It’s been quite a few days since Bren-doc Nelson updated his Magical Mystery Tour diary. This afternoon he not only added the Tasmania section but he posted a YouTube video of him summing up the first week of his tour in glorious monotone monologue.

It’s kind of like a greatest hits monologue with Dr Nelson pulling out all of his favourite anecdotes — you know, the ones he’s been boring us with at every opportunity for the last week: helping the woman put petrol in her car and bagging groceries at a supermarket.

But let’s not dwell on the past when there’s so much comedy gold in Nelson’s latest release.

The carers roundtable was one of the highlights of the visit to Launceston. All expressed their great relief that Kevin Rudd had caved in to the Opposition’s pressure to deliver the lump sum carers’ payment this year and for the next four years.

Dr Brendan has got only one sorta positive from his time in leadership to keep referring to and it’s the tenuous claim that he forced Rudd to maintain the carers’ pork barrel lump sum payment. It’s getting really tiresome hearing Nelson crap on and on about it.

Starting the day on the side of the Tamar River and to see the amount of silt that’s built up is quite disturbing. The Government needs to provide the additional $200,000 for the saltation study and I’m at a loss to understand why Jodie Campbell, the Labor member, will not campaign for the necessary funds. So too the flood levies need serious refurbishment and restoration and the Federal Government must provide written confirmation that its $13 million contribution will be given this year.

Isn’t it weird that these geological processes commenced only after November last year and have reached crisis point in a mere five months? I’m at a loss to understand why Nelson’s own party did not commit the necessary funds in eleven long years.

It was also uplifting to visit St Finn Barr’s School where the students are absolutely magnificent in the way they are presented and the questions the year sixes asked me were tougher than at any press conference.

Nelson, of course, is extraordinarily capable of fending off even the toughest questions so a room full of grade six students is nothing.

The school provides a first rate Catholic education…

Unlike those values-neutral heathens in the evil, lefty public system.

…and is the school where I began my own education in grade one to grade four at its then outreach school Our Lady of Christians.

How proud they must be to have spawned the most useless opposition leader since, well… um…

The meeting with the chief executive of the Launceston General Hospital provided further emphasis to the need to restructure hospital services and especially reduce the load on the hospital from inadequate use of GP services in northern Tasmania.

Do you mean restructuring hospital services by propping up inefficient hospitals against the advice of everyone in order to win a couple of votes at an election?

A stroll through the Mews Shopping centre…

Where shoppers ran screaming in fear of being “helped” for a photo opportunity.

…at King’s Meadows down the road from where my grandfather lived, was a reminder of just how difficult a lot of Australians are finding the current climate. Trying to buy groceries while putting petrol in the car and facing increased interest rates was a struggle freely admitted to me by many shoppers.

Whoa! We need a drinking game where you drink if Nelson says “petrol”, “groceries” or “interest rates”. If he says all three in the same sentence just like he did then you have to skol a bottle of vodka.

It’s absolutely essential that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan get the economy right.

I’m sure they’re thankful for the advice, Bren-doc. There they were thinking to themselves “we must get the economy wrong.”

Kruddy’s a smart guy. You can tell because, firstly, he wears glasses and, secondly, he’s obviously watched episode eight of Lachlan Connor, Independent and done a PMI on ignoring environmental concerns when formulating Tasmanian logging policy.

Pluses
Will likely win back the two Tasmanian seats lost to the Libs at the last election that are crucial for victory at the ‘07 election.

Minuses
Will disenfranchise a lesser proportion of predominantly mainland voters in safe Labor seats, causing them to vote Green and preference Labor.

Interestings
Watching Peter Garrett squirm as he struggles to suppress his actual opinions and adopt those imposed upon him by the Party.

I think it’s disgraceful that on a “listening tour” the alternative prime minister (and leader of the major Party I dislike least) flat-out refuses to listen to one side of the argument when considering an issue as important as this. I respect his political nous but can’t respect the means to the end.