Retired infantry officer. Conservative by nature and politics; Happily married and father and grandfather of eight. Loves V8 powered Range Rovers, Golden Retrievers, good books and technology and think there should be open season on Greenies.
Born in the mid forties and overdue for servicing but most parts still work.
Captain Mona Shindy addresses the inaugural Iftar Dinner at the Australian War Memorial. And yes, she is wearing the uniform of the Royal Australian Navy
What is going on in the Navy? Recently Captain Shindy was announced as Telstra’s Business Woman of the Year.
The last time I looked the RAN wasn’t in business. It has no business plan and is not required to turn a profit so why as one of their officers been awarded this honour.
I think the answer lies partly in her uniform – note the Hijab. On this evidence it would appear the RAN has changed the dress regulations to accommodate one particular religion – Islam.
Ah well, I thought, maybe there is a groundswell of Muslims signing up and whereas, in my experience, regulations have never been change for just one religion. maybe numbers are changing this old rule .
But no, I can’t find any evidence that this is the case. In fact it appears that most Muslims interested in the military have already signed up to fight against us in the Middle East.
Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Barrett recently fasted in solidarity with RAN Muslims and at a dinner at the Australian War Memorial said;
“Muslim-Australians and the knowledge and the values they bring to the workforce are a key and essential component of a successful Team Navy.”
Wow, just Wow.
I get the feeling that the Vice Admiral wouldn’t be saying that at a dinner held at the War Memorial for say, Catholics and or Protestants. In fact I doubt there ever would be a dinner celebrating main stream religions.
We are, after all, a secular society.
Dinner at the AWM. Hmm. The memorial was designed to commemorate the sacrifice of Australians who have served their country. It was never thought of as a temple to political correctness.
Bernard Gaynor goes into more detail than I do and like me yearns for a day when the military defended the country without politically correct language.
During my time I served under more simple rules.
The role of the infantry is to seek out and close with the enemy, to kill or capture him, to seize and hold ground, to repel attack, by day or night, regardless of season, weather or terrain.
There were no riders that mentioned ” in a gender equal manner” or ” in between praying to Allah five times a day” or “dressed modestly with Hijab if applicable”
Poor show Admiral.
Shorten claims the release of the news that the Trade Union Royal Commission has found he has not committed any indictable offence was released late on Friday night was an attempt to bury his “Innocence” has nothing to do with the timing
It is all about Shorten trying to get more media coverage on the announcement.
He may not have committed an indictable offence but he has committed and immoral and unethical offence. Any Trade Union official that negotiates a pay
decrease for it’s members in exchange for funding that was used to finance his campaign to gain a seat in parliament has to be considered as unethical at best.
But that’s the unions for you.
Day after tedious day, the Trade Union Royal Commission uncovers examples of union officials stealing members funds for personal gain.
Day after day, millions of dollars of unexplained or false invoice deals are uncovered and the Unions and the ALP are still screaming “Witch Hunt”
Yes…right fellows.
In today’s news;
The Turnbull government will make a staunch defence against any Labor attack on the trade union royal commission in parliament this week, seizing on corruption allegations against the Australian Workers Union.
At least five former AWU officials have been criticised in the submissions, including allegations of possible criminal behaviour by Bill Shorten’s former deputy at the union, Cesar Melhem, who faces a prison sentence if ultimately charged and convicted of falsifying invoices.
Staunch defence!!!
They should be attacking, not defending. Every press conference, whatever it’s initial subject, should be closed with ” Did you note today’s news from the Trade Union Royal Commission? Did you note that Secretary X has used X dollars on his or her private expense?
Every day, every press meeting.
And then table in Parliament a bill that brings Union officials under the same regulations as business leaders.
Let ASIC sort it out.
Samantha Maiden plumbs the depths of poor manners in yesterday’s Sunday Mail when she quotes from a book Turnbull wrote years ago when he was pumping for a republic.
Full of abuse and ridicule of Charles, the heir to the throne, it gives us an insight as to why Turnbull shouldn’t be PM.
I’m not suggesting that Charles is a winner, in fact I think he’s rather loopy, but that’s just a private citizen’s opinion and isn’t as public as a book written by a man who is now our Prime Minister. A man who will shortly be obliged to entertain and welcome Prince Charles to Australia.
I can only imagine Samantha Maiden is a Republican like Turnbull and thinks raising adultery and tampon conversations is all fair in the debate to rid Australia of the attachment to the Monarchy.
