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What if you are the Prime Minister of Australia? And it’s about the thrilling Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit?

So one of those views were mine. I couldn’t make it past the 4 minute mark - it was so dry and monotonous. Thankfully someone at the BBC took a bullet for us and watched it. Somewhere in the waffle and Anne Fullwood badly lit, is an appeal not to join in violent protests.

Not only is the video itself rather pointless - it was posted at the most ridiculous time.

Not because it was the crack of dawn (well not even) - but because it was too late. 11 Greenpeace activists had been charged with malicious damage, after painting a message on the side of a coal tanker, and down in Victoria, other protesters were already on their way to take over a power station. If only they’d thought to check to see a message from John Howard on YouTube first! All of this kerfuffle could have been avoided!

As you can see 9 hours on - the reaction was woeful:

2 favourites though. Probably both members of Young Liberals.

It’s like some advisor said “We got to reach out to the ratbags on their own turf! We’ll post a video on that YouTube thingie!” So they prop the old boy up, put some drivel on the teleprompter and push record. Edit in a bit of a well known newsreader and it’s done.

Now what they should have done at least 3 weeks ago is have a clean cut Sydney schoolgirl start a video blog. She could post under a name like “lonelysydneyschoolgirl15” - and then right before the APEC summit she could have gone on about her fears of the violent protests.

Or even better there could have been a stop-motion type of thing showing exactly what would happen to protesters!

Or we could have seen footage of John Howard trying out all the safety measures! Showing him as an action man instead of a droning talking head!

Now those are videos that would be watched.

In case you haven’t been following the APEC 2007 news - basically inner city Sydney has been enclosed in a big fence. Sydney is locked down. Tourism South Australia has been inviting Sydney residents to “Get out of here” - and go to Adelaide where you can be done with your shopping by 5pm, dinner by 8 and in bed before 10.

Now my first thought at seeing the price tag of the precautions and the major disruption of a city was - why the hell didn’t they hold it near the Black Stump? Apparently it’s because they needed the hotel rooms.

And here they miss another opportunity for great YouTube goodness! They could have stuck them in the outback with tents and supplies, and if they wanted a big fence as well where it wouldn’t have interrupted thousands of people (and to keep out the feral camels) and filmed them trying to cope. SURVIVOR APEC! They could have voted off one or two of the 21 APEC countries a day! Could have forced some actual agreements.

Now that would have been watched on YouTube.

Also it would have been a more effective way for John Howard to push his climate change agenda and it wouldn’t have been pushed aside for trade talk so quickly if they had been surrounded by desert with little water. I think that would have kind of grabbed their attention, don’t you?

Besides looking at the big picture - these attempts to combat protesting are futile, when you consider that there are still 9 rocket launchers missing and suspected still to be in Sydney. I guess all one can do is hope that any rockets fired bounce off the fence, like a couple of people protesting will….

• Now they should have put them all in tents near the black stump!!  But the APEC survivor thing is priceless!  LOVE IT!!

  the goddess
  Location: Slaving at the salt mines
  07/09/03 08:32 PM