A couple of shorts, football in Australia is getting close to the finals. Japan is looking to drop its weapons export ban. Free Trade and Intellectual Property, though now moot as Howard has agreed to Latham's changes. Hugh White on the Abrams purchase.

Shorts

• I mentioned in a previous diary not being able to find the primary source for the statement of the 43 Australian former Diplomats and military officials demanding truth in government. Margo Kingston's Webdiary has come through again by publishing the statement .
• I was hiking up at Harpers Ferry last weekend. Harper's is an old town on the corner of the Shenandoah River and Potomac River. A beautiful spot. During the civil war it had an armoury and shot making factory, so the Union and Confederates fought over it constantly. The hiking trails follow ramparts and artillery emplacement from the Civil War.
• Saw Cabin Fever the other night. I am a fan of schlock horror, but this one had a never ending set of obstacles that didn't have much to do with the story. Like the close-up of the deer showing surprise before being hit and then its legs thrashing around in the car. There was no solution/closure to it either, it ended up with a "return of the Living Dead" type ending. I give this two out of five Dolph Lundgrens .

Sport

The Ice Hockey World Cup starts soon but will the next NHL season? I am looking forward to watching the World Cup. The Rugby League season is closing in on the play-offs; the current ladder is;

• 36 - Canterbury Bankstown Bulldogs
• 34 - Eastern Suburbs Roosters
• 34 - Brisbane Broncos
• 28 - Penrith Panthers
• 24 - St George Dragons
• 24 - Melbourne Storm

I have only one thing to say to that, "Go the mighty bulldogs!". Looks like the South Sydney Rabbitohs will be the wooden spooners. Though Manly is competing with them to see who is worst.

In Aussie Rules Sydney is again holding on by the skin of its teeth;

• 56 - St Kilda Saints
• 56 - Port Adelaide Power
• 56 - Melbourne Demons
• 52 - Brisbane Lions
• 52 - Geelong Cats
• 44 - Fremantle Dockers
• 40 - North Melbourne Kangaroos
• 40 - Sydney Swans

Well, "Show it to 'em Sydney", and no giving up 40 point leads in the fourth quarter anymore please. It is funny to see the modern style names like Power or Storm. It is also odd that Brisbane chose Broncos as their moniker, when the Australian word for a Bronco is a Brumby. I guess marketers thought itpacifist wasn't cool enough, yet the very successful A.C.T Rugby team is known as the "Brumbys".

As a rare treat last weekend, Fox Sports World showed the Australian vs New Zealand Rugby Union game at 6.00 am. we got up early to watch it. Great game with a pleasing outcome, though I don't get upset when New Zealand beats Australia. The Beldisloe Cup has been the highest quality Rugby being played on the planet for the last twenty years or so, it is always good to watch.

Japan Dropping Defence Industry Export Ban

It looks like Japan is going to drop their 40 year old weapons export ban . The ban was originally put into place in 1967 and was an outgrowth of Japan's constitution;

The current ban, in place since 1967 in the administration of prime minister Eisaku Sato, is a result of Japan's constitution, which renounces "war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes", as well as an earlier parliamentary decree from the 1960s.

It appears Japan is concerned about being left behind in defence technologies. The ban also appeared to deny Japan the possibility of doing the large multi-national projects like the Joint Strike Fighter. It seems that part of the reason to drop this ban is so Japan can get involved in projects like Joint Strike Fighter and Missile Defence Shield. Japan for its pacifist constitution spends a great deal on its military;

Yet the Japanese military-industrial complex is far from having to declare bankruptcy. As an industry it benefits from a military budget that, in purely monetary terms, is surpassed only by those of the United States, Russia and China. This fiscal year alone, total military spending will amount to the equivalent of $45 billion.

In contrast Australia spends 17 billion AUD and the US spends over 400 Billion USD which doesnt include Iraq. The article also makes the point that lifting the ban will also open the protected Japanese defence industries to international competition.

Free Trade Agreement and Intellectual Property

I covered Section 17 of the Free Trade Agreement in a diary a while ago, but it appears that Ross Gittens is picking up on the issues of intellectual property in relation to the Free Trade Agreement. He has now written several articles on the issue. Gittens calls the Intellectual Property changes in the FTA a "Trojan Horse" for Australian industry. In particular Gittens seems to now be championing for dissolving software patents. It won't matter though as Howard has agreed to Latham's changes and it looks like the FTA will go through Parliament. If both Liberal and Labor agree to it in the Senate the Greens, Democrats and Independents can't block it. This is the final text of the FTA . Chapter 17 is the component pertaining to Intellectual Property Rights .

