Pre-Breakfast Chunder Dept.

Sorry, all you doctors and nurses, priests and peace activists, child carers and teachers and environmental activists - you're all just second rate:

Mr Rudd, whose brother Malcolm is a Vietnam veteran, said he considered service in the defence forces the most honourable of deeds.

"I believe there is no higher calling in our nation's life than to serve the nation in uniform," he told an audience including former Australian Defence Force chief, Major General Peter Cosgrove, and Victoria Cross recipient and Vietnam veteran Keith Payne.

"The military life summons forth the most elemental of human virtues: service, sacrifice, self-sacrifice, courage, determination, endurance - and all given shape by an old fashioned, some might say unfashionable but I for one do not, patriotism."

Mr Rudd said he had visited many war memorials worldwide, and Australia's was the best.

Oh dear. I think Krudd is already being swept up in the tide of military madness. Quelle surprise?