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Fischer’s costly new job in Rome rewards Mr Nice Guy
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Kevin Rudd’s establishment of a full-time ambassador to the world’s tiniest country comes with a million dollar-plus price tag. According to DFAT’s media area, the department is to be given additional funding for Tim Fischer’s appointment. Despite Linday Tanner’s ongoing search-and-destroy mission for wasteful expenditure, it could not have been otherwise — DFAT has already copped a $57m cut this year and is currently in the throes of one of those “root and branch” reviews so beloved of the Government. A rough calculation suggests the posting would cost $1.2m at a minimum. There is already a full-time councillor at the Vatican, supported by a local (i.e. non-Australian) staff member. In addition to Fischer’s salary — over $200,000 including super — there will need to be a couple of DFAT staff, a media liaison staff member, and a couple of local employees. The Fischers will also need some personal staff — they have two sons aged 14 and 12 — and an entertainment budget. Between that and travel, there won’t be much change from $1.2m per annum. It’ll cost a bit to re-fit the existing office space, too, assuming they can all squeeze into existing office used by the councillor. Greg Sheridan lauds the appointment today as “brilliant”, which is a little extravagant even for him, but it’s presumably on the basis that he urged it some months ago and everyone loves to be proved right. His main reason for believing that an ambassador to a religious fundamentalist micro-state is that everyone else does it, including the Yanks. As DFAT points out, there are currently 69 other full-time ambassadors at the Vatican. Maybe Rudd just wanted to get the Holy See’s number to 70. A greater mystery is the continuing popularity of ex-National Party leaders. Doug Anthony is well-liked and briefly ascended to the realms of cultdom in the 1980s with DAAS (now there’s some guys who demonstrate the concept of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts). Fischer is even more popular. These are men whose occasionally extreme views have been forgotten or ignored because they’re basically decent and friendly blokes. Fischer’s frequent attacks on Israel (for which Anthony defended him in 1993) apart, his lowest moments came on Indigenous issues, promising National Party supporters tempted by One Nation “bucketloads of extinguishment” of native title in response to Wik and calling Aboriginal land councils “blood-sucking”, for which he later expressed regret. Maybe this taps into some Australian attachment to rural eccentricity that Anthony also drew on when he ran the country from a caravan at the coast when Malcolm Fraser was on summer holidays. It’s not likely to continue, though — it’s impossible to see younger, more mainstream Nats like John Anderson and Mark Vaile ever inspiring that sort of affection. |
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7 Comments
P’haps the Ruddmeister was concerned about Amanda’s sleeves rolled up no nonsense approach to diplomacy: ” C’mon Your Holiness cough up the dosh. It’s not as if you’re a few quid short. These working family australians were buggered by your priests. They deserve a fair go…etc”?
Keane’s statement that Sheridan’s “…main reason for believing that an ambassador to a religious fundamentalist micro-state is that everyone else does it, including the Yanks” is clumsy and I suggest the missing subject is to be found in the grab-bag of Catholic-hating invective.
By the by, isn’t Amanda Vanstone doing this job, and if not why not? The Vatican is smack bang in the middle of her Roman posting. Is Fischer replacing her?
I thought Fischer was Catholic. I hope we wouldn’t make a Chinese dual-citizen our ambassador to China. Don’t we need someone who wouldn’t feel conflicted if it became necessary to give the Vatican an earful. If we need an ambassador, which I doubt, we could at least get an unconflicted one.
An ex-Country Party/National Party, (whatever name they are currently running under) and the Vatican. Are the biggest oxymoronic contradictions I’ve ever heard. These rural Parties represent now, and will represent always Socialism for the Farmers. “Stuff what other parties and other people want. We stand for the farmers to get every social benefit, and every last cent out of the great Australian (half-witted public) that’s going” Smashes fist onto the bar and knocks over a couple of cans. “Nobody else should get anything at all. And see that line of men over there? You can’t really see them as they are meant to be invisible. Well, they are all the men who represent the farmers. The Country Party, The National Party, (whatever name they are currently running under). Well son, they get fifty percent, straight off the top. There’s nothing small about them. Why one of Ginger’s mates got himself a cushy job at the Vatican….It’s where the Pope lives, stupid”
In my experience the Nat MPs are generally the most gracious on a personal level. And the most ruthless on actual policy around say environmental resources. It’s a real disjunction for a greenie from the personal to the business of political change. Conversely Libs and ALP are more willing to consider their urban voter base concerns with the environment but might not have that easy squattocrat assuredness of their place and position in the scheme of things. Make no mistake the Fischer sticht was wrapped up record levels of forest destruction, attempts to promote Jabiluka U mine, bucketloads of extinguishment etc. To ignore all this is a joke really, and mutualism of the overpaid political classes at the expense of transparency to the voters. I always recall a local landmark around his part of the world ‘Poisoned Waterhole Creek’. Mmm. Talk about real Australian history and how the squattocracy got their wealth.
What’s there not to like about this? We get rid of Fischer a rather nasty capital C conservative and a country member from our shores with the added bonus that we are rid of his “vixen and fixin’s to boot”. Perhaps he can use his supposedly avuncular style and mangled syntax to get the the RCs to really take on the issue of their sexual molestation of minors and then when they have finished that do something about the appalling poverty in South America and elsewhere that they fail to tackle on anything but a superficial bandaid level.
It is hard to comprehend what he will do with his time. Frequent trips to the opera I suppose.