A comment for Roscorp and his posting of 18 April. First thank you for the Mr Bowden…but Peter will do. You quote Mike Carlton in defense of the academy commandant, Commodore Bruce Kafer. Mike Carlton is a columnist for whom most of us have a great admiration. But this time he is wrong, simply wrong. Carlton’s statement "Kate, the RAAF cadet, was no doe-eyed innocent. She had already been charged with being AWOL and drinking offences, and she knew sex between students was forbidden" Is totally irrelevant. The issue is Kafer’s treatment of her, in that she blew the whistle on a wrongdoing and she was ignored. And asked to apologise. Otherwise why did she go to the media? If Kafer had acted positively she would have had no need to blow the whistle.

Kate’s own wrongs were immaterial. She could have been Lucretia Borgia, three times over, but that would still not justify any retribution. Carlton knows this, so why did he tell us that Kate was charged with being AWOL etc.”? Was it another “lurid exaggeration” by yet another commentator? Carlton’s additional statement that Kafer “did not order Kate to apologise to her fellow cadets for going public on the affair.” may be true, but according to the reporter to whom she blew the whistle, Kafer did suggest that she apologise. Any young cadet, male or female, would be throwing away their careers to ignore a “suggestion” from their commanding officer. Carlton’s statement therefore that “The hounding of Kafer has been cruelly unfair” is somewhat over-the-top. Any person who is training our future military leaders should be aware of the lay of the land, should think through and search out the traps into which he may expose himself, and act accordingly. Kafer did not.

Peter Bowden