There I was sitting on a a comfy bench in Parliament house on February 13, national laugh at John Howard day, when Kevin 07 saunters along, fires off a quick joke to myself and colleague Martin before heading on his way to sign the sorry declaration. We were on a whistle-stop tour of all the channel ten newsrooms (Brisbane, Melbourne, Canberra) and were hoping to film the prime minister in action. His infamous "you blokes on strike or something " line hilarious for the fact that we were'nt actually filming him but instead lazing around on the couch people watching. But what people watching it was... first came Julia Gillard with her proud parents on either arm... she gave me a big smile, then came Julie Bishop, 3 generations of Mclellands, Bob Brown, and then mid conversation with Martin he gets distracted and mutters a hey Bobby how ya going as if just running into a long lost friend delivered in his finest Cronulla accent. It was of course Bob Hawke, who as I later found had no idea who Martin was. This was due to the fact they had never met and Martin had fallen for the whole I recognise you and I'll absentmindedly say hello and then realise afterwards that I don't actually know you. But back to Kevin's little joke. 
The reason we couldn't film him was that we were inside the restricted area of the house where you cant film. Kevin being Kevin still doesn't realize this, his press secretary informed us. One channel ten crew had been given permission to film the sorry declaration walk for all the other networks and we were hoping to attach ourselves to this crew and film the crew filming Kevin. I was hoping it would make great footage for the news promotion I'm making. Unfortunately the speaker of the house intervened and even though Kevin's office was keen, the speaker wasn't so there we were on that famous couch.
It was a great trip though getting a fly on the wall peak at how TV newsrooms work and especially inside the Canberra Press gallery where we hung out for 2 days. It was also great to be there on such an historic occasion and mixing with indigenous Australians something which rarely happens to us inner city types
1 comment:
Great photos, what an fortunate place to be hovering- and you got to see Kev. Interesting to hear that his people keep him shielded from the details of press freedom in parliament. What are you doing with the footage that you did take on sorry day?
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