Discrimination Archives - thegoodwills.com

Time to befriend an indigenous person

NAIDOC-Week-Yes-Nawa — Musician Kevin Bennett

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are advised that this blog may contain references to deceased persons.

Reading an online ABC story about Ash Barty and her newly-born baby, I was struck by two things. The first was that the story had clearly been assembled with no direct input from Barty. Since retiring from championship tennis last year, Ash has made it fairly clear she values her private life. All the same, she’s famous enough that a declaration (to friends) on social media was appropriated by deadline-hungry online media. The story was compiled from what old journalists used to call ‘the cuts’, meaning file stories, social media comment (and responses) and a photo of Ash on her wedding day (supplied).

The second thing about this shallow news story was that nowhere in the text was Ash identified as an indigenous person. You’d think that in NAIDOC week, that would be a given.

NAIDOC stands for National Aboriginals and Islanders Day Observance Committee (originally dubbed National Aborigines Day Observance Committee).

The ABC could at least have tried to contact Ash, perhaps in the guise of preparing a NAIDOC week story. The time-honoured protocols of mainstream journalism should at least contain the disclaimer – the ABC made attempts to contact Ash Barty for comment but was unsuccessful.

The most interesting thing about the newly-born son (Hayden) of Ash Barty and husband Garry Kissick is that he is now part of the Barty extended family.

Through her great-grandmother, Ash Barty is a member of the Ngarigo people, the Aboriginal people of southern New South Wales and north-eastern Victoria. Despite being declared Australia’s Person of the Year in 2022, Ashleigh Barty is entitled to her private life, so I will now move on to NAIDOC.

This is a week of observance during which indigenous people can feel free to celebrate their origins. White fellas can use the time to reflect on their attitudes to indigenous folk, hopefully in a positive way. It is probably fair to say (and feel free to let me know if you think this is a generalisation), most white people who are not in some way inter-married, know few indigenous people and fewer still can actually say they have an Aboriginal friend.

She Who Is Going to Canada Soon has been making attempts to meet First Nations people in our home town, with limited success. Her attempts to make eye contact and say Hi will on occasion elicit a shy smile or a nod. (Of course, it’s just possible we already have Indigenous acquaintances, as not everyone chooses to mention their ethnicity. Ed)

It’s probably no wonder that so many Indigenous people are reluctant to engage with ‘white’ Australians If I was an Aboriginal person living in this country I’d probably not want to make eye contact with white people either.Ed

This is a reference to the shocking periods in this country’s history when European settlers squatted on land once used by Aboriginal tribes for hunting, food-gathering and sacred ceremonies. From this arose seldom-mentioned Frontier Wars and the gradual marginalisation of indigenous Australians

We got chatting to a young person in Brisbane recently who we discovered has Aboriginal ancestry, though it was not obvious to us. We found this out because she was visibly upset by an overtly racist comment made in her workplace by a customer.

The comment was not addressed to the young person, but it was gratuitous enough to make her angry and upset.

The young person revealed that her grandmother was one of the Stolen Generation. This refers to a shameful period in Australia’s history (mid-1800s to 1969), when Aboriginal children were removed from their parents and adopted by (usually) well-intentioned white people. This tawdry period in Australia’s colonial past was best summed up by the late songwriter, Archie Roach:

Taught us to read, to write and pray
Then they took the children away
Took the children away
The children away
Snatched from their mother’s breast
Said this is for the best
Took them away.

Even today, people in their 50s and 60s are discovering or tracing back their ancestry and those who have the opportunity to spread the story do just that. Alt-country songwriter Kevin Bennett not so recently traced his family and now writes songs depicting or satirising that era. Check out his song Spaghetti Western and its reference to a ‘stolen land’. Bennett also referred to intermarriage in Goulburn Valley Woman.

“She said she was a Goulburn Valley woman, she felt connected to the land; Her mother was a flame-haired Irish lass, her father was a Yorta Yorta man.”

The ABC this week interviewed songwriters Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody, who did more to raise awareness than most with their seminal song ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’. I first met Kev at a folk club in Toowoomba and was also aware that he was (like me) one of the mature age students studying at the university. Kev played guitar in a local bush band and on occasions would sing one of his own songs. I had no idea he was indigenous until the night he sang a song about someone being ‘zipped up in black skin’.

“This is a song about my Uncle,” he said, launching into Jack Deelin. Carmody released his debut album in 1988, the Bicentennial year. Along with indigenous bands Yothu Yindi and compadres including Gurrumul, Tiddas, Kutcha Edwards and others, Kev Carmody was at the forefront of raising awareness of indigenous culture and the injustices of the past.

