Watch Video
Podcasts
Blogs
Hairspray: not just a musical
Wednesday 9 April
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has my hairspray. And I’m not getting it back.
In photos: Around the world with Kevin Rudd
Hairspray is one of the irritants of the TV correspondent’s existence. It is a necessary, unfortunate-smelling evil. Without it, we are a mess.
I carry a voluminous canister of the stuff around with me and when we went to Number 10 Downing Street, it came along too.
Trouble is, when your hairspray doesn’t fit in your handbag, it’s easy to leave behind, which is kind of annoying for the people who end up with a stray can and mighty annoying for those with flyaway locks.
Security people are generally quite understanding of the whole hairspray situation and it’s usually afforded the status of an essential item, especially when accompanied by a tripod and camera.
In Bucharest, the NATO summit security chaps hesitated only slightly (after all, it was that it was a black can the length of my forearm) and made me spray it on my hair, presumably to confirm it wasn’t sarin gas.
At Number 10, they were pretty good about the hairspray thing, having to regularly host the likes of us – sometimes several times a day. I parked mine on the antique hall table in the corner of the upstairs fireside-chat press conference room, tucked in next to an elaborate lamp.
Unfortunately, in my hurry to get down the Hugh Grant staircase (the real version of the one he danced down, playing the Prime Minister in Love Actually) and out into the street to do a live cross by mobile phone into our 6.30 news bulletin, I left it behind.
I approached the bobby standing beside the door to Number 10 to beg help with retrieval.
“You’ll have to knock on the door,” he said. When I queried this with two raised eyebrows he insisted it was fine, it was just a door, and people knocked on it all the time.
I returned to the footpath on the other side of the road for further contemplation.
A few minutes later, Mr Brown appeared through the door with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and they shook hands and said bye bye.
I still hadn’t got to knocking when we started to record our pieces to camera with the door as the backdrop. Each of the five TV reporters had several to do and there’s no greater way to make yourself unpopular than to walk into a colleague’s shot.
So, I waited, watching as people came and went, knocking at Number 10, going in and out.
Finally, some time later, I decided, it had to be done. To great amusement, I strode across the road and gave the knocker a whack.
The nice man who answered said he would inquire after my hairspray and would return momentarily to report on its fate.
After some time had passed and we were frozen solid and getting towards the end of our work there in the street, I went back across to the door and knocked again.
The news was not good.
“I’m sorry maam, but there is a meeting on in that room now. You’ll have to wait until it’s over.”
That, the door-opening gent informed me, would take another half an hour. Alas, I did not have half hour to linger longer.
And so, my hairspray was sacrificed to a meeting between the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of Liberia.
It’s kind of funny that nobody apparently noticed a large, black, unattended canister parked on the table against the wall, throughout.
Still, my potential security scare ended up being a blessing in disguise. I have now discovered dinky little purse sized hairspray cans, so the great silo canister is no more.
I hope Mr Brown finds the firm hold works well for him.
Bill's still got it
Sunday 6 April
These days, it might be his wife who wants to rule the world, but Bill Clinton can still hold a room.
The Progressive Governance conference is an annual talkfest for left-leaning socially concerned world leaders and this year's was in a jolly nice manor house in the rambling, green and rather dampish English countryside.
There were some dozen or so leaders there, although only 10 fronted for the news conference afterwards. Others, including Italian President Romano Prodi seemed to have to dash off - something about fickle voters and an upcoming election. Or, maybe, it was just Saturday night.
At any rate, the plenary sessions were something to behold, at least when the silver-haired patron spoke.
We media types watched them on big flat-screen TVs from a large marquee, in which the English hosts were kind enough to provide bottled water, lovely sandwiches and lots and lots of coffee. It was like a page out of How To Keep The World's Media Reasonably Civil, 101.
The only slightly disturbing thing about the facilities and supplies (aside from the provision of the fanciest portaloos you've ever seen, with hot & cold running tulips in vases and Kenneth somethingorother hand cream) was that the plastic water bottles were shaped distinctly like vessels which might normally carry vodka or gin. How very, charmingly English.
Casting about the room, you would swear we were at a meeting of lapsed alcoholics.
Yet, not even the tempting treats and fresh water could distract us from the towering (even when seated) former leader of the free world. Ah, the interventions.
Wth Bill looking on, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was chairing a session on climate change. Now, Kevin can be a charistmatic guy. (Well,. he can tell a joke or two when the need arises.) But today he was suffering one of his verbally incomprehensible bouts of acronymosis. When he spoke vis a vis the CFCs.. well.. we wished for Stoli or Gordons in the water.
Never mind, somebody had a word in Kevin's ear about livening up the conversation and he called on Bill to have a word.
Sucking on a boiled lolly (I kid you not), Clinton started to talk about energy-efficient buildings and how there was no reason they couldn't be built all over the world, especially in poor communities.
" I was shocked when we put together a building retrofit program and we raised $US5 billion in an afternoon, with the help of a few banks, to retrofit these cities," Clinton said. "...It's disgraceful. Two or three square blocks of Manhattan is worth $US5 billion."
He said those who cared about environmental progress should be spending $US200 billion to $US300 billion on making buildings greener and there was no excuse when some countries still didn't have the basics.
