Politics as usual

A week full of politics, not so strange considering the fact that I am living in the nation’s capital and I am working for the Department which at the moment initiates massive changes in the nations Industrial Relations legislation.

Last Monday the new Industrial Relations package became effective law, giving small and medium sized companies the opportunity to sack employees much easier; resulting is massive protests from the Labor party and unions whose role diminished with these new laws.

On Thursday I went to parliament which sat last week. A parliamentary session (actually both the House of Reps as well as the Senate) have a much different role than their Dutch counterparts. There are two main political parties, John Howards Liberal Party (which in fact is conservative) and Kim Beazely’s Labor. Parliament is a theatre where both parties try to throw as much dirt as possible to the other one. Both parties sit opposite each other, as in the English Westminster system, or VARA’s “lagerhuis”. It is quite funny to witness it, even though many questions are not answered the language and tricks used are sometimes hilarious.

In weekend we went to some pubs and discos, really cool. Friday I went to a place called Mooseheads which is a mixture between a pub and a disco. Saturday after a failed attempt to visit a housewarming party (turned out to be the day before) we ended up at the Academy, a club.

On Saturday I went with my housemates and another friend to the vinyards around Canberra in NSW. We tasted some very good wines, problem is however once you tasted the best one some others will taste rather bad. It's amazing how many vinyards there are in the surrounding ACT and NSW region, the closest one is within a 10 mins bike ride. Photo's have been taken and you can get a picture of the drought in Australia

This afternoon I attended a lecture by the Prime Minister, the Hon. Jan Peter Balkenende at ANU (Australian National University). He wrote a article in today’s paper which can be read,
here which reflects the contents of his lecture as well. I had to explain my Ozzie mates who the PM was, they did not recognize him as such. It has to be said that he is very approacheble and open to questions from students and media. Since I attended the even right after work I was dressed in a business suit contrary to the students, resulting in the fact that people after the event approached me with questions about the Netherlands, its policies and the PM. Maybe a sign that I should enter politics :-). I took some pictures but the light in the lecture hall was rather poor....