to react in any given circumstances and this is important if we ever have to fight them. However, presuming this is unlikely to happen, a real and obvious advantage of letting Indonesians into our colleges is that a certain rapport will develop between Police and Army Officers from both countries as they get to know each other. Never understimate how important this is. When Gen Cosgrove or Leah have an Indonesian based problem they can pick up the phone and talk to their counterparts. When Gen Lewis, Director of Special Forces and Bahasa Indonesian speaker has a problem then he does the same but in Bahasa. All these officer will have done a lot of courses with Indonesians of similar rank over their respective careers. Keelty, AFP Commissioner has a similar network. The week after the attack, President Megawati Soekarno-putri signed an agreement in Jakarta for a historic joint investigation into the tragedy. Luckily for the Australians, the straight-talking officer General I Made Pastika was named as chief investigator. He had become friends with Keelty after the pair did a police management course in Canberra in 1993. and; Ashton, the Federal Police liaison officer in Jakarta between 1995 and 1997, spoke Bahasa and was friendly with senior Indonesian police. Go read the article in full and then thank your lucky stars that we have people like this working diligently and professionally to track down the terrorists.

Over at troppo Wayne Wood accuses me of parroting a line and Niall thinks I’ve fizzled out. My wife might agree with Nial and the kids most probably could quote most of my parroted old lines but a debate needs more than cliches to win a point. Still, I welcome any debate on defence. I allows me to climb up on my soap-box and wave my sword around in my best Colonel Blimp impersonation. Great stuff. You might read the ‘Defence’ posts below before you go over to troppoarmadillo or you might just miss Wayne’s point.

Pics too good to miss. Heads up from Slatts

Twent years ago I did my Infantry Company Commanders course and as a part of Corps familiarization travelled to Puckapunyal, then the home of the Armoured Regiment, to talk to our ‘turret head’ brothers. We aspiring infantry commanders were put in the drivers seat of the Leopard Battle Tank and got to play ‘Boys and their Toys’ at the ultimate level. Under command of qualified crew commanders we drove the tank and on a quite Friday night in Brisbane, if you listen carefully, you can still here me extolling the wonders of this ultimate weapon. Driving down a steep slope with the Crew Commander saying ‘bore it up ‘er, sir’, I hit 80 kph and then acted on the order, ‘hard right stick’. My limited high school physics brought up visions of impending doom as I thought – 50 plus tons, 80 kph, hard right turn on downward sloping hill has to equal disaster. Not so. The Leopard obeyed and the magnificent suspension coped beyond physics. Similarly I drove it over a 6 foot creek gap at speed and actually had the 50 ton green ‘tonka toy’ airborne for a second ot two. The smart reader will have already noticed the point of this post. It was twenty bloody years ago! To put that in perspective a twenty year gap in battle tank development can be best explained by comparing World War One battle Tanks with World War Two models. Get my drift? When I commanded a company in the Operational Deployment Force in Townsville in the early eighties my troops were carring machine guns that were older than they were. They were riding in APCs that had been rebuilt from 60s stock and restricted parts and flying hours for helicopters was setting the stage for the later Blackhawke disaster. From then till now things have not improved that much. Don’t be mislead by videos of well equiped Aussie soldiers on patrol in East Timor or in Iraq. You are only seeing the cheap end of military hardware. The expensive stuff, the new tanks, carriers and artillery have been put in the ‘too hard’ basket for too long. The debate that we should have had two or three times in the past is just surfacing now. This article from todays Australian sets the pace and, in fact backs up my post earlier in the week. It’s a pity the Generals and I didn’t think the same when I was serving. Lieutenant-General Leahy said the army was undergoing a “military transformation” that could require it to operate independently in protecting Australia and its regional interests, and in coalitions further afield. “The new army that will develop over the next few years will be a land force that is mobile, agile and versatile,” Lieutenant-General Leahy told a conference in Canberra. “It will be a land force that is able to … operate independently, jointly or in coalitions, across a complex spectrum of conflict. The complexity of the army’s missions in areas as diverse as East Timor, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Solomons, shadowed as they are by the ongoing war on terror – indicates the challenging character of the new international security environment. “We are in transition away from being a light infantry force towards becoming a light armoured force.” And this; Defence forces suggest there is a split within the ADF over the purchase of new tanks. The army is thought to be pushing for the purchase of 100 new Leopard tanks at a cost of about $300 million to replace Australia’s ageing fleet. But defence force chief General Peter Cosgrove is believed to favour the much heavier US Abrams-style tanks, which would fit more easily Australia’s role in supporting the US. A final decision will have to be taken by cabinet as part of its review of the future of Australia’s 10-year $25 billion defence forward purchasing plan. Spending on the previous 2001-2010 plan is estimated to already have blown out by at least $2 billion. I’m with Cosgrove here. If we are going to fight with the Yanks then lets have some commonality of equipment. It makes all the diiference in matters logistic and matters logistic make all the difference.

