Oppositiong leader Tony Abbott
seemed to forget that the Australian Navy are not his personal political plaything for the media:
Earlier, top Navy brass stepped in to stop Mr Abbott grilling officers about how they felt patrolling for asylum seeker boats.
Mr Abbott toured Australia's busiest Naval port he asked several personnel for detail about Operation Resolute.
"Do you get out on those boats often," he asked four Navy personnel at an outdoor staff canteen.
"So you guys were doing people smuggling patrols?," he asked.
"What was it like to apprehend these vessels."
After a pause they offered stilted answers including "it's tiring", "a challenge".
"It's busy," said another.
While another said it was "Tiring work too, frustrating."
At this point Lieutenant Commander Michael Doncaster stepped in and asked for the questions to stop.
"Sir I'd prefer we don't talk on that line and move on," he said.
The Australian Navy previously
had to tell Abbott to stop using the phrase "spending like drunken sailors."
Senior Navy officers have implored Mr Abbott to tone it down because it
doesn't fit with the image they are trying to portray of the modern-day
Navy professional as a sensitive, well-behaved individual.
"We are not like that any more,'' a Navy source said.
"It is not an image that is reflective of the current force or ideals.''
Tony Abbott
splashes the cash:
- $67 million to deploy Australian Federal Police officers to
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia to assist with joint people smuggling
operations;
- $20 million to "enlist Indonesian villages to support people smuggling disruption including a capped boat buy back scheme";
- regional transit zones to help move asylum seekers to offshore
processing centres without needing to go first to Christmas Island or
the Australian mainland;
- $27 million for increased aerial surveillance and $71 million to Indonesia to boost their search and rescue resources;
- supplement the border protection fleet with commercially leased vessels; and
- expand the capacity of processing centres on Manus Island and Nauru by 2000.
The massive
$30 billion Liberal Party sinkhole continues to grow:
There is a gap of almost $30 billion between the size of the tax cuts
and new spending the Coalition has promised and the savings it has
unveiled so far, leading economist Saul Eslake estimates.
In a 34-page review for clients of how a Coalition government
might change economic management, Mr Eslake, chief Australian economist
for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, also highlights the potential for
"significant and ongoing tensions" in an Abbott government between its
"genuine economic liberals", such as shadow treasurer Joe Hockey, and
those who are "more sceptical about markets . . . including in many
cases Tony Abbott as prime minister".
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