Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie is a mixed bag. She went full bootlicker during the Covid pandemic, but on other issues, especially foreign policy, she is an often necessary gadfly. But what really gets the former army member revved up is the treatment of veterans and serving military in Australia, both by the Canberra bureaucracy and the top brass.
Naturally, she’s absolutely ropeable that former defence chief Angus Campbell has been gifted a plum diplomatic posting. Lambie holds Campbell particularly culpable for the shameful treatment of Afghanistan veterans.
Ahead of the federal election, due by May 17, Senator Lambie said the campaign she was considering would call on both sides of politics to improve the nation’s defence capabilities, act in the interest of veterans and throw out war crimes charges against former SAS troops who served in Afghanistan.
Senator Lambie has also criticised Foreign Minister Penny Wong for appointing Mr Campbell as Australia’s ambassador to the EU, NATO, Belgium and Luxembourg, after the retired general oversaw a decline in defence capabilities and personnel numbers during his six years as Australian Defence Force chief.
Lambie blames Campbell for the worst ‘abuse and systemic weaponisation of administrative processes’ during his tenure.
She pointed to the ADF’s attempts to frustrate the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide by refusing to share requested information to the inquiry.
She also accused Mr Campbell of refusing to accept responsibility for Defence’s failures during the royal commission or for allegations of war crimes when he was in command of Australian forces in Afghanistan.
“You threw your Diggers under the bus, said we don’t want anything to do with this,” she said.
“No way. I am sick and tired, and many other Australians are sick and tired of seeing people that do the wrong thing, and are flown out under the darkness of night into another well-paid job.”
If nothing else, Campbell is a shocking hypocrite. This is, after all, the officer who piously declared, “It is the responsibility of leaders, at all levels. I am the chief of defence force; I am accountable for everything that happens in the defence force.” Then he turned around and shafted every digger who served under him. Except for himself and his chums in the top ranks.
Remember this is the same Angus Campbell, the same Chief of Defence Force, who wanted to punish all 3000 Special Operations Task Group personnel who served in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2013, stripping each and every one of them of their meritorious unit citation over unproven, untested allegations of war crimes against some of them. No top brass included.
This was an absolute abuse of process. Stripping some of the nation’s most distinguished combat veterans of their medals, simply on the say-so of some scurrilous (and at times, clearly fake) journalism, and the say-so of a handful of Afghan tribesmen fishing for some blood money, was an utter disgrace. Campbell comes across as a villain from Breaker Morant. He’d probably have sent Albert Jacka to the firing squad.
For her part, Lambie questions whether any of them even have a case to answer.
“Would the minister agree that because of the Taliban and Islamic State fighters’ subhuman behaviour and vile, disgusting culture and ideology that they should be exempted from any rules of war or international human rights?” Ms Lambie asked Defence Minister Marise Payne at a Senate estimates hearing.
It should be no surprise that the ADF is in the doldrums under Campbell’s ‘leadership’. He comes across as less a military man than a middle-management careerist.
Campbell’s expertise is management school garbage. Gibberish. Gobbledygook. Circular bureaucratic nonsense.
In an epic display of gormless, grinding, suffocating prevarication masquerading as leadership, Campbell, the nation’s top military officer, presented as the final witness in the harrowing, awful Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide […]
Campbell told the royal commission, literally in front of families still mourning the loss of their loved ones in uniform, that Defence was on a “journey”. And we haven’t been able to “shift the dial” just yet. It’s a process. It’s hard.
Rather than come armed with solutions. Actions. He came with an apology. A classic crisis management 101 apology […]
If any of his men and women were watching they could have been forgiven for thinking they went to bed as soldiers and woke up as management consultants. This was an excruciating extended episode of Utopia, without the satire, or frankly, the sincerity.
Campbell would have been handy at Gallipoli. Give him a megaphone, let him talk and the Turks would have either fallen asleep, surrendered or stood up demanding to be shot.
The ADF once produced leaders of the calibre of Generals John Monash and Pompey Elliott and Field Marshall Thomas Blamey.
Now, all we’ve got is Gordon Brittas in khaki.