"I just asked the President of Monrovia if they've got the electricity on overnight yet," Clinton remarked, shifting his lolly from one cheek to the other, indicating it was perfectly routine to chat to the President of an obscure republic about having to live by candlelight.
He said it was vital "to get the big countries to do the easy things, now:" and that they could make little statements which would mean a lot.
He lamented the way the world was going.
"Fabulous amounts of money have been earned by money and nearly nothing has been earned by labour," Clinton said.
"I was in a carbon neutral building in Rotterdam the other day," Clinton continued, beginning another story which trailed off with the plea that if he "had $US500 billion" he could "figure out how to spend it in two years".
Yeah, me too, Bill, although, your ideas might do more for the planet in the long run.
(Still, if my feedback is of any use to you, I do love tulips but we could probably live without them.)
Cold Confort
Thursday 3 April
There’s a reason this is called the Confort Hotel.
It is not what it seemed from afar. We have arrived in Romania. It has been an interesting journey.
Photos: around the world with Kevin Rudd
The Prime Minister’s office decided to break with tradition and leave the media to book their own hotels for our two-night, one-day visit to the NATO summit which Kevin Rudd will address when he flies in from Brussels in the morning.
Given that this is a gigantic summit and we weren’t told until two weeks before departure that he was coming here (one might wager his office knew a little before that), the whole freelance accommodation thing was a curious decision.
Instead of block-booking rooms in advance, to be reimbursed by media organisations (we do pay our way), thereby ensuring the 20-strong travelling party was able to be quickly assembled to actually cover the PM and not scattered across the fair city of Bucharest, they left us to our own devices. (I’m being generous about Bucharest, it’s still dark.)
Therefore, we are distributed across several hotels, booked by our good selves with what now appears to have been slightly dubious assistance from the NATO summit organisers.
We booked, necessarily, at the last minute, with fingers crossed. We needed stronger magic.
The newspaper correspondents have done ok. They have secured the Krystal Palace, about which we chuckled when our bus pulled up but which, right now, is looking pretty good. Or it would be, if we were there.
Then there is the Caro Hotel, in which only one the reporter from The West Australian reporter has been deposited. He panicked when we pulled up at 11.30pm to find the building all in darkness.
On cue, his colleagues rained down all manner of Transylvania trivia, asking if he’d packed his wooden stake and crucifix and urging him to remember that vampires can only enter a room if invited.
So best not order room service.
Still, he was much encouraged (at least, when we last saw him alive) as we turned a corner to find we’d been at the wrong entrance and the hotel’s frontage was comfortingly ablaze with lights and staked out with an assurance of (un)smiling Romanian policemen.
He disappeared inside, confident Dracula had darker corners in which to lurk.
Hitting the road again in a bus Australian officials had to ask permission to hire on our behalf, we noted that there are, in fact, Romanian policemen stationed in pairs approximately every 100 metres through the city centre.
We also had a very serious “escort” with a walkie-talkie and no English (to be fair, we had no Romanian) who sat in the front seat of the bus and maintained much the same demeanour as the police outside.
This city clearly retains its historical regard for law and order.
Lastly, or so we thought, we reached the small, plain Confort Hotel – yes, there’s definitely a CON involved - 90 minutes after we had landed. The remaining 13 of us hauled our bags up the dark stairs and proceeded to check in.
Hurrah, the man on the desk spoke English. Alas, he only had reservations for 2 radio reporters and one from a news wire agency.
One moment, said he, as he made a telephone call, returning to advise politely that the rest of us were booked at the Hotel Confort. That’s the OTHER one.
We had passed it, laughing at its remoteness, on the highway approximately 10 minutes in from the airport, its name in giant red neon.
At 1.45am we arrived, after a three-hour round trip, still trailing with us the non-communicating Romanian spook, the equally silent bus-driver and two helpful but slightly concerned women from the Australian Embassy in Brussels.
One of them broke further bad news.
THIS Confort Hotel, it seems, is so far out of town, it’s not one of the designated NATO hotels.
There is no NATO shuttle bus out here to transport us from the boondocks on specially closed-off roads in to the enormous media centre from where we can do what we came for.
Without a shuttle bus, we must run the gauntlet of the Bucharest morning traffic, which we are told is something to see and something else to be stuck in.
We will be dropped off some distance from the media centre and have to leg it along the streets on foot to join the queue of 1000 mostly European and American media to get in to watch the proceedings.
I hope Romania is nicer in daylight.
Blitzing Brussels
Wednesday April 2
Brussels. Too fast to say much about it, except that the Prime Minister was hours late arriving thanks to an incident at Andrews' Air Base in Washington.
Some wag drove the aircraft stairs up too quickly and ploughed into the plane, leaving a little ding in the side near the door.
The Prime Minister, his wife and their entourage were left twiddling thumbs (Mr Rudd and Ms Rein were actually driven back into town for a while) until the RAAF declared it all safe for departure.
Arrival in Brussels was less eventful, as Brussels itself tends to be (give or take the odd grisly child abduction).
Mr Rudd went to the EC to talk about the EU and we followed. Now we've gone on ahead to Bucharest.
Nothing more fun on a casual April Wednesday than a NATO summit in Eastern Europe...
Belgium bound
Tuesday April 1
If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium.
