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The Forum > Article Comments > The fall of Fitzgibbon? > Comments

The fall of Fitzgibbon? : Comments

By Peter Coates, published 31/3/2009

Kevin Rudd has a chronically underperforming Defence Minister whom he had to hire due to the system of factional appointments.

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“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 According to today’s media, we are not equipped to fight a war because of our run down, out of date equipment.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
Posted by Leigh, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 11:08:25 AM
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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?
Posted by Spikey, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 1:24:24 PM
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Whilst the Howard lackies inbedded in the Defence department, similar the federal police, secrecy and inefficiency will continue.
Posted by Kipp, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 4:25:41 PM
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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 ?
Posted by ShazBaz001, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 4:30:16 PM
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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.
Posted by Wattle, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 7:03:55 PM
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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.
Posted by Faustino, Tuesday, 31 March 2009 8:59:33 PM
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Fitzgibbon certainly aint no Kim Philby - but he may be a klutz. My guess is Rudd will dump him when he gets back from over seas then Andrew Bolt and Peirs Akerman et al can put aside their faux outrage and go back to leftist bashing and bad writing
Posted by sneekeepete, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 7:53:57 AM
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Tasked or not, the AFP has got the dirt on most people of influence in politics and the public service.In the complex market place of information trading within the corridors of Canberra, as part of the never ending quest for influence, Keelty, no doubt thought he could score points with powereful defence interests.
There was never a need for DSD to get involved. The information, such as we know it, was easily obtained.
Keelty is always on the look out to strenghthen his base of support. Over the past 6 years he has sought to strengthen the AFP's relationship with the ADF, partly rationalised by the need for a common front against terrorism, but driven more by Keelty's empire building ambitions.
The leaking of the information was designed to hurt Fitzgibbon, but with the incompetence now pervading the public service in Canberra it has blown back to damage Nick Warner. And rightly so.
If favours bestowed on politicians are to be examined, then all gifts from all countries and sources should be examined.
Bruce Haigh
Posted by Bruce Haigh, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 8:07:55 AM
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It never ceases to amase me how the rusted on libs' like this Peter Coates try and try to defame any labour member by deframing thair name on any context. Incompetent, underachieving, useless minister - whatever words it takes, without any proof, to undermine the person.
How unaustralian is this unfitted use of language and pure school yard nastiness. Peter, come up with the goods before you throw stones, bully-boy.
Posted by JMCC, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 8:41:59 AM
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I agree with what most posters have said.

- Fitzgibbon's competence and experience is unacceptably low to represent a huge and complex portfolio that is also involved in a war.

- Politicians often do learn to work with a difficult portfolio but Fitzgibbon doesn't appear to be learning. He appears to be going backwards in some areas.

- Fitzgibbon's claim that its all about Defence reacting against his reform agenda seems largely a furphy. Many/most Defence Minister's claim that their "sweeping agendas" will finally clean up Defence's profligate ways. Most try - few Ministers succeed. Public Service supremos and major arms sellers have been in the game a lot longer than Ministers.

- In terms the "Estimate" two paid for trips are probably just small sins for a politician - given the low standards of accountability expected of politicians compared to most Australians (us "little people").

Politicians simply do it and get away with it because they are powerful and because ultimately they make the rules.

Here's another interesting AFP document http://www.afp.gov.au/services/referrals.html . Note the section towards the bottom - REFERRAL OF POLITICALLY SENSITIVE MATTERS

Obviously politically sensitive matters "not limited to fraud" come up often enough to demand special handling by the AFP and the Minister for Home Affairs (Bob Debus).

The AFP's clear need to see a distinction between "Politically Sensitive" and presumably "Not politically sensitive" is interesting.

Should political sensitivities place some matters or people above the law?

Are they receiving special handling (even coddling) as provided for in this AFP document?

Pete
Posted by plantagenet, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 9:26:57 AM
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Go back to mumsy Engel-and where you obviously belong. And take your beloved, stinking-corrupt UKUSA with you. We'll get by fine with ANZUS (provided the US hasn't been 100% sacked already).
Posted by mil-observer, Wednesday, 1 April 2009 9:30:57 AM
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I for one am willing to wait until we have another Jake Kovco-type fiasco and then we'll see where the blame really lies - with the ADF or with a politician.
Posted by wobbles, Thursday, 2 April 2009 12:43:40 AM
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Wattle

You said the author"s "suggestion of "money trails" is probably drawing a long bow."

Have a look at yesterday's Age newspaper: http://www.theage.com.au/national/lius-40000-gifts-aided-ministers-campaigns-20090403-9rm4.html?page=-1 :

"Mr Fitzgibbon's office yesterday confirmed that Ms Liu's former property development company, Wincopy, contributed $20,000 to his campaign to retain the NSW seat of Hunter in 1998.

