He just doesn't get it

Poor old Gerard Henderson. He's John Howard's mouthpiece to the media. And he still doesn't get it.

He is just shocked - honestly, ingenuously, profoundly, stupendously shocked - at the lack of "intellectual" support for Howard's Liberal Party agenda. (See, http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/coalition-troops-illequipped-for-battle-of-ideas/2005/11/21/1132421599333.html

"What is interesting about the debates on national security and industrial relations is how few articulate commentators have been prepared to support the Howard Government on one or both issues. The vast majority of lawyers, academics, journalists and artists who have contributed to the debates have sided against Howard on both issues."

"Yeah, well, d'uh", as the kids say. "Interesting"? I'd say "telling" would be the more apt description.

The thing that had his knickers in a knot today was a speech Howard's own Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, made to the Rotary Club of Adelaide a few days ago. This was the same speech that also got up the ire of Howard's media outlet, Rupert Murdoch's The Australian, in an article that called for Amanstone's resignation. That article described the speech as follows:

"In a wide-ranging speech to Adelaide Rotarians, Senator Vanstone dismissed many commonwealth security measures as essentially ineffective. "To be tactful about these things, a lot of what we do is to make people feel better as opposed to actually achieve an outcome," Senator Vanstone said. During her Adelaide speech, Senator Vanstone implied the use of plastic cutlery on planes to thwart terrorism was foolhardy.

Qantas has backed Senator Vanstone on the reintroduction of metal cutlery on planes.

Mr Bevis said Senator Vanstone's comments on wielding weapons in planes were irresponsible. "If she made comments like that getting ready to board a plane, she'd be arrested," he said."

Frankly, I'm glad to see someone in government agree with me, for a change: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/08/nothing-to-fear-but-fear-itself.html

Hendo just could not get his head wrapped around the shear folly of much of the terror overreaction that Vanstone sees clear as day. He wrung his hands and moaned,

"Vanstone said she thought of the wine glass example "every time" she sees "new bids for more money for the security agencies to spend on things like bollards to put at the front of Parliament House". Yet she failed to come up with any ideas as to how to protect buildings from trucks driven by suicide/homicide bombers. And she seemed unaware that her wine glass scenario, if taken seriously, provides a reason for more - not less - security. The key point in her speech - that sometimes we can get a bit cynical about the focus on terrorism - could have come from a Democrats or Greens media release."

Ah, poor, feckless Hendo. In one of his more careful distinctions without a difference, he said,

"Vanstone's speech is a throwback to the 1960s, when senior Liberals were not able to intellectually defend their government's decision.... Then, as now, the number of political conservative intellectuals was few."

His labelling of his loving conservative "intellectuals" in that quote and his derogative put down of the liberal "intellectuals" as "intellingentsia" in his prior column can be nothing more than cold war propaganda and pettyfoggery balderdash.