Stilgherrian » brendan nelson

The Real Brendan Nelson

Stilgherrian — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:00:10 +0000

Will the real Brendan Nelson please stand up? Is it the man Annabel Crabb saw on Tuesday, the mild-mannered doctor with “substantial empathy for those suffering from misfortune” whose “attention is drawn disproportionately to the Gothic end of the human suffering spectrum”? Or is the rabid Bon Jovi fan?

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Super Hornets are Go

Stilgherrian — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:14:37 +0000

Defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon has announced that the controversial purchase of 24 Super Hornet aircraft will go ahead.

The review of the Howard government’s decision to buy the aircraft — at a total cost of $6 billion even though the RAAF hadn’t wanted them — reached some damaging conclusions, including:

There has been a lack of sound, long-term air combat capability planning decisions by the former Government over the course of the last decade.

The retirement of the F-111 was made in haste but is now irreversible. The cost of turning the F-111 back on would be enormous and crews and skills have already moved on.

The former Government’s decision to leave Australia’s air defences in the hands of the Joint Strike Fighter project was a flawed leap of faith in scheduling terms and combined with the quick decision to retire the F-111 early, allowed an air combat capability gap to emerge.

The subsequent timetable the former Government put on the acquisition of an interim fighter left Defence planners with no choice but to recommend the Super Hornet. No other suitable aircraft could be produced to meet the 2010 deadline the former Government had set. One year on, that is now even more so the case.

Cancelling the order would still incur a financial penalty and create “undesirable tensions”, and the final conclusions is that “the Super Hornet is an excellent aircraft… and is the only aircraft which can meet the small delivery window created by the former Government’s poor planning processes and politically-driven responses.”

As a shareholder in Australia Inc, I’d like to know why the former “board members” allowed this to happen. When company directors are negligent they become personally liable so why, given the report’s damning conclusions, does Brendan Nelson not become personally liable?

Why were established evaluation and purchasing processes ignored? What is the connection between former defence minister Brendan Nelson (a member of the Liberal Party), and the then chairman of Boeing Australia, Andrew Peacock, a former leader of the Liberal Party?

Hat-tip to Tim Dunlop, who also notes:

[D]o you make procurement decisions on the basis of strategy or is it on occasion necessary to build strategy around procurements that have already been made? I mean, the White Paper may be still six months away but it is hardly as if it is being written from scratch. It looks like Fitzgibbon has decided that getting the Super Hornet decision locked away was the more important factor and is happy enough to make strategy decisions with the Super Hornets in the mix. To paraphrase another Defence Minister/Secretary, sometimes you do strategy on the basis on the equipment you have.

As in this case. We’re buying the Super Hornets because, essentially, it’s the only choice left.

[Photo: A US Navy (USN) F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft, Strike Fighter Squadron 115 (VFA-115), Naval Air Station (NAS) Lemoore, California (CA), launches from catapult three during flight operations on board the USN Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. US Navy via Wikipedia.]

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So who’s ready for the future? Who’s not?

Stilgherrian — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:18:12 +0000

Maxine McKew and I aren’t the only ones who think Australia is ready to start a new conversation about our identity. The Australia 2020 Summit secretariat received 7251 nominations for the 1000 spots. I wish them well with the winnowing — and wish myself good luck with my own application.

The real fun now is seeing who’s actually ready for the future, and who just wants to stifle discussion.

Human rights lobbyist Howard Glenn puts it well, and shows that he’s ready:

Why am I enthusiastic about a relatively small two-day conference in April? Because it is a big gesture which says clearly that we have permission to start thinking about the future again. The flow-on effects are already starting. Schools want to have their own future summits, difficult long term issues are emerging for community debate. And that’s before it’s all really started.

It’s only two days and 1,000 people. Who gets to go is not as important as the fact that it is occurring at all, and that there’s such media attention to the attendance. Some will see it as a revival of the mythical Keating elites; the start of European-style social planning; a talk fest. I see it as the start of a restoration of confidence in Australian culture, identity and ingenuity, and a faith that we can think about future challenges, and find what we need to face them.

So what about everyone else?

