House of Reps - Canberra Superstars

11/9/07

Roll up, roll up to the House of Representatives question time featuring the superstars of Australian politics. With the likes of John Howard, Peter Costello, Kevin Rudd and Peter Garrett, there is a politician for everyone.
This is the glitzy question time quite often shown in snippets on the evening news. As the federal election nears and the polls creating gossip and rumours, there is not a more important time than for the Coalition to counteract negative polls and for Labour to win the hearts of the Australian population.

Today in particular is an important day as it is the day before the sixth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The question time today includes quite a few questions regarding the War on Iraq. I enjoyed listening to these as I think it is an important topic for our generation to understand. Previously it has all been a bit of mumble jumble in not really understanding the topic. I always feel I should be doing other things rather than sitting down during the day and reading. This is one of my faults. So this question time helped me to understand the War on Iraq.
The first question today was from Kevin Rudd to John Howard regarding wether the Australian Government’s plan for Iraq was to follow that of the UK and the US with the draw down of forces after the election.
Howard answers the question in the first line of response, “We do not have any proposal to draw down forces in Iraq.” This technique corresponds with what we were taught in our media conferences last semester – to answer the question quickly and efficiently.

Howard makes an interesting point, which I have not previously been aware of:

Prior to the surge there were about 130, 000 American combat troops in Iraq, the surge has added approx. 30, 000. The force levels that Australia had prior to the surge are exactly the same as the force levels that are there now.