More ‘Better life shoppers’ arrive
Australia intercepts third asylum boat this week but Rudd is adamant he hasn’t softened border control.
Rudd denies weakening border controls and said today the surge in asylum seekers heading to Australia is mostly caused by Sri Lanka’s civil war. Australian authorities have stopped about 89 people-smuggling operations in the past year, he said on Melbourne-based 3AW Radio.
Civil war….yeah right.
They’ll be coming in daily soon.
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Kev
One of my daughters has a mate who comes from Zimbabwe. Her family were driven off their successful and prosperous farm by Mugabe’s mob. She’ll readily tell you that they went shopping for a better life (Australia or Canada) and signed up as refugees to come here after talking to others who’d come to Australia earlier.
What’s the problem with seeking a “Better Life”?
1735099
Did your friends jump on a boat and crash the party or did they put themselves on the guest list and come in the front door?
There is the difference. No one is saying that all these people are undeserving of the opportunity to better themselves but there are protocols that should be followed. The cRudd answer of making it easy for queue jumpers to get preferential treatment is inviting refugees who can afford the fare to come into the country (in a leaking boat) ahead of those who are financially less fortunate and therefore forced to follow the LEGAL entry methods. It is happening, check the numbers.
Who is more deserving, given that the reasons for claiming to be a refugee are equal, the person following accepted methods or the person jumping the queue?
If you can’t see the difference kick your labrador and see a surgeon about the leaking valve on your bleeding heart.
A total of 48,456 overstayed on visa last year. A total of 1,700 came by boat so far this year. The numbers were much the same in the days of the Vietnamese boat people (2000 by boat, 90000 from refuge camps on aircraft all up – by the current definition – all queue-jumpers). These people have contributed to our community.
See – http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/30-years-ago-today-the-first-vietnamese-boat-people-arrived/2006/04/25/1145861348232.html
You hear nothing in the media about the first group, but the alarmists (Bolt is a good example) go on ad nauseam about boat arrivals because it plays to paranoia and pig-ignorance about refugees. This hysteria has lurked just below the surface in this country for centuries, starting with the anti-Chinese riots on the goldfields, and has been milked by unscrupulous politicians from Menzies to Rudd. There was a short period (Fraser/Hawke) where a bi-partisan approach operated.
John Howard milked the paranoia for all it was worth in 2001, and both Rudd and Turnbull/Abbott continue to do so because they understand that there is enough ignorance in the electorate to accumulate a head of steam and make it an issue.
These pollies and the MSM can’t see the irony in blithering on about border protection when the numbers are so small, and – hello – we don’t actually have borders. Last time I looked Australia was an island – but they never let the facts drown out the dog-whistle. It would be funny if it didn’t involve the lives of desperate people.
Bob – have a look at –
http://www.ajustaustralia.co/informationandresources_factsandstatistics.php
BTW – I don’t kick dogs and “bleeding-heart” is an American term. American slang doesn’t compute, and it’s worth noting that we don’t have an equivalent in our lingo. I do, however, uphold the Aussie tradition of standing up for the underdog. It’s a pity that it’s going out of fashion.
1735099 I have some good friends who came here from South Africa and Rhodesia for a better life. The had to jump all the hoops first and surprise surprise they did not go on the dole. Good Judeo Christian stock with no crime gangs following. 1735099 I have been following Kev’s blog some time and have seen your replies.As an ex digger and i have respect for our diggers, my father was one,served in the desert and the in the jungle 1939 1945 he did.Good Labor (leftwing) man, told me when i was a boy when i asked about his tinea, he told me that his boots rotted out in the jungle and he had to tie rags around his feet for protection. The reason the boots did not get to New Guinea: the waterside workers (labour party) would not load the supply ships. Did you get spat on by any lefties when you returned from vietnam? I loved my dad but to this day i can not understand why he continued to support the treasonable crap in the labour party. Maybe he didnt grow up just like you. Regards Redneck
17
Those who enter Australia at an airport or other controlled border point of entry hold a passport and a visa, the visa has been approved by the person entering Australia having been vetted and found suitable to enter Australia.
Those who arrive on boats have no identification or visa and therefore Australia has not vetted them.
Redneck
My dad (RAAF – New Guinea – 1942 – 45) also was a strong Labor man all his life. He remembered the depression, grew up as a Tyke in Warwick after his mother died when he was six, and worked his backside off in remote bush schools most of his life. He raised six successful kids (School Principal, Director-General, Public servant, Company Manager, Music Teacher and General Practioner).
He had a very dim view of Bob Menzies and Winston Churchill (used to call him a ” rotten old drunk”). If he was alive today, he’d probably vote Green. He would always take the side of the underdog.
The people who haven’t grown up are often the indulged generation too young to remember Vietnam, and who have been hoodwinked by the corporate world and converted from citizens into consumers. Anything that can’t have a dollar value put on it, as far as they are concerned, doesn’t exist.
As my Dad was fond of saying “For the almighty dollar – every knee shall bend”. He was right…
Kae
By the time the “boat people” have been vetted, they are much less of a risk than those who come in on Qantas, the biggest people smuggler of them all.
This is particularly the case in regard to health checks which are non-existent for Visa holders.
Another issue not often considered is that the facts show that those arriving by plane are a much greater risk to national security than the boat people. Benbrika arrived in Australia in May 1989 on a one-month visitor’s permit – not on a boat.
1735099 Gee you’ve got the left wing rehearsed whining down to a T. In your reply to kae you mention that the illegal aliens have been “vetted”. How could they be vetted properly when they dont say where they come from or give out any information. I think that your mates in immigration just give them a free pass after a while. The whole system is a charade,the romantic old leaky boat trip escaping persecution crap. The story that they rehearse before they get here aptly coached in what to say by traitors in the green and labour parties. Then they’re on the dole using the average Australian as a soft touch, you know, throw the old Aussie “fair go” back in his face.You obviously have a problem with big business when you mention Qantas as the biggest people smuggler. More left wing envy jargon. 1735099 I recently made a trip to the great satan with the worlds biggest people smuggler I seem to remember going on the net to apply for a visa giving my passport details and filling out a health form and to declare i was not carrying more than a certain amount of money. I also had health insurance. I was padded down on the way through customs to check for concealed money. They could also have randomly checked my signed health statement (declaration) to see if it was correct . Left wing whiners hate visa overstayers as they are usually of Anglo European stock,but, they, the overstayers have rules and if caught they spend time in a detention center until sent home with a penalty of no return. They are sent back to the address that is on their passport. While they are overstaying they are not receiving any benefits from the government and are probably working in the lucrative cash economy. As for benbrika, how many of the 2500 illegals by romantic leaky boats so far this year are sleepers? Regards Redneck sorry the ignorant Redneck
1735099 I have been reading your CV and have determined that you are a very nice bloke and that it hurts to be called a B—— H—- o r Touchy Feely. I still can’t believe that a soldier who fights for freedom can tie himself to an ideology that wants to restrict that freedom. Any way you are none of those nasty titles you are a PAWN. You being of the soft left Camelot Big Rock Candy Mountain Imagine Civil Disobedience etc are a pawn of the hard left,the followers of saul alinsky richard cloward frances piven. In fact i think you should google those names for more information. Check saul alinsky who wrote the book rules for radicals which soon after it was released 1972 became the hand book for the labour party and certainly for the greens. It took a while for the alp to perfect the alinsky method but i believe that rudd and his thugs have it near perfect with the help of a compliant media. I think that Abbott must have been made aware of alinsky recently because of his changed attitude to the fraud that is global warming. If you do read the rules for radicals you will find that allowing large numbers of illegal aliens into the country covers a few of the rules ie. destroying our culture eg would you trust a man who entered the country illegally in the Australian Army (remember Ft Hood) and overloading the social security system. As you are an educator and consultant you should read “rules” and introduce the book to your clients. Have a read and tell me what you think Regards Redneck BTW To Kev are you aware of saul alinsky?
The difference between a Visa overstay and an illegal immigrant is pretty simple. the Visa overstay went through all of the processes to get permission to come here, the illegal came without permission.
A simple analogy would be that the Visa overstay is like that dull drunk who won’t go home at the end of the party and the illegal immigrant is like someone performing a break and enter (yes they do take some of our money).
I love the way that wanting to control our borders is always viewed as racism or ignorance by the soft left, and yes we do have borders, its a legal term.
The left never does well electorally on this issue, they love the smug feeling of superiority it gives them calling the rest of the electorate names, far too much to come up with workable policy.
Re the fact that the numbers of illegal immigrants are small, that can change rapidly if we are seen as a good place to live and easy to enter.
Harry Buttle An excellent analogy Harry One thing that the left indulges in is giving part of the story eg 48,000 plus overstayed last year Senator Evans LABOUR Immigration Minister says that most overstayers go home 7 days after visa expiry
The reason that the left hates overstayers is that they’re WHITE ANGLO EUROPEAN AMERICAN.
Overstayers do not overload our welfare system. The numbers are changing rapidly before our eyes 2500 this year when Howard had it down to zero. “LABOUR THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD TO THE SEVENTIES” Again read Alinsky It’s all in the book Regards Redneck
Redneck
As I recall the beginning of the seventies, I also remember being conscripted to fight in Vietnam. The current administration, with all its faults, is unlikely to descend to that.
By the way, it’s Labor, not “Labour”, if you’re talking about the political party.
.
1735099 I was in the lottery for the first Vietnam call up and did not win. My objection at the time was conscription because it concerned me so i joined the moonbats. My fascination with left wing moonbats did not last long when i realised that socialist politics are the politics of spite and envy. I also took a minor official position in “my” union but soon realised that i was worth more money than fellow unionists and did not need to be part of a collective to improve myself. Was it was labour who introduced conscription in WW2?. By the way i just love it how lefties when they cannot counter an argument want to check your spelling or your sentence structure.
1735099 Have you googled Cloward-Piven Saul Alinsky Antonio Gramsci? What they have to say is not conspiracy theory its happening right now.Regards Redneck
Redneck
“Was it was labour who introduced conscription in WW2”.
Conscription had existed in Australia in limited form (mainly for training) since introduced by a Labor government in 1911. The Anglophile Hughes tried to extend it to calling up Australians to contribute to the meat grinder which we call WW1. After the first referendum on Conscription (October 1916) was defeated, Hughes left the Labor Party and created a conservative Nationalist government, campaigning strongly for conscription in the face of both the Labor Party and the Catholic Church, led by Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix, and strongly supported by Queensland Labor Premier TJ Ryan.
A second referendum was held in December 1917, and defeated again.
In WW2, in the face of a real and imminent threat from Japan, conscription was extended (with support from the community) to cover areas in the South-West Pacific. The troops who delayed the Japanese advance on the Kokoda Track were conscripts (derisively called “Choccos” because they were considered likely to melt in the face of the enemy).
We tend to forget this, and the fact that Menzies supported Churchill and Roosevelt in an effort to abandon Northern Australia by insisting that the 6th and 7th divisions be diverted to Burma instead of being sent into the conflict in New Guinea.
