Andrew Bolt: Pathetically political attacks on flood response help no one

Labor are desperate to make Morrison seem a dud who never delivers. It’s childish, and stops us focusing on the real scandal – how we keep letting our towns be flooded, year after year.

Australian Army aircrewman Sergeant Rick Scott surveying flood waters over Lismore during Operation Flood Assist 2022. Picture: ADF

These attacks on our army for not saving us from the floods are brainless and pathetically political.

Any excuse to accuse Prime Minister Scott Morrison of being all spin and no action.

And any excuse to ignore the real scandals.

Yes, forget the councils that let people build whole suburbs of houses and shops on flood plains in parts of Sydney and towns like Lismore and Ipswich.

Forget the ludicrous penny-pinching that stopped state and local governments from at least then building the levees and channels to protect those homes.

Forget the green idiocy that blocked the plan to raise Sydney’s Warragamba Dam to stop exactly the kind of flooding we see now.

Aerial view of Warragamba Dam overflowing in the Western Sydney region where major floods have hit the area. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Forget everything we failed to do as people rushed to buy or build homes on cheap land so flood-prone that many can’t even get insurance for them – or not at a price they can afford.

Forget all that. Let’s just blame the army when the mud hits the fan.

Where’s our army to come help?

Why did some locals have to hire their own helicopters to fly in supplies, or get into their own boats to rescue neighbours?

“Are you embarrassed that ordinary Australians are having to do so much?” Channel 7 host David Koch raged at Defence Minister Peter Dutton, as if Australians should feel free to put their feet up in a calamity and leave it to the government to save the people next door.

Labor took up the cry, because this was its only way to pin the disaster on Scott Morrison.

Labor MP Justine Elliot, whose electorate takes in flood areas, wailed that “we had poor volunteers in dinghies, we had people co-ordinating on my Facebook page to rescue people from caravans”.

Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton visit the Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane. The Brigade are assisting with the recovery from recent floods in Queensland. Picture: Dan Peled

To me it’s inspiring and natural for Australians to help in a disaster this massive, but for this Labor MP it was “heartbreaking”, and she lashed the Australian Defence Force for having “hardly anyone on the ground”.

Journalists joined in socking it to our supposedly missing soldiers, and foul citizens abused them to their face.

“W-----s,” cried a woman who filmed herself jeering at soldiers at a McDonald’s in Queensland.

“That trailer isn’t going to empty itself,” sneered a man as he filmed soldiers clearing a site in NSW.

Both times, the hecklers were too lazy to even get out of their cars, let alone actually help.

But why abuse just our soldiers but not, say, our police, fireys, council workers, SES, public servants or anyone else who could have done even more than they were doing to help in these massive floods?

Australian Army soldiers loading crates of fresh food onto a helicopter, ready for delivery to areas of Northern New South Wales affected by Floods. Picture: ADF

In fact, 2000 ADF personnel have been working already on flood relief, and there’ll be 5000 by week’s end.

Attention: that’s the equivalent of nearly 10 per cent of our entire full-time armed forces.

True, some may actually have been reservists, but I’m guessing many reservists in flood areas were busy.

And why do we expect the army to always gallop in massive numbers at times like this?

It’s like we think our armed forces aren’t doing anything useful already. They aren’t patrolling our borders and seas. They’re not training, gathering intelligence, finding the best weapons, guarding facilities, doing military exercises with our allies, studying warfare or doing anything related to the defence of this country.

No, apparently they’re just lolling around as odd-jobbers, waiting for scraps of work.

Two years ago, for instance, 6500 ADF personnel – including 3000 reservists – were sent to fight the summer bushfires.

During the pandemic, 3000 worked in quarantine hotels and airports, and helped maintain lockdowns.

When the virus got into aged care homes, nearly 2000 were even sent there, and still we heard that same complaint – “Aged care still waiting for ADF support as homes close amid staff shortages,” wailed the Sydney Morning Herald.

Australian Army soldiers, Signaller Matthew Hayne and Private Jessica Fitzsimons undertake pre-deployment training prior to assisting with aged care support in Queensland. Picture: ADF

ADF people also had to vaccinate Australians, and a general even led the rollout. More helped tidy up Tonga last month after a cyclone hit it.

This is getting out of hand. It devalues the role of our military and diverts it from its real job – defending our nation, not sweeping out mud or minding a nursing home.

But there’s an election in two months, and Labor and its media mates are desperate to make Scott Morrison seem a dud who never delivers. So attack the army.

Like I said, it’s politics. It’s childish. And it stops us thinking about the real scandal – how we keep letting our towns and cities be flooded, year after year.