The injustices and inequalities (which still exist) include a mortality rate 1.6 times greater than non-indigenous, chronic health problems, inadequate housing and over-representation among jail populations.

Over time, this led to the Apology by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2007 and the emergence of some now ubiquitous traditions. One is the warning at the start of this blog. This accords with the Aboriginal custom of not referring to the departed by name, unless special permission has been given. Then there is the acknowledgment of country which has become universal.

My attempts at befriending Aboriginal people stall on innate shyness and I suspect it is a two-way street. A fellow sometimes busks outside the IGA in town. He sings, plays guitar and harmonica and is not half-bad. I was tempted to sidle up and join in on the harmony to “Down on the corner, out on the street, Willie and the Poor boys etc.” Opportunity lost.

I remember visiting Derby in Western Australia and seeing the ancient Boab ‘Prison’ tree and reading the bleak history of the region. While the story of that hollow tree used as a temporary prison is said to be a myth, the Boab was a staging post and Aboriginal prisoners were chained to nearby trees. These are stark images which remind us of how European settlers mistreated the original inhabitants. But as is often the case, the historic records are often disputed, many because they were never written down.

It’s not that much different to the Highland Clearances, where my descendants were pushed off their land so the English aristocracy could run their sheep and lay claim to whisky production. The same applies to other colonial conquests around the world, although the mistreatment of Aborigines and Native Americans stand out as egregious examples.

The way I see it on this particular Friday is that come the referendum, we should all be saying ‘yes’.nawa.

Discrimination in the 1960s, by an unofficial feminist

Despite being ranked equal first for educational attainment, Australia came in at 44^th overall in the Global Gender Gap Index 2020 rankings, slipping five places from the previous year. But things are better than the discrimination evident in the 1960s and 1970s*.

discrimination-gender-equity-feminist — She Who Rides Trail Bikes

By Laurel Wilson

In 1965, Merle Thornton and her friend Rosalie Bogner walked into the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane and chained themselves to the Public Bar as a protest about the discrimination which forbade women from drinking there (instead, relegated to the ‘Ladies’ Lounge’ to drink their Shandies).

At the time, I remember wondering why any self-respecting woman would want to drink in the noisy, smelly, smoke-filled drinking pit that was the usual Public Bar. But then I was just a naive teenager, content to wear the black stockings, gloves and hat that my school rules required, even in the midst of a Brisbane summer. That same school had a rule in which the girls were not allowed to talk to the boys – the playground was separated into the girls’ section and the boys’ section. It seems a ridiculous rule now, and I thought the same at the time. I do remember attempting a small rebellion at one stage, encouraging the girls to sit on one side of the dividing path and the boys on the other, but it came to naught, so my incipient reputation as a ‘stirrer’ was saved for another day.

Then on to University, where it was often rumoured that the women were in danger of being harassed for ‘favours’ by some of the male tutors and lecturers. I didn’t experience this myself, but it seemed to be common knowledge who to avoid.

Prior to graduating, I came to the realisation that because of discrimination, women were officially paid less than men for doing the same job, apparently under the assumption that men needed more money in order to provide for a family. The flaws in this ‘logic’ are too gaping to bother elucidating. I decided at the time that I wouldn’t seek any employment that had such a discriminatory policy. By the time I was in my last year of University, the female wage for teachers was 90% of that for men and there was equal pay by the time I graduated. The requirement that women resign on marriage had gone by the board some time previously (see time-line below).

I had a Holden Ute and a trail bike which I used to race on the dirt track at Tivoli near Ipswich. Of course I had to have a full set of leathers. I had a red leather jacket and black pants (with red hearts on the knee patches). As I was wearing a full-face helmet, it was sometimes a bit difficult to tell there was a female on the bike, except that I was pretty slow. There were a couple of other women racers as well. We’d race in the same races as the men, but there was usually also a ‘ladies’ race’. I didn’t think of it as pioneering anything at the time, but I guess it was a bit unusual.

I asked an artistic friend of mine to paint a red Suzuki ‘S’ on the driver’s side door, which he duly did, but added an embellishment of his own by painting the Women’s Lib sign on the tailgate. I don’t think that the rather conservative principal of the school where I was teaching was favourably impressed with that.

