While I was on holidays, other than when I was in England (where all I heard about was the English cricket tri-series win) the only Australian-relevant news I ever heard was when John Howard said the following:

If I were running al Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008, and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats.

It was also the only news I got about Obama and what was happening for him in the US. And, being an Obama and Rudd fan, I really wanted to be back at home to see how a statement like that was received by the Australian and American media. I also hand-wrote a post that I intended to transcribe to here, but I lost the papers somewhere.

Anyway, when I got back, I found out that it had hardly received any attention at all. I was rather surprised - PM Howard had just blasted a potential presidential candidate and senator. It might not sound like much, but at the least I would have thought the ALP would have run with it for what it was worth. I assumed that they hadn't, and then completely forgot about the issue.

Then, watching the news today, I saw that Kevin Rudd has set up a MySpace account, not dissimilar to what American politicians have done to attract the attention of the younger vote that is techno-savvy. I've had Obama's on mine for some time, and during the fund raising season I was getting many a message from him.

Anyway, to get back to the point I was making, I added Rudd to my friends list, and then headed over to YouTube, noticing that Kevin has some videos on the MySpace video server. I went through, checking YouTube for Question Time videos and anything of interest that was Rudd-related. Then, to my surprise, I found this:

It's the Question Time that I longed to see! Well, part of it anyway. You have to remember that Rudd had only just started leading the ALP through Question Times when I left, so I missed his early days as Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives. And, now that I saw that video, I wish I hadn't even more so. I know that Beazley and co. were taking it to Howard when they were in charge, but watching Rudd do it is far more entertaining - because he does a better job at it!

I hate how those budging politicians take a monster break when I'm on holidays. Next available chance, I think I'm going to go down and watch a session for myself.

Thomas.