In today’s The Australian Paul Kelly, who has written a book on The Dismissal, claims Turnbull plans to advise the Governor-General and the Queen to release correspondence between former governor-general John Kerr and the palace leading to the dismissal of the Whitlam government.
This has Republic written all over it and it is obvious Turnbull still wants the debate on a republic.
Like it or not, during the course of the next Government Turnbull will raise the issue of a Republic again. He will see it as his part in history, to dramatically change Australia on his watch.
His ego demands it.
In today’s
The Australian, the Aviation section has an article on a book soon to be released by author and former Qantas director of public affairs Jim Eames, entitled The Flying Kangaroo.
An extract
Then there was s humour and a larrikinism that Eames noted would not be tolerated in today’s highly regulated, closely scrutinised environment.
These included the exploits of former RAAF transport pilot Ross Biddulph.
Biddulph’s legend was born flying a DH-84 Dragon from Kainantu to Lae in New Guinea. After realising he’d left his Craven A cigarettes in the back of the plane, Biddulph, desperate for a puff, decided he would set the aircraft on a level cruise and dart through the cabin to retrieve them.
“Apparently Dragons dislike people rapidly appearing behind the centre of gravity because the wretched plane reared up like a Wodehouse salmon and set course for Jupiter,” Biddulph wrote in a letter. “Almost immediately it stalled and, forgetting all about Jupiter, screamed straight down towards Nadzab (a PNG village).
“Shortly afterwards I arrived in the flight deck area, spreadeagled against the instrument panel like a butterfly and covered in thousands of Craven As.’’
Worse for Biddulph was the fact that Qantas’s chief pilot in the region, Bill Forgan-Smith, was flying a DC-3 1000ft behind and above him.
It’s behind the paywall but if you subscribe
go read the piece. It is entertaining and a window into an earlier life
I have struggled coming to grips with Tony Abbott’s sacking. An honourable man replaced by a “Flash Harry” of little substance. From my reading of Turnbull and, for that matter, Shorten, their complete CV is centred on themselves and what they can do to enhance their pursuit of self aggrandization.
The Libs have badly let the country down because the polls were bad. Any government taking over from one as economically bad as the Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government was, has two years to try and fix the problem. This should have been accepted as fact but the crazies in the Senate, coupled with Shorten who refused to take any blame for our parlous financial state, ignored the need and blocked every attempt to fix the problem.
Bad news at the start of an election cycle is always bad for the polls but then in the third year, when things start to stabalize, the polls lift. There is no way that an ALP government was on the cards with Shorten in command. He has far too much ammo for the Libs to use in an election campaign for him to get through.
I have quoted Bolt in full. I seldom do quote him but his article explains my feelings on the matter better than I could ever have done.
NOW Tony Abbott is gone I can finally tell the truth about him. Folks, you made a big mistake with this bloke.
No, no. The mistake wasn’t that you voted for him.
In fact, you got one of the finest human beings to be Prime Minister.
In many ways he seemed too moral for the job, yet he achieved more in two years than the last two Labor prime ministers achieved in six.
Compare. Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard left us with record deficits after blowing billions on trash — on overpriced school halls, “free” insulation that killed people, green schemes that collapsed, “stimulus” checks to the dead.
They meanwhile opened our borders to 50,000 illegal immigrants and drowned 1200. They hyped the global warming scare and forced us to pay a job-killing carbon tax just to pretend they were saving us.
But Abbott? I won’t go through the whole list: how he stopped the boats, curbed spending, scrapped the useless carbon and mining taxes, led the world’s defiance of deadly Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and made us safer from terrorism.
He even signed three free trade deals to secure jobs for our kids — including one with China that the last three governments couldn’t clinch.
And he did all this in the face of astonishing heckling and even vilification from our media class, and despite often feral opposition in the Senate.
But your mistake was not to care about all that. Deeds didn’t count with you. Image was all.
And so you told the pollsters you didn’t like Abbott. You believed the vicious crap written about him, until his MPs finally panicked and dumped him.
Your mistake was that you couldn’t look behind the flim flam — the way Abbott looked, the way he spoke, the way he walked, the way he ate an onion — to see what he’d actually done for you and for your country.
You even laughed at some of his finest qualities and emblems of his public service. Journalists ridiculed his work as a lifesaver by mocking his costume and body hair. They dismissed his firefighting service as just a photo-op. Wrote off his patriotism as bigotry.
When he defended women, he was called insincere. When he warned that our finances were in strife or that terrorism menaced us, they called him a scaremonger.
And you believed them. You let people treat like absolute dirt a man who had a record of volunteerism no prime minister has equalled — working in Aboriginal communities, lifesaving, firefighting, helping people in natural disasters, and raising money for women’s shelters and a hospice for dying children.
