  A new friend decided to surprise me with digging up some of my searchable past… ouch. To stave off painstakingly slow death by embarrassment, I figured I'd post the whole thing and get it over and done with for now. Go on, have a laugh on me;) The damn internet! This is SO going to be happening the rest of my/our lives… I had no idea a one pager I wrote on mental illness and health in Australia for some Government public relations youth consultation wank ever got published on line. It was the summary of eight months volunteer research on my behalf – interview after interview, book after book, article after article, free trip after free trip, lunch with politician after politician (well okay, only water, a shared hour or two, and weeks playing email softball with their advisors). Fascinating to read (for my ego anyways;) and what's scary is the conclusions and recommendations still add up. I guess that goes to prove the PR point a bit;) The really scary bit is the profile photo – the text is a complete laugh: I wish I had a commerce degree, I wish I could be back in Canberra for the future 9th Canberra International Film Festival (paid of course) I wish… I wish someone had managed to simply copy and past my original bio rather than re-write like a shmuck and get so many things wrong…come on people, its not that hard? Is it? And what about the actual report? Some twenty pages? Oh well, such is the price you pay for a good laugh a few years latter… man the hair cut!
The writing mistakes don't extend to the standard political influence of the day of course…the one most valuable contact I made in government through the whole process – the only person to actually talk with me about what I was interested in, was Senator Kate Lundy. And here's the treatment she gets for being real about the youth consultation process! What was I really interested in talking about? Why Defence of course! I managed to get a great spread in the top three stories each bulletin for the morning drive three hours on the ABC's JJJ, Radio National and Canberra local (aptly named) 666 (where I latter worked!?!
) on the morning of the presentations of findings at Parliament House. Unfortunately for posterities sake, you won't find a transcript on-line anywhere (unless you want to pay Rehame for your own words of course;) but for the desperately bored, I have paper copies… you'll need to buy me a bottle of red for the laughing privilege however! Oh brother, I really need to stop reminiscing, its making my head spin… 