Wednesday just gone witnessed a meet at the revamped Story Bridge Hotel of the right wing chapter of Brisbane Bloggers. Although refreshing to drink with people who have political opinions it would have been good to have some left wing thinkers present to sharpen debating skills -or swords. I invite one of my sons but he muttered something about ‘smelling a right wing plot from a hundred metres’. Ah well, viva la difference Paul Bickford talks like he writes with more body language, Dan Murphy, thinks beyond his years and embraces capitalism while Todd McKenzie and I share a secret past and by extension are trained to agree with each other. Todd bailed earliest under the guise of it being the smart thing to do but I think maintaining the ‘ever’ in the ever-loving girlfriend could have been a motive. It beats the local RSL where I’m a member by obligation but have long wearied of discussions on who won the fifth at Randwick. Yes, as Todd points I am clearly the elder but could I say, that as sure as young tarts become old tarts and young Pilgers become old fools, then young right wing warriors become old right wing commentators. Having literally fought battles against left wing ideology I tested the air for the taste of cordite – damn! no fools to wind up and tear apart, only good chaps all. Gary, absent in person, left a deposit to start the drinking. The next morning the question of ‘Did I have a good time” could only be answered by reference to Todd It appears I did!

The Age carries a story by Annabel Crab about a White House brief for the Presidents upcoming trip to Australia. Under the banner ‘Major blunder in White House Australia brief’ we are told, and expected to believe that the White House thinks John Major is the Prime Minister of Australia. The rundown, however, gets off to a shaky start by identifying the Australian Prime Minister as “John Major”. “In 1996, a Liberal/National Party coalition came to power under Prime Minister John Major after 13 years of ALP rule,” it claims. If the White House tag is on this brief, it would have been compiled by someones favourite niece from Montanna doing work experience. More likely, it was a setup -as in “Anna, could you find or engineer something negative about Howard.” The Howard Haters will be giggling over this and thanking the Age for pointing out how insignificant Howard is on the world stage. It’s a double hammy as well, as in, by inference, Bush doesn’t know who Howard is. Stupid Whiter House, dumb President and unknown Howard. A left wing trifecta. Strange, but the Washington Post news feed doesn’t mention what would be a major diplomatic stuff-up nor does any newspaper other than the Age – well known for setting low standards of journalism and failing to meet them. A tabloid mentality on broadsheet paper.

This from Jackie Kelly, Lib MP Mark Latham, who behind a thin veneer of intellectual sophistication, is a visceral political pugilist who sees politeness as a form of political correctness. Says it all.

The ABC has proven beyond doubt that someone really did plunder the Bahgdad museum. In this article reported by the ABC a man has been…….hang on, I got it wrong. It’s all about the Australian Museum. Never mind Auntie, one out of two isn’t bad.

As if Ruddock doesn’t have enough on his plate in his new portfolio an Australian lawyer thinks being forced to do time for a crime against humanity is a greater transgression than doing the crime. No wonder there are so many lawyer jokes. PHILIP Ruddock’s first task as attorney-general should be to clarify the status of the two Australians held by the US military in Guantanamo Bay, Law Institute of Victoria president Bill O’Shea said yesterday. Why? The status of these two has already been clarified. They were caught fighting for the Taliban who were trying to kill coalition forces. The fact that Australians were a part of that coalition makes it even clearer. They should stay incarcerated for the duration of the War against Terrorism. Clarified?