In the wake of this morning’s historic AUKUS announcement let us not forget the key role of former defense minister Christopher Pyne in the whole French debacle. (Debacle being appropriately a word of French origin.)
Pyne was actually industry minister in April 2016 when his close ally, PM Malcolm Turnbull, awarded the $50 billion contract for 12 new submarines to the French DCNS group.
Even though he was not yet defence minister or even defence industry minister, the attention-loving Pyne was in the media spotlight touting the contract’s benefits for his home state of South Australia.
On the day, Pyne gloated that the announcement would secure the town of Osborne as the centre of naval ship-building into the future.
“This of course means a continuous naval shipbuilding industry for decades into the future which all first-world countries should aspire to,” Pyne crowed.
You could have been forgiven for thinking that securing jobs, including his own in the next election, was the focus of the huge contract, rather than defense or security considerations.
Indeed, the newly former PM Tony Abbott had reportedly favoured the Japanese bid. However, according to the Guardian’s Paul Karp: “South Australian MPs were concerned if Japan was awarded the contract local shipbuilder ASC would miss out on the chance to build the submarines”.
As luck would have it, Pyne did win his seat at the federal election a few months later. Soon after he fortuitously became minister for defence industry, and then in 2018 he was promoted to full defence minister. Unfortunately, he decided to abandon ship at the 2019 election.
In a shock to everyone, including presumably those ministers who had retired prematurely, the Morrison government won reelection, and subsequently frustration with the French submarine boondoggle has escalated in line with its costs — now estimated at around $90 billion.
A month after the election, Pyne started a new defence industry consulting job, prompting a Senate investigation into a potential breach of ministerial standards. Of course, he was cleared.
One popular politician who is still there relentlessly pursuing the whole French fiasco is Rex Patrick, although being from South Australia he too is often concerned over the whole local job commitment issue.
Indeed, the independent infamously appeared in the Senate chamber last year dressed as a bright red cut-out submarine with the words “save our 700 sub jobs”.
The stunt angered Senate President Scott Ryan who ordered Patrick from the chamber immediately, stating “you’re embarrassing yourself”.
By April this year Senator Patrick was urging Defence to consider dumping the whole French contract, stating it was like a bad marriage and “it’s obvious that divorce should now be discussed, particularly before any children are conceived”.
In the first minutes after AUKUS was announced, Senator Patrick seemed to raise concerns about nuclear submarines. But at least the man is a former Navy submariner, which is more than anybody else involved in this can boast.
Certainly not former Health Department secretary Jane Halton, who only two months ago was appointed to the local board of Naval Group Australia to help the French parent company navigate its fraying relationship with the federal government.
At least she still has her Crown Casino board gig, as that company is not completely sunk yet.
Sadly the entire political system is broken. We need some new options with less parasitical politicians. Surely there are some Australians who care about this wonderful country, who would vote for the common good rather than what we have now, where personal gain, advancement is the most common motivation.
The problem is the voting. Where there is voting there are elections, and where there are elections there are parties, and parties exist for themselves and to be corrupted by those who fund them. The elected members are described as representatives of their constituencies, but this is a lie. They represent first their party or some faction of it, then their paymasters, after that themselves, and their constituency last.
The only reliable way for the Australian public to be represented is to select all members of Parliament by a random ballot of the adult population, repeated at regular intervals to renew the representation. There would still need to be elections for the leader(s) of the executive government, but it would have to get all its legislation through a genuinely representative Parliament. That should stop most of the idiocy and corruption.
Since that will almost certainly never happen the best realistic hope is for the election of more decent independents, such as the ‘Voice of…’ candidates appearing in some places.
A Good Start is making political Parties subject to the Trade Practices Act (“truth in advertising”).
Next step would be real time disclosure of all political Party donations.
You could always try THE NEW LIBERALS – a move back to some of the principles the current illiberal party has left behind on its way to becoming the party of self interest. They must be doing something right over at the New Libs, because they have scared ScoMo and his little band of incompetents into emergency changes with a retrospective effect such as we have never seen since Howard was Treasurer.
The more conservative minor parties the better for the Liberals as they benefit from the preferences. It is how Morrisin had his miracle win after all thanks to God Palmer.
As for Howard when Treasurer:
John Howard is the only treasurer in Australia’s history who’s been able to engineer – simultaneously – double-digit inflation (December 1981 to June 1983), double-digit levels of unemployment (April to October 1983) and double-digit interest rates (November 1980 to October 1983).
