Ausmarine March 2015 – Editorial
Proving, yet again, that they are the ultimate in what Lenin so accurately called "useful idiots", the angling lobby has joined the Green extremists in an endeavour to close down what's left of the New South Wales commercial fishing industry.
This time, an official sounding group, the "Central Coast Taskforce", is making dishonestly extravagant claims about the behaviour of the rapidly diminishing band of commercial fishermen who operate along the state's central coast.
Much the same thing happened a couple of months ago in Victoria's Port Phillip. In both cases, for a change, the fishing industry has got itself together and started to fight back. This is a welcome new development.
The coupling of the mostly educated, inner-suburb residing Greens, who are largely government employees, with the mostly self-centred individuals who make up the bulk of the angling lobby is remarkable. It is also likely to be short-lived. However, it is already impinging on the livelihoods of commercial fishermen and their families.
The Greens and the anglers, of course, have never been very concerned about other people and regard any misfortune that may befall them as nothing but collateral damage in their crusade to obtain more power and taxpayer "funding".
The anglers, similarly, are concerned only with their own selfish interests. The only good commercial fisherman, they believe, is either dead or forced out of business.
Well, for once, these selfish, arrogant people are up against a strong response from the fishing industry. In NSW the Professional Fishermen's Association of NSW and, in Victoria, the Australian Marine Alliance, have moved to refute the spurious science and outright dishonesty espoused by this malignant conspiracy of Greens and anglers.
For its own good, the wider fishing industry should be supporting and learning from these two pro-active organisations. If you don't immediately refute lies and correct distortions they will become accepted as truth by the wider public.
Meanwhile, fishermen should always remember that great lie of the twentieth century: "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you". Judging from his most recent press releases, that are full of pathetic AFMA produced platitudes, fishermen won't be able to depend on the support of the new junior minister for fisheries, Senator Richard Colbeck.
Senator Colbeck needs rapid re-education as to the value and importance of the fishing industry. One hopes that these two active associations can get to state their case to him absent the often malign influence of AFMA personnel.
Our submarine purchasing decisions should never be made on the basis of a possible loss of parliamentary seats. They should only be based on economic cost benefit. In other words, obtaining the biggest bang for the buck. We must decide, once and for all, whether our submarine money is to be spent on welfare or warfare.
Plainly, that is never going to happen while the government persists with the thoroughly discredited ASC. Its profit and productivity results to date prove that is a very benevolent sheltered workshop. Having toured the place very extensively on three occasions, I noted with dismay the slack culture that prevails there. It is obvious, after numerous changes of management, that its problems are incurable. By far the best move from the taxpayers' point of view would be to close ASC down immediately and liquidate it. Leopards don't change their spots!
Even if we paid the ASC employees so displaced $100,000pa each for the rest of their working lives to just go to the pub or the golf course, the taxpayer would be billions better off.
Rather than making idiotic promises to our new "best friend in Asia" as prime minister Abbot recently did, we should choose the best available long range, quiet boats, irrespective of size and buy as many as we can afford. We should then spend some of the money we save by not building them in Australia, on finding and training the best possible crews and, particularly, captains for those boats. They will be far more successful in battle than lesser crews on bigger, more expensive boats.
Finally, another point worth pondering. For all of World War II, the Korean War and much of Vietnam, we had no submarines. As part of the wider debate, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we really need submarines at all.