Two years earlier, another of her companies, Diamond Hill International, gave $20,000 to Mr Fitzgibbon's campaign fund for his first election.

She also gave at least another $50,000 to the NSW ALP between 2001 and 2007. Details of the gifts came as a former Chinese diplomat who defected to Australia in 2005 spoke of Ms Liu's "intimate" relationship with China's Canberra embassy and Sydney consulate." [all legal for politicians - not for anyone else].

"...Defence Department officials had conducted a covert inquiry into their association and concluded that it posed a security risk due to her high-level Chinese political connections."

"...Despite travelling repeatedly to China to help with Ms Liu's business affairs, Mr Fitzgibbon has denied having any commercial relationship with her.

But this week he refused three times to answer questions from The Age about whether his wife, children or siblings had received cash or company shares from Ms Liu or her associates.

Mr Fitzgibbon also refused to discuss whether he intended to continue renting a Canberra residence owned by Ms Liu's family..."

All through this Fitzgibbon has been paid a large parliamentary salary by us - the taxpayers. He is now in an extremely sensitive position of trust yet he has this close foreign financial relationship on the side. If Fitzgibbon weren't a politician would he get away with it?

It would be illegal for Fitzgibbon's lower paid subordinates in Defence to enjoy the (above the law) political privileges he is making money out of now.

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2009/04/anzac-day-songs-2009.html
Posted by plantagenet, Sunday, 5 April 2009 3:18:58 PM
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What a very fake and drawn-out beat-up, still beating that drum for Mumsy's Empah and Queen Liz's Rio Tinto as it keeps sucking Australia's resource riches.

On business-related donations, Fitzgibbon's involvement in such practices is part of that near-universal process among Australian parliamentarians - and you know it.

The really serious money trails of the major parties' corruption are those leading to such vaster, dark pits in Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Rio Tinto et al.

Most disturbing in this case is that the above rackets mostly involve the imperialist fakery of derivatives-based finance. China's resource interests, by contrast, offer actual trade in real wealth and associated benefits for regional security.

The whole campaign is a contemptible subversion of Australia's national interest. It may just prove to be the site of an effort at regional destabilization. What's cooking next? Another project against Indonesia? East Timor? PNG?

Imperialists only stop once they've been imprisoned or executed.
Posted by mil-observer, Sunday, 5 April 2009 3:35:27 PM
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THREAT ALERT...THREAT ALERT...THREAT ALERT...THREAT ALERT

"Imperialists only stop once they've been imprisoned or executed."

"Imperialists only stop once they've been imprisoned or executed."

"Imperialists only stop once they've been imprisoned or executed."

Contact Us

The National Security web site is administered by the Attorney-General's Department, Canberra:

http://www.nationalsecurity.gov.au/agd/WWW/NationalSecurity.nsf/Page/Contact_Us

If you wish to report suspicious activity, please contact the National Security Hotline.

Attorney-General's Department
Robert Garran Offices
National Circuit
BARTON ACT 2600
Tel: +61 2 6250 6666
Fax: +61 2 6250 5900

THREAT REGISTERED

THREAT REGISTERED

Just kidding mil...
Posted by plantagenet, Sunday, 5 April 2009 10:04:02 PM
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NEWS HEADLINES

Prime Minister Visits China. Avoids Contact with Any Chinese Lest Australian Army Suspects He's a Spy.

Defense Department Read Minister's Mail. Agree to Let Him Continue to be Their Minister. Proviso - No Challenge to Departmental Incompetence For Next Three Years.

VIP Air Force Crew to Get Tear Money. Promise of No Future Media Leaks.
Posted by Spikey, Sunday, 5 April 2009 11:36:14 PM
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His Nibs/Royal Lowness does not surprise at all by jeering at my warning against the imperialist campaign underway so blatantly now. The Whitlam-era push to nationalize Australia's resources met with very similar sleaze and destabilization, culminating in the GG's sacking of Australia's elected national political leader.

If imperialist agents are merely left out of government and its various positions of influence, or even if they are out of the country itself, they will continue their efforts via well-funded lobbying and covert action. But such activity too is extremely important for these campaigns regardless, in order to mislead the comunity - hence the intensification of media barrages along these lines.

Therefore, we can see too that "acting for foreign interests" or "treason", cannot be properly defined for Australian legal purposes when foreign interests subordinate the entire state apparatus, and especially in most explicit senses in areas like defence, the police forces, and in the judiciary itself!

Any loyal Australians alerting the state apparatus of such actual treason and/or corruption will at some stage confront imperialist agents ready to discredit them, harass them, blacklist them, and worse. As I recall from another commenting to the same effect, but in the more isolated context of budgets: it's the foxes running the hen house.