Fortunately, we had a (Labor) PM who had the guts to stand up to them, and the rest is history.
So if you really want to analyse the performance of Australian governments when it comes to conscription, one fact is clear from the history. When the excrement hits the cooling device, Labor governments put the interests of this country first.
Menzies remained consistent to the end, offering Australian conscripts to a foreign power in a different meat grinder (Vietnam) twenty years later.
In WW1 the foreign power was imperial Britain, in the 1960s the USA.
1735099 Is that the ABC version of history. Regards Redneck
I’m quite stunned, I honestly wouldn’t have thought it was possible to have less respect for a persons honesty and integrity in making an argument than I have for you 1735099, but you have excelled yourself. actually calling Vietnam a ‘meat grinder’ in the same context as WW1. literally insane.
The Australian casualty rate in WW1 was almost 65%
The Australian casualty rate in Vietnam was aprox 14%
source AWM.
Harry Buttle –
“Literally insane”.
Only if you believe Kipling’s “the lesser breeds outside the law” don’t count. 5 million plus enough for you?
“The lowest casualty estimates, based on the now-renounced North Vietnamese statements, are around 1.5 million Vietnamese killed. Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged. 58,226 American soldiers also died in the war or are missing in action. Australia lost almost 500 of the 47,000 troops they had deployed to Vietnam and New Zealand lost 38 soldiers.” (Source – http://www.vietnam-war.info/casualties/)
Not a meat grinder?
Another relevant comparison –
WW1 – Australian Conscripts killed – 0
Vietnam – Australian Conscripts killed – 181 (Source – AWM – http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/vietnam/statistics.asp)
Never let the record get in the way of “honesty and integrity”.
Redneck
No – the National Archives. See – http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/image.aspx?id=tcm:13-21708
Sorry if the historic fact is an embarrassment.
5 million dead – pretty standard results for the excesses of communism…they were the invaders – remember?
Kev
I don’t know how we got from refugees to Vietnamese history – but it’s a good argument.
You could debate the point about invasion. If you argue that the North invaded the South, you would have to acknowledge that the free world forces were also an invasion.
In 1955, the Geneva Accord had promised elections to elect a government for a unified Vietnam. Only France and the Viet Minh (in power in the North) had signed the document. Fearing that Hồ Chí Minh would win the election due to his war popularity, and establish Communism in the whole of Vietnam, the US and Ngô Đình Diệm’s government refused to abide by the agreement.
Fifty years later, there is a “Communist” government in Vietnam, and like Australia a war memorial in every town, most of them with thousands of names (not twenty or so as in Australia). Most of these names are local people. Have you visited the memorial outside Ba Ria, or the new one in Vung Tau? It’s very instructive to do this with an interpreter and ask questions about who the people listed were and where thy came from. There aren’t any northerners remembered in these places.
You can’t hypothesise about history but I doubt 5 million would have died without American involvement.
“Not a meat grinder?” Not based on those figures.
Really grabbing at straws there 1735099, The total number of casualties in World War I, both military and civilian, were about 37 million: 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded.
Assuming the casualty figures coming out of a communist govt are accurate (because they aren’t at all known for inflating that sort of thing for propaganda purposes are they?), then, as I said, comparing the casualties to those of WW1 is literally insane.
However, lets also notice, that you never mentioned any context other than Australians until the lunacy of your argument was pointed out (note “The Anglophile Hughes tried to extend it to calling up Australians to contribute to the meat grinder which we call WW1. ” not a word about the Belgians, Germans, Russians or French – “Fortunately, we had a (Labor) PM who had the guts to stand up to them, and the rest is history.” not a word about the Natives of New Guinea, Malaysia, the Americans, Koreans or Japanese – “Menzies remained consistent to the end, offering Australian conscripts to a foreign power in a different meat grinder (Vietnam) twenty years later.” Again not a word about any other nationality except Australians).
So I’m calling bullshit – you got caught out and had to flail about desperately trying to find a way to compare “the meat grinder of Vietnam” with a real horror story – WW1, the problem you run into is that, once you’ve pulled in the (most likely) fictional casualties of Vietnam, the obvious move is to compare them to the well documented casualties of WW1, and you still look like a fool for comparing them. Keep digging old boy, it just gets funnier from here.
Harry Buttle
In the final analysis, all you have challenged is my choice of the term “meat grinder”, and my non-inclusion of nationalities other than Australians in the figures. Last time I checked, my passport was marked “Australia”. I live here.
Please define when the use of “meat grinder” becomes invalid. Is it after one million, three million, five million….? The other common feature of WW1 and Vietnam was that we were fighting somebody else’s war. The comparisons are sane and valid. Insanity lies in denying the horror that was Vietnam.
My original point responding to Redneck’s reference to the seventies reminds us that that in this country Conservatives were quite content to conscript young men to fight in two wars in which there was no immediate threat to our national sovereignity. These same Conservatives yell and scream when there is any move to conscript wealth, for any purpose, not matter how worthwhile.
It neatly sums up Conservative values . My dad’s reference to the “almighty dollar” holds up pretty well.
By the way, since you challenge my casualty figures on Vietnam, here are some non-Vietnamese sources –
http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html*
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm
http://www.olive-drab.com/od_history_vietnam_casualties.php
“Vietnam – The Australian War” – Paul Ham – Harper Collins – Sydney – 2007 – pp663-664!
“Unheralded Victory” – Mark W Woodruff – Harper Collins – London – 1999 – p184
*An interesting footnote is that this website (a Veteran’s posting sourced from US National Archives) claims in reference to the Vietnamese casualities that “These figures were deliberately falsified during the war by the North Vietnamese Communists to avoid demoralizing the population” – exactly the opposite of your inference.
!The most thoroughly researched figures.
Merry Christmas.
“These same Conservatives …” Ah, tell us again how a ‘conservative’ snubbed you 17 whatever. You really are a boring fixated old fool.
Peter W
You’re the one with the boring fixation…and you’ve obviously run out of ideas. When reason fails you invariably atempt to distract with abuse.
:-)
1735099, The Term meat grinder becomes invalid when you use it to compare what was essentially a sideshow in the overall scheme of things, with a world war. Quite obvious really, but keep grabbing at those straws.
BTW
First Link,
“Note: NVA casualty data was provided by North Vietnam in a press release to Agence France Presse (AFP) on April 3, 1995, on the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. The entire press release is reproduced below. ”
Well, no chance of it being falsified there…
Second Link,
“Vietnam War (1965-73): 1 700 000 ”
Aprox 1/3 of the figure you quoted…
Third link not really useful.
Moving on to “The other common feature of WW1 and Vietnam was that we were fighting somebody else’s war. ” I see you have never heard of the concept of ‘alliances’, if we do not turn up for their wars, it seems unlikely they will turn up for ours. Very simply, we pay in blood to ensure that we will have allies if the poo really hits the proverbial for us.
I also like your insistence that we wait until a threat is immediate before we act against it. only the truely stupid would go for that.
Of course in future you could try convincing the Aust taxpayer to pony up the sort of cash required to be able to go it alone on the defence front. let me know how that works out for you.
Harry Buttle –
You’ve completely ignored the most thoroughly researched account of casualties in Vietnam, viz Paul Ham’s work. Go here – http://1735099.blogspot.com/2007/11/book-review.html
Again, I’m not sure where the term “Meat grinder” clicks in – but then I must be a soft lefty, because I don’t accept that even one Australian should be used as cannon-fodder by any foreign power, whether it be the British in WW1 or the Americans in SVN.
If it makes you happy, I’ll try to harden up and be prepared to turn a blind eye to this practice in the future – although by now most Australians would probably share my view of the world. Menzies left office in 1966, after all, and Billy Hughes died in 1952.
As to “alliances”, history is open to interpretation, but the British abandoned us in 1942 – hardly a reward for the 59330 KIA and 159,171 WIA in defence of Empire in WW1. Whilst on this topic, you can’t deny or ignore Churchill’s betrayal (and Roosevelt’s connivance in it) in 1942.
See – http://john.curtin.edu.au/artofthepossible/leaders.html
I wonder how many Americans would have come to our defence if Pearl Harbour had never happened? Fascinating prospect! To quote Jack Lang – “Always put your money on self-interest son, its the best horse in the race”.
As for “immediate threats”, you’d be drawing a pretty long bow to put Vietnam (or Iraq) in that category.
And I’d have no objection to paying taxes to support a military based on the Israeli/Singaporian/Swiss model. I’d also be content to see my sons and daughters as part of a National Service scheme which trained them for twelve months and then put them in the Reserve for a specified period of time. Decisions about deployment would need to be made in Canberra, not Washington.
So you are quoting your own book review? fail. Try the SMH review of the same book –
“Paul Ham’s history book is a curate’s egg – sometimes revealing and insightful, sometimes sloppy and sparsely referenced”
http://www.smh.com.au/news/book-reviews/vietnam-the-australian-war/2008/02/08/1202234148357.html
So far you’ve not come up with anything credible to support your assertions, you might want to stop digging that hole you are in.
Re your whining about “cannon fodder”, in WW1 that was unfortunately how the war was largely conducted by both sides, its not like we were singled out and its not like our own commanders did markedly better until very late in the war. In Vietnam, please give examples where Australian troops were used as “cannon fodder”.
From this point on you head off into lunatic territory.
The Brits did not abandon us in WW2, they were comprehensively defeated in Malaya, Singapore, at Sea and in the Air. yet Churchill still guaranteed to divert an Armoured Div in case of substantive invasion of Aust.
re the Yanks not coming to our aid if not for Pearl Harbor, if it hadn’t been for Pearl Harbor we wouldn’t have needed their help, we’d have still been on the other side of the world from the war FFS.
The Allies knew the Japs were not going to invade Australia as of mid April 1942 as noted in the Allied Combined Operations Intelligence Centre minute, 11 Apr 1942, [NAA] MP1587;218s SRs 575 ‘Magic summary’, 18 April 1942, RG257, US National Archives and Records Administration.
ie 4 months after the US coming into the war, it was known at the top level of allied strategic planning (due to US codebreaking) that the Japs had no intention [or ability] to invade Aust – on that basis, how much allied “assistance” do you think should have sat the war out in Aust waiting for an invasion that the Japs were not only unwilling to send, but were utterly incapable of delivering?
Hint. read some real history rather than self serving ALP tripe before you make more of a fool of yourself.
Re immediate threats, you are the one who insists on waiting until a threat IS immediate, not I – “Conservatives were quite content to conscript young men to fight in two wars in which there was no immediate threat to our national sovereignity.”, I support a policy of keeping combat at arms length from Australia.
re your willingness to waste tax money on a home guard based defence force, none of the examples you cite have to defend a continent, one traditionally gets out of local conflicts by providing discrete banking services to aggressive dictators and the third has never been tested. the one that has been tested (Israel) also has the total backing of the USA (who picks up the tab for a lot of the military kit it “sells” to Israel) and has developed its own nuclear capability, I don’t suppose you could let me know how you are planning on getting the same sweetheart deal that Israel has in military procurement, cooperation and defence guarantees for Australia?