When I was about twenty-two I tried to patent a keyboard device after I got bad RSI from typing. I paid a patent lawyer to look into it and drove down to the Patent Office in Sydney to do a patent search on it. It would have cost me $100,000 to have the device patented in the larger western nations, and I got warned even if I did patent it, if it sold well then a factory in Taiwan would copy it directly.

I realize now I was taken in by the myth of the Thomas Edison inventor, someone who can make a living just inventing things. It is a myth, I would have been better served to have focused on being a manufacturer and distributor. I could have ignored the patenting process and its $100,000 barrier of entry and just done what Taiwan was doing in the late 80's, manufacture a product for market. Get the cash-flow now, rather than wasting your money on steep capitalization costs.

In that case a patent was no help to me. My naivety back then was also a stumbling block. As a twenty-two year old I just didn't know any better. At that age I was more likely to believe a prominent myth, the reality is for every stereotypical crazy inventor making a living there are 10 million successful industrialists.

White on Abrams

Came across an interview of Hugh White while searching for something else. The topic being discussed is Australian defence including the Abrams purchase . The Abrams are 70 tonnes which cant be airlifted by existing Australian aircraft, so they have to be ship born. Australia doesn't have much in the way of naval heavy lifting. Australia is also getting 67 Abrams to replace 100 Leopards, which means a loss in quantity. Another point which Lane raises is that in the Leopards 40 year service they have never fired a shot;

Well I ask the question because given that the army has been to wars all over the place in the last 30 years, you can't keep the Australian army out of a war, and it's never used the tanks, it looks as though tanks are surplus to requirements.

White responds that Australia is an infantry army and uses tanks for infantry support. In other words, Australia doesn't do "Operation Desert Shield" or Kursk like battles in Western Europe. If Australia lined up its 20 year old Abrams next to the US 1st Armoured Divisions modern Abrams, Australia would be politely asked to make their way to the rear as the equipment isn't up to snuff.

White thinks Australia would be better upgrading the existing Leopards as this would give Australia a 30% more quantity in service. White worries about the numbers of Abrams that could be deployed in an emergency;

You know, numbers do count in this business and the present plans, if the reports we're seeing are correct, will see us move from 100 Leopards down to 60 Abrams and by the time you've lost a few for servicing and training and one thing or another, with 60 Abrams we probably couldn't deploy more than about 30 tanks to a conflict. Now 30 tanks for the Americans is a drop in the bucket.

White believes Australia should stick to what it is good at, which is Special Forces Operations. Hugh White also weighs in on the War On Terror;

I mean my own view is that the war against terrorism - though I don't really like that phrase, let's call it the struggle against terrorism - is an immensely important national security priority for Australia and for a lot of other countries. But I don't think terrorism is the only problem we need to worry about and particularly not in building our defence forces. In the end the military don't have much to do with the struggle against terrorism; that's to do with police forces, it's to do with intelligence agencies, it's perhaps in the broader sense to do with aid agencies and that sort of thing. The military are not a very subtle instrument for that.

But even when you use the military, the tanks I think have got a very small part to play, particularly large-scale tanks like the Abrams. I would think that if you're trying to adapt a defence force to play a bigger role in terrorism and indeed for a range of other non-conventional tasks - the sort of thing we've been doing in East Timor or the Solomons - you'd be much more likely to go for a smaller, lighter tank like the Leopard ones we have at the moment rather to invest in this much larger, heavier type of capability.

Like White, I think terrorism is a civil issue not a military one. the invasion of Iraq showed how unsubtle the military can be when used as an instrument of political change. Using policing is far less disruptive and so far has been more successful in bringing terrorists to justice. Not to mention, it is more economic than having 140,000 men stationed overseas in a fractious nation.

I find the Abrams purchase perplexing. Australia has bought enough rust buckets from the US in ships and helicopters. No need to add armour to that list. If Australia needs a tank to satisfy Australian needs, spec the platform and then hand it off to Australian industry. I am sure that local designers/manufacturers like Holden, Ford, Mitsubishi and who knows who else would love to have a crack at it.

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