The Super Hornet debacle perpetuated by Brendan Nelson when he was defence minister gives good insight into how he would govern. It would be executive whim, without deliberation or oversight. In other words Schmittian conservatism.
Robert Merkel writes:
The decision was then rushed through cabinet without following the usual defence procurement procedure, possibly with the aid of a slide show to cabinet directly put together by Boeing. ...
The thing that makes this particularly farcical is that if a capability gap exists, its origins allegedly lie in Howard's decision to commit to the Joint Strike Fighter back in 2002, after being sweet-talked by the salespeople at Lockheed Martin while on a visit to the United States, bypassing - you guessed it - the defence bureauracy's evaluation process.
And Robert again three months later:
If this is true, we've just spent six billion dollars, without a tender process (and thus quite possibly bought a dud), to replace an aircraft that was still serviceable - or, at least, wasn't going to fail because of the faulty wings Nelson was spouting to his Cabinet colleagues and the public.
Nelson would govern as Howard did. In my opinion this was the main reason the Howard Government was voted out - because of its poor governance that was dominated by emergency, exception, whim, executive imposition, executive rule and ignoring the constitutional boundaries of federalism and limited government.
Brendan Nelson is a Schmittian conservative not a liberal.
Update I:
Guy writes an excellent piece at Polemica on the tensions between the conservative and liberal wings of the Liberal Party and how that plays out with Nelson and Turnball.
Update II:
William Bowe writes something similar, that Turnball is the leader the Liberal Party requires to become competitive again at the national level. The consensus from nearly all quarters is that Turnball is a superior choice to Nelson.
I agree.
More Reading on Schmittian conservatism
Most Popular on South Sea Republic
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Most Popular Restaurants in Phoenix
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Most Popular Hikes in Arizona
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Alternate Australian Constitutions
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
Archives For South Sea Republic
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
Who Is Cam Riley
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
Websites Worth Reading
Websites of friends, colleagues and of interest;