Also, given that we will be required to break the nuclear non proliferation treaty and develop a full scale nuclear processing industry, would you mind letting me know how you are planning on convincing the taxpayer to go for that, fund development of delivery systems for the nukes and cope with the inevitable boycotts of Australian products and services, whilst ponying up a lot more cash for a full kit out for all these extra militia (including regular training and compensation for their employers while they are away from work).
Harry Buttle
So you’re not challenging Ham’s statistics – thank you. Your objection – remember – was to my use of the term “meat-grinder”, based on what you claim were false figures – You wrote – “Assuming the casualty figures coming out of a communist govt are accurate…”.
QED.
Again, you don’t like “cannon-fodder”. I call what I saw (and what I was part of). Any use of conscripted troops to fight for a cause not supported by the electorate is precisely that. In the final analysis, it doesn’t matter what it’s called – it’s plainly wrong, from both a strategic and moral standpoint.
As for examples in Vietnam, read Greg Lockhart’s “The Minefield”. A small extract –
“The history of the Minefield springs from and epitomises a war that was fought with willful blindness. It was fought against an irreversible tide of popular nationalism. The minefield was an Australian tragedy because it fed the crimson river that runs through the darkest valleys of the Anzac tradition.” (Introduction – xxv). This “crimson river” he refers to is the fine old tradition of high-level military incompetence costing Australian lives that was born in Gallipolli under Churchill, came to maturity under Macarthur in the mopping up campaigns in the Pacific, and lingered under Brigadier Graham in Phuoc Tuy in 1967. At least Graham was an Australian. In all, 55 Australians were killed by our own mines, and 250 were wounded. 42% of all KIA in 7RAR were from mines removed from the ATF barrier minefield.
The fact that the British “were comprehensively defeated..” makes no difference to Churchill’s clear and stated intention to abandon Northern Australia to the Japanese. As for their intentions, note this from a senior Japanese naval commander in February 1942 –
“No matter what happens, in order to win we simply cannot allow the enemy to use Australia. If the enemy is not able to prepare themselves yet, then we can take Australia”. (Baron Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka – responsible for development of Japanese Naval war planning – quoted in Bob Wurth’s “1942” – Australia’s Greatest Peril”). This view was not shared by the Japanese land commanders because they were worried about over-stretching the supply chain. However, during the period between December 1941 and April 1942, as far as the allies were concerned, invasion was a real threat. What was revealed later is a red herring in terms of your argument.
As for National Service, the three countries I cited are but examples. I could also have included Albania, Algeria, Austria, Brazil, China, Cuba, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iran, North & South Korea, Kuwait, Libya, Mexico, Moldova, Russia, Seychelles, Syria, Taiwan and Thailand.
And nowhere did I advocate the use of a Nuclear deterrent. You’re arguing with yourself on that one.
If you insist that we deal with any situation that has the potential to threaten our national interest by sending troops, we’d have operations on the go in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran…etc. I’m yet to be convinced that we are threatened by insurgents in Afghanistan any more than in any number of other failed states in the Middle East and the Pacific. We probably increase the threat to national security by these deployments because we give the home-grown nutters a motive to plan and implement terrorist attacks. Note that I am critical of the decision to send troops, not of the highly professional diggers who are involved. This is unlike your branding of Vietnam as “essentially a sideshow”. I thought this crap (which was directed at many of us on RTA, often in RSLs) had gone. Unfortunately it lingers.
Recent events in Copenhagen make it abundantally clear that the wallet will have more power than the bullet in this new decade. As their financial power declines, the Americans will have to go the way of the British Empire after WW2 and enter into a whole new range of multilateral arrangements. China and India will ultimately exert the strongest influences on our strategic future.
17, I can only assume that you are being wilfully ignorant, as nobody is actually so stupid as to believe that, having provided a contrary review of the book you rely on, by a professor of history and politics, where he states that the book contains factual mistakes, is sloppy and sparcely referenced means that I conceed that his figures are accurate.
Given the lack of references, he could have simply made them up or relied on the same sort of tripe you do. A school child understands this, on the bright side, it did give you the opportunity to use “QED” in the most astonishingly innapropriate fashion I’ve ever seen. bravo.
Throw in the fact that your other references (as noted above) don’t actually say what you say they say, I have to believe that you are simply dishonest, and silly enough to think that people don’t check your references.
Your definition of “Cannon Fodder” is rubbish, if you want to make up your own terms at least use a caveat that tells people that you are using your own sanity free definitions. then we can just ignore you.
cannon fodder
“soldiers, sailors, etc. thought of as being expended (i.e., killed or maimed) or expendable in war”
http://www.yourdictionary.com/cannon-fodder
Main Entry: cannon fodder
Function: noun
Date: circa 1891
1 : soldiers regarded or treated as expendable in battle
2 : an expendable or exploitable person, group, or thing
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cannon fodder
Not a mention of “the electorate” or “conscripts”. Google is your friend. it will stop you making an arse of yourself. use it.
Back to your whining about Churchill, as noted previously, Churchill, Roosevelt and Curtin all knew the Japs were not coming as of Apr 42 (from the previously referenced ‘Magic’ decodes), as such for security reasons, they could hardly just publicly state “no need to send troops, the Japs are not coming” as that would tell the Japs that we were decoding their traffic. being prepared to give ground (when you know the Japs have no ability or intention to invade) is a very good cover story for not making a few extra Divs sit out the war so as to not compromise what was possibly the 3rd biggest secret of the war (decodes [ultra/magic/purple] arguably coming after the Manhattan project and the cavity magnetron) and frankly, prior to the knowledge that they were not coming, if Australia was unable to defend everywhere (he who tries to defend everything, loses everything), then concentrating a significant force where needed is a good idea (more on the available Australian forces later).
re invasion planning – Captain in the Navy is NOT a “senior commander”.
Lets see what some really senior people had to say about such stupidity, shall we?
a bit of background – the first point to remember is that China was Japans military goal. the war in the South Pacific was a diversion that was forced on Japan by a lack of available oil and the imposition of an oil embargo.
The second point to remember is that Japans South Pacific strategy was NOT to militarily defeat the USA, they knew that was beyond their capacity, they intended to defeat the US Pacific fleet to buy time for them to sieze a ring of islands and fortify them against attack, presented with such a fait accompli the US was expected to negotiate a peace settlement rather than fight.
New Guinea was one of the places to be held and fortified. Australia was not.
Why attack the USA at all? Because US forces (air and naval) based in the Phillipines, could interrupt Japanese fuel convoys in the South China Sea in from Borneo oilfields and the Dutch East Indies at will.
Shipping
December 1941, Japan had almost 6.5 million tons of shipping, however the Japanese economy and existing military needs required 6.5 million tons of shipping to operate, there was no leeway and any diversion of shipping had to be temporary as it would mean cutting into strategic materials stockpiles. (The Japanese Merchant Marine in WW2 by Mark P Parillo).
In December 1941, the Japanese tanker fleet totalled only 575,000 tons. (Brute Force by John Ellis).
The IJA drafted 2,160,500 tons of shipping (roughly one third of the fleet!) at the start of the Pacific war (for supply and invasion forces), the IJA estimated that after July1942 they would be able to return all but 1 million tons.
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) drafted 1,740,200 tons of shipping- (270,000 tons of which was comprised of tankers, almost half of the available tanker fleet).
All up this was roughly 2/3 of the available shipping diverted to military control, leaving the economy with only 1/3 of the minimum shipping it required to function. But it is worse than that – 840,000 tons of the shipping left under civilian control were passenger vessels ill suited to cargo transport. (The Japanese Merchant Marine in WW2 by Mark P Parillo).
The practical effect of this is that, even without US intervention, Japan was not in a position to keep even this amount of shipping under military control in an effort to invade Australia, such an effort would destroy their economy.
The opinions of the major players.
29 Jan 42 Yamamto was only prepared to commit to invasions of Lae, Salamoa, Tulagi and Port Moresby. He was not interested in an invasion of Australia, that was a waste of manpower and too roundabout a way to end the war speedily.
(BBS, Daihon’ei kaigunbu, rengokaitai, Vol 2, p.309; and Nanto homen kaigun sakusen, Vol 1 p.355).
7 Mar 42 at the Combined IJA and IJN HQ liaison conference mid level naval officers put forward a plan to invade Australia, it was ridiculed by the IJA leadership as ‘gibberish’ and it was noted that troops were not available and logistic problems were quoted.
The IJN leadership (the direct superiors of the officers proposing the invasion) left it at ‘shipping is not available’.
From that conference emerged the ‘Fundamental Outline of Recommendations for Future War Leadership’ paper, signed by the Combined IJN and IJA HQs at the liaison conference and presented by Tojo, Sugiyama and Nagano to the emperor on 13 Mar 42 states in Paragraph 3, as a “future option to demonstrate positive warfare” that ‘a temporary invasion of port Darwin , if and when the situation allowed; that is, if Chaing Kai Shek could be brought down and the Soviet threat removed’
(BBS, Daihon’ei kaigunbu, rengokantai, Vol 2, pp 337-8).
To put it simply – the officially expressed opinions of the senior Japanese military leadership was that it would only take the defeat of China and the USSR to make a limited invasion of Australia feasible – all of this at the height of Japanese ‘victory disease’ (the belief that, militarily they could do no wrong).
The ‘Plan’
The only plan advanced for an invasion of Australia was that advanced by mid level naval officers on 7 Mar 42, it was ridiculed (as noted above) and it was noted that troops were not available and logistic problems were quoted by both the IJA and IJN leadership.
It is important to note that the IJA were the only Japanese force that had any large scale operational experience against Commonwealth troops on land and they estimated that it would require 12 Divisions to make a limited invasion of Northern Australia (they were also very clear on the point that they did not have 12 Divs to spare), they also noted ‘logistic problems’ which was quite an understatement (as shown in the shipping figures provided above).
The defending forces
Frankly, even if it had been possible to deliver Japanese 12 Divisions to Northern Australia, they would have been quickly defeated. in offensive operations a ratio of 3 attackers to 1 defender is assumed as a prerequisite for success, but that is dependent on the attacker having equipment parity with the defender, the Japanese were poorly equipped for open country warfare, Australian produced 2 Pdr anti tank guns could penetrate Japanese tanks at any range they could hit them, an Australian Division had a ‘throw weight’ of supporting artillery that was twice that of a Japanese division and threw their shells further than the Japanese guns.
Australia, in 1942, was able to almost fully motorise 8 Divisions (and had 8 Divisions worth of troops in Australia at the time) and was also in a position to requisition vehicles as neccessary from the large number of available civilian vehicles to make up any shortfalls.
The Australian army status report (AA MP729, series 6, file 42/401/142) stated that 22.5% of all major units were ready for mobile offensive ops at Bde or higher level; 48% were ready for static or semi static ops at Bde or higher level; 81% of all major units were ready for static or mobile ops at Bn level. 19% had not completed Bn level training.