The election in March 1983 meant that Labor presided over this economic misery, even though they obviously had not created these outcomes.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper has examined the financial records of 55 countries, drawing upon what it claims to be the “most comprehensive” database currently available.
It has identified just four periods between 1913 and 2011 during which it identifies “fiscal profligacy” in Australia’s financial policies, and only two of those have occurred in the past five decades.
According to the analysis, both happened during John Howard’s prime ministership – in 2003, and from 2005 to 2007.
The next most recent occasion was in 1960 under the leadership of former Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies, although it adds that the Menzies government was noticeably prudent in 1950.
The paper was by staff in the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department.
The Swan/Rudd government’s stimulus spending during the global financial crisis escaped criticism, with the report noting that it is sometimes appropriate to have a “profligate” fiscal policy to avoid a deep and prolonged recession.
Gough Whitlam’s government also avoided censure, despite repeated criticisms from the Coalition that it was one of the most wasteful in Australia’s history.
Whitlam was the first government to ever receive a AAA credit rating.
And the Swan/Rudd/Gillard the first Australian government to receive a AAA credit rating from all 3 major agencies.
Due to Coalition terminal fiscal incompetence , no Liberal Treasurer has ever received international recognition for ability and competence; nor achieved the same AAA credit rating successes as has Labor.
Never once did the Howard government deliver a cut in real spending in any of its 12 budgets.
Nor did the Fraser government, for that matter, ever deliver a cut in real spending in its seven budgets.
Twenty Coalition budgets and never a fall in real government outlays.
This is staggering when put against the perceptions and rhetoric that so often does the rounds.
The IMF was clear: there were only two times in the last 200 years of Australian history in which spending by a Federal Government resulted in little or no returns for the economy or financial sector. 2003 at the start of the mining boom in Australia and 2005-2007 in the rush to survive as an incumbent government .
Facts are:
Rodent Howard rode two booms – in mining and household spending – and as a result raked in “extraordinary” amounts of income during its last two terms.
Don’t forget the sale of Telstra either.
This is exactly the point the International Monetary Fund noted about the Howard government in a recent study; that it needlessly and wastefully boosted spending in the last two-thirds of its term of office. Pork barrelling is the term and Howard out pigged any other…until Scott Morrisin came along fresh from being sacked for the same offence in NZ and Aust
Nope; try this out and you will see why our once wonderful country is no longer. Submarines Away, full steam ahead on the gravy submersible train.
JOHN Howard is costing taxpayers more in retirement than he did while running the country. Australia’s second longest-serving prime minister commanded an annual salary of about $330,000 in the job.
But in his first year of retirement he racked up a $1 million bill at taxpayers’ expense.
Documents obtained through Freedom of Information by the Sunday Herald Sun reveal the former Liberal leader spent $1.04 million from the public purse in a year. The bulk of the spending went into a lavish city office overlooking Sydney Harbour. He spent $416,952 fitting out the office in Martin Place, including $2510 on furniture.
Taxpayers also paid for a $1180 TV and video system, $3622 worth of office equipment and $6082 for newspapers and periodicals. Howard charged $7739 for mobile phone bills, $1432 for calls from a home phone, $1834 on office calls and $4300 on office security.
Australia’s five living former prime ministers submitted expenses tallying almost $3 million the year before year, the figures show Howard was by far the biggest spender. He spent $21,361 on airfares, more than $21,600 on cars and more than $318,000 on private staff.
The rodent Howard defended the spending. Malcolm Fraser was the second biggest spender, recording a $518,000 bill for his office in Collins St, Melbourne, including $142,000 on rent.
Paul Keating was the most frugal former leader, spending $365,033 on his Sydney office.
The IMF and EuroMoney were not fooled by the lying rodent and his complicit MSM; only Australians with blinkers on and a low IQ or high greed factor believed Howard and Costello’s self proclaimed economic wonder world.
Jane Halton?? And the word sunk?
The derided by some, ancient files, coughed up a little treasure involving on water matter and Halton, so I guess he was the right person for the lucrative appointment after her Watch tower fiasco
An inquiry by the Australian senate last March disclosed that the Australian navy had extensive prior knowledge that the Siev-X was in a perilous state.
