History

Since three months we've got a new Prime Minister in Australia: Kevin Rudd. He decided to immediately take some long overdue actions. First of all he signed the Kyoto protocol. Australia scores high on the pollution scale (mainly due to burning coal in elecricity plants) so it was about time to at least take a postive attitude towards this. We still don't understand why we're not using more solar and wind energy over here. Next he apologized officially to the 'stolen generation' of aboriginals. Until the late sixties it was policy to take halfcast children away from their mothers. A very moving film about this subject is: 'The Rabbit Proof Fence' . And although some people doubted what good this would do, it was a very emotional day for Aborginals of those generations. All this has made him the most popular Prime Minister ever according to opinion polls (73% approves of him). We look forward to what's next on his agenda.

Also, February 16th was remembrance day of the Ash Wednesday bushfires 25 years ago. Enormous areas on South Australia and Victoria suffered from this. These bushfires even got to our current backyard. Luckily enough bushfires on this scale are rarely seen and we've had safe summer.