After some years teaching, I took a break for a while then applied for a job with the Probation and Parole Service as it was then called. There was a vacancy in Toowoomba, which would require travelling to towns further west from time to time One of the interview questions asked was what I would do if I got a flat tyre. My reply was that I would lift the bonnet and wait for someone to give me a hand. That seemed to satisfy them, as I got the job. I’m not sure how many other women were doing that job at the time, but we were definitely in the minority. I believe it was somewhat grudgingly accepted that women employees were needed as there was a growing number of female probationers and parolees. Not that we were confined to supervising women only, so I guess you could call the Service an equal opportunity employer.

Being a State Government job, it was quite well paid, and in those days, a permanent position. I assumed that there would be no problem obtaining a loan to buy a house (for the princely sum of $17,250 – a three-bedroom weatherboard on a large block near the Showgrounds in Toowoomba.) I had quite a good deposit, and as I’d been banking with the same bank since I was at school, I assumed I’d have no problem obtaining a loan. Not without a male guarantor! I withdrew my money from the bank and never darkened their doors again. I’m looking at you, Commonwealth Bank!

Tuesday 8^th March was International Women’s Day. According to an article from the BBC that I read, the date of 8^th March was formalised after a strike in Russia in 1917 in which Russian women demanded “bread and peace”.

The strike began on the 8^th of March and after four days, the Tsar was forced to abdicate.

We can only hope history repeats itself!

Discrimination against women in Australia 1960s-1970s

Despite the introduction of the Federal Sex Discrimination Act in 1984, women continue to be disadvantaged. In case you forgot, the Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexism, homophobia, transphobia and biphobia, as well as sex, marital or relationship status, actual or potential pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status or breastfeeding in public.

TIMELINE

1956: Until this year women were prevented from teaching full-time after marriage. The Temporary Teachers Union lobbied for this restriction to be dropped;.

1961: Women could buy the contraceptive pill but initially it was only available (on prescription) to married women and carried a 27.5% ‘luxury item” tax;

1966: Australia lifted the legislated marriage ban, which prevented married women from holding permanent positions in the public service;

1971: The Bank of New South Wales (now Westpac) became the first Australian lender to lend money to a female without a male guarantor;

1969: First abortion rights granted (with limitations);

1972: The right to equal pay introduced (see note at end);

1972: The newly-formed Women’s Electoral Lobby made the contraceptive pill more freely available;

1972: Gough Whitlam introduced a single mother’s pension. It was later broadened to a single parent pension (available to men and women);

1973: Commonwealth employees were granted 12 weeks paid maternity leave and 40 weeks unpaid leave;

1974: The minimum wage was extended to cover women;

1975: No-fault divorce introduced, formation of women’s refuges;

1979: Women were granted 52 weeks unpaid maternity leave;

1983: Married women could apply for an Australian passport without needing an authorisation from their husbands;

1991: the marriage age in Australia of females was increased from 16 to 18 (the same as males;

2011: Federally-funded paid parental leave introduced;

2020: Gender pay gap between men and women confirmed at 13.8%;

2022: Despite the 1972 equal pay declaration, Australian typically earn about $25,000 a year less than men (Workplace Gender Equality Agency).

FOMM back pages

What the left hand doesn’t know

Last week, Friday the 13^th, I intended to write about International Left Handers’ Day. Apparently it’s been a thing since 1976 – a clever way of making people aware of this difference, at least once a year.

Clearly the organisers of International Left Handers’ Day do not suffer from Triskaidekaphobia, a fear of Friday the 13th.

Phobias are an irrational fear of one or more of hundreds of strange things that induce panic attacks in some people. So you may not be surprised to learn that Sinistrophobia is a fear of left handed people (or objects close to the phobic person’s left hand).

I was made aware of International Left Handers’ Day by my friend and musical collaborator, Silas Palmer. In posting links to social media pages about Left Handedness, he revealed that three of the four members of Melbourne band The Royal High Jinx (he plays drums, keys, accordion and fiddle), are lefties in the literal sense. That is a clear statistical anomaly, as the norm is 10% of the population.

So what does it all mean to the 90% of us who use the right hand for most tasks requiring dexterity?

Well, it could be that you share an abode with a partner or other who is left-handed or have children who turned out that way.

I tried teaching She Who Is Also Left Handed to play guitar but it did my head in. Even now, I just can’t handle watching her chopping up onions or meat with the knife in her left hand. (You’d freak out more if I tried doing it with my right hand. Ed)

There’s been a lot of research into the science and psychology of handedness. Recently, a team at Oxford University found for the first time the role played by DNA. Scientists found the first genetic instructions hard-wired into human DNA seem to be heavily involved in the structure and function of the brain – particularly the parts involved in language. Left-handed people may have better verbal skills as a result.

