Ross Eastgate spot on about Richard Marles and our pathetic Defence leadership.
Saturday, 27 April 2024
Failure to act on defence leadership issues
IN 2017 at the National Press Club, Labor defence spokesman Richard Marles declared, “Partisanship in the area of defence strikes me as indulgent and ultimately a little contrived”.
He added, “It ought not be how we do business”.
On 17 April in the same location he declared, “The Liberals were a defence disaster.
“When the Albanese Government came to office we inherited a mess.
“The Liberals were one of the worst defence governments in our nation’s history at a time when Australia could least afford it.”
Partisan, indulgent and contrived.
Marles has been either shadow or defence minister with minor breaks from July 27, 2016 until now.
He was shadow minister when outgoing CDF Angus Campbell was appointed to the role on July 7, 2018.
He has been closely involved in internal defence politics for that entire time, as an observer and participant so can’t claim ignorance of the many issues which plague the organisation.
Yet he admits to being a politician at heart with “all that implies and certainly willing to dive into the electoral politics of contest”.
Answering a question at the NPC Marles said, “The strategic problem that we are trying to meet, that we are trying to solve, is making sure that in a much less certain world in the future we are able to resist coercion and maintain Australia's way of life.
“And what that means is that our focus is on making sure that we are bringing to bear the kind of capabilities that will enable us to do that in, you know, a decade from now and beyond.
“That is the challenge that we face and that is the challenge that we’re meeting.”
You can’t make up this stuff, or can you?
Compare Marles’ answer with Peter Sellers’ 1958 parody, “Party Political Speech”.
“In the light of present-day developments, let me say that I do not regard existing conditions lightly.
“On the contrary, I have always regarded them as subjects of the gravest responsibility, and shall ever continue to do so.
“Indeed I will even go further and state, quite categorically, that I'm more than sensible of the definition of the precise issues which are, at this very moment, concerning us all.
“We must build, but we must build surely!”
Marles has so far failed to act on serious Defence leadership issues.
Nor should we expect anything but political partiality into the future.
© Ross Eastgate MMXXIV