Well, it is for the media pack, anyway.
Kevin Rudd is spending this northern Tuesday still in Washington, mostly on the Hill, seeing the House leadership and meeting Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
But his journalistic entourage is being compulsorily moved on, some 12 hours ahead of him, to Brussels, where he'll be following overnight on Tuesday night, in order to leap into meetings with senior people from the European Commission on Wednesday, local time.
We are travelling on an RAAF charter aircraft - a breakthrough after being required to chase the previous Prime Minister around the world on a myriad of often highly dodgy commercial airlines, regularly arriving hours and hours after him and with safety sometimes uncertain.
The RAAF charter - our organisations are all paying our airfares - was designed at least in part to stop that separation. Alas, on this sector, it isn't quite working.
Because we take up almost all the seats on the plane, we don't have a "spare" RAAF crew. That means the crew, whose working conditions are of some concern to the new Labor Government (although this is the same Government asking public servants to work for free over the upcoming 2020 summit in April - go figure), are required to have rest breaks of a certain duration.
As the PM is only in Brussels for, effectively, a day, before flying on to Bucharest, in Romania, for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) summit, focussing on the troop commitment in Afghanistan, the crew have to get there in enough time for their rest break, so they could then fly the next leg.
And as we are flying with them, so do we. It's sort of travelling in order to travel which is a bit, well, annoying.
But it's the trade-off, on this occasion, for having a much more convenient way of travelling which bypasses luggage transfers and running for connections in far-flung airports where they don't like people with loads of equipment and batteries and microphones that ring alarm bells and attract security officers with officious manners.
We have some elaborate arrangements in place to enable us to still cover Mr Rudd's activities, including mid-flight briefings from a ground-based media adviser to an airborne colleague, delivered on one of those dinky aeroplane telephones that you see fictional United States Presidents talking on, and then passed on to us to allow us to work enroute.
And so the next stage of The World Tour begins.
Like I said, if this is Tuesday...
(I've always wanted an excuse to say that. Thank goodness he wasn't flying to Brussels on a weekend.)
Biting the Big Apple
Tuesday 1 April
On Saturday night in midtown Manhattan, Kevin Rudd did stand-up at the Rainbow Room.
That's the swish restaurant atop Rockefeller Center where in Sleepless in Seattle the magnificent view of the Empire State Building (emblazoned on that occasion with a red heart for Valentine’s Day) prompted Meg Ryan to ditch her dorky fiance and run across town into the arms of Tom Hanks.
On Saturday night there was still the great view but no heart-shaped lights and no obvious elopements, unless you count the high-voltage Aussie-linked American business audience shifting its affections from an absent, homely chap they've been seeing for 12 years to the new and curious 'It Guy' of junior world leaders.
The American Australian Association had booked the joint out for a dinner to welcome Mr Rudd to the city at the centre of the universe.
When he mentioned that his government had just issued an apology to indigenous Australians, the very New York audience burst into spontaneous applause. Word gets around, apparently.
Before his speech descended into a distinctly unexciting cut-and-paste on his domestic agenda, he opened by telling jokes at his own expense and, raising a few eyebrows, just a little at the expense of the man who'd just hosted him in Washington.
"I thought the President and I were getting on like a house on fire, until I looked him in the eye and said I understand the state of Queensland is bigger than the state of Texas," Mr Rudd said, pausing for the laughter to subside. "If looks could kill."
That one brought the house down. This is New York.
He went on to talk about having just emerged from the "scar tissue" of a federal election and offered a message of sympathy for the American presidential candidates.
And now he’s injecting himself into that very fray, lining up meetings with senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Democrat and Republican respectively, and a “detailed chat” on the phone with the Democrats’ Barack Obama.
Mr Rudd will be disappointed the last one isn’t face to face, not least because Senator Obama is now the Democrat front-runner. But he’s also have hoped for all three, in person, because he needs to not be seen to be more closely associated with one candidate than another.
It’s interesting that Senator Clinton has found time to catch up with Mr Rudd but Senator Obama has not.
Is it that, when your campaign is struggling, it helps you look like a leader if you meet a leader? (even one from a nice, friendly but not-so-powerful far-away country full of funny animals?)
Probably not. Interest from the American media is, well, low.
More likely, it’s that when TV host Rove McManus put Mr Rudd on the spot during his own election campaign last year and asked “Hillary or Obama?,” he said “Hillary”.
And that could also have something to do with Senator Obama being just too busy up the road in Pennsylvania, where Senator Clinton is also headed.
The exchange between the Prime Minister and former First Lady this morning after they met at the Brookings Institution may earn the little event slightly more local media attention than it otherwise would have got.
Trying to ignore uncomfortable questions about his previous endorsement of Senator Clinton, Mr Rudd offered this: “As a candidate myself who knows what it’s like to be on the campaign trail, I have every sympathy for what Hillary has ahead of her.”
“I appreciate that,” Senator Clinton responded. “I need all the sympathy I can get.”
So, what is Comedy Kevin saying to the candidates? Wear a crash helmet? Did you hear the one about the two Democrats who hit a brick wall….?
We await a full briefing…
Living the West Wing
Saturday March 29
For every self-respecting fan of TV's The West Wing, going to the White House is a bit of a thrill.