Looking through recent news stories…

Opposition leader Brendan “Mr 9%” Nelson reckons the summit will be a dog’s breakfast. Looking at the state of his own party, I guess he’d know a dog’s breakfast when he sees it.
His deputy Julie Bishop branded it an “elite” event — yes, she’s imaginatively dragging out that Howard-era term of denigration, which apparently is not negative when applied to “elite athletes”. Somehow she knew this before she’d even seen the steering committee, let alone the full list of attendees. “Elitism is dead,” says the deputy leader of the party full of lawyers and private school attendees. Yes, that’s certainly reflected in the polls, luv! Keep up this mindless negativity and your stay in opposition will be a long one.
All sorts of people with a “special interest” whinge that their own specific focus isn’t mentioned by name somewhere: Gisela Kaplan on the environment; Duncan Riley on tech; Yvonne Zeniou on the parents of disabled children. Folks, a “vision for the future” is not just a list of jigsaw pieces.
Disappointingly, steering committee member Tim Costello focuses on the problem of teenage binge drinking which, while perhaps a problem that needs addressing, is hardly “a vision thing”. Let’s hope the “strengthening families and communities” topic doesn’t become a shopping-list for wowsers craving a return to some mythical golden past of endless backyard cricket.

People are wanting to talk about the future. Grass-roots websites have sprung up at Summit2020.org and CounterSummit Australia2020 and OzIdeas and BangTheTable and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more.

Is it only the federal opposition that’s afraid of the conversation?

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The compulsory “Sorry Day” post

Stilgherrian — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 04:35:14 +0000

Originally I wasn’t going to write about today’s Parliamentary Apology to the Stolen Generations. But the event has so captured the nation that writing will clarify my own thoughts. So here goes…

I’ll get the obvious comments out of the way first. Kevin Rudd delivered the Apology with dignity and grace. Brendan Nelson’s speech was moving in parts, but fortunately his attempts to weasel it failed to sour the overall occasion. I agree with Paul Keating’s comment that Nelson missed the point of the day.

I was disgusted to hear that Chris Pearce, the Member for Aston, was reading a magazine and cracking jokes during Rudd’s speech.

As Chris Graham, editor of The National Indigenous Times reports in Crikey:

At the part where Rudd was talking about the tragedy of infant mortality, the “little ones” in Rudd’s words, Pearce was cracking a joke to the rather uncomfortable looking member of parliament sitting next to him.

In fact, Pearce was so against an apology, that he also sat and read through his own leader’s entire speech. When Rudd finished and received a standing ovation, Pearce was the only member of parliament to remain seated. It begs the question, why did he even show up?

Who voted this ignorant yobbo into Parliament? Mr Pearce, you’re entitled to hold an opinion, but at least show some manners in the House. You could hardly accuse Wilson Tuckey of being Australia’s best-mannered parliamentarian, but at least when he decided against the Apology he didn’t turn up.

The negative radio talkback callers were the people we always hear on these occasions: the whining, selfish, ignorant, bitter white-trash who seem incapable of seeing the world through anyone else’s eyes.

HEART FM Hobart 09:44 AM: Caller Ron says white man and the Aboriginal men will never assimilate, like in the north of America. As the white man made the farming lands Ron is looking at now. Ron says an Aboriginal burned an Australian flag that soldiers fought under…

2UE Sydney 09:37 AM: Caller Helen doesn’t agree with the apology to the Stolen Generations because Governments shouldn’t apologise every time there is a bad law. Says she has Aboriginal friends but says there are Aboriginal people out there that, no matter what you do for them, are never happy.

When I worked for ABC Radio I produced some 4000 hours of talk and talkback programs, and I heard far, far too many of these people complaining about the riches and luxuries supposedly showered on the blacks, dole-bludgers, single mothers, poofters, arts students, immigrants and anyone else who didn’t precisely match their own experience. They, of course, had always suffered through the depression, or the War, drought, floods, bushfires, poor health, hard work and high interest rates and were deserving of their handouts.

There probably weren’t ever that many of these folks. They just seemed to have so much spare time in which to phone talkback programs — probably because they’d driven away all their friends through constant whinging.

Thankfully, it won’t be long before they’re all dead. It’s just a shame that certain legal impediments prevent us from hurrying things up a bit.

