Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to acknowledge and congratulate a great if transient institution of Australian politics—the Rudd 2000 Twitter account. On 14 November 2013, an anonymous Twitter account tweeted #imagine Kevin Rudd never fired, still PM today. Fast forward to today, 3,000 tweets and 5,000 followers later, and the authors of this Twitter account, Scott Bridges and Stephen Owen, have now published a compendium of their work to raise funds for the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Politics is a serious business but I am sure that no Australian wants their politicians to take themselves too seriously. In this respect, Kevin 2000 provided an invaluable reality check to 'Ablo', 'Barnbully Juice', 'Emmo', 'Scot Moreson', 'Toney Abert' and, yes, 'Tim Wat'. My office and branch members derived enormous pleasure from the antics of my alter ego 'Tim Wat' and 'Wyat Roy'—so much joy that we launched our own Rudd 2000 memorabilia to raise funds for an asylum seeker charity in my own electorate, the West Welcome Wagon. We raised more than $800 for asylum seekers in my community off the back of a tweet from Scott and Stephen:

Tim Wat ride BMX past Wyat Roy office. You dead at little lunch he say.

In that way, Scott and Stephen made a practical contribution to some of the most vulnerable members in my community. So I say to the members in this House: buy this book, do a good deed and get it now before Ablo eat them all.