Mentee Labor Senator Kimberly Kitching (wife of long-time friend of Crikey Andrew Landeryou) is tipped to have a “meteoric rise” by many inside the party.
As Guy Rundle chronicled in these pages, Kitching’s powerful political ties helped her into the Senate spot vacated by Stephen Conroy in 2016 and, according to recently departed Labor power broker Sam Dastyari, she’s the only first-term backbencher who can expect visits from Shorten at her office in Canberra.
Despite that, she’s yet to come to wider public notice — something we at Crikey are keen to put right. This week, she gave an indication of just what Shorten sees in her, the rhetorical force and policy nous pushing her up the Labor ranks. At the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee she asked a defence representative a slightly … abstract question:
You might have to take it on notice, but could I ask, in the region, are we able to track … climate change to the extent that, given, for example, in one program … most of the submarines that are coming online in the region, they’re moving to nuclear. Obviously that might effect … well … I was going to say emissions but I guess they’re oceanic, but I mean there will be more nuclear-powered defence vehicles or defence resources — will that lower climate change in the region? And would you be able to have an assessment of that that’s meaningful?
If the answer contained anything that could credibly associate itself with the word “meaningful”, we suspect it would be one up on the question.
Presumably she meant to ask, “do nuclear-powered submarines cause less pollution?”
Or something broader about whether defence is tracking carbon footprints on a program by program or region by region basis, but then got sidetracked.
It feels a bit cheap to lambast someone through verbatim quoting of someone stumbling through an off-the-cuff thought, frankly.
Would it still feel cheap if that off-the-cuff thought fell out of the mouth of Josh Frydenburg or better still, Sarah Hansen-Young ?
I doubt it would trouble you at all,frankly.
You have to remember that she is a politician, they cannot speak in concise language, otherwise the general public would understand what they are actually doing.
Non-carbon military? If only it were true! The military of every nation is high on that nation’s list of carbon emitters. Although nuclear propulsion is efficient on large ships and icebreakers, it has a long way to go before it can replace all the fuel oil, diesel and jet fuel consumption at sea. U.S. Navy has reported that it is possible to synthesise jet fuel from an aircraft carrier’s nuclear electricity, yet it is more feasible on land than at sea.
Submarines in our region are likely to remain diesel powered, as they are quieter than nuclear, with its noisy cooling system.
Yes, emissions from our region would be lessened by the presence of any nuclear power plant. However the emissions quickly spread worldwide so the saving must be shared across the globe. For the same reason, the ultimate reduction to zero must be global.
She came to wider public notice recently in a Good Weekend profile, apparently aimed at humanising her but not quite succeeding.
Details can be revealing; it stated that at one point she had $6600 in unpaid parking fines. Perhaps she’s more suited to making the rules than to obeying them.
The she’s in the right place, ask Barnaby, Cash etc.
You say ‘apparatchik’, I say ‘timeserver’ which is the essence of modern Labor.