So the majority of the force available (81%) was trained to a usable standard, the rest – like many military forces in history, would need to learn on the job, but would likely be held back from the most demanding of tasks whilst that training was completed.
Australian produced small arms (Bren guns, Vickers HMG, Lee Enfield .303 rifles, Owen Guns) and ammunition were certainly a match for the best the Japanese forces had.
The only area of superiority the Japanese had was in mortars, particularly light mortars, which are a lot more useful in jungle than they are in open country, however Japanese medium mortars also outranged the 3 inch mortars produced in Australia- this advantage would of course be offset by the Australian divisional artillery advantage mentioned above.
By 26 June 1942 (mid 42 is the earliest ‘credible’ date for a Japanese invasion [assuming the shipping fairy provided a mass of shipping to carry, support and supply the force], factoring in troop transport, resupply, refitting etc) Australia had taken delivery of 103 Matilda tanks and by the end of April 1942, 54 x M3 Mediums (Lee/Grant) had arrived in country – by December 1942 a total of 757 x M3 Mediums were on hand, both of these tanks were virtually impervious to all Japanese AT guns available at the time and were armed with a gun that could penetrate the armour of any available Japanese tank at the time at virtually any range.
10 x M3 Light tanks (Stuart) had been delivered by the end of 1941. Deliveries increased during 1942 and by the middle of 1943, and the total number of Stuarts in Australia was around 370 tanks – the Stuarts gun was as effective as the 2 Pdr, but being a light tank, it was more vulnerable to Japanese tanks and AT guns than the Grant and the Matilda.
Australia also produced Bren gun carriers, including variants that mounted 2 Pdr AT guns and 3 inch Mortar variants.
Basically, Australia had better artillery, better AT guns, better tanks and had an ability to fully motorise the force available, meaning they could dictate the time and place of an attack and could break contact virtually at will. As well as having the huge advantage of much shorter supply lines.
Churchill had also promised that he would divert a British Armoured Division from the Middle East to Australia in the case of ‘substantial invasion’.
Naval Power
The IJN had no force capable of blockading Australia, as too many Australian ports were way too far south and the IJN was not good at replenishment at sea, nor did they have enough tankers to support such a plan.
Any attempt to use IJN forces for shore bombardment would require diverting a signficant portion of the Japanese fighter a/c to protect it from air attack.
Shore bombardment operations down the east (or west) coast of Australia with significant fleet units would also put an intolerable strain on both fuel oil supplies and the tankers that would need to move such supplies.
To get a feel for just how much fuel this would consume, the excellent Combined Fleet website http://www.combinedfleet.com/guadoil1.htm has detailed information on the fuel consumption for a Japanese bombardment task force in the Solomons.
Airpower
Japan certainly had an advantage in this area, but the Japanese air forces (Army and Navy) achieved most of their successes by attacking their enemy on the ground, this option was denied them as, by June 1942, there was not only an extensive ground observer network but also a widespread radar network in eastern Australia.
This would largely allow the Australian force to choose its battles and only fight when the odds were in their favor, added to this is the large numbers of heavy and medium AA guns that the Australian army possesed, the abundance of machine guns in Australian army units along with the light construction, lack of armour and lack of self sealing fuel tanks on Japanese aircraft and Japanese airpower could not be considered a decisive factor, particularly when constrained by such long supply lines.
An example is China where Japanese airpower was virtually ineffective in supporting the battlefield in spite of their total air superiority and the paucity of Chinese air defences.
Australia had 180 front line fighters (mostly Kittyhawks), as well as 315 medium bombers and aprox 1000 light bombers, these aircraft, if used in conjunction with the observer network and the radar network to attack undefended or lightly defended targets could not only inflict significant damage on a force (such as the Japanese) that was very lightly equipped in anti-air weapons, but could force the Japanese fighter units into a mostly defensive role.
Conclusions
The Japanese were unable to invade Australia largely for logistic reasons, but those logistics were greatly complicated by the Australian governments development of an fairly sizeable arms industry, that made Australia largely independent in most categories of ammunition and most critical weapons types. This, effectively ‘raised the bar’ for what would constitute a credible invasion force well beyond that which the Japanese could deliver and supply.
Do you see now why I have suggested that you read some real history books, rather than self serving ALP tripe? try starting with –
“Armed and Ready” by AT Ross.
“The Japanese Merchant Marine in World War 2” by Mark P Parillo
“Japan’s Southward Advance and Australia” by Henry P Frei
“Brute Force” by John Ellis
Re your national guard countries, most have never been challenged, Denmark, Greece and Germany are members of NATO and as such heavily backed by the USA (including their nuclear umbrella), Austria and Finland aren’t formally members of NATO but works with them, Mexico can rely on US aid as they would not allow a hostile invade on their southern border. South Korea are reliant on US military guarantees and have US forces stationed in country, Taiwan rely on US military guarantees, Kuwait got their arse kicked by Iraq as I recall and had to be liberated (largely by the US) so it is a bit hard to see where this “national guard” idea is likely to work real well if we have ditched our alliances.
I assumed that, since you wanted to emulate the Israelis, you would be prepared to take on board the bit that makes the national guard idea work – the ability to utterly destroy any invader who looks like defeating their army with nukes.
We contribute to operations that threaten our national interest within our capabilities.
The idea that operating against people whose ideology is based on the idea of destroying us, makes us a bigger target, is one of the most stupid canards of the soft left. read the “mission statements” of these groups and their supporters – they already want to destroy us, they can only kill us once, so making them angry is of little concern. though I’m glad you raised the issue of the “home-grown” nutters amongst us – they were not home-grown, the Labor party largely imported them en mass to shift voting patterns in Western Sydney in their favor. and hasn’t that idea turned out well for the people of Sydney.
It seems you are building a strawman re my branding of Vietnam a sideshow, it was a sideshow but that does not reflect on the troops involved in that sideshow. nice try to sidetrack the issue though.
Recent events in Copenhagen have made it abundantly clear that the brain has more power than religious fervor. read up on the subject try googling “climategate” “east anglia CRU” and “hide the decline” there has been no detectable global warming in the last 15 years, in spite of a significant increase in atmospheric CO2 – EA CRU faked the figures for the IPCC and got caught just in time.
The excellent http://wattsupwiththat.com blog will give you all the info you need on the subject, with copious references.
India may well have a significant effect on us, China won’t. they are in a demographic death spiral, turns out that the one child policy had unfortunate side effects, particularly when combined with a culture that values boys a lot more than girls.
Harry Buttle
If you read Fitzgerald’s review of Ham’s work you’ll note that he specifically lists what he (Fitzgerald) considers to be poorly-referenced material. He does not challenge the casualty figures. He also concedes –
“Yet there are at least three examples in the book where Ham has either uncovered, or at least confirmed, crucial information about the disturbing behaviour of Australian federal politicians and top military commanders in dealing with the war in Vietnam.”
You should consider what Fitzgerald actually says, not dismiss the whole work because he alleges some errors. What Fitzgerald writes is criticism. What you’ve posted is smear. There’s a clear difference.
Let’s examine your definition – “soldiers, sailors, etc. thought of as being expended (i.e., killed or maimed) or expendable in war”
The term “thought as” is illuminating. The reaction encountered by many Vietnam veterans on RTA, and their treatment by DVA since, would lead a sane person to believe that they were/are regarded as expendable. I used this term in the sense that any soldier conscripted to fight in an unpopular war, is by definition, considered expendable, at least by the decision makers. This attitude only changed when it began to backfire politically. Towards the end of our deployment, pressure was being applied to senior commanders to reduce casualties – both Ham and Fitzgerald agree on this.
Your lengthy discourse on Japanese capability and intentions is interesting, but largely irrelevant. Churchill, Roosevelt and Curtin did not have a crystal ball. The decisions Churchill made about the defense of Australia were made before he had access to the coded material. The crucial cable exchange between Curtin and Churchill happened in February 1942. (National Archives of Australia A816/1 52/302/142).
The Australian mobilisation in the early stages of the Pacific war reveals what the country is capable of in the face of a real threat, and with a government prepared to “conscript” wealth and industry in the face of this threat. Contrast this with the hypocrisy revealed in the sixties when the government was quite happy to conscript young men, claiming that we were threatened by an ideology, whilst at the same time allowing “business as usual” in every other aspect of national life.
It is possible to retain a well-trained citizen’s militia whilst at the same time maintaining alliances. In fact, many of the countries I listed do exactly that. If nothing else, it would indicate to our allies that national security is seen as everybody’s business in this country, and not the responsibility of a small segment of the population. Aligned with an opt-out clause, allowing for civil service (reconstruction in indigenous communities, disabled care, “peace-corps” activity), it would add to the quality of our national life and provide essential life-skills to a generation that are increasingly being led by the corporate dollar into selfish and narcissistic lifestyles.
Your reference to “home guard based defence force” has nothing to do with what I’m suggesting. The home guard were local volunteers otherwise ineligible for military service – not at all what I had in mind.
My basic points remain unchallenged –
1. Call it what you like, millions, mostly civilians, died in Vietnam.
2. Churchill was prepared to divert Australian troops away from defending Northern Australia in the face of a real threat to our national security.
3. A Labor PM refused to cooperate and put his country first.
4. With the exception of the deployment of militia in New Guinea, Vietnam was the only war in our military history where conscripts were used to fight overseas. In New Guinea a real threat was evident, in Vietnam, this was not the case.
These are historical facts – not “ALP tripe”.
Its nice that you are grabbing at straws, the fact is that the reviewer gives examples of factual errors and sloppiness, he in no way suggests that he has identified all of them (that is hardly the objective of a newspaper review), the fact that he found or confirmed 3 other matters is interesting, but not relevant to your contention that total Vietnam casualties were on the same scale as those of WW1 (in fact you only moved onto that claim when your reference to Aust casualties in Vietnam and WW1 both being like a “meat grinder” got called), I’ll allow you the dishonest argument, because it doesn’t matter – you look equally foolish making either claim.
What is relevant is that the book is in error factually and does not provide adequate references. claims are worthless in that sort of book without references that can be checked, Hamms book is therefore worthless to support your contention, as noted above NONE of the other credible references YOU cited support your claimed casualty figures, so the only reference you have left is a book that is sloppy, contains factual errors and is poorly referenced, as such your position does not stand up to critical examination and is either dishonest or simply wrong. QED.
Re your attempt to redifine “Cannon Fodder”, nowhere does it suggest that it is THEIR opinion that is referred to, particularly if one looks up the original reference. stop making such an arse of yourself, google can save you here. carrying on about the ‘feelings’ and treatment of those who were conscripted after they returned shows that you are too stupid to even read the definitions supplied – soldiers regarded or treated as expendable IN BATTLE, not 35 years after FFS! to recap “cannon fodder” to paraphrase, are troops basicly used to soak up enemy fire with no regard on the part of their leaders for casualties (human wave type stuff usually), not troops who feel that they were poorly treated on return or decades after the war. you are wrong and references have been supplied.
