Query over exercise

Press, 24 September 1983, Page 4

Query over exercise

NZPA-Reuter Canberra A fictitious country to be depicted as the enemy nation during the important annual defence exercise Kangaroo ’B3, has had some reaction in Tasmania. Federal Tasmanian members have asserted that the enemy nation is an inverted map of their state. However, the Australian Minister of Defence, Mr Gordon Scholes, has set the record straight by revealing the map of the enemy State, located for the purposes of the exercise off the northwest coast of Australia, is in face modelled on the South Island of New Zealand.

An inverted map of Tasmania did feature in the exercise plan but it was code-named “Orange Land” and located in the Coral Sea, Mr Scholes said in the Australian Parliament.

Tasmanian members had objected to their state’s being depicted as an enemy land.

Mr Scholes said the forces who would be defending the real enemy land would be New Zealand troops taking part in the exercise. He said he was surprised that Tasmanian members had trivialised the exercise in such a way and should have known better. The inverted Tasmanian map “is not as the hillbillies from Tasmania claim a target of Kangaroo ’83,” he said.

During the 1981 Kangaroo exercise the inverted Tasmanian map had been used and at that time a Tasmanian Liberal member, Mr Kevin Newman, had been a minister in the Government that planned the exercise, Mr Scholes said.