Dearest Readers, My Name is Les Patterson Junior. I am the number one son to Australia's greatest External Affairs powerhouse Sir. Les Patterson. Dear old Dad taught me allot over the years about Foreign Affairs.
He was particularly good at passing on knowledge about the application of masculine wiles to turning business trips into pleasure trips during many Far Eastern adventures of the congenital nature.
Before I plunge into the slippery slope of "Training and & Self Help" for Today's Foreign Affairs leaders both in Australia and elsewhere, I must digest into a concise illustration of my perfunctory academic beginnings in the late 1990s.
For you see dear reader, I am an 80s child. I was born in 1982 at the height of Thatcherism and Ronny Reaganism. As a consequence my intellectual sires in the chemical sphere of International Affairs was of a particularly conservative stripe.
Like all the offspring of great minds, I rebelled against my father's relentless pursuit of Socialist Leader's and the Holy Grail of golden nuggets, commonly known as the 'Taxpayer Dollar'.
Indeed my stint at St Turnbulence's Holy High School on Sydney's North Shore was a seminal experience in my development into what Australia's current Prime Minister might call a 'nay-saying, penny pinching bastard!'.
Despite this blue ribbon beginning and my initial resistance to following in the old man's footsteps, I graduated in 1998 from St Turnbulence's Holy High School with the rarest distinction of all. I graduated with the rarefied title of "Johnny Come Lately".
After working as a door to door Salesman in Maroubra and Cronulla well before it got taken over by the Bin Laden's of the world, I considered going to work for Telstra as a Communications Consultant, up selling those old fashioned brick phones that were so prevalent at the time.
However the all powerful pull of Girl Friday's and Research Assistants tugged on my phallic pride and drew me back into pursuing the family business. Unsure as to how I would approach this new journey, like all politically connected families Dad pulled a few strings and got me into an International Relations course in the merry old Bush Capital, Canberra.
As it turns out I also got a slot at Burgmann College, the Alma mater of one K. Rudd. I remember my first day on campus like it was yesterday. There was a silver haired Queenslander on campus handing out pamphlet's during market day for the Socialist Alternating Alternative. His name was Julian Assange, he wasn't a student at the time, but had driven down in an old zombie van. Well it was a combie van painted with a dope smoking zombie in front. An auspicious start to my career.
Julian was a well spoken dude, but kept darting off every five minutes to take a leak in the Manning Clarke Gardens. It was a harbinger of the future as it turns out. But I again digest.
My journey into completing the Bachelor of Farts (International Conjugation), required me to specialise in Middle Eastern Culture where I wrote many papers on Middle Eastern Women's rights as it related to the post-modern impact of heterosexual and lesbian rights and the contextualisation of what their role in the kitchen should be at the beginning of the 21st Century.
It was a long and hard journey, but once I completed the degree I was off into the wonderful world of International Diplomacy. This experience was important. Despite my privileged position I resolved to make my own way in the world and made sure that Dad knew this before I left Australia for the first time.
It was 2002 by this time and I was into the post-9/11 world where the Americans didn't trust anyone wearing white coloured clothing and beards.
My first posting was a cultural and economic exchange in Saudi Arabia, where I closed many deals on oil and gas and ended up, opening the first all-Muslim topless bar. It was and remains Riyadh's most successful night club to this day.
It was in this time I started a very fine collection of Middle Eastern Art, Wine and Israeli Porno mags that would make any uninitiated gentile blush.
However as a Junior Diplomat I learnt one very important lesson. Politicians and media personalities must be treated very very carefully. For one thing, most of them don't know what the hell they are doing and are usually wind bags of the Abbott, Rudd and Gillard variety.
It's true! As an international representative of privilege and clout, I have to say the current generation of politicians on both sides are so incredibly unremarkable it makes the days of Johnny Howard and Paul Keating look positively sparkling!
So, now that I've got that dirty water off my chest, I've got some very specific advice for Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Julian Assange and Gina Rinehart as it relates to managing both domestic and international affairs in a way that won't make our neighbour's think we're still a bunch of inbred knuckle dragging convicts!
That advice is stop talking!!!! Just do what you do day to day and don't say a word!
It works for me on a Girl Friday up at Hotel Shanghai-La and it can work for you too! ;=)
Les Patterson Junior writes from Sydney New South Wales, where he currently resides in an unnamed million dollar hovel in Cogee Beach. He is currently considering starting his own political party and running for Prime Minister in 2013. He is planning to call the party the Joke Party of Australia and directly challenging all under-performing politicians.
