14 June 2011 (Photographs courtesy of Rusty Stewart/DLIAL)

What a day! After our months of preparation and scurrying the halls of Parliament House, His Holiness finally had his day in Canberra.

More than anyone else, there is one group of people who made today a success - you! All of you. Thanks to your hundreds of emails and phone calls to your local politicians, a phenomenal 90 MPs and Senators joined the Dalai Lama for over an hour at his Parliamentary Reception. This followed a press conference in Parliament House, an interfaith Prayers for World Peace and a lunch meeting with members of the Australian All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet.

Most significantly of all, after the reception His Holiness took a seat in the special visitors gallery in the House of Representatives and was formally acknowledged by the Speaker at the beginning of Question Time. The symbolic gesture prompted a loud “hear! hear!” from the floor and warm smiles from those who had lobbied for months for this moment.

For a blow-by-blow account of the program and to read a statement from the Australian All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tibet, you can see my full report on Dalailama.com. But since you’re reading my blog, I’ll give you some of the inside scoop.

First up was the media conference. As a former journalist, I like to think I know a little about reporting. But the media is a strange beast. It is always revealing to sit through an entire press conference and then look later to see what parts the newspapers actually reported.

After a series of substantive questions and answers on climate change, global responsibility and human rights from the nation’s premiere media outlets, I was looking forward to some interesting stories later in the day. So imagine my surprise when the lead story doing the rounds later that day was “Dalai Lama confuses Julia Gillard’s gender”(!) Watch here

Looking back at the media conference, I remember His Holiness had indeed accidentally referred to the Prime Minister as a “he”, only to be quickly corrected by his translator. But the slip seemed so inconsequential and irrelevant alongside the weighty topics under discussion and the sheer significance of having His Holiness in Parliament House that I had promptly forgotten it. What’s bizarre is that we’re not just talking about the tabloids here. Even the British and US broadsheets have been carrying this story!

So if you’ve been confused by the hype around His Holiness’s minor slip, I can reassure you that there was plenty of genuinely interesting stuff that happened in Parliament House too!

Thankfully not all the media reports were as shallow. You may have caught my colleague Paul today doing the rounds on ABC, SBS, 2UE and 2GB, talking about His Holiness’s sustained efforts in building a modern Tibetan democracy in exile.

It was lovely to see so many MPs and Senators lining up to have their photos taken with the Dalai Lama. ATC is determined to follow up with every one of them to make sure they carry their enthusiasm for His Holiness through to real support for Tibet.

Time and time again members of the Senate cross-bench have moved motions on Tibet, some as innocuous as congratulating His Holiness on his birthday, only to see them voted down by both major parties. It is not good enough.

This afternoon Senator Bob Brown put another motion to the Senate. I will be checking Hansard in the morning for the result. Let us hope that for once the major parties have been true to their words.

But enough of the negatives. All-in-all it was a wonderful day. While it would be easy to get riled up about the PM declining a golden opportunity to sit down with one of the world’s greatest living advocates of peace and sustainability, I will leave that for another time.

Today is a time to have a little celebration!