Sunday, November 22, 2015

Malcolm Turnbull needs new jet for summit season

Malcolm Turnbull and his wife Lucy arrive at Halim airport in Jakarta.



When Malcolm Turnbull was faced with his first major overseas travel as a new Prime Minister, he was confronted with the realization of all modern leaders — there is now more overseas travel required than ever before.

The days of Robert Menzies travelling to London by boat and being absent for months have long gone. But even the journeys of Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, which were covered by a couple of old 707s, have been overtaken.

The demands of “summit season” have grown to the point where it is necessary for an Australian leader to go to the G20, the APEC forum and the East Asia Summit, added to the old Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, plus now turnabout trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, Japan and regular visits to the US and Britain.

It is also no longer possible to have all the meetings near each other — the G20 was in Turkey this year and APEC in Manila only a day after. As a result, the new Prime Minister, like his three predecessors, is now faced with the prospect of having to order a new VIP plane. It’s a choice no one wants to make and John Howard’s decision to try to limit the publicity fallout by ordering small Falcon jets was an operational error.

Kevin Rudd cursed the small jets, which are limited by range, fuel, passenger capacity and pilot rest requirements, because they could not be used efficiently on long-haul flights. The fact journalists and officials couldn’t travel on the smaller planes became a contentious issue after the death of one esteemed DFAT official and terrible injuries to a Fairfax journalist in a Garuda crash in Indonesia as they tried to keep up with a VIP on commercial flights.

On one occasion Howard made a secret, dramatic flight across the world from Japan to visit troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and was required to have a dozen stops for refueling and changing planes.

Turnbull decided the way to maximize his time in parliament and meet all his global commitments, with the added security advantage, was to charter a plane for his recent 10-day trip. It underlined the fact that the Howard-era planes are just too small to meet modern requirements. But like all the leaders before him, Turnbull will be reluctant to buy a new plane or planes because it always looks like a leader looking after himself and attracts bad publicity.

Yet, the time has come, as Turnbull prepares to leave this week an other trip across the globe. Consideration has to be given to upgrading the VIP fleet. There is a simple and cost-efficient answer: an A330 refueler, like the KC30 Turnbull chartered, with a cabin fitout that means it can be used for RAAF transport but also for the Prime Minister, officials and the (paying) press corps, just like every other world leader who has to attend summit season.

- Source:  http://www.theaustralian.com.au

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