The Press Room - where fictional press secretary CJ Cregg holds court - is sadly a bit pokier and less glamorous than Aaron Sorkin's set ever seemed. But hey, when you're parked in the actual vinyl flip-up chairs looking up at that oval emblem on the wall, you live with the disappointment.
Extremely unsurprisingly, the Press Room is situated in the White House's west wing.
It was built on top of Kennedy's swimming pool (which, by all accounts, saw an interesting lap or two) as if to seal in all the fun ever had there and plaster it over with serious matters of state.
Lately, the Press Room has had revamp. The familiar white-on-navy wall emblem is now a sort of royal blue. In fact, the whole room is royal blue. Even the permanently mounted broadcast equipment has had the once-over with a blue brush.
But, worst horror of all, every reporter's favourite souvenir happy-snap pose has been banned. The "CJ" shot is no more. Our State Department escort, a cheery but firm young woman in a black trench coat, bore us the bad news when one of our number made to leap up and grip the lecturn in the usual mock-gravitas manner of these visits.
She informed us brightly that we may stand in front of the lecturn, at floor level, but definitely not behind it. What unspeakable atrocity had prompted this major upgrade of security (doubtless committed by some rogue journalist from a far-flung republic standing 30cm off the ground) was not immediately clear. But we took our pictures in front.
Lest it seems like we journalists don't have our focus on the main game (leader of the free world meets new Prime Minister, stuff like that), it must be said in our defence that there's usually a bit of time to kill when you're waiting for an event at the White House.
This is categorised as a "hurry up and wait" occasion, a phenomenon most commonly associated with overseas trips and election campaigns.
"Hurry up and wait" occurs when media representatives are rounded up and marched to our collective destination hours before we are due because (they tell us) security clearance will take a long time. We are then generally bundled through in a matter of minutes and left to stand around for long periods doing nothing.
When you've read all the papers, made any outstanding phone calls (time zones notwithstanding) and discussed the finer points of foreign policy, photographing each other passes the time. (In fairness, the Australian Embassy staff today performed a minor miracle and persuaded the White House to allow us to arrive only a casual 90 minutes before the press conference. They deserve our eternal thanks.)
Sometimes there is more than one "hurry up and wait" per event. Today, for example, involved the entry to the White House grounds, then the wait in the Press Room, then the quick march to the fabulously ostentatious East Room, and finally a long period sitting on slightly precarious chairs painted gold.
The picture-taking stage of the second H.U.A.W was brightened by the early arrival of First Lady Laura Bush and Therese Rein, wife of our Prime Minister (and in fabulous fuschia suede shoes) and we were only slightly disheartened by having to work without a flash.
Then, just when the anticipation was almost too much, a disembodied voice boomed over the loudspeakers.
"Please turn off your cell phones. The program will begin shortly."
Now "shortly" I understand. That is just code for "you'll be waiting a bit longer".
But "the program"?
It might be the East Room but it's all still the West Wing to me.
The Eagle has landed
Friday, 28 March
Day 1 of 17 and the Eagle, or his Australian equivalent, has landed. Kevin is finally in the US capital.
This is the first stop on a five-country, almost-three-week Prime Ministerial world tour and there is an entourage of about 20 or so media types traipsing along behind, or in front as the case sometimes may be.
On this first leg, we arrived some 14 hours ahead of the Prime Minister and were a bit under-whelmed but not really surprised to find, after a sleepless flight, that our hotel rooms weren't quite ready on arrival at 6am and still not ready six hours later.
On these Prime Ministerial roadshows, it can get like school camp and being sleep deprived before you've even started does not make for smooth inter-agency relations.
Although our accommodation is always very nice, it's sometimes the little things that count. Like being able to rest horizontally for more than an hour at a time.
Still there was the collective sound of snoring for a couple of hours before the PM and company arrived and we managed to get ourselves sensibly together enough to ask him a few questions, deliver a few lines and get the first story done and on air.
Trying tourists
We were reminded today of how much tourists like TV cameras. It doesn't really matter where you - or they - are from, or even that they are never going to be able to see the finished product.
They will stop and watch, take photos, pass comment on your hair or how you are standing, and generally turn you into a spectacle.
It happens in India (except there, it can be several hundred people at a time). It happens in Japan. It happens in Sydney. It's just a thing hat seems to happen the world over.
Generally, people are very nice as you bumble through with this variously-sized audience, wishing you had chosen a spot a little more out of the way. Or a more sensible profession.
My attempt to record my piece-to-camera outside the White House this evening attracted a crowd of about a dozen on first attempt.
Misadventures
After my mobile phone rang mid sentence, then fly-away hair required spraying, and we paused while onlookers' camera flashes went off (yes, people take pictures of strangers if they are standing in front of a camera), I had lost count of the number of attempts and was starting to sweat.
By then, the crowd had swelled to something approaching a hundred, including what appeared to be an entire school on excursion.
When I finally nailed it, they applauded. A little girl came up and asked if she could shake my hand. It seems she was quite serious.
Happily, by the time it got dark and we had to do it all again, we had the mall in front of Lafayette Park to ourselves, with only a suspicious security guard and the odd disinterested commuter for company.
Ah, television. What a glamorous business it sometimes isn't.
Still, tomorrow we go through the White House gates. Can't complain too much about that.