In other words, the people on board could have been saved. In April, Rear Admiral Geoffrey Smith, commander of the navy’s “border protection” department, testified three times under oath that he knew nothing about the boat until it had sunk.
Jane Halton, a special adviser to the prime minister on asylum-seekers, made the same denial.
she was the right person….heaven forbid it’s a he
Now there’s a blast from the past, Twistopher Lapdog Pyne. Just the name brings back happy memories of the threesome meeting to discuss how to get rid of speaker Peter Slipper. There was Mal Brough, Julie Bishop and Pyne all agog with James Ashby having a coffee in a cafe.
I wish France was still part of this franchise…. for namesake.
If this government had the slightest interest in making sure the nation’s human resources were as fully and gainfully employed as possible, they would not have destroyed our motor vehicle industry, nor done their best to tank the higher education sector. Wasting public money is bad, but wasting our resources is far worse.
Had to be done.
Big union the manufacturing sector, next it was to be the construction sector, with Abbott’s Dyson Heydon Liberal keynote speakers sham TURC.
Combined with the massive immigration intake of the Coalition of cheap foreign labour to break unions and lower wages and conditions, it was an outstanding success.
Never mind the fact that our nation can no longer manufacture a safety pin or couldn’t manage any PPE gear. Couple of industries geared up and started making masks but now Morrisin is again buying them from China.
We are a nation of foreign cheap labour health care workers, coffee servers, farm and crop workers, foreign students who provide funding for universities and cheap labour for many businesses while buying their degrees and permanent residency ….clever Howard, hospitality and 7 Eleven, Pieface workers. And the rush to open our international borders is all about this cheap foreign labour force.
We are even going to have to pay $1million per foreign worker for build the subs, so pathetic is our non existent training nowadays in the billion dollar subsidized vocational training foreign ponzi scam. That we can shaft back to Keating who began the privatisation of CES.
So this submarine deal has exposed much of what the Coalition has done to kill off unions and manufacturing. The car manufacturing also had a flow on to the aerospace industry etc. But gone, all gone now.
260 businesses that supplied accessories and components to the Australian automotive sector closed down too
But beyond the direct impact to suppliers, there was a significant impact on output and tens of thousands of job losses in downstream and upstream industries, and in particular, the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (PSTS) sector.
And so this prediction came to pass:
With the absence of car manufacturing companies, we need more, not less investment into R&D and technological innovation. Otherwise, the lack of investment in these important areas will adversely influence the survival of the remaining industries, particularly technology-intensive industries. That’s not what we want in an “innovative and agile” economy.
https://theconversation.com/collapse-of-australian-car-manufacturing-will-harm-randd-in-other-sectors-study-66984
“Government policies have sown the seeds of a global free market through which we’ve surrendered control of our economy.
The truth is that the death of Australian car manufacturing did not begin on September 7.
It began 30 years ago when the Hawke government commenced the job of abolishing tariffs, opening us to global competition.
This was declared a necessary step in Australia’s economic evolution. It would bring growth, dynamism, and after some pain, prosperity.
When Labor today argues the Coalition is sacrificing blue-collar workers at the altar of an economic theory, it omits that in Australia, Labor was that very theory’s midwife. Ask Paul Keating.
Actually, don’t bother. He’s already given his answer when asked what he’d say to blue-collar workers whose jobs disappeared on his watch: ”What do I say: what’s your new job like? … I mean, did we ever hurt anybody liberating them from the car assembly line?”
For now, an argument rages on whether more government money would have saved Holden. The opposition insists $150 million would have done it. The government points out that Holden, like Ford before it has been ”saved” in this manner several times before, only to be unsaved and threaten to leave again.
The truth is we’ll never know because Holden won’t tell us, and even if they did, they’d be guessing.
Either way, the government’s argument is intensely interesting because it boils down to the assertion that there is nothing it could reasonably have done to prevent this. That this decision was out of its hands, and was based on economic factors largely beyond its control. But in defending itself, it has made an epic admission: that we’re not really in control of our economy.”
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/death-of-car-industry-30-years-in-the-making-20131212-2z9xd.html
Hawke and Keating ran with the neo con liberal ideology and Howard couldn’t have been happier.
[The Coalition]” signed a free trade agreement with South Korea, which both major parties had worked on.
The upshot: great for agriculture, bad for car manufacturing. Labor didn’t quibble.