The research published in Brain magazine concludes that being left-handed (or port-sided), has often led to a raw deal.

“In many cultures being left handed is seen as being unlucky or malicious and that is reflected in language,” said Prof Dominic Furniss, a hand surgeon and author on the report.

“What this study shows is that being left-handed is just a consequence of the developmental biology of the brain, it has nothing to do with luck or maliciousness.” (Despite the word ‘sinister’, which is derived from the Latin for left-handed. Ed)

If you grew up in the 1950s, the education system was not at all in favour of left-handed children. As the teaching of writing became widespread, teachers encouraged right-handedness by (mild examples), tying the left arm behind the back and knuckle-raps for writing with the ‘wrong’ hand. Those that persisted with their left hand were left to cope in a world designed for right handers.

Psychologist Chris McManus has suggested that the Industrial Revolution encouraged this, due to the right-handed design of the machinery in mills and factories

McManus, in his book Right Hand, Left Hand, finds an account from a school near Falkirk, Scotland, in 1880, noting that “eight children had come to school left-handed”. The phrase “had come” implies that they were not allowed to remain so.

With the decline of attempts to convert children, the numbers of left-handers has risen sharply over the course of the 20th century.

Some estimates put it as high as 18% and, as we will see, there are statistical anomalies.

Songwriter and film score composer Dory Previn wrote the definitive song about left-handedness.

The lyrics of Left Hand Lost (from the 1972 album, Mary C Brown and the Hollywood Sign), are infused with Catholic references linking the left hand to evil deeds (as in finding work for idle hands).

Previn, who wrote a good half dozen albums full of self-reflecting songs about mystical kings and iguanas, lemon haired ladies and waking up slow, starts this one with a liturgical chant.

The real attraction to this topic was a chance to name-check a few famous guitarists who have mastered the art of playing ‘Molly Dooker’ (1940s Australian slang).

Most of us would know about Paul McCartney, but there’s also a long list of players (living and dead) including Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Annie Lennox, Tommy Iommi (Black Sabbath), David Bowie and Sting. Down under lefties are represented by singer songwriters Eric Bogle and Courtney Barnett, Dick Dale (Bombora), Beeb Birtles (Little River Band), Oscar Dawson (Holy Holy), WA slide guitarist Dave Hole, Kevin Curran (Hail Mary) and Kate Miller-Heidke Band guitarist Keir Nuttall.

Keir plays a 21-year-old Guild Jumbo acoustic that has been customised to suit a left hander.

“It sometimes requires the addition of wooden braces inside the body to compensate for the additional stress from reversing the string order (as well as the nut and bridge),” he explained.

“All of my electric guitars are made left handed. But you often pay more, as the good ones are snapped up by collectors, so the prices are driven up.”

Keir says he started off self-taught so it was too late to switch by the time he realised that it is expensive and frustrating being a lefty.

In an effort to join in on jams at parties, he learned the basic shapes playing a ‘normal’ guitar upside down.

“When I taught guitar I would encourage my students to learn right handed to spare themselves the pain. Guitar is about the co–ordination between both hands, so I believe it doesn’t matter whether your dominant hand is fretting or picking.”

This could be a good time to explain that some left handers (like the aforementioned Dick Dale and the late indigenous singer, Gurrumul), learned to play a conventionally strung guitar upside down.

The website https://leftyfretz.com/ is devoted to left handed guitars and how to play them. But the webmaster has also compiled an impressive collection of left-handed trivia. Like, did we know five of the last nine US presidents (not Trump) were left handed? Mensa, the elite organisation of people with high IQs, claims 20% of its members are lefties.

From this exhaustive list of left handed celebrities, I plucked just two Aussies (Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman). Did you know that 40% of the world’s best tennis players are southpaws (US baseball term)? Rafael Nadal was a right-handed player but taught himself to play leftie to give him an advantage (which it clearly does). Former tennis great turned commentator John McEnroe is also a Portsider.

I noted Simpsons creator Matt Groenig on one of these lists. This may explain why at least four of the characters (Marge Simpson, Bart Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr Burns) are corrie dukit as they say in some parts of Scotland,

Specialist stores like Ned’s Leftorium do exist. The website www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk operated a shop in London’s west end from the mid-1960s. Management quit the retail space in 1996 and has been operating a home-based internet business ever since. Just in case you were wondering, some of the product lines that do very well include can openers, scissors, spiral notebooks and pens (the latter have curved nibs so the writer can see what’s being written without putting the heel of the hand on still-wet ink).

