PM gets ANU student card

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hasn't been a student for about three decades, but he's
just acquired a memento of those heady days at Canberra's Australian National
University (ANU).
ANU vice-chancellor Professor Ian Chubb has presented the PM with his very own ANU
student card, complete with his original student number: 1466022.
The idea was actually generated by Mr Rudd during a recent visit when he commented
that he'd been back to his old campus on so many occasions - four times in the past
four weeks - that he should renew his student membership.
"Prime Minister, it gives me great pleasure to give you your student card. It is
your original student number but not your original student photograph," Professor
Chubb told the bemused PM.
On the card, Mr Rudd is described as a part-time student. It doesn't actually
entitle him to cut-price movie tickets and cheap student travel, a university
official said.
Mr Rudd was back at ANU on Saturday evening for a serious purpose - to launch the
book Aboriginal Placenames: Naming and re-naming the Australian Landscape, edited by
Harold Koch and Luise Hercus and featuring contributions from 21 authors.
This is a near 500-page long treatise on Aboriginal place names that Mr Rudd said
was the product of serious scholarship over a very long period.
He said much indigenous history and language had been lost and without diligent work
more could be lost to future generations.
"That is why a book such as this is important. It unlocks some of the secrets hidden
in the past," he said. "It peels back the layers of history of recent European
settlement which have shrouded the true meaning of specific place names in
Australia."
Mr Rudd said the European way was to use familiar names such as Sydney or Perth, but
the result was that many Aboriginal place names had been lost, or if retained, often
mistaken, misapplied or mispronounced.
In the process places familiar to indigenous Australians were made places unknown to
them, he said.
Mr Rudd said one example was Canberra, the only capital in Australia with its name
rooted in Aboriginal language and supposedly derived from the word for meeting
place.
But there was significant disagreement about that, with questions about the
interpretation and whether the original Aboriginal word really meant meeting place.
Mr Rudd said that demonstrated that anything about Canberra would always remain a
matter for dispute.