Thanks for the vote of confidence, shepo. Mrs At and I, along with a few friends already had a party last Friday night! Nah! Never wanted to do that but I did always want to participate in political parties. Been a member of the ALP for many, many years, then prob'ly six years ago shifted to the Greens.
I have two things that keep me inside this Gvn't camp of faithful: a)Nothing that they'll do will ever be as bad as what the Libs have done the last decade or two or three... throughout their history, in fact and b) it's very early days yet. Even a brutal despot loses the strength of his grip after a while and I'm hoping that in the coming days and months, Rudd's ministers and backbenchers -some of whom I have great faith in- will steer him in the right direction.
As for the China-Japan issue, I find them quite different. I think he's doing the right think about the whales and the "softie" thing towards China because that's where political limits take him. Let's face it, all he can do with China is to bang a sonorous drum: very ineffective and highly susceptible to the phenomenon of backlash and backfire! We have our own similar type of misdemeanour and China will only be too happy to tie them on a flagpole.
Boycot the Olympics? Yeah, maybe but with what consequences? And who's going to agree with that, our sportsmen and women? How effective will it be? Organise a trade embargo around the neighbourhood? Can never happen! Send a couple of hornets around? The whole world will roll on its belly with laughter. I see Oz's options being very minimal: "Please, China, be good and treat your demonstrators with restraint!" What will China say? "Please shut your gobs. These aren't demonstrators, they are separatists. We know you love separatists -you've shown that with Kosovo- but we are looking after our borders... blah, blah blah!"