If you’d like an insight into left handedness, try writing today’s headline with your opposite hand; that is, righties try with the left and vice versa. A fun game for any old Friday afternoon.

Older Australians an economic burden

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s much-reported speech, where he referred to my cohort (the over-65s) as ‘an economic time bomb’, should not be seen as random.

The speech to the conservative think tank, the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CEDA), was deeply calculated. Frydenberg’s thesis is that older Australians should work longer and take up re-training to help facilitate a return to the work force, thus easing the country’s social security burden.

Frydenberg was immediately attacked by Seniors’ advocates who pointed out (for starters) that 25% of people on the government’s inadequate unemployment payment (NewStart) are aged 55 and over.

It came in a week when the ABC television debuted its much-hyped show, Australia Talks. The latter is based on a huge survey of 54,000 people, who were asked to prioritise their chief concerns.

The list of worries was headed by household debt, the cost of living and drug and alcohol abuse. Ninety percent of respondents answered they were ‘somewhat’ or very much’ concerned about the top three issues, with water (89%) and ageing population (87%) not far behind.

The Treasurer was interviewed the following day by 2GB radio shock jock Steve Price, who didn’t let him off too lightly:

Price: What do you say to our listeners – people like truckies, labourers and builders, all tradies, saying ‘look, we just can’t work past retirement age because physically our bodies are worn out’?

Frydenberg: Well, that is totally understandable and nobody is asking them to do that. What I am saying…

Price: Well, we are pushing up the age of the pension.

Frydenberg: But what I am saying is that when it comes to that age that you referred to (67), that was legislated by the Labor Party back in 2009 and we haven’t said that we would change the retirement age, so we’ve been very clear about that.

Price: But it goes up to 67, right?

Frydenberg: It does. And again, the Labor Party legislated that in 2009.

Price: But you’re going to leave that there?

The Labor Government did introduce measures in 2009 to increase the pension age to 67 through gradual increases during the period July 2017 to July 2023. But the Abbott government’s 2014–15 Budget proposed to increase the pension age by six months every two years from 1 July 2025 until it reached 70.

Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison shutting down speculation last year that the government was considering lifting the retirement age to 70, it was a Coalition policy and could resurface at any time.

Ian Henschke from National Seniors Australia said it was unfair to stigmatise older Australians.

“We should blame previous treasurers from 1980 who have stood by and watched this happen.

“Let’s deal with the facts, for example, that older Australians want to work more and longer but they are not getting the work they need.”

“When they do retrain, we know they are experiencing discrimination.”

Statistics support the government’s rhetoric that older people are indeed either staying in the workforce longer or making a comeback. The workforce participation for over-65s stands at 14.6%, up from 6% 20 years ago. It’s not hard to find the reason for that: a basket of goods from the supermarket costing $200 in 1999 will set you back $331 today.

There is lots of sage advice around for people nearing retirement age about how much money they will need to fund a comfortable retirement. There is less information around for those in advanced stages of not working anymore and trying to make their money last.

Moreover, factors well out of everyone’s control continue to move the goalposts, forcing retirees to come up with new and inventive game plans. Specifically I’m talking about the unsustainable investment returns available to retirees, who typically are advised to invest in no-risk strategies.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) advises that the ideal superannuation target for a single person on retirement is $545,000 (implying that a couple needs $1.09 million).

So how are we all doing then?

While half-watching the cheerfully superficial Australia Talks, I heard a butcher’s assistant confide that she had $45,000 in her super fund. She didn’t look old enough for this to be a worry yet, but let’s face it; you’d have to sell a shitload of sausages to reach that mythical half a million dollars.

Superannuation was supposed to be the panacea for older Australians not wanting to be a burden on the national pension scheme. But ASFA statistics tell a sobering story. While there are 16.1 million Australians with at least one superannuation account, one in three women and one in four men, across all ages, have no superannuation. So 25% of women and 13% of men are retiring with no superannuation, relying partially or substantially on the Age Pension for their retirement income.

Fair enough, the Age Pension is supposed to be a safety net for Australians who find themselves at 65+ and broke. But why doesn’t Josh Frydenberg shut down the loophole that allows a couple to earn about $75,000 per annum and/or have assets well over $2 million, and still be eligible for some benefits.

In case you had wondered, Australia is a long way down the list of countries which pays its retired citizens something close to a living wage. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), analysed data from 35 member countries and a number of other nations. Pensioners in the Netherlands, Turkey and Croatia receive more than 100% of a working wage when they retire (the right-hand end of the graph).

