Country Party Room

Barrie Virtue: I think it was about 2005, they arranged a lunch at Royal Canberra Golf Club and one of the officers in trade, who I think he must have heard me sing at a concert somewhere, and he said would I come and sing a few songs at this lunch. 

One of the advantages of working for Doug Anthony was that you had the services of Margot Anthony, who was a wonderful pianist. And occasionally when I was asked to sing somewhere, Margot would play the piano for me, which was great. So, we got together, we found one old song called Trade Winds – we were looking for things to do with trade, and we found an old song called Trade Winds, so we did that. And I thought, well, I’ll have a go at writing something. And I borrowed a tune from Sullivan, Arthur Sullivan, and this is the little song I put together: 

I am the very model of a modern trade commissioner 
With GATT and GATTs and EIAs I’m more or less familiar 
With liberalisation barriers or something similar 
Discriminatory measures and agreements multi-lateral 
The World Trade Organization, the Doha round Cancan collapse 
AFTA EFIC export subsidies harmonisation 
And there is that friend of ours, the old most favoured nation 
But what’s this controversial thing that’s called globalisation? 
The minister is coming through, what can we find for him to do? 
Free trade and tariff cuts might serve to help him make a speech or two 
I hope he’ll tell my Austrade boss that I’m a good practitioner 
For I’m the very model of a modern trade commissioner 

(Clapping) 

Thank you very much, I put in all the trade-type terms that I could remember from many years earlier. 

Interviewer: And how did it go down? 

Virtue: It seemed to go down very well, in fact, a former secretary of the department rang me up after to say how much he enjoyed it, so that was nice.