“The Defence portfolio and our troops who are being asked to fight and die in Afghanistan deserve better.”

Yes, and Australia deserves better. According to today’s media, we are not equipped to fight a war because of our run down, out of date equipment. The F18’s, for example, are useless where there is any air defence because they lack modern electronics. Useful for air displays over silly Grand Prix etc., but that’s all.

While Rudd is tipping the wink to the Chinese, and our Defence Minister is an incompetent naïf who has been led by the nose by a Chinese woman with strong ties to the Chinese Government and the Peoples’ Liberation Army, we are sending troops to Afghanistan to be killed for no good reason.

We will not have to use our decrepit ADF against China, though. Rudd (and Howard before him) have and will continue to, sell most of Australia to them

What a mealy-mouthed piece of political partisanship this article is.

Who is this Peter Coates? (Should I also ask who his father was?) Is it the same Peter Coates who runs the line that China and East Timor are a militarily threat to Australia?
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7724&page=2

Perhaps there's a Part 2 of Peter Coates's article waiting to be published? In this Part 2, he will tell us what qualifications he thinks a Minister requires in this portfolio (having regard for all those previous Ministers who have been successful) and also whether it's the role of the Defence forces to spy on the personal life of their Minister and leak carefully chosen 'facts' to the media.

He might even be able to re-assure us that the massive blunders in defence procurement over the past decades should be allowed to continue without Ministers (competent or not) asking awkward questions and demanding better answers?

Whilst the Howard lackies inbedded in the Defence department, similar the federal police, secrecy and inefficiency will continue.

Spikey ........I would like to know more about Mr Fitzgibbon's relationship with Mrs leu .

The relationship is substantial considering Mrs Leu's bankrolling of the trip .

I am not qualified to run the Defense Ministry either but if I was passed the Job I would expect / compel the Dept. of Defense to know about all transgressions of this nature .
Mr Fitzgibbon is tainted by his actions , how can he guarantee loyalty to OZ when he owes something to Communist China ?

Ms Liu's gift of free flights to Mr Fitzgibbon is quite legitimate under Chinese business practices. She may have seen it as a way of enhancing good relations with a Member of Parliament. In Australia, this behaviour is viewed differently and it should have been declared. Mr Fitzgibbon would have known the rules and the reason the rules were enacted. His behaviour should be considered as corrupt and the matter treated seriously.

There is no reason to believe Ms Liu's motives were sinister and Peter Coates's suggestion of "money trails" is probably drawing a long bow.

One of the most experienced British generals, a former number two in NATO, notes that there has been a shift from industrial war to “war among the people” (Rupert Smith: The Utility of Force), a view shared by the Australian general with most experience of modern warfare (Jim Molan, who ran allied operations in Iraq in 2004-05: Running the War in Iraq). Molan notes the lack of understanding in Australia of the critical need for a joint forces command structure, and that the joint competence in the ADF lies not in fighting wars but in humanitarian operations, peacekeeping and peacemaking. The point of military forces is of course to be able to successfully undertake combat when vital national interests require it, and as both Nolan and Smith note, the time, place and style of combat will more often than not be determined by your opponents than yourselves. The recent media coverage demonstrating that Australia’s land, air and naval craft are not capable of engaging in high-intensity combat shows how far from grasping the requirements of modern warfare our government and defence bodies are. Only the SAS is capable of serious force projection, and then only on a small scale.

This is the context in which the competence of the Defence Minister, his department and the ADF needs to be considered. What changes in personnel, structure, approach and materiel are needed to create and maintain deployable forces and equipment, with an effective joint force command which is superior to the three forces rather than dominated by one of them?

I can’t answer that question. It is imperative that the people charged with the defence of Australia can. At present, certainly collectively and perhaps individually, they can’t.