Just a few little things
I know Stephen Smith is not popular, and I am sure there are many things I dont know. My personal view is neither favourable nor unfavourable
I know he got some flack because he did not want any acroymns in the reports that he got. This was taken by some to mean he was not smart. I have to say I agree completely with him on this. There are probably thousands and thousands of acronyms used in the defence force, plus he has to be on top of all three services. He has to manage a budget of 26.5 bilion dollars annually. Now I would argue that his time is spent better on spendig that 26.5 billion dollars well than learning thousands and thousand of acronymns.
He put through the SH60R purchase, which is generally seen as a good thing
The troops in afghanistan seem to be getting a lot of equipment.
They got an extra C-17
Labor has maintained th US alliance, they have not acted like left wing commies on this alliance, more the oppostie.
The defence budget has been exempted from budget cuts which affect other departments, this has been the case for all five years of the labour adminsistration.
The labour party was democratically elected. Maybe the independants would not have been voted in had they told the electorate that they were going to side with labor. If Kevin had called an early election just after his emmissions trading scheme was knocked back, he would have romped in. I would rather live in a democrary than a dictorship (North Korea of Syria anyone)
The cancelled the Sea Sprite program. In retrospect they should have just got extra SH60s, and found a way to put missiles on them. The american have done this, thius we could have bough them off the shelf
They got the Larges Bay from Britain, generally considered a good thing
The Sanki Bergan thing looks yuck to me, I am very so-so about that. That is about 100m out of a 25 billion annual budget.
I am sure there are other things too, we got NH90s (think this was decided in last 5 years, in the longer term should be a reasonably good purchase)
They went ahead with the Canberra class carrier/landling dock thingy. They did not cancel them
They went ahead with the three new destroyers, adelaide class from Spain, did not cancel them.
They bought, or are buying some new light weight 155mm artillery from america.
Labor is saying they want to get back to surplus. The oppostiion has been hassling them for spending too much money. The money they spent was a keynesian stimulus. In retrospect it could be argued that it was too much and not good value for money. However america and europe and China have all done the same (Keynsian stimulus) and their spending was not particullay well done (bailouts for Greece, airports not needed in the US etc)
I am not saying he is a good minister, I am not saying he is a bad minister. I dont know. What I am saying is that any view of him has to be objective. I can recall it was the liberal government that got rid of our Skyhawks and did not replace out carrier (if i recall correctly-maybe that was the right decision at the time, funnily enough we are now getting somehting that looks like a carrier when viewed from a distance). The last liberal governemtn supported a war in Iraq, that was legally questionable and has cost the US 3000 billion dollars, and ruined their international standing, not to mention killing around 4000 american serviceman (plus how many Iraqis), and taking resources from Aghanistan, which is almost starting to look like a lost cause.
The liberal government did nothng, and played silly games whilst teh Americans transferred an Australian permanent resident Madoub Habib to Egypt where he was tortured. This guy was completely innocent, all he did was go to Pakistan to look for a religious education for his children. My fahter was a permanent resident (born in Wales), does that make it ok to send him to Egypt and torture him if he goes to another country for religious reasons.
Malcolm Fraser was in power when Indonesia invaded East Timor, and chose not to object, a good 100,000 East timorese starved to death in following years. Gareth Evans was behind the Cambodian peace plan, a country which is now slowly but surely getting better.
It may be that labor has stuffed many many things up. Maybe a lot of things have happened that I am not aware of. All I am saying is that it is not all black and white, would be nice to be objective.
I know this is thread drift, and I apologies for that
all I am saying is that the performance of a minister needs to be objective. If there are heaps of bad things that he has done, then please feel free to list them, alternatively I am equally happy to stop the thread drift entirely.