Wednesday 9 April
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has my hairspray. And I’m not getting it back.
In photos: Around the world with Kevin Rudd
Hairspray is one of the irritants of the TV correspondent’s existence. It is a necessary, unfortunate-smelling evil. Without it, we are a mess.
I carry a voluminous canister of the stuff around with me and when we went to Number 10 Downing Street, it came along too.
Trouble is, when your hairspray doesn’t fit in your handbag, it’s easy to leave behind, which is kind of annoying for the people who end up with a stray can and mighty annoying for those with flyaway locks.
Security people are generally quite understanding of the whole hairspray situation and it’s usually afforded the status of an essential item, especially when accompanied by a tripod and camera.
In Bucharest, the NATO summit security chaps hesitated only slightly (after all, it was that it was a black can the length of my forearm) and made me spray it on my hair, presumably to confirm it wasn’t sarin gas.
At Number 10, they were pretty good about the hairspray thing, having to regularly host the likes of us – sometimes several times a day. I parked mine on the antique hall table in the corner of the upstairs fireside-chat press conference room, tucked in next to an elaborate lamp.
Unfortunately, in my hurry to get down the Hugh Grant staircase (the real version of the one he danced down, playing the Prime Minister in Love Actually) and out into the street to do a live cross by mobile phone into our 6.30 news bulletin, I left it behind.
I approached the bobby standing beside the door to Number 10 to beg help with retrieval.
“You’ll have to knock on the door,” he said. When I queried this with two raised eyebrows he insisted it was fine, it was just a door, and people knocked on it all the time.
I returned to the footpath on the other side of the road for further contemplation.
A few minutes later, Mr Brown appeared through the door with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and they shook hands and said bye bye.
I still hadn’t got to knocking when we started to record our pieces to camera with the door as the backdrop. Each of the five TV reporters had several to do and there’s no greater way to make yourself unpopular than to walk into a colleague’s shot.
So, I waited, watching as people came and went, knocking at Number 10, going in and out.
Finally, some time later, I decided, it had to be done. To great amusement, I strode across the road and gave the knocker a whack.
The nice man who answered said he would inquire after my hairspray and would return momentarily to report on its fate.
After some time had passed and we were frozen solid and getting towards the end of our work there in the street, I went back across to the door and knocked again.
The news was not good.
“I’m sorry maam, but there is a meeting on in that room now. You’ll have to wait until it’s over.”
That, the door-opening gent informed me, would take another half an hour. Alas, I did not have half hour to linger longer.
And so, my hairspray was sacrificed to a meeting between the Prime Minister of Britain and the President of Liberia.
It’s kind of funny that nobody apparently noticed a large, black, unattended canister parked on the table against the wall, throughout.
Still, my potential security scare ended up being a blessing in disguise. I have now discovered dinky little purse sized hairspray cans, so the great silo canister is no more.
I hope Mr Brown finds the firm hold works well for him.
Bill's still got it
Sunday 6 April
These days, it might be his wife who wants to rule the world, but Bill Clinton can still hold a room.
The Progressive Governance conference is an annual talkfest for left-leaning socially concerned world leaders and this year's was in a jolly nice manor house in the rambling, green and rather dampish English countryside.
There were some dozen or so leaders there, although only 10 fronted for the news conference afterwards. Others, including Italian President Romano Prodi seemed to have to dash off - something about fickle voters and an upcoming election. Or, maybe, it was just Saturday night.
At any rate, the plenary sessions were something to behold, at least when the silver-haired patron spoke.
We media types watched them on big flat-screen TVs from a large marquee, in which the English hosts were kind enough to provide bottled water, lovely sandwiches and lots and lots of coffee. It was like a page out of How To Keep The World's Media Reasonably Civil, 101.
The only slightly disturbing thing about the facilities and supplies (aside from the provision of the fanciest portaloos you've ever seen, with hot & cold running tulips in vases and Kenneth somethingorother hand cream) was that the plastic water bottles were shaped distinctly like vessels which might normally carry vodka or gin. How very, charmingly English.
Casting about the room, you would swear we were at a meeting of lapsed alcoholics.
Yet, not even the tempting treats and fresh water could distract us from the towering (even when seated) former leader of the free world. Ah, the interventions.
Wth Bill looking on, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was chairing a session on climate change. Now, Kevin can be a charistmatic guy. (Well,. he can tell a joke or two when the need arises.) But today he was suffering one of his verbally incomprehensible bouts of acronymosis. When he spoke vis a vis the CFCs.. well.. we wished for Stoli or Gordons in the water.
Never mind, somebody had a word in Kevin's ear about livening up the conversation and he called on Bill to have a word.
Sucking on a boiled lolly (I kid you not), Clinton started to talk about energy-efficient buildings and how there was no reason they couldn't be built all over the world, especially in poor communities.
" I was shocked when we put together a building retrofit program and we raised $US5 billion in an afternoon, with the help of a few banks, to retrofit these cities," Clinton said. "...It's disgraceful. Two or three square blocks of Manhattan is worth $US5 billion."
He said those who cared about environmental progress should be spending $US200 billion to $US300 billion on making buildings greener and there was no excuse when some countries still didn't have the basics.
