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WINDOWS OPENED, CLOSED
Kevin Rudd launches his 2020 Summit:
Today we are throwing open the windows of our democracy, to let a little bit of fresh air in.
A few hours later, as the SMH’s Annabel Crabb reports:
By late morning they had closed off the Creativity group session to the media ...
UPDATE. The ABC reports: “Blanchett thrilled about new Govt-arts relationship”. Closed doors are symbolic of this.
UPDATE II. SMH summiteer Miranda Devine:
At Friday night’s cocktail party for 2020 Summit participants in Canberra’s National Portrait Gallery, gossip swirled about which groups had given the summit secretariat - the public servants who make it work - the most trouble. Surprise surprise, it was the creatives.
UPDATE III. Kevni’s Ruddfest is a nodfest:
Blanchett set the audience nodding in approval when she stated her belief in ‘a long and meaningful relationship between arts and government’ ...
Dissent is so 1996-2007.
UPDATE IV. Lots more from Andrew Bolt, including:
Barrie Cassidy this morning discussed with Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard only one fresh summit idea - about the only one he could find, I suspect: Teaching children at school how to choose the best mobile phone package.
UPDATE V. Barry Jones GotUp! a short while ago and began jabbering in an old-mannish way about the precise wording of something or other. I felt like Dr Frankenstein watching a column come to life.
UPDATE VI. Lili Gans writes:
We sat down to watch the opening of the 2020 Best and Brightest Summit at 8.30 am on Saturday and three and a half hours later we gave up.
Lili - please read her entire post - couldn’t endure any more Ruddchat even though her son is a participant.
UPDATE VII. Annabel Crabb - striking a fine mocking tone in her direct-from-Ruddfest online coverage - hits the wall:
I was forced to leave the Governance session yesterday when I saw the facilitator draw a house on a piece of butchers paper. The brick bit was the media consuming public, TV the roof or some such.
A worthy reader challenge to Annabel:
I wonder if you can sneak in an objection to the low-flow shower heads for low-income households? Surely this will discriminate and identify them on the street when they step out each day with flat hair caused by unrinsed shampoo?
UPDATE VIII. “Butchers paper, indeed.”
UPDATE IX. Get cracking, summiteenies:
Each of the summit’s 10 groups have until three o’clock this afternoon to identify their three ideas, including one that costs nothing to implement.
Imagine the panic if they’d been asked to come up with ideas that made money.
UPDATE X. Piers Akerman:
If there was an independent thought voiced in opposition to the generally anodyne motherhood statements, it went unheard.
A delegate on the Dole Bludging Arts Scum panel made a similar point a few minutes ago, then called for bold ideas. “My bold idea is ...” he began, then the ABC coverage cut to another session.
UPDATE XI. More from summit superstar Cate Blanchett:
Wearing an olive green dress-suit, she told the 100 creative-arts participants about meeting former US president Bill Clinton in a hotel room in London a few years ago.
“He liked talking to blonde artists, he said, because they existed just a fraction ahead of culture,’’ Blanchett said.
UPDATE XII. In the future, there will be no chairs:
UPDATE XIII. Melbourne mother Kate Hands, invited to attend by the Herald Sun, isn’t impressed:
Ms Hands said she was disheartened at lunchtime, wondering if her trip to Canberra was worthwhile ... Most of the suggestions were obvious and had already been done in the past, she said.
UPDATE XIV. Summiteer David Marr is in Canberra on behalf of his entire fan base:
I’ve decided as a last resort I might as well represent myself.
UPDATE XV. There is no joy in Rudville! Also: get fit or pay the penalty.
UPDATE XVI. Sandra Lee calls crazy talk on Maxine McKew.
UPDATE XVII. Ruddlers in space! Summiteer Joshua Gans has Martian plans:
I decided to get more ambitious and put forward that perhaps our goal should be to put an Australian on Mars by 2020. When queried about the cost, I elaborated that it was not part of the goal to bring them back — that was the expensive bit. But let’s face it, if that idea gets up it will have the quality of being new!
UPDATE XVIII. Margo Kingston and her student Webdiarists planned to cover RuddCon ‘08, but so far they haven’t posted a single word.
UPDATE XIX. The SMH’s Mike Carlton wasn’t invited:
What a relief it is not to be on the A-list any more.
Carlton was previously on an A-list? What did the A stand for?
UPDATE XX. Rainmaker Tim Flannery didn’t turn up, thus preventing any floods.
UPDATE XXI. The summit’s best idea:
“Make death a better experience”
Just looking at the pic of your fearless leader on the floor, I noticed the soles of his shoes. I’m wondering, can’t he afford new shoes? Or, maybe he can, but he’s showing his concern for Gaia by wearing one pair until they fall apart?
Or third, they just look that way from all the excess supercilious shit falling on the floor?
He he, Ruddles looks bored and disinterested.
Competition: What may he be thinking of?
His night out in New York?
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 20 at 01:25 PM • permalink#2 I thought the Muslims already had that ideas market cornered.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 20 at 01:27 PM • permalink#249 Hey, there’s a vacancy, well, at a least a vacumn, waiting for Pell in Canterbury (England, not New Zealand).
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 20 at 01:33 PM • permalinkMrkL—Oddly, wronwright can’t stand the relish gas at all.
And I wouldn’t share this with just anybody, Tim, but I found some Exclusive video from inside the Ruddy idiot’s little meeting…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 20 at 02:03 PM • permalinkrinardman—you think his shoes look bad, you should see the knees of his trousers…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2008 04 20 at 02:11 PM • permalinkRe #247, whatever happened to burial at sea, paco? Surely that has a low carbon footprint, and one gets get to be fish food instead of worm food, a definite step up the food chain.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2008 04 20 at 04:39 PM • permalink##8 I’ll do it; as long as I can be the f*cker, rahter than the f*ckee. And a female target :-)
Hey, we have government grants in Cadada too.
Posted by Wimpy Canadian on 2008 04 20 at 05:53 PM • permalinkDuring the tea-break at my meeting this morning I sat on the floor to demonstrate to everyone how humble I am.
The Commissioner didn’t seem to understand the gesture at all.
Posted by Pig Head Sucker on 2008 04 20 at 08:05 PM • permalinkI always thought it would improve the quality of death if I became a fossil.
Did any of these wankers suggest: Let the Government eff off, stop interfering with peoples’ lives, lower their taxes drastically and let them create wealth and live their own lives, not live as some effing social work wanker says they ought?
I didn’t think so. Twits.
Posted by Michael Lonie on 2008 04 20 at 10:49 PM • permalinkWhat impresses me about so many of the participants in this sorry affair is the combination of moral vanity and exhibitionism, together with a lack of self-awareness. (Obviously, actors are exempt from this criticism, since these qualities are professional advantages for them.)
Posted by s.r.intulom on 2008 04 20 at 11:22 PM • permalinkRuddfest—a pure pie in the sky event—
they didnt worry about real problems and developments, er what about connecting all of the nation by the same gauge rail,using the northern water elsewhere, or making road laws and education national not fragmented state by state etc??
Then there’s the cult of victims getting a the brush off for the crims in our courts!
Twits!
And self centred ones at that, just like the holograph PM we had to have!
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