Comment – Paper Tigers

What does concern me is the over-population of bureaucrats hibernating at Fort Fumble in Canberra. These highly protected self-perpetuating individuals tend to bog down the entire system until the official Committee structure ends up involving more people than the entire Army. The Leopard tank purchase, the ongoing TFF saga, the Airtrainer purchase and the Melbourne replacement are all fine ex­amples of modern-day Fort Fumble at its bureaucratic best.

Most of the heavily dramatised criticism of defence in our press regrettably refers directly to the men and machines in the front line: not the insulated pen pusher of Russell Hill. And this is wrong!

Not so long ago I was aghast to read the Editorial in a ma­jor Sunday paper (with a readership of several million) that described in great detail how our Services were consistently destroying expensive equipment in a veritable orgy of destruction. Now we all appreciate that accidents do happen, particularly with high-performance combat aircraft such as the F-111 and Mirage where the slightest problem can, by the sheer nature of operation, turn into a disaster generally beyond the flight crews’ control.

Obviously the writer of that Editorial would consider the all-conquering United States Marines to be pretty hot fliers – then if so, why has the USMC lost more than two dozen AV- 8A Harriers in recent years? Or why did the equally prestigious US Navy lose three Orion aircraft last year? Or 8why does the Royal Air Force, surely one of the most capable air arms in existence, have such a high loss rate with the Her­cules transport?

Indeed our much acclaimed Editorial writer could not attempt to answer these questions as he simply would not know the answers. Yet if an Australian aircraft goes down all hell breaks loose!

I might add that the same Editorial, which went on to openly chastise the troops for crashing our expensive weaponry (as if it was done on purpose for some rudimentary form of vandalistic glee) listed the value of the little CT-4 Air­ trainer at $800,000 – now really!

Another point worth mentioning is the incessant “knocking” of our aircraft. We all know that the Mirage is no teenager and certainly, it deserves the almost official title of “ageing” prior to its name in any media report but one recent incident really had me laughing. In a leading daily on a Mon­day, we have an article referring to the poor state of our age­ ing Mirages – an article which I am sure would hardly lead the man in the street to believe that we had a viable fighter force (ask the USN F-14 pilots from the USS Enterprise how viable our ageing Mirages are!!). Then in the Wednesday edi­ tion of the same paper, there is the “shock” announcement that Rhodesia has acquired a number of highly sophisticated supersonic Mirage fighter planes.

Now I ask you – how can the same mark of aeroplanes be an ageing Hulk on a Monday and suddenly be transformed into a force of “highly sophisticated supersonic fighters” three days later – perhaps it was Black Power?

This, of course, is a typical example of our press at work, seeking the negative, building it up and never printing the positive as the supposed readership won’t react to good news.

Good news such as how the RAAF has taken off the coveted Fincastle Trophy nine out of 19 years including two ties with Canada and Britain. Or how the RAAF took home the CANZ awards last May. Did you read that in your dailies – Of course not. What can we do?

Well, quite simply, next time YOU read what amounts to absolutely biased rubbish in your paper write the editor of that paper a letter. You most probably will not receive a reply (going on personal experience) but eventually, if enough peo­ ple get serious about this situation, you will find the editors of this country finally putting their brains into gear before writing inaccurate editorials. And that would be good for everybody.