RE the Japanese, Allied leadership did have a crystal ball, several in fact. the first was called ‘magic’ we were reading Japanese military communications, then ‘purple’ we were reading japanese diplomatic communications, then military intelligence knew that it would take an operation that was of historically unprecedented scale to perform an amphibious invasion and defeat better equipped forces in situ in a continent the size of Australia and that it would take at least until mid 42 to assemble and replenish a force that could even make a start on the job (if troops, supplies and ships could be found), we also knew that the US was still holding on in the Phillipines – the Japs were never going to push on to other major land ops until the Phillipines was settled, as they could potentially strangle Japanese supply lines to the south. The Phillipines held until May 6, almost a month after Magic intercepts confirmed that Japan was not going to invade Aust.
Please read some real history books.
The Australian mobilisation in the early stages of the Pacific war shows what Australian Govts achieved by pushing industrialisation as a policy since about 1901, you don’t pull an ability to make superior artillery out of a hat in a year. again, read some real history, “armed and ready” by A.T Ross is a superb reference on this subject.
Please leave your personal whining about conscription out of it, what would have been achieved in Vietnam by the average Australian undergoing petrol rationing or industry being forced to make more rifles? hint, not everything is about you and it is both predictable and boring.
It may well be possible to maintain a citizens militia and alliances, but you have already said that we should not be sending troops to fight in other peoples wars, so why would anyone ally with us – what is in it for them?
The other problem with your militia idea is that it will, by default, arm the “home grown nutters” that the ALP imported (and that you seem to be avoiding discussing now).
Your basic points are rubbish,
1. you are the one who chose to “call it what you like” by comparing casualties in Vietnam with WW1, not I, since then you have been flailing about desperately moving the goalposts in a failing effort to not look foolish.
2. There was no Japanese threat to invade Australia, this was known before Apr 42 by simple logistic analysis and after by Apr 42 reading Japanese sigs. get over it, you’ve been given the refs – it is an ALP myth that we were in dire trouble and Curtin saved us.
3. See above.
4. In New Guinea there was a distant threat to mainland Aust (mostly air raids) if Moresby had fallen. In Vietnam the threat was the spread of communism (ask some people who have lived under communism if they enjoyed it).
As I have said, please read some real history, you are just wasting my time now.
Harry Buttle 6 – Ignorant lefty 17 whatever 0
Tell us again 17 how you were conscripted to serve the interests of big oil and Exon.
Harry Buttle
You initially took objection to my use of terms such as “meatgrinder” and “cannon-fodder”, and have been attempting to justify this objection since. No amount of quibbling about casualty figures and their sources will change the fact that millions died in the war in Vietnam. Take time out to visit the country and inspect the many memorials. You’ll be made welcome. Try telling the Vietnamese that the “American War” was a sideshow.
You state baldly in 2009 that “There was no Japanese threat to invade Australia”. You can sit behind a computer screen in 2009 with 20/20 hindsight and make such a statement in an attempt to prove a point, but that doesn’t alter the perceptions held at the time by the protaganists.
Dr Peter Stanley wrote in September 2008 –
“Australians not unreasonably thought that having conquered most of south-east Asia the Japanese would simply keep going. It was logical – and they’d been fearful of Japanese aggression for fifty years, fears evoked by novels, plays and films. The Curtin government understandably warned Australians to prepare for attack or even invasion – as the notorious poster put it ‘He’s Coming South’!
In fact, ‘He’ was not, but John Curtin and the Allied Supreme Commander in the South West Pacific, Douglas MacArthur, only understood this by about the middle of 1942.”
Stanley argues two things – one that in hindsight the invasion threat was probably not a reality, the other that those involved (including Curtin, Churchill and the Australian war cabinet) quite reasonably regarded it as real until the middle of 1942. This is a fine but important distinction. You’d better tell Stanley to get over it as well. Unless you believe that the former senior historian at the AWM is an ALP stooge.
I have a number of friends living in Vietnam “under Communism”. One of them lost a brother and two sisters when they were shot by police in Lang Phuoc Hai in 1985 whilst trying to escape to Australia. He told me over a beer in 2006 in Vung Tau that whilst he still feels angry about that, his prevailing emotion now is sadness because they tried to escape, as he believes they would be doing as well as he is had they stayed in the country after Doi Moi. He’s running a small business, owns a couple of tour agencies, and can afford to send his kids to university.
I don’t have the arrogance to tell the citizens of another country how they should organise their system of government, so I button my lip when I’m there. It’s a great pity we weren’t doing that 50 years ago.
Some advice – You always include a gratuitous insult in every post. It’s not a good idea. Your posts would be much improved if you left them out.
Well 17etc, you are the idiot who compared casualty figures between WW1 and Vietnam, and then have been flailing desperately to justify that level of idiocy and trying to find a way to link it to conscription. We get it, you can’t get over being conscripted, please stop making an arse of yourself over it.
Millions of Vietnamese might have died (historically communist govts lie about cas figures for propaganda purposes), but it doesn’t support the insane contention that the cas rates are comparable between Vietnam and WW1, particularly since, before being called on the subject, you were only talking about Australian casualties, shows just how dishonest you have been.
And why not try getting one of the Vietnamese who you are so obsessed about to tell the French, Brits, Germans or even the Australians who died in droves that the Vietnam war wasn’t a sideshow compared to WW1.
Sad though it is, the Japanese were not going to invade in the timeframe before the magic intercepts let the allied leadership know they were not interested. Basic logistic analysis told them that it could not be done in the short term, in the medium to long term magic intercepts told them it wasn’t on.
BTW, anyone who understands logistics knows that it wasn’t vaguely “logical” that units that had just fought the length of Malaya, were bogged down in the Phillipines or were still fighting in China, could just “keep going” south, particularly without reinforcement, resupply, rest or shipping to move them (its one thing to just keep going on land [though didn’t that work out well in Russia] when supply runs out, but across serious water barriers it doesn’t work, or Great Britain would have fallen by 1941.
Re the Curtin Govt warning the populace to be afraid, here is a surprise, scaring the piss out of the populace to drive up enlistment and production seemed to help in both cases, whilst still concealing that there was no actual threat. And the Govt of the day went for it. Stunned. Simply stunned. How could it be that a Labor Govt would lie to the people?
As noted above, long term propaganda, does not constitute reality, in April 42 they knew the Japs were not coming from their own sigs, before that logistic analysis showed they couldn’t come.
Quoting General MacArthur (from Peter Stanleys work, “Curtin’s apprehensions ought to have been greatly calmed by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the South-West Pacific Area. MacArthur briefed the Advisory War Cabinet five days after arriving in Melbourne, in March. Its members may have been relieved to hear his opinion that “it is doubtful whether the Japanese would undertake an invasion of Australia …”, though they may have entertained misgivings over his reason “as the spoils here are not sufficient to warrant the risk”.) – In September 1942, though, Curtin was still pressing for an Allied force of 25 divisions for Australia’s defence. Roosevelt, in a cablegram that month, reassured him that Americans “fully appreciate the anxiety which you must naturally feel” for Australia’s security. Nevertheless, he had to stress that the forces then in Australia, including two American divisions and a large air corps element were “sufficient to defeat the present Japanese force in New Guinea and to provide for the security of Australia against an invasion”. The confidential “backroom briefings” Curtin gave journalists, documented by Fred Smith, suggest both his concern and his ignorance. On 21 September 1942, after complaining of the obduracy of Churchill and Roosevelt, Curtin told journalists that the Japanese could still “base on the Kimberleys and cross overland … diagonally across in this direction”. This contradicted both the advice of his service advisers and geographical common sense.
By contrast, Winston Churchill, who had faced a more immediate threat of invasion for a year in 1940–41, took a more phlegmatic view of the likelihood of the Japanese attack. He consistently deprecated the likelihood, telling the House of Commons in January 1942 that the Japanese were more likely to devote their attention to making the most of their conquests rather than “undertaking a serious mass invasion of Australia”. His Chiefs of Staff consistently expressed the view that “a genuine invasion of Australia does not form part of the Japanese plans”. The Curtin government, kept informed by both the Dominions Office and by its High Commissioner in London, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, was aware of this view throughout. The Australian Chiefs of Staff, asked to comment on this and other British appreciations, did not demur. Both Churchill and Roosevelt appear to have understood both that Australia was practically secure and that they had to deal with Curtin’s fretfulness rather than the strategic reality.
Not until early 1943 is there any indication that the Curtin cabinet accepted that the Japanese threat had diminished. The official poster “Ringed with menace!”, dating from about mid-1943 demonstrates how ludicrous the contention had become. In reality, Australia was spotted with inconvenience rather than ringed with menace. But Curtin refused to publicly concede the declining likelihood of actual invasion until June 1943.
But even as he (Curtin) confirmed in an off-the-record briefing in March 1944 that “there would now never be any danger to the eastern side of Australia”, he was still raising the possibility of Japanese attacks on Darwin and Western Australia, his home state.
What explains Curtin’s anxiety? Australian and Allied leaders in Australia knew of the Japanese decision not to invade within a month of the debates between staff officers in Tokyo in March 1942. In early April “Magic” intercepts reached Australia which confirmed that no invasion was contemplated. An actual danger of invasion had never existed and the likelihood diminished through 1942 as Allied victories eroded Japan’s offensive capability. Curtin was told as much by London and Washington, and MacArthur, Curtin’s principal strategic adviser, consistently advised that it was improbable. Why did Curtin continue to bang the invasion drum? Glyn Harper has suggested that Curtin’s kept up the pretence of an invasion threat for electoral advantage in 1943.
Other answers may be that by so loudly proclaiming the danger Curtin could kill two birds with one stone. First, he could mobilise the Australian people, whose commitment to the sacrifices necessary for victory so often was less passionate than his own. Second, his advocacy of a possibility known by Axis to be false supported the deception that the Allies had broken key enemy codes. Had Curtin admitted the impossibility of invasion sooner Axis powers may have suspected how he could have known.
End of Stanleys quote.
Wow! Your own reference, Peter Stanley of the AWM sounds remarkably like me! It is almost like I have read his work at some length and corresponded with him on the subject rather than done a desperate last minute trawl of the net like you (google is your friend, but it doesn’t beat years of study)…
I had a friend (Kurt) who got out of East Germany over the wall, he left behind his sister and and a finger that was shot off as he left, he was not sympathetic towards communism and, funnily enough was a whole bunch more able to express himself freely than your friends, what with no longer living under a communist govt.
The people of south Vietnam didn’t get to organise their govt, they got invaded and overrun by nth Vietnam you fatuous clown, I am “arrogant” enough to suggest that they should have had the right to choose their Govt, just like the Dutch should have had the right to choose their Govt in 1942.
You get insulted because you are a fool, I’d have thought you would be used to it by now.
Harry Buttle
You’ve ranted on about my choice of terminology, but conveniently avoid any mention of the substance of my original post, viz –
“Menzies supported Churchill and Roosevelt in an effort to abandon Northern Australia by insisting that the 6th and 7th divisions be diverted to Burma instead of being sent into the conflict in New Guinea.”