But I digress…

Chairman Rudd has set himself an interesting challenge with talk of a bi-partisan “war cabinet” and a referendum. Once the emotion of today’s grand symbolic gesture fades, how will all unfold, I wonder?

A grass-roots call rippled through Facebook for people to change their status message to “…is sorry”. Of the 65 of my friends who’d updated their status recently enough to count, 60% of them had done so — roughly two-thirds of them with the simple “…is sorry”, the rest with additional comments. Another 8% changed their status to some acknowledgement of the day.

By any measure, today was a major milestone in Australia’s history.

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Corey Delaney’s Other Party

Stilgherrian — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 01:43:44 +0000

Hugh Atkin, the man behind the excellent Chairman Rudd propaganda videos [1, 2], has retrieved an interview from the future, when Brendan Nelson is replaced as leader of the Liberals. Hat-tip to various people, including Peter Black. (I know, a few weeks old but still very amusing.)

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Predictions for 2008

Stilgherrian — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 22:14:12 +0000

OK, I’m meant to be clever, so here are my predictions for 2008. The Snarky Platypus didn’t help me with these, as we decided we had better things to do on New Year’s Eve (gin and tonic, for example). So blame me alone.

The Joy of Chairman Rudd’s Iced VoVo Revolution will be dulled by the end of January when they take some stupid actions which demonstrate that they are, after all, politicians like all others. Actually, this has already happened with the announcement of mandatory Internet filtering by ISPs. I’ll write more about that soon.
At least one member of the (former) Howard cabinet will be charged with a criminal offence over something they did in office. I’d like it to be Brendan Nelson, because that deal to buy $6 billion worth of Super Hornet fighter aircraft stinks — mostly because the air force doesn’t want them and the process was, erm, rushed to say the least. However I suspect it might be something to do with the AWB scandal.
Channel 7 will continue to win the Australian TV ratings. Channel 9 will fail to reinvent itself now that its owned by an investment vehicle and not a media proprietor.
Telstra will be forced to separate its wholesale and retail businesses. Meanwhile the Sol Trujilo-led management team will continue to play nasty with the government, causing them to be increasingly sidelined — especially over the Rudd government’s new broadband rollout.
Barack Obama will win the US Presidential election. I know Hillary Clinton is currently the favourite, but I have the gut feeling that the Oprah factor will be important, and that Hillary’s dirty washing will be aired.
When former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra returns from self-imposed exile on 14 February the new government, which is a coalition led by a Thaksin-supporting party, will somehow drop the corruption charges against him. Another military coup will follow.
At least one Australian company will suffer a major leak of its customers’ private data, prompting new laws on dealing with such things (like they already have in California).
We’ll finally figure out what the Storm Botnet, the world’s largest network of hacked computers, is for. My guess: whatever the hell the designer’s paying clients want it to be for.

You might also like to read the interesting predictions from The Australian (not really predictions, but obvious events following on from their news calendar), advertising agency JWT, Peter Black and Rachel Polanskis, and predictions about toy names for 2008.

What are your predictions for 2008? And how do you think mine rate?

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Oops, that should have been “miserable toad”

Stilgherrian — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:49:52 +0000

One of the choices in this week’s poll is “slimy toad”. Of course that should have been “miserable toad”, as this commentary on Kim Beazley’s farewell speech to parliament indicates.

You might have thought the Prime Minister could have made the effort to be there for his adversary of 27 years standing, but he did not. John Howard remains a miserable toad. The rest of the Howard ministry took their cue and also absented themselves — Robb and Nelson the exceptions. And know also that when Beazley finished speaking and sat down, and those in the public gallery got to their feet to join the applause of Beazley’s Labor colleagues and most of us in the press gallery, Andrew Robb and three of the Liberal backbenchers applauded, too.

Brendan Nelson did not.

I always liked Kim Beazley — which, you should note, is not the same thing as saying he’d make a good Prime Minister. He was a strategic thinker and a good orator, both skills lacking in modern politics.

I meant to say it at the time: the articles by Alan Ramsey (which I just quoted) and Annabel Crabb are well worth reading — if for nothing else than the historical snippets Beazley dropped.