At the other end of the scale, pensioners in the United Kingdom receive just 29% of a working wage (compared with the OECD average of 63%

Pensions paid as a percentage of a working wage

Image: OECD countries ranked by pensions as a percentage of a working wage. Australia is 12^th from the left, paying 43%. Source OECD.

The OECD’s 2017 report Pensions in Australia noted that public spending on pensions is low and will remain low (currently 4% of GDP and projected to be 4% in 2050) as opposed to 9% and 10% for the OECD. From this we can deduce the government’s future reliance on superannuation, including the government’s compulsory scheme and privately-funded superannuation accounts.

The old age income poverty rate in Australia is high, at 26%, compared to 13% across the OECD. This is partly related to the high prevalence of people taking superannuation funds as lump sums rather than annuities at retirement. These people, as any current affairs programme worth its spots will tell you, squander their money on travel, then risk falling into poverty if they outlive their assets. No doubt they will then sign on for our Age Pension (which costs the county $50 billion a year).

What, may I ask, is wrong with someone who has paid taxes for 45 years retiring on a combination of savings (super) and a part-pension from the government? Frankly, I’d have thought that paying $1 million+ in income tax through my working life would have been enough.

Nobody considered me a burden then, did they?

Further reading: https://bobwords.com.au/taking-an-interest-in-recessionary-economics/

Get the kids off Nauru, maybe

Nauru refugees are welcome – photo by Takver – flickr

We’ve been learning a protest song for our choir’s Christmas concert. Actually it is a plea for peace, the musical equivalent of a street march – “What do we want? Peace! When do we want it? Now.”

John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Happy Xmas/War is Over starts by asking the universal question so many of us end up asking ourselves: “And so it is Christmas, and what have we done? Another year over, a new one just begun.”

If you can ignore the ‘sounds like’ melody and work through the key changes to the counter-refrain “War is over, if you want it,” this is quite an epic tune. Many critics have pointed out the similarities between Leadbelly’s ‘Stewball’ made popular by Peter Paul and Mary but even then, the tune pre-dates that earnest trio by a few hundred years.

A few people (including me) have written protest songs about Australia’s pitiless refugee policies, particularly its offshore processing strategy. Doctors for Refugees spokesman Paddy McLisky recently told a rally in Brisbane that offshore processing was a ‘health hazard’ Continue reading “Get the kids off Nauru, maybe”

Human Rights and Halloween

human-rights-nauru — Human rights billboard Image provided by Fr Rod Bower of Gosford Anglican Church

You always have to look for the silver lining; like the Queensland Parliament introducing a Human Rights Act on the same day (31^st October) that people were walking the streets dressed as ghouls and zombies, reminding us that Christmas is just 55 days away.

Christmas Island is just around the corner too – well, it’s precisely 1,550 kms north-west of Perth. But it is an Australian territory, unlike Nauru and Manus Island.

I mention human rights in the context of offshore processing of asylum seekers to make the point that Australia is one of the few democracies that does not have a so-called Bill of Rights.

Victoria and the ACT have their own Human Rights acts and Queensland’s new act will become law next year. But there is no specific Federal law. In case you did not know, Queensland’s Human Rights Act will replace a hit-and-miss system in which individual liberties are said to be protected under the constitution and by common law. The Federalists have always argued that the latter is sufficient protection to ensure freedom of speech, privacy, equality and such like. The anti-Federalists in Queensland have been quietly pushing for this new act for the last four or five years.

The subject came up more than once when former Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs was in town for Outspoken, a literary event that draws a mixed crowd of avid readers. Triggs, as one would imagine, was well aware that Queensland was considering introducing a Human Rights act and there was a bit of discussion as to what form that might take. As she mentioned at the time, she hoped this new Act would protect indigenous culture (and it does).

Queensland’s act mimics Victoria’s laws in many ways – it protects 23 human rights as basic as the right to freedom from forced work, to equality, the right to life and the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of association (remember Campbell Newman’s bikie laws?).The Australian Government should make a note of this one: ‘protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’, in terms of refugees being kept on Nauru and Manus Island.

If this new Act is set to enhance the protection and privacy of individuals, will this extend to trick and treaters coming down the driveway, uninvited? This did not happen in our street, the Halloween revellers opting to approach only those houses suitably adorned with spooky lights, cobwebs, pumpkins and other faux-accoutrements of a distinctly American tradition.

Protecting the privacy of individuals should surely extend to preventing real estate agents, politicians, Clive Palmer and the NBN from shoving unwanted solicitations in your letterbox?

Should it not also cover the telephone ringing at 6.50pm with the chatter of a call centre in the background and a long pause while someone realises yours is the next cold call they must attend to (by which time you have hung up).