And –
“Fortunately, we had a (Labor) PM who had the guts to stand up to them”.
And –
“Menzies remained consistent to the end, offering Australian conscripts to a foreign power in a different meat grinder/sideshow/police action* (Vietnam) twenty years later.”
*Use whatever term you please.
Tell me where the errors in fact are to be found in these statements. Spare us the boys-own micro analysis of the strategic situation, and the after-the-event narrative which is totally irrelevant to these points. Answer me a smple yes/no to the following –
Did Churchill attempt to divert the 6th and 7th Divisions to Burma in 1942?
Was this supported by Menzies and Earle Page?
Did Menzies introduce conscription in 1964 without any prior reference to it in the 1963 election campaign?
You’re obviously also peeved to be reminded that –
a) Curtin was a Labor PM, and he was re-elected in a landslide in 1943. (In 1943 the Curtin Labor government increased its majority, winning 49 seats to 12 United Australia Party seats, 7 Country Party, 3 Country National Party, 1 Liberal Country Party, 1 Queensland Country Party, and 1 Independent seats in the House of Representatives. Labor won all 19 Senate seats contested).
b) The only time Australians were conscripted to fight on foreign soil (Except New Guinea in WW) was in Vietnam.
c) By the time I served (1970) most Australians did not support the Coalition’s policies in regard to Vietnam.
d) The “American War” ended in 1972, and in 1975 Vietnam was unified after centuries of conflict that began in 1858 with a French fleet and 3000 troops landing in Danang.
e) Vietnam has shown remarkable progress in the last thirty years. (Ranked 61 out of 111 countries in “The Economist’s” Worldwide Quality of Life Index 2005).
As for my attitude to conscription – I have no particular personal beef – it probably did me the world of good. It did, after all, bring me into contact with a fine body of men (7RAR in 69/70).
This doesn’t alter the fact that it did many young Australians no good at all. It was also a cynical exploitation of dog-whistle “Reds under the Bed” politics back in the sixties.
It is possible, you know, to accept both these propositions, if you possess enough maturity and breadth of experience to know that life is full of contradictions.
I have every right to express opinions based on my experiences. You don’t have to agree, but calling me a fool on the basis of my opinions is childish. No doubt if they agreed with yours, you’d have no problem. In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Jesus wept, do you not read? the Japs could not get here, frankly we could have handled the defence of the north with a couple of troops of girl guides, logistically the Japs were unable to transport and supply a force in Nth Aust. I know you are stupid, you have repeatedly demonstrated this, but since it was clear the Japs could not get here, what was the point of putting more Divs to sit out the war in Darwin, Townsville etc?
While you are having a whine about Churchill being prepared to abandon the north to the Japs who couldn’t get there, I assume you know that Churchill was prepared to “drench southern England in mustard gas” if the Germans landed there? – BTW, why wouldn’t you be prepared to abandon Nth Aust to provide for a militarily defensible line you idiot. Do we criticise the USSR for trading land for time? or do we criticise Hitler for insisting that not an inch of land be given up, thereby throwing away entire armies?
As noted above at nauseum, Magic told us they were not coming, basic logistic analysis (compare already known Jap shipping capacity with requirements to move and supply troops in combat) told us they were not coming, as did the fact that the Phillipines were still holding until after we got the critical Magic intercepts – public perceptions, plus Curtins renowned nervousness (in spite of the assurances of his own military leadership already quoted above) does not equal reality except in ALP propaganda which you swallow wholeheartedly – FFS read. some. real. history.
Still referring to the Vietnam sideshow as a “meat grinder” does not make you look any more educated than it did before it was demonstrated to you that it wasn’t one. on the bright side, you might as well keep doing it, as you can’t look any less educated on the subject.
Re Curtin being reelected, so what? its not often that wartime Govts are changed during the war and he did push the “about to be invaded” line until mid 43 (a clear lie on his part and it has been suggested that it was for electoral advantage).
re “the only time Australians were conscripted to fight on foreign soil (Except New Guinea in WW) was in Vietnam.” or to put it equally accurately, Vietnam was not the only time Australians were conscripted to fight on foreign soil. hint here, I have no problem with conscription and once conscripted, they go where they are told.
I don’t call you a fool on the basis of your opinions, I know you are a fool on the basis of what you pretend are facts, in spite of being supplied copious references you still insist on clinging to discredited sources and ALP hype. that makes you a fool.
I’ve proved you with a mass of references, all of which you have ignored. I have done all that is reasonable in an attempt to educate an idiot, I do not intend to waste any more of my time on you, fortunately anyone else who wants the facts can just read the references that I’ve already provided, you have the facts available and have had them for quite some time, I honestly can see no point in repeating myself any further.
Harry Buttle
You either don’t understand or wilfully ignore the difference between historical fact based on source material and your spin on interpretations made by writers after the event. The sources (the cable exchange between Curtin and Churchill) are available at the AWM. They are not ALP propaganda.
You also ignore the temporal sequence – ie, Churchill and Curtin were not aware of your precious “Magic” when they were making decisions about the defence of Australia early in 1942. What the record shows is that Menzies and Page were happy to appease Churchill, but Curtin was not. Your contention that Australia wasn’t threatened is meaningless, because it wasn’t know at the time.
The Australian people made their decision in 1943 (and again in September 1946) when Chifley won 43 seats to the newly-formed Liberal Party’s 26.
It’s a shame you weren’t around at the time to explain that there was never any threat of Japanese invasion, and that it was OK to let Churchill and Roosevelt run the country. I’m sure you would have been listened to…
Despite your accusation that I ignore facts – (and I’m still trying to work out how your interpretations can be called facts) you have not challenged any of my points above.
This disturbing trend of re-writing history because it doesn’t suit your mindset needs to be called.
all already covered above in considerable detail.
Curtin was only re-elected because war time censorship prevented the Australian people from finding out that he was a MacArthur lapdog who had surrendered Australian sovereignty and control of Australian forces on our own territory.
Curtin refused advice from his General Staff and commanders in New Guinea and allowed MacArthur to waste the lives of Australian Soldiers in unnecessary assaults on Gona, Buna and Sanananda.
In the words of military historian Gavin Long, during the Curtin-MacArthur era, the Australian Government ‘had made a notable surrender of sovereignty’ when ‘no Australian government would have so completely surrendered control of its forces in its own territory to a British commander and staff’.
In Long’s view, a ‘strange aspect of this alliance of an Australian government and an American commander’ was how far apart were ‘their views on international and local politics’.
So complete was the surrender of sovereignty that MacArthur from the outset appointed Americans to lead every branch of his staff even though there were several highly qualified Australian Army specialists who had the additional advantage of ‘recent and varied active service’.
Your welcome to your misplaced worship of Curtin 17 whatever, he was a very feeble ‘light on the hill’.
Peter W
“Curtin was only re-elected because…”
Obviously the Australian people were easily fooled. My Dad must have been a fool. He voted Labor when he was serving in the RAAF in Lae.
Of course, ensuring that Australian front line troops returned to defend the country was a form of appeasement in your view….very strange. What would you have called it if Curtin had caved in to Churchill?
Long’s view is not backed up by any available sources (see Peter Love, ‘Curtin, MacArthur and conscription, 1942-43’, Historical Studies, 17, 69 (October 1977), p. 505. and remains one historian’s opinion.
A very different opinion was expressed by none other than Paul Hasluck –
“There appears to be no evidence, other than rumours current during the controversy, that either MacArthur or the United States Government had suggested or sought “conscription” of the Australian militia.”(Paul Hasluck, The Government and the People 1942-1945, Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1970, p. 349.) Hasluck was writing about Curtin’s decision to allow the militia to fight overseas in defined areas, but the general argument was about whether Curtin or Maccarthur was calling the shots.
By the way, given how Australians were used in WW1 by the British commanders (until Monash arrived on the scene), it’s hardly surprising that Curtin didn’t want them in control. Monash’s post-war rejection of the fascist New Guard and the White Army, and his deft handing of Billy Hughes when the latter tried to undermine his command near the end of the war, put him in the same mould as Curtin – an Australian first – an Anglophile never. See p502 “Monash – The Outsider who won a War “Roland Perry, Random House Australia, Sydney, 2004.
The attempt by Churchill to misappropriate Australian assets is clear and unequivocal, and the sources (the cables) are available for perusal.
Your problem (like Harry Buttle’s) is that you can’t abide the fact that Curtin was a Labor PM.
It’s very inconvenient when the sourced history doesn’t match your world view.
Curtin and Macarthur had a strong relationship – they were very different men, but shared a committment to defeating Fascism in the SW Pacific. To get a better idea of the nature of this unique alliance read chapter 20 (pp266-277) in “John Curtin – A Biography” by Lloyd Ross (Macmillan: Sydney 1977). It’s impeccably sourced.
To get a handle on appeasement read – http://www.theage.com.au/news/Opinion/Historian-Alexander-Downers-Burmese-daze/2005/05/24/1116700707844.html
Poor 17, reduced to “It’s very inconvenient when the sourced history doesn’t match your world view…” 17 you are so sadly wrong it beggars belief. Mr Buttle has wiped the floor with you and your childish distortion of history. The rest of your fallacious rant is so removed from the truth you aren’t even amusing any more.
As Harry pointed out earlier, your Google view of history is inept at best. You’d do better if you read the references you link. You might then understand how distant your shabby version of history is from the truth.
Perhaps you’d like to evangelise the treacherous waterside workers in Australia who went on strike for ‘danger money’ in return for loading ammunition rather than cover the backs of their own countrymen.
I’m sure communists like Lloyd Ross and ALP apologists like the author of the hallucinogenic ‘Light on the Hill’, Ross McMullin, will agree with you.
You and the mendacious left you represent disgust me.
Fall on your bayonet 17, the Vietnam War is over, you were conscripted – tough shit.
As for your father – who knows, perhaps he was also afflicted with the virulent political poison you have succumbed to or perhaps you are just the ignorant spawn of his bigotry.
Peter W
I guess when you run out of arguments, abuse and ad hominem drivel is all that remains.
If my old man was alive he’d be laughing at your description of him as “bigoted” because he voted Labor when he was on active service.
It’s also worth noting that at least he got to vote in 1943. In 1969 I was going through Canungra with my battalion when the federal election was on and was denied a vote because HQ refused to provide transport to take those of us who wanted to vote to the booth. Again, an illuminating view democracy in action at the time. You gotcalled-up to fight, but shouldn’t have expected to get a vote. The term “cannon-fodder” springs to mind.
In reference to industrial action during WW2, look at the history. Curtin managed the industrial demands of the maritime unions with skill and courage. He pacified the Labor caucus under Eddie Ward, something that no conservative pollie at the time would have managed.
You need to understand a few facts (rather than myths) about the role of the maritime unions at the time. One in eight of these much-maligned Australian merchant seafarers (and maritime union members to a man), gave their lives in WWII in defence of their country, often in Australian waters, and suffered the highest proportionate mortality rate of any service. I guess we should refuse to acknowledge this because they were on the “wrong” side of the political spectrum? Try suggesting that to any merchant mariner you see marching next Anzac Day.
