Albanese's failing leadership, page-222

In 45 years of journalism, I’ve never seen anything like this

I can never remember any previous minister or official saying it was OK to support a terrorist group, provided that support was just verbal or some such. Even less is this all right for someone seeking to come to Australia.

Greg Sheridan =>



And then there were none.As the Albanese government makes an almighty mess out of visas for Palestinians from Gaza, spare a thought for another fundamental national security failure, one in which its words before the election were fine, and its record after the election dismal.Before the election, Anthony Albanese expressed admiration for John Howard and presented himself as Bob Hawke in modern guise. Both Howard and Hawke were very strong on national security. Albanese made big promises on national security. Almost everything he promised has come to nothing. One of his commitments was to Australia having a commercial fleet, a merchant navy. In emergencies governments can requisition ships that carry their national flag.When Labor came to office there were two Australian-flagged international merchant ships. Now, at the end of a full term, there are none. There has of course been a review. There are of course future plans.But more important than what governments say is what they do, and here we have nothing. There are a few modest vessels that chunter between mainland Australia and Tasmania but none that work internationally. Union power means we’ll never have such a fleet. In the contest of union power versus national security, the Albanese government abandons national security.Forget about AUKUS. In any national crisis where our sea lines were cut, we’d last about five minutes. Supply-chain security is non-existent.“And then there were none” describes much of the government’s national security policy. In Defence, a thousand reviews and plans have yielded, so far, nothing. Our defence force is substantially weaker than when the Albanese government came to office.Which brings us to the Palestinian visa imbroglio. The same syndrome has got the government into a world of hurt here. That syndrome is a desire to pull the wool over people’s eyes, to use process as an excuse for doing nothing, to hide behind bureaucracy to avoid hard political decisions and an absolute refusal to be straightforward and candid about government policy. This refusal is born of a cowardice about hard choices.In this case the government’s problems have been exacerbated by some undisciplined talking from the director-general of ASIO, Mike Burgess.But the main fault is with the government. It decided to give Palestinians from Gaza wishing to come to Australia visitor visas. It should have announced this, and told the public what it was doing and why. Instead the information had to be dragged out of it piecemeal. When the government was talking to a national security audience the subtext was: we’re doing almost nothing, so there’s nothing to see here.https://apple.news/A0uO20VZ8QPmt67lqta6b5w