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I agree. He seemed to shrug it off rather well...I think I was more pissed off than he was. I loved his free speech comments and so did the others in the hall. All and all, with a few immature exceptions, they gave him a great response, a standing ovation and a lot of "hear, hears" I wonder if the press will report that.

Can you imagine our Congress behaving so badly to a guest(Ted Kennedy not withstanding????)

Well, I'm Australian, and I can tell you that 99.5% of the population think that Bob Brown is a fool. He's one of those far left Green politicians that can't produce policies that make any sense, so relies on headline producing stunts like this to grab attention. Unfortunately this gets enough of the unemployed/student/looney vote to keep him elected. The reaction here to the heckling has been one of disgust. People are pretty angry. Even the regular 'middle of the road' left politicians (Labor Party - Democrat equivalent) have called it 'childish', 'disgusting' etc and they all gave the President a standing ovation.

And yes, Australian parliament can get pretty roudy. No fights, as someone said in an earlier post, but heckling is quite common in a normal session (but not for a visitor), similar to British parliament. It can be pretty funny, but with an invited guest, its not on, and the reaction has been so negative towards Brown that hopefully it will be the start of the end of him.
The President was warned by PM Howard that Brown (no relation to my screen name!) might do this. I think he (Bush) actually enjoyed it.

His speech however, has gone down very very well here. It was fantastic. One of the best I've heard, from him or anyone. The reports we are seeing in the news here are showing the President arriving at Parliament to a foyer full of government staff cheering him, saying all the right things in a press conference with the PM, delivering an awesome speech (and very funny in some parts), making a Green politician or two look like an idiot, heading off to a relaxed barbecue lunch at the PM's residence (with Australian government, military, business & sports leaders and umm, the Crocodile Hunter), laying a wreath in a touching ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, meeting with Aussie SAS, Air Force & Navy personnel who served in Iraq, then heading off to Hawaii.

2000 protesters and 2 Greens didn't like him. 19,997,998 other Australians thought he was great, and it was an honour having him.