I guess I stepped in a hornets’ nest the other day. Here is what I received after my note about the Victoria Premier’s School Girl talk… in order to give you a balanced view:

As a Victorian I was extremely upset to read your last email. The PREMIER of Victoria (we have a separate and distinct political system from the US, know as the Westminster system) was, as usual, taken out of context in the interest of cheap, sensationalised ‘news’. I find it offensive that you can come to Australia and immediately start criticising our leaders. Jeff (Kennett, the Premier of Vic.) was merely discussing the fact that Australia is facing a reduction in population, a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. He did not tell these school girls to ‘go forth and multiply’, as the media would have you believe. He merely joked that these girls will need to get busy and procreate if we are going to maintain steady population growth. The reality is that Victorians are used to Mr. Kennett’s joking ways. I can understand that you would be shocked upon hearing the carefully and cunningly selected sound bites offered by the nightly news, or the quotable quotes offered by our newspapers. I can only hope that you can look into a matter at some depth before making any snap judgments. Nothing annoys me more than criticism based on everything but fact.

Whoa, as Keanu Reeves would say… It’s only a politician after all and I simply quoted the Melbourne media… I do think that Australia should deal with their projected population reduction by allowing more people to immigrate to this beautiful country rather than encouraging school girls to reproduce. There are a lot of people in this world…and many would love to come here… In any case I do love the city of Melbourne and we are all looking forward to spending half of Sunday, and all of Monday and Tuesday there.