And none of it was done just to puff his CV for an election pamphlet.
The only reason I know Abbott helped people secure their homes after one Sydney storm is that my wife’s uncle asked the head of the team getting the tree off his house if that really was Abbott over there, helping to cut it away.
Shush, said the captain. He doesn’t like people knowing.
Now, I must declare straight up — I call Tony Abbott a friend.
So you’ll call me biased. You’ll laugh that I can write this massive praise of him when almost everyone else is horse-laughing. And you’ll say that’s why I see more qualities in Abbott than are actually there.
But you’ll just be making another mistake.
See, I don’t think Abbott is a great man because he’s my friend. He’s my friend because he’s a great man. Greater than the people who tore him down.
He’s my friend especially because he’s not those things that so many journalists wrote — including some who must have known what they wrote were lies.
Truth is that Abbott is not a thug, bully, racist, fool, liar, woman-hater, homophobe or bigot. He’s not cruel or lacking compassion.
If he were any of those things he would not be my friend. Those are deal breakers for me. Those I love best are people of honour, warmth and kindness.
Tony Abbott is one such man, and that he has been betrayed and deposed doesn’t just break my heart. It makes me fear for this country. I can only hope that Australians will one day wake up to what they’ve tossed away.
Sorry to sound so melodramatic, but here are some glimpses of the man I know — ones that put the lie to the trash that even big-name correspondents peddled about him.
And from Steve Kate at Catalaxy Files
The media and the left are among the people least capable of seeing goodness in others. And it’s not as if these qualities were invisible even to those of us who were not among his friends. If you are part of the anti-Abbott collective of this country, you are part of the problem and in no way part of the kind of humane solutions Tony Abbott tried to bring to political decision making in this country. We are all the worse for his departure. There are some who do not know this because they are so shrivelled inside that they incapable of knowing this. But there are some, thankfully, who understood what a great Prime Minister we had and know exactly what we have lost.
And this from comments at the Cat.
When the second Bali bomb happened at Jimbaran beach, the people who died and the ones who are still struggling are friends of ours.
Tony was on holiday with his wife and daughters. Ours son’s friend lost both of his parents that night, our sailing mate lost his sight and his wife lost one of her eyes. Our business lawyer is alive but has never recovered, and his wife struggles.
Tony Abbott was Health Minister in the Howard government at the time. He teamed up with Newcastle GP, Adam Frost, who was also on holiday with our friends, and they did the most amazing triage and lifesaving operation.
Seriously, people, you have no idea of the quality that is Tony Abbott, and what those lightweights have thrown away in favour of an empty suit.
Flash Harry in an empty suit – poor exchange indeed.
Not enough is being done to prepare the Australian Defence Force to deal with the security threats and other consequences of climate change, warns a new report by former ADF chief Chris Barrie.
Admiral Barrie says the Asia-Pacific is the most disaster-prone region in the world and the ADF is under escalating pressure to help with climate-induced natural disasters.
Is it…are they?
I mean is it the most disaster prone region and are the ADF under pressure to help? Talking to officers and soldiers in 7RAR thy are all about training for combat while training to counter computer modelling that spells doom and gloom are simply not in their thoughts or long term plans.
The sermon continues;
Climate change will significantly affect accessibility and availability of freshwater resources and was a key factor in the 2008 food crisis, that increased the number of undernourished people worldwide by 75 million, he says.
Now that’s a big call!
From the
Science and Publicity website;
The SEAFRAME sea-level study on 12 Pacific islands is the most comprehensive study of sea level and local climate ever carried out there. The sea level records obtained have all been assessed by the anonymous authors of the official reports as indicating positive trends in sea level over all 12 Pacific Islands involved since the study began in 1993 until the latest report in June 2010. In almost all cases the positive upward trends depend almost exclusively on the depression of the ocean in 1997 and 1998 caused by two tropical cyclones. If these and other similar disturbances are ignored, almost all of the islands have shown negligible change in sea level from 1993 to 2010, particularly after the installation of GPS leveling equipment in 2000.
The whole piece strikes me as being a job application submitted for our new Climate Change advocate Prime Minister.
GREENPEACE is calling on the Institute of Public Affairs to donate any money it wins to a climate change charity, if it’s awarded a prize for its role in killing the carbon tax.
THE environmental group has hit out at the right-wing think tank after learning that it was a finalist for the $US100,000 ($A142,680) Templeton Freedom Award for its anti-carbon tax campaign.