I'm referring ultimately to the Queen (and - shudder - future Kingsy Charles!) of Old Engel-land. Perhaps worse than many of the old toff, plum-mouthed pretenders of Oz's Foreign Office-turned-DFAT, such non-Australian, un-Australian and often ANTI-Australian sentiments and traditions are some of the deepest internal weaknesses undermining Australian sovereignty and efficient self-defence.

They also pose some of the most direct challenges and dangers to any sincere Australian government.
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 6 April 2009 4:45:24 AM
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Spikey, your link to the Coates article was enlightening. A quote:

"Relevant to Australia is a massive naval base China is constructing at China’s southernmost point, near the resort of Sanya, on Hainan Island. In a setting and plot worthy of James Bond’s The Spy Who Loved Me China appears to be building huge tunnels in hillsides at the base which could be capable of hiding 20 nuclear submarines."

Such is the pubescent onanism "informing" many among those establishment circles which still presume the title "intelligence" in their dubiously motivated and dubiously directed service.

And the implicitly imperialist condescension is breathtaking. "Egads! How DARE these CHINESE rotters build a naval base...in CHINA!"
Posted by mil-observer, Monday, 6 April 2009 6:26:42 PM
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Giday mil-ob

You have exposed such dank, unremitting, interest in moi over the last week that I feel (almost) privileged to divert you from your onanizing.

"plantagenet" is no indicator of monarchism. I chose it because it sounds good, colourful, even codeword. I'm more closely related to the Scot William Wallace than to Longshanks of Billy’s hangin-drawin-n-quarterin fame.

I’m not concerned with the fate of Charles III to be “Kilted Gnome” or his horse-faced, be-babbled Queen "Fluzie" Camilla-dancing-over-Diana's-dead-body.

Their very illegitimate elevation to the throne of UKland will be useful in boosting Australia Republic ways at last - a good thing.

My main, non-writing, concern since divesting myself of Government employ is something to excite your interest Oh mil-ob. It involves Draw n Place.

Think of "Karla" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla of le Carre notoriety. Someone so devoted to an unfolding mission that payment is an operational disadvantage.

Draw n Place can be:

- cooperative - as in the case of 2 foreign but Western operatives (one, very brave and formidable, who is still close like a daughter and has settled down). The other sadly tried, from a Western country, to run a rogue counter-terrorism operation in Australia and was passed on to Australian federal authorities who have never responded, though a State body, to its credit, has.

- or it can be unexpected as in the case of 2 wayward Russians, who thought they might win a gamble but instead were passed on to the appropriate (non-Australian) Western authorities.

(I've sanitised the details above, you'll note)

The main aim of Drawing the former grouping was defence of Australia - the second in defence of Western interests.

Confused? There is more:

Behold the Real Me http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2008/06/meme-of-seven-chain-autobiog-bug.html and only 2 months old. All these details unrelateed to my Government "career".

Still masticating?

If you would like an email with my latest ABC interview (recorded in January) just write to petemate@fastmail.fm. I give China well deserved praise.

Regards

Pete
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2008/06/meme-of-seven-chain-autobiog-bug.html
Posted by plantagenet, Monday, 6 April 2009 11:56:24 PM
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plant: "Confused?" Wow, and the name is "even codeword"! How exciting and, well, SPECIAL that must make you feel!

But confusion was obviously the main point, beside the expressed intention to "divert".

Diversion, with shrouds of mystery, mystique, intrigue, and convolution - all to give an appearance of complexity, exclusivity and, thereby, an allure of "intelligence" around anyone claiming either to know or be attracted to the chicanery of the state's most arcane bureaucracies.

Unfortunately for the Australian state and people, it has been made into a bull$h|te world of immature, narcissistic w@nk. Worse, and obviously part of the reason for that dysfunctionality and immaturity, it undermines Australian sovereignty by its extra-diplomatic, ethnic- and language-based intra-alliance called "UKUSA". Fitting that such an exclusive environment of fakery and self-obsessed seclusion and secrecy mirrors in many ways the incestuous degeneracy of its royal masters, and that this "intelligence" world is still inhabited and often dominated by so many rejects from the UK and their equally pathetic colonial imitators.

And what's with the other "diversion" about supposed Jock background? Trying to provoke prods into Houston's foreign birth and upbringing (a scot, ex-UK citizen from the age of nineteen if I'm not mistaken)?

Suffice to say that that case too just highlights the ugly hypocrisies of racism and its fake nationalism around the anti-China beat-up, one of the slimiest smear campaigns since those against Jim Cairns and Rex Connor.
Posted by mil-observer, Tuesday, 7 April 2009 8:10:45 AM
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