brainsnorkel.com

Senator Amanda Vanstone.

Setting aside her previous atrocities that include defending the previous Minister for Immigration from his ministerial responsibilities, and that she is a minister in a government that has been using meaningless security initiatives and fabricating security issues for their own ends (c.f. Tampa), I’m becoming much more impressed by Amanda Vanstone:

“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”
[...]
“Sometimes we can get a little bit cynical,” she said. “I think cynicism is another word for real, actually.
[...]
“And with the current focus on terrorism, which I don’t seek to make light of, but I think we should keep our perspective on these things, we tend to get a bit cynical.”

Ms Vanstone continued in her speech to a South Australian Rotary gathering lamenting the state of toast no-knife policy adopted by airlines:

“I don’t know if any of you travel that much and have the pleasure of trying to cut soggy toast with a plastic knife, which from my experience is not very reliable,” she said.

“But we have this (no knives policy), of course, because we’re worried about terrorists getting on planes and grabbing knives and doing bad things with them.

“But has it ever occurred to you that you just smash your wine glass and jump at someone, grab the top of their head and put it to their carotid artery and ask anything? And believe me, you will have their attention.”

There were apparently a few more thoughts that she hadn’t articulated publicly since her last conversation with the Prime Emporer about Australia’s new clothes:

I asked him if I was able to get on a plane with an HB pencil, which you are able to, and I further asked him if I went down and came and grabbed him by the front of the head and stabbed the HB pencil into your eyeball and wiggled it around down to your brain area, do you think you’d be focusing? He’s thinking, she’s gone mad again.

No. He’s thinking “I wonder if that’s covered in the Code of Ministerial Conduct?” or “What if we banned the supply of pencils to anyone with a history of fantasizing about giving Prime Ministers lobotomies with them?”

The news articles make it clear that these were candid statements to Rotary members, and that had the Minister known that there was a journalist in the audience, she would not have been so forthright. What a shame that Australians who are not Rotary members can’t be treated like grown ups.

But, the greatly encouraging news for me is that she has obviously had frank discussions with the Prime Minister about how spurious some of the counter-terrorism measures have been since 2001. Perhaps cabinet isn’t entirely full of sycophants who want a piece of the AU$1 billion per year in additional security spending for their constituents. It’s almost like she’s been reading Schneier’s blog, or perhaps even Beyond Fear:

Senator Vanstone said the reaction when an angry driver smashed his four-wheel-drive vehicle through the doors of Parliament House showed how policy was made.

She said bollards were suddenly placed in front of the building to stop the same attack and further “national embarrassment”.

Labor has called for the sacking of Amanda Vanstone over this. If it’s inevitable that the next Prime Minister will be a Liberal, then I’d like her to be that next Prime Minister. I’m calling for her promotion.

link and link.