"I just asked the President of Monrovia if they've got the electricity on overnight yet," Clinton remarked, shifting his lolly from one cheek to the other, indicating it was perfectly routine to chat to the President of an obscure republic about having to live by candlelight.
He said it was vital "to get the big countries to do the easy things, now:" and that they could make little statements which would mean a lot.
He lamented the way the world was going.
"Fabulous amounts of money have been earned by money and nearly nothing has been earned by labour," Clinton said.
"I was in a carbon neutral building in Rotterdam the other day," Clinton continued, beginning another story which trailed off with the plea that if he "had $US500 billion" he could "figure out how to spend it in two years".
Yeah, me too, Bill, although, your ideas might do more for the planet in the long run.
(Still, if my feedback is of any use to you, I do love tulips but we could probably live without them.)
Cold Confort
Thursday 3 April
There’s a reason this is called the Confort Hotel.
It is not what it seemed from afar. We have arrived in Romania. It has been an interesting journey.
Photos: around the world with Kevin Rudd
The Prime Minister’s office decided to break with tradition and leave the media to book their own hotels for our two-night, one-day visit to the NATO summit which Kevin Rudd will address when he flies in from Brussels in the morning.
Given that this is a gigantic summit and we weren’t told until two weeks before departure that he was coming here (one might wager his office knew a little before that), the whole freelance accommodation thing was a curious decision.
Instead of block-booking rooms in advance, to be reimbursed by media organisations (we do pay our way), thereby ensuring the 20-strong travelling party was able to be quickly assembled to actually cover the PM and not scattered across the fair city of Bucharest, they left us to our own devices. (I’m being generous about Bucharest, it’s still dark.)
Therefore, we are distributed across several hotels, booked by our good selves with what now appears to have been slightly dubious assistance from the NATO summit organisers.
We booked, necessarily, at the last minute, with fingers crossed. We needed stronger magic.
The newspaper correspondents have done ok. They have secured the Krystal Palace, about which we chuckled when our bus pulled up but which, right now, is looking pretty good. Or it would be, if we were there.
Then there is the Caro Hotel, in which only one the reporter from The West Australian reporter has been deposited. He panicked when we pulled up at 11.30pm to find the building all in darkness.
On cue, his colleagues rained down all manner of Transylvania trivia, asking if he’d packed his wooden stake and crucifix and urging him to remember that vampires can only enter a room if invited.
So best not order room service.
Still, he was much encouraged (at least, when we last saw him alive) as we turned a corner to find we’d been at the wrong entrance and the hotel’s frontage was comfortingly ablaze with lights and staked out with an assurance of (un)smiling Romanian policemen.
He disappeared inside, confident Dracula had darker corners in which to lurk.
Hitting the road again in a bus Australian officials had to ask permission to hire on our behalf, we noted that there are, in fact, Romanian policemen stationed in pairs approximately every 100 metres through the city centre.
We also had a very serious “escort” with a walkie-talkie and no English (to be fair, we had no Romanian) who sat in the front seat of the bus and maintained much the same demeanour as the police outside.
This city clearly retains its historical regard for law and order.
Lastly, or so we thought, we reached the small, plain Confort Hotel – yes, there’s definitely a CON involved - 90 minutes after we had landed. The remaining 13 of us hauled our bags up the dark stairs and proceeded to check in.
Hurrah, the man on the desk spoke English. Alas, he only had reservations for 2 radio reporters and one from a news wire agency.
One moment, said he, as he made a telephone call, returning to advise politely that the rest of us were booked at the Hotel Confort. That’s the OTHER one.
We had passed it, laughing at its remoteness, on the highway approximately 10 minutes in from the airport, its name in giant red neon.
At 1.45am we arrived, after a three-hour round trip, still trailing with us the non-communicating Romanian spook, the equally silent bus-driver and two helpful but slightly concerned women from the Australian Embassy in Brussels.
One of them broke further bad news.
THIS Confort Hotel, it seems, is so far out of town, it’s not one of the designated NATO hotels.
There is no NATO shuttle bus out here to transport us from the boondocks on specially closed-off roads in to the enormous media centre from where we can do what we came for.
Without a shuttle bus, we must run the gauntlet of the Bucharest morning traffic, which we are told is something to see and something else to be stuck in.
We will be dropped off some distance from the media centre and have to leg it along the streets on foot to join the queue of 1000 mostly European and American media to get in to watch the proceedings.
I hope Romania is nicer in daylight.
Blitzing Brussels
Wednesday April 2
Brussels. Too fast to say much about it, except that the Prime Minister was hours late arriving thanks to an incident at Andrews' Air Base in Washington.
Some wag drove the aircraft stairs up too quickly and ploughed into the plane, leaving a little ding in the side near the door.
The Prime Minister, his wife and their entourage were left twiddling thumbs (Mr Rudd and Ms Rein were actually driven back into town for a while) until the RAAF declared it all safe for departure.
Arrival in Brussels was less eventful, as Brussels itself tends to be (give or take the odd grisly child abduction).
Mr Rudd went to the EC to talk about the EU and we followed. Now we've gone on ahead to Bucharest.
Nothing more fun on a casual April Wednesday than a NATO summit in Eastern Europe...
Belgium bound
Tuesday April 1
If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium.
Well, it is for the media pack, anyway.
