Friday, August 1, 2008

Is the PM a Robot?

A few weeks ago, Margaret tried to contact EBay about a problem that has arisen in their search routines. The search by postcode facility has moved Sydney suburbs such as Lilyfield and Leichhardt to within 100 km of Narrabri! She sent a detailed email to their problem section and received a very helpful reply about how to post large articles signed by Walter. It was obvious that Walter is a computer programmed to respond to certain key words so that only the less common complaints get through to humans.

Listening to Kevin Rudd on "AM" this morning reminded me of Walter. The interviewer was trying to get the PM to make some sort of commitment about interest rates, grocery prices and their effect on voters- the very subjects he was very eloquent about before the election. But his replies were very scripted, delivered in a very stilted way and to be honest, sounded like he was reading from a script that almost but not quite lined up with the question.

It was very much like listening to EBay's Walter picking up the words "post" and "distance" in Margaret's email and deducing that it was a question about posting heavy parcels.

Looking at the number of consultations, reviews and the wooden scripting that passed for political debate, it seems we have elected a bureaucrat to be our leader.

For "Yes Minister" fans, Sir Humphrey seems to have replaced Jim Hacker!

What a pity!

So, if Peter Costello can bring himself to actually make the decision to take on the leadership of the Liberals which they are practically begging him to do, then Kevin Rudd could well be a one-term PM.

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