Thursday, October 25, 2012

Rent-seeker alert


(Houston tells the board a really big fish story)

A lease/rental of U.S. Virginia-class nuke subs may be goofy. On the flip side of that coin we have a rent-seeking orgnisation that will do anything to sling mud at the idea of buying good, existing, off-the-shelf conventional subs to get a capability up now with a long and steady path of crew tribal knowledge.

And, little mention of fixing the DMO.

Here are two worrying points all in one short paragraph:

Speaking after being appointed to the South Australian government's Defence SA advisory board, Air Chief Marshal Houston said building the 12-boat strong future submarine fleet was critical to sustaining Australia's defence industry.

Good post-retirement work if you can get it.

In 2002, the then Air Vice-Marshall Houston stated that the F-35 would be affordable because there were 3000 jets on the order-book.

No such "order-book" existed.

The federal budget is billions in debt due to a spend-thrift government. No amount of crying about cost being less important than some questionable military spending project will matter because there isn't any money.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He has a leg up for a start.
Remember Juila advised that she was a little bit in love with him at his retirement.
However hiring someone with such a record of imcompetence and with a legacy of emasculating the Defence Force astounds me.