Kevin Rudd is spending this northern Tuesday still in Washington, mostly on the Hill, seeing the House leadership and meeting Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
But his journalistic entourage is being compulsorily moved on, some 12 hours ahead of him, to Brussels, where he'll be following overnight on Tuesday night, in order to leap into meetings with senior people from the European Commission on Wednesday, local time.
We are travelling on an RAAF charter aircraft - a breakthrough after being required to chase the previous Prime Minister around the world on a myriad of often highly dodgy commercial airlines, regularly arriving hours and hours after him and with safety sometimes uncertain.
The RAAF charter - our organisations are all paying our airfares - was designed at least in part to stop that separation. Alas, on this sector, it isn't quite working.
Because we take up almost all the seats on the plane, we don't have a "spare" RAAF crew. That means the crew, whose working conditions are of some concern to the new Labor Government (although this is the same Government asking public servants to work for free over the upcoming 2020 summit in April - go figure), are required to have rest breaks of a certain duration.
As the PM is only in Brussels for, effectively, a day, before flying on to Bucharest, in Romania, for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) summit, focussing on the troop commitment in Afghanistan, the crew have to get there in enough time for their rest break, so they could then fly the next leg.
And as we are flying with them, so do we. It's sort of travelling in order to travel which is a bit, well, annoying.
But it's the trade-off, on this occasion, for having a much more convenient way of travelling which bypasses luggage transfers and running for connections in far-flung airports where they don't like people with loads of equipment and batteries and microphones that ring alarm bells and attract security officers with officious manners.
We have some elaborate arrangements in place to enable us to still cover Mr Rudd's activities, including mid-flight briefings from a ground-based media adviser to an airborne colleague, delivered on one of those dinky aeroplane telephones that you see fictional United States Presidents talking on, and then passed on to us to allow us to work enroute.
And so the next stage of The World Tour begins.
Like I said, if this is Tuesday...
(I've always wanted an excuse to say that. Thank goodness he wasn't flying to Brussels on a weekend.)
Biting the Big Apple
Tuesday 1 April
On Saturday night in midtown Manhattan, Kevin Rudd did stand-up at the Rainbow Room.
That's the swish restaurant atop Rockefeller Center where in Sleepless in Seattle the magnificent view of the Empire State Building (emblazoned on that occasion with a red heart for Valentine’s Day) prompted Meg Ryan to ditch her dorky fiance and run across town into the arms of Tom Hanks.
On Saturday night there was still the great view but no heart-shaped lights and no obvious elopements, unless you count the high-voltage Aussie-linked American business audience shifting its affections from an absent, homely chap they've been seeing for 12 years to the new and curious 'It Guy' of junior world leaders.
The American Australian Association had booked the joint out for a dinner to welcome Mr Rudd to the city at the centre of the universe.
When he mentioned that his government had just issued an apology to indigenous Australians, the very New York audience burst into spontaneous applause. Word gets around, apparently.
Before his speech descended into a distinctly unexciting cut-and-paste on his domestic agenda, he opened by telling jokes at his own expense and, raising a few eyebrows, just a little at the expense of the man who'd just hosted him in Washington.
"I thought the President and I were getting on like a house on fire, until I looked him in the eye and said I understand the state of Queensland is bigger than the state of Texas," Mr Rudd said, pausing for the laughter to subside. "If looks could kill."
That one brought the house down. This is New York.
He went on to talk about having just emerged from the "scar tissue" of a federal election and offered a message of sympathy for the American presidential candidates.
And now he’s injecting himself into that very fray, lining up meetings with senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Democrat and Republican respectively, and a “detailed chat” on the phone with the Democrats’ Barack Obama.
Mr Rudd will be disappointed the last one isn’t face to face, not least because Senator Obama is now the Democrat front-runner. But he’s also have hoped for all three, in person, because he needs to not be seen to be more closely associated with one candidate than another.
It’s interesting that Senator Clinton has found time to catch up with Mr Rudd but Senator Obama has not.
Is it that, when your campaign is struggling, it helps you look like a leader if you meet a leader? (even one from a nice, friendly but not-so-powerful far-away country full of funny animals?)
Probably not. Interest from the American media is, well, low.
More likely, it’s that when TV host Rove McManus put Mr Rudd on the spot during his own election campaign last year and asked “Hillary or Obama?,” he said “Hillary”.
And that could also have something to do with Senator Obama being just too busy up the road in Pennsylvania, where Senator Clinton is also headed.
The exchange between the Prime Minister and former First Lady this morning after they met at the Brookings Institution may earn the little event slightly more local media attention than it otherwise would have got.
Trying to ignore uncomfortable questions about his previous endorsement of Senator Clinton, Mr Rudd offered this: “As a candidate myself who knows what it’s like to be on the campaign trail, I have every sympathy for what Hillary has ahead of her.”
“I appreciate that,” Senator Clinton responded. “I need all the sympathy I can get.”
So, what is Comedy Kevin saying to the candidates? Wear a crash helmet? Did you hear the one about the two Democrats who hit a brick wall….?
We await a full briefing…
Living the West Wing
Saturday March 29
For every self-respecting fan of TV's The West Wing, going to the White House is a bit of a thrill.
