You can be excused for having missed this one...

...Kevin Rudd, the guest of honour at the launch of ABC 3 was the victim of a security scare from an unnamed contracted cleaner.

The story gets stranger as the AFP, the cleaning company and the ABC itself all refused to comment on what had happened.

It might not be a fair comparison but this 'incident' did make me think of the media world's reaction to Tareq and Michaele Sahali's White House invasion last week.

The couple got scorned and ridiculed from all corners and the Secret Service was forced to make an embarrasing apology for this uncharacteristic slip up.

Here though, Rudd's 'dance with death' has only been run on the 7pm ABC news (it didn't even make it to ABC online) and it looks like that will be it from here on in.

There hasn't been any mention of what risk Rudd had been placed in or what will be done differently to avoid similar breaches.

Why the difference if both breaches were equally harmless?

In my mind it shows that the media knows that Rudd's security isn't exactly going set the water-cooler ablaze, and that Rudd himself probably realises that to talk about it or investigate it further would look weak to a country that still prides itself on its stiff upper lip.

Kind of comforting that in Australia, the politicians ain't too precious.

Today marks the second anniversary of Rudd's election to Prime-Minister- a tenure which has given me mixed feelings of its success and forward thinking ability.

On one hand there is a very reasonable argument that says keeping Howard out has been victory enough.

In my opinion though this point of view does little to offer new ideas, instead it tells us that what's happening now isn't as bad as it could be.

Not particularly constructive.

Finally though, one line which encapsulates Rudd appeared in the Letters section of the Sydney Morning Herald months ago, the letter read:

'Watch out, if you keep walking down the middle of the road you'll eventually get run over'

A perfect description of the fate that will befall this middle of the road warrior.

Australia is dealing with the same problems on heath care, as the US, right now. Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd has been talking a lot (and he loves to talk a lot) about the revolutionary health care reform that is about to take place. Everybody wants health care quality to be better and – of course -  cheaper. But everybody should know that this double aim is impossible.

Rudd’s National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission has worked out that it will cost $3- $6 billion in order to fix up the overall health care system. But God forbid that people make it to the hospital! That will add another $4.5- $7.5 billion more to remain functional. Don’t forget the $3.5 billion needed to bring dentistry into line.

Congratulations lucky taxpayers, you get to pick up the bill.

This is what happens when you nationalise health care - and then leave it alone. The problem is not caused by health care being free; it is because the power, administration and setting of priorities within the health care system lie in the hands of bureaucrats, not doctors.

Can somebody in this world please grow a pair? With Rudd's ETS looking to be headed to the legislative shit pile, Turnbull has proposed an alternative scheme that isn't really much of anything. For one, Turnbull's scheme (or not really Turnbull's scheme, it was written by economic consultants) calls itself 'cheaper and greener' yet, it gives free carbon credits to emitting industries, leaves agriculture out the scheme and makes little move to cut our actual emissions.

Instead, it's proposed we buy carbon off-set permits from developing countries. Hold on a second; re-read that sentence. Instead of reducing our emissions we're going to pay poor countries to grow trees, use bio-fuels and sit under wind-farms for us. Who knows what's that going to do to their arable land or schemes of their own.

So now it's time to cut the crap Turnbull (and for that matter Mr. 5%-cut-of-emissions-Rudd) and stop pretending anyone cares about miners or farmers. Stand up, stop fellating the coal industry and be bold. The only politicians that people remember were decisive and ahead of the times. And now might not be the last time we had a future. So hurry up. 

For instance Trujillo in his interview with the BBC said:

"But my point is that [racism in Australia] does exist and it's got to    change because the world is full of a lot of people and most economies have to take advantage - including Australia - of a diverse set of people.

"If there is a belief that only a certain people are acceptable versus others, that is a sad state."

There is racism in Australia, and if it continues (as it undoubtedly will) our reputation and our ability to attract the world's best talent will suffer. How can anyone argue with that?

But seeing that fact, how have various media agencies chosen to frame Trujillo's comments? They've seen them as a reaction against racism that Trujillo suffered while here. And what was that racism? With the clear knowledge of Trujillo's Mexican heritage, our Prime-Minister Kevin Rudd, said ‘adios' to him. For Trujillo, this ‘annoyance' was a minor point in the interview, with even him sounding a little confused as to whether it was in fact, racism. He was quoted as saying of the PM's comments, that:

"I think by definition (it was racism) - there were even columnists who wrote stories that said it was".  

The "I think" doesn't exactly sound conclusive, nor does it seem that he was scorned enough to go to the Anti-Discrimination Board to complain. But of course it will be that comment, rather than the first set, that will get more column inches.

So in the next few days I invite you to sit back and watch the shock jocks and tabloid journalists have a field day. If the next few day's feeding frenzy does anything, it will serve to remind us that it's much easy to target the man, than what the man has said of a country that can't take criticism from abroad, consider it, and then really look at itself.

Australia’s role in the American Inquisition.

The revelations of a once secret 2006 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the use of torture and "cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment" on prisoners at Guantánamo and secret CIA jails came as a shock to many. This is odd, because anyone with a keyboard, modem and half a brain, quickly discovered that in the panicky aftermath of 9/11, the West had forged a pact with the Devil. It was not only Dick Cheney who felt the call of the dark side - it was virtually the entire governing class of America, Britain and Australia. Yes, even Australia, a former penal colony that started life as Britain’s Guantanamo. By RICHARD NEVILLE.

THE Rudd Government knows it's got a real perception problem with China, thanks to the ill-timed bumbling of and carelessness of Joel Fitzgibbon.

The Defence Minister's undeclared trips to China come as China is doing everything it can to take a huge stake in Australia's natural resources; after Kevin Rudd's "secret meeting" with China's propaganda chief has made a bad impression; as the Prime Minister's longstanding Sinophilia makes people suspicious; and as Australia is championing Chinese efforts for a greater say within the IMF.

But ill-timed bumbling doesn't mean Labor is handing over Australian sovereignty to China nor that Rudd is the Manchurian candidate with a Chinese chip in his neck and Harold Holt in the backyard of The Lodge.

The disclosure of the Defence Minister's failure to declare two trips to China paid for by his family friend, businesswomen, Chinese investor and landlady Helen Liu, couldn't have come at a worse time.

Given Rudd's declared standards of ministerial probity, it's probably a hanging offence but Fitzgibbon will get a suspended sentence as long as he doesn't have any more damaging disclosures.

His colleagues think he has behaved poorly but he still has the support of Rudd and Julia Gillard, whom he helped to their respective jobs.

As a minister he's been in trouble for a while but his failure to declare the trips - before he was a minister - doesn't create a vast Chinese conspiracy.

As China undoubtedly becomes more aggressive economically and militarily in a world it is increasingly going to influence, there are legitimate concerns about putting Australia's security - national, resource or economic - at Beijing's beck and call.

The Prime Minister and Wayne Swan both know they face a diabolical dilemma in choosing to accept much-needed Chinese investment while trying to keep China from controlling resource production in Australia and, hence, prices for our exports through state-owned companies or investment funds.

The choice is made more difficult by yesterday's decision to excise the sensitive area of the old Woomera rocket range from China's bid for OZ Minerals.

The Government's got a perception problem, Fitzgibbon's made it worse but there still isn't a Manchurian candidate. Dealing with China is part of the new world.

[via The Australian]