Curtin also used emergency legislation against the coal mining unions in May 1943. At no time during the Vietnam war did the coalition display the courage to take on any of the striking unions delaying the loading of the Jeparit. This speaks volumes for the lip service they gave to the support of the diggers, and the true nature of national “leadership” at the time. It’s an interesting comparison with how Curtin acted in WW2.
To understand the context of the events of the time, read – “Menzies and Curtin in World War Two: A comparative essay by David Black” at http://john.curtin.edu.au/ww2leaders/print.html
I doubt, of course, that you will – it is a balanced account and won’t suit your version of history.
BTW – “The attempt by Churchill to misappropriate Australian assets is clear and unequivocal, and the sources (the cables) are available for perusal” – You still haven’t challenged that…. :-)
Come on fellows, what about the boaties arriving in droves as a result of cRudds change in Australian policies……doesn’t seem to have abated since we change the subject to policies affecting Australians at war.
Bigot: “One who is strongly partial to one’s own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.” That’s you 17, to a ‘T’.
‘…read – “Menzies and Curtin in World War Two: A comparative essay by David Black”…’ I have and after reading your comments on this thread it obvious you either haven’t or your level of comprehension is so low you can’t grasp even the simplest the themes in the essay.
“…because HQ refused to provide transport to take those of us who wanted to vote to the booth…” Here we go again with another “when I was conscripted” sob story. What a pathetic individual you are… It was 40 years ago, wipe away the tears and get over it.
As for the references to ‘maritime unions’, your comprehension goggles have slipped off completely. I made no reference to ‘merchant seafarers’.
However your claim that “[A]t no time during the Vietnam war did the coalition display the courage to take on any of the striking unions delaying the loading of the Jeparit” displays your usual ignorance.
In 1966 the communist leaders of the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) defied ACTU, ALP and Federal Government agreements and directives to crew the Australian National Line ships Boonaroo and Jeparit on voyages to Vietnam, despite the fact another seven unions involved in crewing the ships volunteered to man the vessels.
The Federal Government threatened action in the Industrial Court and the SUA caved in and the Boonaroo sailed to Vietnam on schedule. A later voyage of the Jeparit was also manned by SUA members after the Federal Government threatened to use naval personnel to crew the ship.
However when the Boonaroo was chartered and loaded with ammunition for a second voyage in 1967 the SUA traitors refused to crew the ship again so it was commissioned into the RAN and made the trip crewed by naval personnel. A similarly loaded 1967 voyage of the Japarit was crewed by a mixture of naval and civilian personnel later that year.
So much for ‘coalition’ inaction. The careful restraint shown by the Federal Government in 66 and 67 ending in the quiet commissioning of the two ANL ships into the RAN is in marked contrast to the bitter ‘open warfare’ between Curtin and the miners during the 1940s where he was reduced to threatening to cancel the exemption from military training of striking coalminers.
As a Sydney Morning Herald editorial of the day made clear “The Seamen’s Union is Communist-led, and the reason for its tactics is perfectly clear. Mr Elliott and his colleagues are less concerned about the welfare and employment opportunities of their members than they are trying to ensure the triumph of Hanoi.”
Your lies about government inaction during the Vietnam War and the hyperbole about ‘national leadership’ ‘speaks volumes’ about your ability to see the truth through your rosy red ‘left wing’ glasses.
Despite your desperate and wildly inaccurate attempt to whitewash Curtin’s wavering and fault ridden management of Australia at war if it hadn’t been for the foresight and tireless work by Menzies, Curtin’s feeble and wanting leadership would have brought the nation to its knees.
Menzies’ preparations for the Second World War are described in your favourite essay as “precious work [which] had already been done’ and by the time the war spread to the Far East ‘many of the initial difficulties and most of the routine tasks organizing a nation for war had already been mastered”.
In December 1941 the head of the Defence Department, F.G. Shedden, wrote to Menzies that “Tribute has yet to be paid to the great foundations laid by you at a time when you lacked the advantage of effect on national psychology and morale of a war in the Pacific…”
Meanwhile your faux regard for ‘merchant seafarers’ does nothing to hide your inability to defend Curtin’s panicked surrender of Australian sovereignty and control of Australian forces to MacArther or the fact he refused advice from his General Staff and allowed MacArthur to waste the lives and limbs of Australian Soldiers in unnecessary assaults on Gona, Buna and Sanananda.
MacArthur never ventured beyond Port Moresby, and never took the trouble to familiarise himself with either the terrain or enemy defences.
Yet, for his own publicity purposes and with the implicit approval of Curtin he applied pressure for quick results because he desperately wanted to claim a land victory against the Japanese with Army troops before the Marines on Guadalcanal could finish off the Japanese defenders.
As a result he ordered attacks to be mounted without adequate preparation, without adequate support, and astride approaches that held no hope of success.
Great War veterans amongst the assaulting Australian units wrote that they were forced into repeating the errors made in the early part of WW1 by attacking across open ground without sufficient artillery against well fortified and cleverly sited Japanese defences.
Because of the appalling lack of logistical support for every thousand Australians killed in action in New Guinea another thousand died from Malaria and Typhus.
Many troops went into action day after day in almost futile attempts to take ground one to two metres at a time riddled with Malaria and dysentery to the point they fell exhausted after each assault with shit leaking out of their shorts.
As the Australians set about burying their mates after the campaign, it did little for their morale to learn that the communist-led waterside workers in Australia had gone on strike for ‘danger money’ in return for loading the ammunition they were so desperately short of.
MacArthur’s irresponsible attacks also cost the US National Guard’s 32nd Infantry Division dearly. It was thrown into the New Guinea battles with few weapons; little training and its men were slaughtered. The division lost 5000 men through disease and enemy action.
So complete was the surrender of sovereignty that MacArthur was able to dictate political policy to a cowed Curtin who was so bedevilled with Labor party internal politics and union perfidy he was unable to play a meaningful role in running the war and protecting Australian troops from MacArthur’s excesses.
The ‘cable war’ between Curtin and Churchill is of little import especially when one takes into account what happened to the British Division Curtin insisted be sent to Singapore.
That went REALLY well.
Peter W
I sourced that article deliberately – to find a reading which was even-handed and which lacked bias. You trolled through it to find something (anything) to discredit Curtin.
Pavlov would have a had a ball with you!
I think I understand now…. You go all apoplexic when I mention conscription because you dislike being reminded of the hypocrisy and failures of that particular epoch. The fact that my experiences don’t align with your binary view of history causes all sorts of dissonance, and the only way you have of dealing with it is to resort to name-calling. So sad.
A couple of points..
When did the coalition declare a State of Emergency to deal with the Seaman’s Union in the sixties? Surely if the issue was of such national import, threats of action in the Industrial Court were a bit wimpish?
Curtin, on the other hand, had the vast majority of Australians behind him when he took action – a little more than can be said for McMahon and Gorton in the sixties. Gorton, in particular, never really had his heart in it.
You’re right, Menzies did indeed do some good work in the lead-up to the dangerous times, but he lacked both Curtin’s courage and skill in uniting Australians behind him, and his unequivocal commitment to his country. Menzies was never quite sure where his loyalties lay. He’d seriously considered a seat in the British parliament, after all.
As for – “So complete was the surrender of sovereignty that Macarthur was able to dictate political policy to a cowed Curtin who was so bedeviled with Labor party internal politics and union perfidy he was unable to play a meaningful role in running the war and protecting Australian troops from Macarthur’s excesses”.
Let David Black say it –
“But essentially Australians and most historians accepted at the time and since that the close relationship with the USA in general, and with General Macarthur in particular, was essential to Australia’s capacity to avoid foreign invasion. Whatever the reality of Japan’s intentions and capacity at the time – as John Edwards has said 7
‘the Battle for Australia…never took place’13 – the fact remains that the threat to the homeland seemed so obvious and apparent, certainly until well into 1943, that Curtin’s leadership was accepted without question amongst the population at large.”
This is exactly what I’ve been saying since my third post, and you have never challenged it.
As for “The ‘cable war’ between Curtin and Churchill is of little import especially when one takes into account what happened to the British Division Curtin insisted be sent to Singapore.”
Total nonsense, unless you believe Curtin was capable of time-travel.
Perhaps you do – it would make sense given the “logic” displayed in then rest of your argument.
As for Macarthur – “Yet, for his own publicity purposes and with the implicit approval of Curtin he applied pressure for quick results because he desperately wanted to claim a land victory against the Japanese with Army troops before the Marines on Guadalcanal could finish off the Japanese defenders.”
Yes, he was looking towards a future political career as a Republican POTUS, which makes it all the more remarkable that he and Curtin worked so well together.
Curtin, on the other hand, literally killed himself in service of his nation. Churchill….Well, if you’re British, a great man. If you’re Australian, someone who thought you were expendable.
It says “Australia” on my passport.
“You trolled through it to find something (anything) to discredit Curtin.” Really, talk about Pavlov’s dogs, try reading the quotes from Black again. Ding, ding, ding…
” You go all apoplexic when I mention conscription…” I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about conscription – it’s you 17 who bangs on about it in every post you scribble, be it here, Bolt’s blog or any other space you infest, binary or otherwise.
“When did the coalition declare a State of Emergency to deal with the Seaman’s Union in the sixties?” Again the words on the page must be dancing all over the place for you to have so little comprehension. The SUA was sidelined by the Federal Government during the 60s. There was no need to enact anything to get the ANL ships loaded and dispatched, they were simply commissioned into the RAN and crewed by matelots.
“…the fact remains that the threat to the homeland seemed so obvious and apparent, certainly until well into 1943, that Curtin’s leadership was accepted without question amongst the population at large…” this passage from your own quote rather hoists you on your own petard. You obviously either don’t read the references you post or have such poor comprehension (probably because you were snubbed by a conservative after being conscripted) that plain English words are completely opaque to you.
A ‘drover’s dog’ would have the same support in those circumstances.
“…literally killed himself in service of his nation” what drivel, he drank and smoked himself to death with ample help from his own side of politics you twit.
If anyone is guilty of ‘murdering’ John Curtin then the ALP and union movement (6 million working days were lost to strikes during the war) are the ones with his ‘blood’ on their hands with Eddie Ward dipping in it to the shoulders.
During the protracted conscription debates in cabinet Curtin wept when Ward shouted at him that he was “putting young men into the slaughterhouse although 30 years ago you wouldn’t go into it yourself!” Ward had earlier shouted in parliament that anyone who advocated sending Australian troops overseas was “guilty of a traitorous act”.
The multiple examples of sabotage and strikes for inexcusably petty reasons also hurt Curtin to the core as he said to one group of striking wharfies “I’m fed up. I can’t satisfy you. I grant you conditions you have been demanding for years and that I have always regarded as your right. I can’t satisfy you. What will satisfy you? There’s a war on.”