“Since its removal following the lies and smear campaign by the IPA and others, emissions have massively increased, polluters are largely free to pollute again, and Australia is further isolating itself from almost every other economy on the planet who are doing the exact opposite, and there’s a prize for that?” Greenpeace Australia chief executive David Ritter said.
I’m calling on Greenpeace and their Australian subsidiary, the Greens, to donate any money received in their lies and smear campaign to the Australian treasury to start paying back the billions of dollars they have cost the nation. They could start by donating the $1.6 million they got from WOTIF owner Graeme Wood.
They played a major part in the development of Desalination plants that cost billions to build but now mostly sit idle costing millions a year in maintenance; they have stopped mining development all over Australia as part of their campaign to close down the coal mining industry and that has cost the nation billions; they have stopped the building of dams effecting agricultural and city water needs and generally do their best to stuff up the economy.
They owe Australia big time
Busy days. Last week at Coolangatta I commemorated the loss of my mates in South Vietnam with members of the platoon. As Recce Platoon, 7RAR we spent a year conducting long range patrols and took a lot of casualties from mines and AK 47s. We get together every year on the anniversary of one our mate’s death in action and remember them all. We are together for a week and it is great to recharge the batteries.
It reminds me that friendship’s formed in battle and the losses we suffered are forever.
A weekend with grandkids and back to work at a three day seminar with the Royal Australian Regiment Association where we try and do better at looking after our less fortunate veteran mates.
Senator Michael Ronaldson, Minister of Veteran’s Affairs, shared his thoughts under
Chatham House rules and he was followed by Craig Orme from DVA.
I was impressed with both of them. With their compassion, professionalism and determination to improve the lot of veterans. They handled the crusty old soldier audience with aplomb considering there were star ranks abound (not me, of course – I only made Major)
From commemorating my mates death in action to attending a seminar aimed at helping those of us who survived, is taxing but ultimately motivational as you spend days concentrating on the less fortunate and realize there are agencies who are lining up to help and that any personal problems you think you might have, pale into insignificance compared with others.
Of course, after all day conferencing, the time comes to relax and this week gave me cause to remember that some of these older warriors have a tremendous ability to consume beer and red wine as we literally discuss the history of the Regiment from Morotai (where the Regiment was formed in 1948) through to Iraq.
The unofficial history, that is. The history that never gets written down.
We military have Chatham House rules as well.
Heady days – now back to work.
At the height of the Vietnam War,
John Ali was in a team of truck drivers recruited on the orders of the then army minister Malcolm Fraser for a secret mission delivering military supplies deep into Cambodia where US and Australian forces were officially not supposed to be.
Hmm
Greens senator Penny Wright told parliament last night that Mr Ali’s treatment by successive governments was shameful. He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and lives with the debilitating effects of his experiences in Vietnam and Cambodia, Senator Wright said. “He jumps at the sound of thunder and takes about 20 tablets a day.”
Greens senator Penny Wright. Hmmm.
I wonder why Malcolm Fraser didn’t use the thousands of soldiers already in country and subject to military law. And don’t think because we weren’t supposed to be in Cambodia that we weren’t.
It’s one thing to convince a Greens Senator of outlandish claims. Let’s face it, they believe that the Earth is doomed unless we spend hundreds of billions of dollars and otherwise ruin the economy by locking coal in the ground, but it’s another matter entirely to convince the DVA and us skeptical old soldiers.
If he wasn’t in the military then any compensation is a matter for other government bodies, not the DVA. He could try talking to Malcolm Fraser to confirm the story. Oh hang on, he’s dead.
I’m surprised his problems only came to light after Malcolm was interred.
Really surprised.
Malcolm Turnbull has publicly come out against the position of Tony Abbott and the Coalition party room on the question of a national same-sex marriage plebiscite.
The Communications Minister, a prominent advocate of same-sex marriage, warned the Prime Minister’s strong disposition for a public vote would become an incessant distraction for the Coalition in the lead-up to the next election and into the next term of parliament.
“One of the attractions of a free vote is it would have meant the matter would be resolved in this parliament, one way or another, in a couple of weeks,”
The main attraction of a free vote is it could possibly pass.
“The reason I have not advocated a plebiscite after the next election is that it would mean that this issue is a live issue all the way up to the next election and indeed at the next election, and if we are returned to office, it will be a very live issue in the lead-up to the plebiscite itself.
The reason that he doesn’t like the idea of a plebiscite is that if the people get a vote, it will not pass and he knows it.
Seriously Malcolm, just resign and go back to Labor.
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