As covered in the Media this morning, Kevin Rudd, formally the Shadow Foreign Minister, is now the leader of the Australian Labour Party (ALP).

For those unfamiliar with Australian politic’s - the ALP is the opposition party (the nemesis of John Howards Liberal Government).

Anyway, since a few years ago watching Lateline, 7:30 Report, and so on, studying Kevin Rudd, I’ve always been impressed by the way he talks and the way he argues a point. He’s intelligent, witty, has a sense of humour (appears on the morning Sunrise show quite often), and has what it takes in my opinion (keep in mind, I’m just a web developer, so I’m probably wrong, but anyway.. lol).

Kim Beazley was the previous guy running the ALP, and he was quite good too, but I think he has had his shot, loosing at 2 elections (before Mark Latham) and has already retired once.

Hopefully over the next few years, his leadership will sort the ALP party out, and get it back on track to be a likley contender at the next election in 2 years time.

Also, on doing a quick flick through the Liberals website, it looks like they have already put together a compaign to degrade Kevin, check it out here, quite funny, but obviously desperate: http://www.liberal.org.au/sameoldlabor/index.html.

As anyone living in Perth, Western Australia (GMT+8) would know, `they` (`they` as in the deranged politicians), are introducing a daylight saving trial for the next 3 years.

Personally, I find the whole idea, more effort then its worth.. but anyway.. with the system coming into effect on 3rd December (this Sunday), it’s better to be ready then not.

So, without further opinionated remarks.. below are a few links to help with adjusting your Perth Linux boxes:

http://matt.ucc.asn.au/time/
http://www.greenwood.wa.edu.au/~grogers/daylight_savings

and here’s a handy shell script to apply the changes automatically:

#!/bin/sh
cd /tmp
wget http://matt.ucc.asn.au/time/Perth
cd /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia
mv Perth Perth.orig && mv /tmp/Perth ./Perth
mv West West.orig && cp ./Perth ./West

I’ve installed this on a few boxes so far.. I’ll let you know if it was successful or not..

/me wonders about the mobile phone and whether optus will update it remotely?