Senator Andrew Bartlett
Friday, May 20, 2005
 
On a Downer - In Sydney for Blogtalk

I finally arrived back in Australia around 11.30am and checked into another hotel in Sydney. I've been very slack in not finishing my speech for the BlogTalk conference prior to this. I finished off most of it on the plane and will do some finishing touches prior to heading down to see some of the other presentations. I'm particularly interested to hear Rebecca Blood give a talk. Apart from her own site’s good links to stuff on gothic culture, she also seems to have lots of good ideas for communicating meaningfully online.

In an apt follow on from my work on Nauru, I’ll be going to a Quiz Night in Sydney tonight, hosted by HG Nelson and Tony Squires, which is being held to raise money for the Asylum Seekers Centre.

I finally managed to properly log on to email and promptly wished I hadn't as my Inbox had 622 new messages. Most of them will be spam.

In catching up with other news, I see that the reviews of all the Nick Cave concerts I missed have been fabulous, Kylie Minogue has been diagnosed with breast cancer (I've always had a soft spot for Kylie, especially since her duet with Nick but also because she's stuck at it so hard for so long despite all the crap she cops), and my bird Voyager is now sitting about 8th in the great Albatross Race.

In another comforting indication that some things never change, I see that Alexander Downer is making moronic comments yet again, this time taking puerile schoolyard potshots at Australia's wartime Prime Minister, John Curtin. John Curtin is widely recognised as one of Australia's greatest Prime Ministers and is someone who willingly faced and embraced the suffering required in his role and who in a real sense gave his life for his country. His efforts and sacrifices contrast starkly with Alexander Downer's. I am often bemused as to why Alexander Downer is not more widely recognised as the greatest buffoon we've ever had as a Foreign Minister – I suppose the fact he's just stayed in the position for so long has meant everyone has got used to his regular outbursts of idiocy, hypocrisy and juvenile name calling and we've forgotten what quality contribution to the public debate is like.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Friday, May 20, 2005 Permalink
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