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John Howard is just about the most charismatic man in the world. He is a good leader and an astute politician, good at percieving the moods of the electorate. If by now you don't realise that I'm being sarcastic, you are a very, very sad person indeed.
In fact, I still don't understand why Australians, who generally are quite intelligent, would vote this guy into office. First of all, he made himself very popular in Canberra when, flush with triumph, he announced that he wasn't going to move to Canberra, and he wanted to stay in Sydney and commute to Canberra when he needed to. What a great public relations move! Rumour has it that for his commutes to Canberra, he needs eighteen decoy stretch limousines.
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| Google has weird ideas of which John Howard is more important. The pic on the right came before the one on the left. |
Australia has a history of Prime Ministers who are just absolutely fucking insane. How about Paul Keating? He sure had funny nicknames for John Howard. During the 1996 election campaign which he lost to Howard (A sure sign that your political career has gone totally ratshit), he called him "the living dead" and "His Oiliness". Then he also went mad by doing pushing weird laws through Parliament, and then, when he realised that raising the GST doesn't exactly win you popularity, clicking "undo".
Other Aussie PMs have had bizzare things happen to them. One guy was Prime Minister for exactly 6 days (I forgot his name, but that's excusable because you don't get famous when that's the legacy you leave behind). And, one PM who wasn't insane, Harold Holt, was 2 years into his term and was taking a nice little stroll on a beach in Victoria, went for a swim, and then inexplicably disappeared. It's now 40 years later and still, no one knows what happened, and they never found his body. That's right. One of their Prime Ministers just vanished from the face of the Earth, and they still don't know why. Crackpot theories say he was abducted by the Chinese, for no reason except that they're commies. Of course, it's more likely he got eaten by something or his corpse has washed up in Antartica.
If there ever was something which merited the description "passive-aggressive", it would be a metal detector. The one in Australia's Parliament House was, unfortunately, undergoing psychiatric treatment, but had to be used since they didn't appear to have any spares. It beeped erractically and worked in tandem with the most neurotic security guard I've ever met (though I'm sure I'll meet many more when I stopover in San Franciso in a few weeks). First, the detector beeped when I went through. So I had to backtrack, and when I went backwards, it didn't beep. This caused the security guard to pause for approximately half an hour figuring out what to do next. Then he got me to go through again, and this time, a siren went off. The guard banged on a switch in the wall for a while, and the siren shut up. After which, I was probed in delicate places by the security guard.
Still I can't really complain since not many national legislature buildings are open to anyone who wants to take a look around or watch the Aussie politicians slang each other. The Australian House of Representatives is the only one in the world where insult matches take place regularly. There was a period of time when Paul Keating (reportedly, it isn't in the transcripts) only referred to John Howard as "the living dead" during a House sitting. "And The Living Dead and his party are telling us that these Parliament sessions are too entertaining? Well, Living Dead, you called me a "slacker hobo" last week, so you're contributing to it yourself you stick-armed senile old man."
The Parliament house currently in use has been around since 1988, and took over from the old one when it was completed. The Old Parliament, the Australian War Memorial and the current Parliament form a straight line along Anzac Parade, and you can see one from the other, although in this case, my view was blocked by a gigantic (probably plastic, from its extreme greenness and considering the drought) Christmas tree.
The amazing thing is, although it was built 14 years ago, it looks like one of those "ultramodern" style buildings that have just started to attempt taking over the world. Also, everything looks really new, thanks to the blank-cheque budget of the maintenance division.
And, they are also willing to give out seating plans. I'm guessing this is because everyone hates the people they've voted for (voting is compulsory in Australia) and so have no real objections to a terrorist shooting some of the politicians. As the guy behind while we walked into the House Of Representatives said, "It'd be great if they all got bitten by something."
Well, if anyone feels like sniping a minister or introducing some funnel-web spiders to the House, here's the seating plan I picked up.
That's it for now. In Part 3, we'll venture into Commonwealth Park and meet the charming seagulls.
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
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