K Rudd goes Hollywood ...

Labor voters thought he would be down in Canberra post-election - as he promised - working hard to fulfil the laundry list of 'promises' which got him elected.

No, he's at Kirribiili House in Sydney entertaining Hollywood stars Kidman and Jackman.

Getting distracted from what the voters elected him to do took all of about 5 minutes ...

Excerpt from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Get set for Kevin08, Australia: PM's back, best you look busy

14 January 2008

The non-holiday holiday is officially over today, writes Annabel Crabb.

He's back.

After taking a brief festive break during which he completed his move to Canberra, learned to love cricket and developed a mild man-crush on Hugh Jackman, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, flew back to the national capital last night in readiness for the first official working week of Kevin08.

At this level in public life, the distinction between holidays and work can be difficult to spot.

Thus, Mr Rudd's last day of holidays yesterday was spent not as an ordinary person might spend such a day (lying about morosely wondering if there is anything clean to wear to work), but as Kevin Rudd would spend it - flying to Brisbane for a bracing discussion of economic policy with the Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan.

This is all part and parcel of what government press secretaries, with the manic perkiness of the already overworked, have described as a "working break".

And at the end of this week cabinet ministers will experience a further workplace innovation: the "working weekend".

According to a memorandum they all received a couple of days ago, next Sunday will be spent not in quiet reflection as per the Bible's polite suggestion, but in attendance - albeit non-voluntary - at a community cabinet meeting in Perth.

Kevin08's inbox is groaning with problems not foreseen in the halcyon days of Kevin07.

Take the banks, for example.

Who knew they would turn out to be sneaky sporran-robbers, gouging money from Australian working families? And who knew that one of the first acts of the year of the shadow treasurer, Malcolm Turnbull, would be to accuse Mr Rudd and Mr Swan of being apologists for the banks?

Mr Turnbull's muscular attack on the banks would be remarkable even if he had not himself spent four of the past 10 years as the managing director of Goldman Sachs.

Whales also have turned out to be a problem - the Government has ended up in a wild cetacean chase through Antarctic waters, competing against Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd to find and distract the Japanese whaling fleet.

How has this happened?

Cabinet insiders are eyeing Peter Garrett, whose natural affinity with whales may be attributable to the fact that he too is a giant, somewhat endangered mammal with a gift for eerie, discordant song. On Friday Mr Garrett was flown to Antarctica amid some pomp and ceremony aboard the first passenger flight to the frozen continent.

But he found his way back.

In the coming weeks Mr Rudd must also make headway on the rationalisation of the national health system, and on the drafting of a cut-price apology to the Aboriginal stolen generation.

It is a big ask, but Government lawyers are buoyed by Mr Rudd's record; his last-known formal apology, delivered to his wife, Therese, in 2003 after being "a bit of a goose" at a New York strip club, appears to have been an unqualified success and resulted in no litigation whatsoever.

Canberra will be full of newcomers in the coming days.

The Rudd family pets, Jasper the cat and Abby the dog, are due to arrive at The Lodge this week, although precise details of their itinerary were not available.

And the 2007 crop of new MPs will be in Canberra for formal instruction in the basics of their new life. In a welcome indication that there still burns a spark of humour in the capital, Anthony Albanese has been chosen to lecture them on parliamentary standards.

And the bespectacled Mr Rudd will be at the centre of it all. For a man who confesses to being "so not cool" at high school, it must be rich fare indeed to have dined with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman on Saturday night at his Sydney pad, Kirribilli House, before returning to Canberra as that city's most powerful resident.

The nerds have never had such a revenge.

See - Kevin wants his own star in Hollywood.