Kevin Rudd fostering and milking rock star image among school children whose knowledge of government is minimal
THERE is a scene in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, where Harry opens a chocolate frog packet and lo and behold, a card with the face of the Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, appears. Any day now I am expecting a card of Kevin Rudd to drop out of my cereal packet.
You see Prime Minister Rudd is pretty savvy about just how ignorant children are. Thanks to an education system that has failed to mandate any knowledge of the Australian political system for children, Rudd knows how to suck up to kids.
Already he has a Twitter account that boasts upwards of 1.3 million users. Tony Abbott has a paltry 142,000 by comparison. Through Twitter, Rudd can keep the kids updated with the latest in terms of when he cut himself shaving or other erudite witticisms. But insofar as a policy that really matters to the lives of children, forget it.
The rock star status cool Kevin enjoys is underpinned by naivety in the Pied Piper-crowds that flock to see him on school visits and on social media. Rudd knows how to work a room of gullible kids with pronouncements like this made at St Luke's Primary School in the Melbourne suburb of Wantirna last week.
"Four or five years ago, there was a big problem in the world. And the big problem in the world was, lots of people were losing their jobs, and running out of money. So we decided here in Australia to make a difference. So what we did, we started building new buildings in schools," he chirruped.
You can almost hear the singsong chant as the dazzled eight-year-olds piped up with evangelical zeal, "Thank you, thank you Mr Rudd. Hallelujah." Cool Kev cuts it with the kids and he knows he's on a winner.
And the Prime Minister has no hesitation in capitalising on the knowledge vacuity of Australian children. Few would know what the Senate is. Fewer still, the House of Representatives. Close to none would know what Labor stands for, let alone what policies will directly affect young people.
This is where Rudd acts in an entirely unconscionable way. He knows that Australian children are politically dumb and yet he's smart enough to know that having kids say Kevin is really nice or something else as shallow can influence parents who are similarly dazed by the Rudd headlights.
