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Herald Sun: At one of her first face-to-face meetings with Barack Obama soon after becoming PM, Julia Gillard said to the leader of the free world: “Are you nuts?”.
It could have been a monumental diplomatic blunder from the woman who admitted foreign policy was not her passion. But Obama didn’t see it as an insult. He considered her disregard for foreign affairs double-speak refreshing.
The two leaders have discovered they share a similar sense of humour and political outlook, and a surprisingly strong personal relationship has blossomed between the Australian Prime Minister and the President of the United States.
They are like-minded left-of-centre politicians both facing difficult domestic challenges, with Obama battling a hostile Congress and Gillard juggling minority government. And both are trail-blazers - the first black President and first female PM.
… Gillard sent Obama a 50th birthday card in August, purchased from the Parliament House florist, with pictures of a kangaroo, the Parliament building, native flowers and the Captain Cook water-jet on Lake Burley Griffin. Inside she wrote a personal note, including the line, “Your life has been remarkable to date but I’m sure the best is yet to come”.
… Gillard told me about their chat in an interview: “I had a discussion in the margins of one of the summits with President Obama who said, ‘You know your Question Time is a good way of speaking to the nation and getting your message out’, to which I said, “Are you nuts? We have this for an hour and half, four days a week’.
“He did laugh. He was not insulted by the ‘are you nuts?’. He thought I was pretty funny,” Gillard recalled.
Full article here
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President Obama at a tree dedication ceremony at the U.S. embassy compound in Canberra - photos from Flickr - thank you Hopefruit
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