Australian of the year Tim Flannery.
Photograph: Anoek de Groot/AFP/Getty
Today is Australia Day, and one of the country's most prominent citizens has marked the occasion by reinforcing his nation's popular reputation for blunt speaking.
Tim Flannery, a renowned zoologist and the best-selling author of a book warning of the dangers of climate change, was named Australian of the Year, the prestigious award handed out every January 26.
More or less straight after he received his gong from the Australian prime minister, John Howard, on the lawns of Parliament House in Canberra, Professor Flannery went on the radio to lambast Mr Howard's government for its inaction over global warming, notably by refusing to sign up to the Kyoto Accord.
He told ABC radio:
There is no doubt this Government's been dragging the chain. I've said in the past that Australia has been the worst of the worst in terms of addressing climate change.
For good measure, as Prof Flannery left the radio studio, inside Parliament House, he bumped into Mr Howard heading in for an interview of his own.
Mr Howard denied he was embarrassed:
We do live in a democracy and I'm not so thin-skinned and so desiring in uniformity that I want every Australian of the year to engage in fulsome praise of the government, or of me.
This could catch on: perhaps luminaries receiving knighthoods from the Queen could pause on their way out of Buckingham Palace to remark: 'By the way, do you really need all this space?'
