I would love to be the one who invented the Kevin Rudd/Martin Prince comparison, but truth be told, I got it from someone in Tim Blair’s comment section. If it’s you, please identify yourself.
And yes, it’s ever so true, and I can’t look at Kevin Rudd without mentally exclaiming,
“Spring forth burly protector, and save me!”

Since Sasha’s taken to reading the Guardian, I thought I’d return the favor and feed you some Australian media: What to eat on Australia day. (Just click the link at the bottom of the ‘error’ page, ‘continue anyway’.) Needless to say, this resulted in a flood of complaints from the humor-impaired, but fortunately Australia as a whole is still sane enough not to pull the ad.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually feel a twinge of pity for Mark Latham.
This whole “scandal” has been entirely media-created. Would a statement from him following the tsunami have helped the damp Asians at all? Of course not. (Should his office have been proactive and drafted a generic statement of thiswasaterribletragedyandwewilldowhateverwecantohelp? Yes. But Labor’s incompetence is well known, and beside the point anyway.)
If the press are going to hound the man to his resignation from politics, they should do it for the right reasons: a) he’s an incorrigible asshole; b) he lost an election by the largest margin in recent memory, and c) he’s sunk his party for probably the next decade or so.
But to pile on Latham because he was recovering from a very serious illness is just beneath contempt. I know this won’t win me any points with the local RWDB community, but screw it, it’s how I feel.
And get well soon, Mark.

I brought several Australian specialties to the USA to share with friends and family. Among the popular ones: Bundaberg rum, Tim Tams, Hairy Lemon fizzy vitamin drink and Face of Australia lip gloss.
Not a single person had a good thing to say about Vegemite.

In contrast to last weekend’s triumphant Liberal/National coalition win, yesterday’s local ACT elections were a blowout for Jon Stanhope’s Labor party, which won a majority of local assembly seats. But all due congratulations to John Humphreys and the Liberal Democratic Party, which took away a healthy 1.3% aggregate of the vote in the electorate of Molonglo, amounting to 1308 votes. The also managed 1.2% (602) in Ginninderra, and 0.7% (420) in Brindabella. Unfortunately, none of this translated into winning a seat. But the Greens are clinging desperately to a lone seat in Molonglo, and the Democrats are continuing their death spiral by losing their only seat. Also showing poorly was the Free Range Canberra party, the brave defender of chicken rights. (I’m not making this up.)
The ACT election process is desperately screwy and complicated, involving “primary” and “secondary” votes, “preferences”, mathematical formulae and ratios, and arcane terminology like “Hare-Clark” and “Robson Rotation”. I’m still trying to figure it all out.

The “Man of Steel” has won a fourth term.. The Greens have lost their only seat in the house. The Australian Democrats have seen their percentages plummet. The media continually refer to newly minted MP Malcolm Turnbull as a “millionaire banker”, although they don’t call Peter Garrett MP a “millionaire pop star”. And loathsome Greens candidate Kerry Tucker was not elected to the Senate.
Overall, I’d say it’s a splendid night. I’m having a Tia Maria shot in celebration.
“Tom Paine” was liveblogging the election coverage. Read and be very amused.

In case you hadn’t heard, there’s another election going on: here in Australia. If you’re interested in following the news, you could do a lot worse than by reading the edibly cute Alan Anderson’s shiny new Sydney Morning Herald blog.

Here’s an amusing and enlightening website of a woman with the exact opposite problems as me: An Aussie in America. Makes interesting reading.