Political upheaval

No, unfortunately, I’ve haven’t set off yet.
Just thought I would give you a brief account of a week of Australian political intrigue. I have to confess that I am also killing time before the England/Germany game kicks off. You’ll be disappointed to hear that I am confidently predicting an England victory. Anyway, back to the politics. We woke up on Thursday morning to discover that we had lost our Prime Minister... well I know he was there when I went to bed, is he with your car keys? Maybe he’s in your other trousers (that, doesn’t sound right does it? And surprisingly, for a politician, he wasn’t actually ousted for sexual improprieties, misappropriation of funds or drug/alcohol issues... but more of that later). In fact, he wasn’t lost at all (unlike Harold Holt*), Mr Rudd was in fact ousted in a bloodless coup. Spookily I used that phrase in my last blog, for no apparent reason, and then on Friday the entire Aussie media is using it ad nauseam. This week I am going to drop in the phrase ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’ and I’ll be greatly surprised if it’s not being universally used by this time next week.
*Harold Holt was the 17th Prime Minister of Australia who disappeared after going swimming in the sea in December 1967 and has never been found.
Kevin Rudd was, in fact, dethroned because the opinion polls had shown him slump in popularity from being the greatest thing since sliced bread (or ‘the hottest thing since Kajagoogoo’) 18 months ago (when he gave most of us $900 dollars to go and spend willy nilly) to now being as popular as the person who invented the vuvazaela. One of his biggest mistakes was to put ex-Midnight Oil front man, Peter Garrett (Minister for the Environment) in charge of a scheme to supply roof insulation to hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, thus reducing energy consumption. There were over $2 billion of funds sloshing around in the system for this scheme which succeeded in attracting all sorts of cowboys and ‘shonky’ builders. The upshot was that some of the builders, who were untrained in the correct installation methods, erroneously used metal fasteners to hold the insulation in place, which made the roofs ‘live’, killing four installers and causing more than 90 house fires. Mr Garrett subsequently lost his job and was demoted to become Minister for the Arts.
Most recently the former Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has had the temerity to try and impose a tax on the fat cat mining companies who then threatened to go elsewhere. And so it was that, with his popularity waning, and an election just around the corner, Kevin was advised to fall on his sword. And so we have a new PM (albeit temporarily), who just happens to be female, ranga (that’s Australian for ginger) and from South Wales (which to the majority of the country is somewhat preferable to being from New South Wales).
The other major political story of the week was that George was duly elected student leader for Wattle (his faction). In the end he settled on the ‘I shall be your spokesman’ speech (he rejected ‘the ‘rivers of blood’, ‘ich ein Berliner’ and ‘Gwyneth Paltrows Oscar acceptance’ speeches). He is already practicing his ‘unfortunately we were unable to deliver on our promises because of the infrastructure that we inherited from the previous administration’ excuses. As a student leader he will get to captain his faction (Wattle) at the Winter Carnival (which is school sports day to you and me). They have the sports day in winter because that way they have to deal with far fewer cases of sun stroke.
We also heard last week that George has been accepted into the specialist music programme at Ocean Reef High School. He had to pass two tests to obtain a place in the programme. The first test was an audition where he had to play his guitar and then sing to a panel of judges (George never said whether any of the judges wore trousers that came up to his chest or not). George chose as his song the Australian national anthem (no, not beds are burning). The second part of the audition was a written test.
I’ve got to go now, they are playing the English National Anthem (no, not ‘too shy’) but when I get back from the UK trip I promise to bring you up-to-date with all of Wendy and Harriet’s news. I can tell you that Harriet recently found her Nintendo DS charger that had been missing for 18 months (you never know, perhaps she’ll find Harold Holt next). And Wendy has been promoted at work and is now Manager of Business Services.
See you soon.
H