Canberra, Australia

Today we began our first of two three-day tours across southeastern Australia. This bus would be our home for about 6 hours a day. We shared it with several Brits, one dazed and confused German girl, and our intrepid Adventure Tours Australia tour guide and chauffeur, Bones.

Our first stop was in Canberra at the excellent National Museum of Australia. Then on to Parliament.

I was a fan of Australian government even before the trip began. Immediately upon entering office last year, Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Accords and proclaimed a national "Sorry" day on behalf of the government apologizing to Australia's indigenous people for all of the cruelty inflicted upon them by the state over the last 220 years.
But our visit to the Parliament House would be even better than we could have anticipated. We just happened to be there on the one afternoon a month when the parliament has "Question Time". This mainly consists of the opposition party grilling the Prime Minister and his cabinet with questions insinuating incompetency and corruption. We had the thrill of watching the Liberal Party (conservatives) pepper the cabinet of the Australian Labor Party (liberals) and K Rudd himself with allegations of impropriety with a Chinese business. As the cabinet and Rudd would deftly respond to each spurious question, the opposition "shadow ministers" would guffaw, catcall, and generally talk amongst each other to show complete disrespect for the speaker.

It was fantastic theatre. K Rudd is a consummate speaker. Unrattled, he would turn each nasty remark back at the inquisitor with a sharp response. I tried to imagine our current President responding to probing questions from Congress with no teleprompter to guide him.

I think the Aussie system of government is far healthier that ours. The party in power controls Parliament and the executive office. They can get things done. The opposition is free to ridicule and demand answers once a month. If the people don't like the results or the answers they hear, within three years, they can throw them out and let the opposition have a go. I'm telling you if we had the Aussie system, C-SPAN would have ratings almost as high as MTV-2.

Another reason I am a fan of Australian government is Peter Garrett. If you don't know who Peter Garrett is; he's just your average six foot six, bald, rock superstar, turned environmental and social activist, turned one of the most powerful politicians in Australia. Garrett was the lead singer for supergroup Midnight Oil from 1973 to 2002. I listened to "Diesel and Dust" and "Blue Sky Mining" often in high school in the late eighties. Their music was the first "protest music" I had ever heard. I learned about Australia by listening to Midnight Oil rail against environmental degradation, militarization, and the lack of support for the aboriginal population. Lindso and I were fortunate enough to see one of their very last concerts at Kinetics in Boulder in 2002.

Now Peter Garrett is the Minister for the Environment, Heritage, and the Arts. So we saw him live for the second time, though in a much different venue. I was hoping he would get a question, alas he did not, but we did see his long legs splayed out in the front row a few seats down from K Rudd. Well done, Peter!