The Press Room - where fictional press secretary CJ Cregg holds court - is sadly a bit pokier and less glamorous than Aaron Sorkin's set ever seemed. But hey, when you're parked in the actual vinyl flip-up chairs looking up at that oval emblem on the wall, you live with the disappointment.
Extremely unsurprisingly, the Press Room is situated in the White House's west wing.
It was built on top of Kennedy's swimming pool (which, by all accounts, saw an interesting lap or two) as if to seal in all the fun ever had there and plaster it over with serious matters of state.
Lately, the Press Room has had revamp. The familiar white-on-navy wall emblem is now a sort of royal blue. In fact, the whole room is royal blue. Even the permanently mounted broadcast equipment has had the once-over with a blue brush.
But, worst horror of all, every reporter's favourite souvenir happy-snap pose has been banned. The "CJ" shot is no more. Our State Department escort, a cheery but firm young woman in a black trench coat, bore us the bad news when one of our number made to leap up and grip the lecturn in the usual mock-gravitas manner of these visits.
She informed us brightly that we may stand in front of the lecturn, at floor level, but definitely not behind it. What unspeakable atrocity had prompted this major upgrade of security (doubtless committed by some rogue journalist from a far-flung republic standing 30cm off the ground) was not immediately clear. But we took our pictures in front.
Lest it seems like we journalists don't have our focus on the main game (leader of the free world meets new Prime Minister, stuff like that), it must be said in our defence that there's usually a bit of time to kill when you're waiting for an event at the White House.
This is categorised as a "hurry up and wait" occasion, a phenomenon most commonly associated with overseas trips and election campaigns.
"Hurry up and wait" occurs when media representatives are rounded up and marched to our collective destination hours before we are due because (they tell us) security clearance will take a long time. We are then generally bundled through in a matter of minutes and left to stand around for long periods doing nothing.
When you've read all the papers, made any outstanding phone calls (time zones notwithstanding) and discussed the finer points of foreign policy, photographing each other passes the time. (In fairness, the Australian Embassy staff today performed a minor miracle and persuaded the White House to allow us to arrive only a casual 90 minutes before the press conference. They deserve our eternal thanks.)
Sometimes there is more than one "hurry up and wait" per event. Today, for example, involved the entry to the White House grounds, then the wait in the Press Room, then the quick march to the fabulously ostentatious East Room, and finally a long period sitting on slightly precarious chairs painted gold.
The picture-taking stage of the second H.U.A.W was brightened by the early arrival of First Lady Laura Bush and Therese Rein, wife of our Prime Minister (and in fabulous fuschia suede shoes) and we were only slightly disheartened by having to work without a flash.
Then, just when the anticipation was almost too much, a disembodied voice boomed over the loudspeakers.
"Please turn off your cell phones. The program will begin shortly."
Now "shortly" I understand. That is just code for "you'll be waiting a bit longer".
But "the program"?
It might be the East Room but it's all still the West Wing to me.
The Eagle has landed
Friday, 28 March
Day 1 of 17 and the Eagle, or his Australian equivalent, has landed. Kevin is finally in the US capital.
This is the first stop on a five-country, almost-three-week Prime Ministerial world tour and there is an entourage of about 20 or so media types traipsing along behind, or in front as the case sometimes may be.
On this first leg, we arrived some 14 hours ahead of the Prime Minister and were a bit under-whelmed but not really surprised to find, after a sleepless flight, that our hotel rooms weren't quite ready on arrival at 6am and still not ready six hours later.
On these Prime Ministerial roadshows, it can get like school camp and being sleep deprived before you've even started does not make for smooth inter-agency relations.
Although our accommodation is always very nice, it's sometimes the little things that count. Like being able to rest horizontally for more than an hour at a time.
Still there was the collective sound of snoring for a couple of hours before the PM and company arrived and we managed to get ourselves sensibly together enough to ask him a few questions, deliver a few lines and get the first story done and on air.
Trying tourists
We were reminded today of how much tourists like TV cameras. It doesn't really matter where you - or they - are from, or even that they are never going to be able to see the finished product.
They will stop and watch, take photos, pass comment on your hair or how you are standing, and generally turn you into a spectacle.
It happens in India (except there, it can be several hundred people at a time). It happens in Japan. It happens in Sydney. It's just a thing hat seems to happen the world over.
Generally, people are very nice as you bumble through with this variously-sized audience, wishing you had chosen a spot a little more out of the way. Or a more sensible profession.
My attempt to record my piece-to-camera outside the White House this evening attracted a crowd of about a dozen on first attempt.
Misadventures
After my mobile phone rang mid sentence, then fly-away hair required spraying, and we paused while onlookers' camera flashes went off (yes, people take pictures of strangers if they are standing in front of a camera), I had lost count of the number of attempts and was starting to sweat.
By then, the crowd had swelled to something approaching a hundred, including what appeared to be an entire school on excursion.
When I finally nailed it, they applauded. A little girl came up and asked if she could shake my hand. It seems she was quite serious.
Happily, by the time it got dark and we had to do it all again, we had the mall in front of Lafayette Park to ourselves, with only a suspicious security guard and the odd disinterested commuter for company.
Ah, television. What a glamorous business it sometimes isn't.
Still, tomorrow we go through the White House gates. Can't complain too much about that.