ABC News provided a handy guide to the new Act, which meant that although I downloaded it, I do not necessarily have to wade my way through all 88 pages of the Act. The main objects are to:

to protect and promote human rights; and
to help build a culture in the Queensland public sector

that respects and promotes human rights; and

to help promote a dialogue about the nature, meaning

and scope of human rights.”

Under this new Act, the Anti-Discrimination Commission will be re-named the Queensland Human Rights Commission and as such receive complaints from the public. The specifics of the Act ensure that the Parliament, the government and more importantly, the bureaucracy that administers Queensland’s laws will have to comply with them.

Dan Rogers from Caxton Legal told the ABC the new act would provide a broad spectrum of individual rights. He said Victoria and the ACT had benefited from having similar legislation for over a decade.

“When government departments deliver services, they’re more likely to comply with our fundamental human rights.”

Rogers gave examples of when these rights may be compromised (cameras recording conversations or abuse of search powers by police and government inspectors).

Queensland Council of Civil Liberties president Michael Cope told the ABC that Australian States were some of the last in the world not yet be covered by a human rights act.

“We know from history that democracies can quickly change from being democracies to something else. It only took Hitler six or seven years to transform Germany.”

Predictably, the Queensland Opposition described the new Act as a ‘distraction’ from the real issue (the economy) and harped on about the time and money spent implementing the new Act. (Victoria’s Human Rights Act has been estimated to cost 50c per person, per year).

Most democracies have a bill of rights of some type and 192 member States have become signatories to the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights since it was established in 1948. There are eight notable hold-outs: South Africa, Belorussia, Ukraine, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Saudi Arabia, Yugoslavia and Russia.

Since we mentioned Nauru in the context of Australia’s decision to use the tiny island as a holding depot for asylum seekers and refugees, here’s what we know about its place in the world.

Of the nine core United Nations human rights treaties, Nauru, which has been a member since 1999, has ratified or acceded to four of them. They include the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture. In response to recommendations from other States and human rights monitoring bodies, Nauru ratified the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees in June 2011. Just so we know.

The UN has gone to a lot of trouble to set up a portal to teach children the basics of human rights. It’s not a bad place for adults to digest a summary of the obvious and not-so obvious things we regard as rights.

Item 19 is of particular interest to me and my 27 readers (and an old blue heeler called Herbie who chases his tail when he hears FOMM go ‘ping’ in the inbox):

We all have the right to make up our own minds, to think what we like, to say what we think, and to share our ideas with other people.

That would be of small comfort to journalists jailed last year by regimes that do not brook public dissent. A record 262 journalists were jailed in 2017, amid an aggressive crackdown by government authorities, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In this free-ranging discussion about human rights you may have noticed my own bias creeping in about Halloween. I just do not care for the pervasive infiltration of American ‘culture’ into the Australian-way-of-life. Pumpkins were meant to be cooked and eaten, mate, by me or the dog.

And don‘t get me started on those Council workers cluttering up the only roundabout in the village with a truck and crane adorning the Flame Tree with shiny Christmas baubles and fake presents.

“Mate, you’re infringing on my right to freedom of movement,” the grumpy septuagenarian hollered out the car window.

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Odd socks stamp out mental health stigma

My choice to wear a matchless pair of socks today was a deliberate tribute to Mental Health Week. Odd Socks Day is just one of the many events sponsored through October to remind us that one in five Australians suffer a mental health disorder in any 12-month period.

I’d never heard of Odd Socks Day, but spotted a flyer in a café somewhere and tucked it away for future reference. It’s a national anti-stigma mental health campaign now in its fourth year, using odd socks as a metaphor that anyone can have an off day.

Despite the fact that the majority of people visiting GPs are consulting them about mental health or psychological issues, those with physical ailments are not confronted with the same level of discrimination, stigma and social shame.

Young people are particularly vulnerable to stigma. Research in 2016 uncovered some alarming facts about stigma and what an obstacle it is to people trying to recover from a mental illness. Headspace found that 26% of young people aged 12-25 would not tell anyone if they had a mental health problem and 22% would be unlikely/very unlikely to discuss it with their family doctor.

Fifty-two percent of young people (12-25) identified with having a mental health problem would be embarrassed to discuss the problem with anyone and 49% would be afraid of what others think.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners recently found that 62% of people (via the traditional 10-minute consultation), were seeking support for mental health disorders.

The most common mental health ailments likely to afflict people are depression, anxiety and substance abuse. Sadly, many people struggling with depression use drugs and/or alcohol to self-medicate, often with negative results.