Labor Premier of WA, Phil Colier said “Curtin was shocked at the outlook of unions in New South Wales towards the war. ‘Their damnable attitude,’ he called it, and added in a burst of anger: ‘Don’t they know the nation is fighting for its life? They don’t care a damn!'”
In a speech given shortly after Curtin’s death Ben Chifley said “I deeply regret the trials that were imposed on Jack Curtin, not only by the rank and file of the Labour Movement, but by some of those closely associated with him. These made heavy demands on his strength … It was easy to hurt Jack Curtin and he had to withstand barbs not only from without but also from within the party … [He was] too fine a gentleman for politics. He was too good to be mixed up with the feuds and personal animosities that go with politics. The blitz of the press never hurt him as much as the barbs of the people with whom he was associated.”
Curtin biographer Lloyd Ross wrote “Attacks from non-Labour he could stand, not the criticism that came from within the movement. Such attacks, especially from those who had known him for a long time, troubled and tormented him to a degree that is almost beyond understanding in an experienced politician.”
Oh and as for your time machine own goal.
“…against his better judgement he [Churchill] responded to Evatt’s cable [requesting reinforcements be sent to Singapore] by sending another British division to Singapore. It arrived just in time to be captured when Singapore fell. Churchill could not help blaming the Australians [Curtin] for the wasteful loss of the British Division at Singapore…” (Day, The Politics of War, Chaps. 18-23)
Time for you to pack it in 17, you haven’t clue.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2x5IKxmAQ
Peter W
The substance of your post (highlighting the opposition that Curtin had to overcome in his own party) simply reinforces my contention that he was a great wartime leader who put his country’s security above all else. Thank you. What a pity he was a Labor PM.
Not only do your other arguments lack sense – they are also contradictory.
On the one hand you condemn Curtin as a sot – “he drank and smoked himself to death” whilst a few sentences later, you quote Chifley calling him a gentleman – “[He was] too fine a gentleman for politics. He was too good to be mixed up with the feuds and personal animosities that go with politics. The blitz of the press never hurt him as much as the barbs of the people with whom he was associated.” Make up your mind, my ICD* is in meltdown.
Again, in one post you condemn Lloyd Ross – “I’m sure communists and ALP apologists like the author of the hallucinogenic ‘Light on the Hill’, Ross McMullin, will agree with you.”
Then, surprise, surprise, in your last post you quote the same “communist” – “Curtin biographer Lloyd Ross wrote “Attacks from non-Labor he could stand, not the criticism that came from within the movement. Such attacks, especially from those who had known him for a long time, troubled and tormented him to a degree that is almost beyond understanding in an experienced politician.”
Are you simply posting for effect? Don’t answer that, it’s completely obvious.
“I couldn’t give a rat’s arse about conscription” – OK, the only other possibility is perseveration. It can be treated. And you completely misunderstand my use of the term “binary” – I’ll be buggered if I’ll waste the time trying to explain it.
As for the loss of the British division at Singapore, the responsibility for this rested squarely with the chinless wonders in the British high command, and up through the chain of command to Churchill. It was simply another example of Churchill’s view of “the lesser breeds outside the law” as incapable of taking on the British.
His view of Ghandi –
“It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious middle temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half-naked up the steps of the vice regal palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the representative of the king-emperor.”
(Winston Churchill, 1930)
This quote is indicative of his view of those not blessed with Anglo-Saxon heritage.
As for my postings on Bolt’s blog (when they weren’t censored because they made him look silly from time to time) at least I didn’t suggest, as your mate Harry Buttle did, that assassinating the Australian PM in Afghanistan was conscionable, a comment that Bolt was quite happy to allow –
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/couldnt_they_cheer_rudd_like_he_was_bush/
*Inbuilt Crap Detector
17 you really are a sad case – you’ve tried the “perseveration” drivel before so I’ll ‘repeat’ it’s poor old conscript (who was slagged off by a conservative) you 17 who constantly injects the ‘news’ you were a conscript into virtually every ‘conversation’ you have no matter what the topic. From climate change to refugee policy it’s always “I remember when I was conscripted bla bla bla…”
As your comprehension skills have plummeted to new lows with your latest post I’ll repeat part of the sentence regarding Curtin’s addictions, “he drank and smoked himself to death WITH AMPLE HELP FROM HIS OWN SIDE OF POLITICS…”
The Chifley quote reinforces my point – that you have repeated a salient part of the quote “[T]he blitz of the press never hurt him as much as the barbs of the people with whom he was associated…” in an attempt to create yet another straw man reveals for the umpteenth time on this thread that you either do not read the quotes and links you post or that you just can’t grasp their meaning.
Curtin was a weak vacillating man elected to an office he did not have the capacity to fill – it was a deplorable situation was made worse because of his poor health and the unconscionable treasonous acts of his ‘beloved’ labour movement.
Because of his panic in the face of the threat from Japan he surrendered Australian sovereignty and control of Australian forces both overseas and on our own territory to MacArthur, he refused advice from Australian commanders in the field and allowed MacArthur to waste the lives of Australian Soldiers in unnecessary assaults on Gona, Buna and Sanananda – facts you have not attempted to refute.
It’s instructive that although Chifley seems to briefly regret the labour movement’s treason during the Second World War, it’s only in the context of the stress placed on Curtin and his hastened death, not the damage his fellow travellers did to the war effort with the loss of 6 million man days, the sabotage of equipment and delays in ship repairs.
You’ve lost the argument and descended to ‘ignoratio elenchi’ with references to Ghandi and Harry Buttle and your earlier supercilious reference to a ‘binary argument’ was just ignored as a further example of your simple minded certitude.
It’s time to dump the 17 moniker and use something more in keeping with your style of argument – ‘red herring’ springs to mind after your efforts on this thread.
Peter W
“17 you really are a sad case….”
I appreciate your concern, but I’m far from sad – in fact I get a great deal of amusement from the reactions from many of the the troglodytes that post on Bolt and Blair. It reminds me of poking a wasps’ nest with a stick. As for my anecdote about getting a slagging from a liberal polling booth worker, I’ve mentioned that particular story twice on blogs. At last count, you’ve brought it up five times. That, apart from being more than a little boring, indicates something obsessive.
“….you 17 who constantly injects the ‘news’ you were a conscript into virtually every conversation’ you have no matter what the topic. From climate change to refugee policy it’s always “I remember when I was conscripted bla bla bla…”
This is at the least an exaggeration – at most, absolute nonsense. My blog posts from the index (in order of frequency of theme) include – Politics (85) Education (31) Travel (27 Motoring (26) Whimsy (24) Vietnam (21) Family (14) (Media (10) Firearms (3) Books (6) Movies (1).
“WITH AMPLE HELP FROM HIS OWN SIDE OF POLITICS”
It’s very bad form to use upper case…same as shouting in an argument. As to Curtin’s relationship with tobacco and alcohol, he doesn’t hold a candle to Churchill in this respect. Remember the latter’s well-known addiction to Scotch and cigars?
“Curtin was a weak vacillating man elected to an office he did not have the capacity to fill”
Obviously in your opinion, the Australian people were fools to re-elect him with a resounding majority in 1943. You hold a poor opinion of your countrymen and women. Is it because they don’t always “vote proper”?
“Because of his panic…”
Bringing Australian troops home to defend their country was an act of panic? That’s a bizarre twist on the historical fact. But then, you seem to believe that history is not about analyzing the sequence of events based on reliable sources, but a blood sport seen through polemic interpretation.
“briefly regret the labour movement’s treason during the Second World War….”
BTW – “Labour” is work – “Labor” is the political movement. (After 42 years of teaching, I can’t help it).
You also resort to plagiarism –
“Yet, for his own publicity purposes and with the implicit approval of Curtin he applied pressure for quick results because he desperately wanted to claim a land victory against the Japanese with Army troops before the Marines on Guadalcanal could finish off the Japanese defenders.”
Your post on this blog of Jan 4th, 2010 at 1:05 pm
And –
“Yet, for his own publicity purposes, he applied great pressure for quick results-which were quite impossible in the circumstances because he desperately wanted to claim a land victory against the Japanese with Army troops before the Marines on Guadalcanal could finish off the Japanese defenders.”
This from – “Old Digger” on Apr 24th, 2007 at 11:46 am at http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/04/22/dollys-balance/
In reference to your contention that – “he refused advice from Australian commanders in the field and allowed Macarthur to waste the lives of Australian Soldiers in unnecessary assaults on Gona, Buna and Sanananda”
The orders for these assaults were given by Blamey, a Menzies appointee. As for “advice” – Go here –
http://www.pacificwar.org.au/KokodaCampaign/KokodaOverview4.html
This is an account – not a source document, but it maintains that the responsibility for the losses in this campaign were the result of failed US intelligence. If you’re saying that it was all Curtin’s fault, you need to provide sources to be credible.
And whilst I’m in a didactic frame of mind, I’ll offer you some free advice. Most who post on Kev’s site are of a conservative persuasion. They disagree with me but generally, they refrain from abuse. You’re a notable exception. A light sampling –
“ignorant spawn of his bigotry.
boring fixated old fool.
you haven’t a clue
What a pathetic individual you are
your simple minded certitude”.
You’d garner more respect if you followed their example.
“BTW – “Labour” is work – “Labor” is the political movement. (After 42 years of teaching, I can’t help it).
Rubbish – pity the poor students stumbling through life after being exposed to your error riddled grasp of politics, education, travel, motoring, whimsy, Vietnam, family, media, firearms, books and movies.
See http://www.alp.org.au/about/history.php
“It was at the 1908 Interstate (federal) Conference that the name ‘Australian Labour Party’ was adopted. In its shortened form the Party was frequently referred to as both ‘Labor’ and ‘Labour’, however the former spelling was adopted from 1912 onwards, due to the influence of the American labor movement.”
The ALP dropped the ‘u’ in the party’s name as a result of “the influence of the American labor movement”, but correctly retains the ‘u’ when referring to the ‘labour movement’ as evidenced in the quotes below from the ALP’s website.
“inevitably sections of the labour movement”
“elements of the labour movement”
“political wings of the labour movement”
“within the labour movement”
“many in the labour movement”
Or is the ALP also out of step with you 17?
In post after post on this thread you have proven your grasp of history, amongst other ‘subjects’, is incomplete at best and mendacious at worst.
Attempts to white wash Curtin’s flawed Prime Ministership, re-write the role and importance of the SUA during the 1960s, reposition the Vietnam conflict as a “meat grinder” on the same scale as the Great War and so on don’t reveal a “didactic frame of mind” or even a polemical argument, but instead ignorance compounded with an unreasoned faith in leftist dogma.
Oh, I nearly forgot your pretentious and incorrect assertion regarding the spelling of ‘labour movement’.
“You also resort to plagiarism…” Really, how little you know 17, sorry ‘red herring’ – is jumping to ill-founded conclusions a result of 42 years of teaching or conscription?
“You’d garner more respect…” I have no interest in “garnering” your respect or otherwise.