I was really shocked to see the TV coverage of some poor chap who popped out of his home at Bondi Beach to get a coffee, croissant and the morning paper was accosted by the police as he tried (in vain it seems) to get back to his home!
It appears that he did not have any ID with him and of course the wives of the APEC delegates were having breakfast nearby and were 'protected' by a temporary cordon of Sydney's finest.
In a country in which one of the joys is that you do NOT have to carry ID around with you all day it was a revelation of how things have changed!
I cannot imagine what it would be like to pop out for a brief time in my T shirt, shorts and thongs just carrying enough change for a quick breakfast and then being accosted by police who demand to see my ID when all I am trying to do is to get back to my home!
If you are somewhat "over" the fuss and bother about the "APEC show" and you no longer even watch the news for the first ten minutes or so because all it contains is more rubbish about the "glorious outcomes" of the APEC visit or some even more trite "beat up" about the protests that have been silenced or channelled into 'safe zones' or the traffic chaos that is caused by thousands of taxpayer funded bureaucrats from Australia and abroad who have taken over the city and actually prevented the taxpayers who fund them, from earning a living, then you would not even realise that the wives of the dignitaries escorted by the wife of our current PM were taking over one of the most iconic spots in Sydney - Bondi Beach.
Let's hope that our "honoured guests" leave Australia soon and allow life to start a return to normal.
Let's also hope that those of us who remember a gentler and more open society keep that awareness alive and when it comes to elections reward our politicians and our bureaucrats with an appropriate message about their term in office.
Let that be the lesson from this APEC conference and perhaps give new meaning to the acronym APEC like "Australian People Expecting Change"
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