In my former work life, the notion of taking a ‘mental health day’ was anathema to your average hard-bitten journalist, for whom the deadline reigns supreme. But in recent years the previously taboo subjects of depression and suicide are now being freely publicised and debated. The hidden cost of not properly dealing with workplace mental health problems is now an $11 billion problem for Australian commerce. There is now an argument that $1 spent on mental health services equates to a ROI (return on investment) of $2.30. So why aren’t we spending?

If there is one indicator to show how stigma and mental health ratio is shifting, it is the NRL ‘casualty ward’, which lists rugby league players and their injuries. Through the season I recall at least six players said to be having counselling for ‘psychological’ or ‘personal’ issues, the latter covering a range of non-physical traumas. Dragons half Ben Hunt spoke candidly to the media this year about seeing someone to help overcome a slump in confidence. Armchair critics (virtual bullies) did not help Ben’s situation, with a steady stream of vitriol posted on social media.

Suicide is often the end-game for people fighting ongoing battles with mental health disorders. Australia’s standardised statistics on suicide are not as high as some (11.7 per 100,000 people). Lithuania (28.6) and South Korea (26.3) head the World Health Organisation list, but Australia is nonetheless in the list of 10 countries with a suicide rate in double figures and has been for a decade.

In Australia, men are three times more likely to commit suicide (17.8 deaths per 100,000 people) than women (5.8 deaths per 100,000 people). More than 75% of all severe mental illnesses occur prior to the age of 25, and youth suicide is at its highest level in a decade.

The telling statistics revealed by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners clearly show that the system is under untenable strain.

Author Jill Stark wrote about it in a Sydney Morning Herald opinion piece – ‘What happens when the answer to R.U.O.K is no and there’s nowhere to go?’

Stark wrote from a first person perspective, after fronting up to a GP with what she suspected was an acute recurrence of anxiety and depression. She was handed a form to fill in – a routine step in such a consultation, so the GP can make a more objective assessment of the patient’s mental health state. As Stark related, she scored 25 ‘mild to moderately depressed’ and was prescribed medication (after first being asked if she was suicidal).

The answer was no, but on the way home Stark reflected that should she indeed want to kill herself, she’d been prescribed with something well-equipped for the job.

As Stark bluntly pointed out, the time for wristbands and hashtags has passed. Doctors need the financial support Medicare can bring by allowing longer consultations for patients with complex psychological problems.

“As a matter of urgency we must stop rationing psychological services to 10 subsidised sessions per year,” she wrote.

So that was Jill Stark, wearing her odd socks in public. Bravo.

People like Jill who are having an acute mental health crisis need expert support at least once a week for as long as the crisis lasts.

The Black Dog Institute reminds us that 45% of Australians will experience a mental illness in their lifetime. One in five mothers with children younger than two will be diagnosed with depression. At 13%, depression has the third highest burden of all diseases in Australia (burden of diseases refers to financial cost, mortality, morbidity etc).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that depression will be the number one health concerned in both developed and developing nations by 2030.

That gloomy prediction was no doubt behind the WHO’s decision in 2013 to introduce an eight-year plan to change the direction of mental health in its 194 member states. The plan’s main objectives are to:

strengthen effective leadership and governance for mental health;
provide comprehensive, integrated and responsive mental health and social care services in community-based settings;
implement strategies for promotion and prevention;
strengthen information systems, evidence and research.

Global targets and indicators were agreed upon as a way to monitor implementation, progress, and impact. The targets include a 20% increase in service coverage for severe mental disorders and a 10% reduction of the suicide rate in member countries by 2020.

These are noble aims, but as the WHO observes, it requires effective leadership and governance to implement meaningful change.

Odd Socks Day is one of the rare light-hearted efforts to raise awareness of mental health. Grow, the organisation behind the campaign, runs an in-school peer program that helps young people support each other through their issues.

The overall cost of unmanaged or mismanaged mental health in the Australian workplace is approximately $11 billion a year, according to Dr Samuel Harvey. Dr Harvey, a Black Dog Institute consultant, leads the workplace mental health research program at the school of psychiatry for the University of New South Wales. He was the lead author for research published in The Lancet which found that workplaces that reduce job strain could prevent up to 14% of new cases of common mental illness from occurring.

Quite clearly, we all need to pull up our socks, odd or not, and change our attitude. If only 35% of Australians in need are actively using mental health services, we need to do more than ask R.U.O.K.

Resources: Lifeline 13 11 14, beyondblue.org.au

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