Category: Friday on My Mind

A few myths about refugees

Sri Lankan and Tamil refugees
Sri Lankan and Tamil Refugees image by climatalk.in https://flic.kr/p/eEQYBg

My conscience would be burdened if anyone went to the polls on July 2 believing some of the persistent myths and misunderstandings about asylum seekers and refugees. First, let’s set out a few facts in the interests of perspective:

  • Asylum seekers are people seeking international protection but whose claims for refugee status have not yet been determined;
  • Australia is the only nation with a policy of indefinite mandatory detention for people it has identified as illegal or irregular arrivals. This policy was introduced by then Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating in 1992 (it had bipartisan support);
  • Refugees receive the same social security benefits as permanent residents, although they are exempt from the standard social security waiting period that applies to migrants;

These facts sit uneasily amidst the seriously heated debate between refugee advocacy groups and supporters of groups like Rise Up Australia, the Australian Liberty Alliance and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Many Australians believe (and resent) the story perpetuated by hoax emails that refugees receive more Social Security payments than permanent residents. You might also hear that refugees are given (free) houses, cars and big screen TVs, the latter one of the first things spotted on A Current Affair’s expose on Nauru. (Gasp. They have microwaves too).

There is also a persistent myth perpetuated by talkback radio jocks and right-wing commentators that our shoreline (all 25,670 kilometres of it), will be over-run if the current border protection policy does not remain in place.

Over-stayers outnumber boat people

In Australia, visa over-stayers greatly outnumber asylum seekers. According to an Immigration Department report, Migration Trends 2012-2013, 44,800 visitors and 10,720 students overstayed their visit, led by people from China (7,690), Malaysia (6,420), the US (5,220) and the UK (3,780).

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection’s statistical report for April 30, 2016 says there were 1,695 people in immigration detention facilities, including 1,509 in immigration detention on the mainland and 186 in immigration detention on Christmas Island. However, the report also states that there were 469 people, including 56 women and 50 children, at the Nauru Regional Processing Centre and 898 men at the Manus Island RPC. So in sum, the total numbers of people in detention (including on and off shore) at the behest of the Federal Government is 3,062.

Of the 1,695 people in detention on the mainland, 60% (1,025) arrived in Australia lawfully but were subsequently taken into immigration detention either for over staying or breaching their visa conditions. 548, or fewer than 40%, were ‘Irregular Maritime Arrivals’ (some terminology refers to these as ‘Illegals’).

On face value, Labor’s asylum seeker and refugee policies are not that far removed from those of the LNP.  Both remain committed to offshore processing, regional settlement and stopping people smuggling by turning boats away. However, Labor has a plan to provide $450 million over three years to support the UN’s refugee agency. Labor will abolish temporary protection visas, re-instate access to the Refugee Review Tribunal and abolish the Independent Assessment Authority.  Labor states it will also reinstate a statutory requirement for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to report on how many claims were processed within 90 days of a completed application being received. This ‘90 day rule’ was removed by the Abbott Government last year.

Labor also wants to increase Australia’s annual humanitarian intake from the current 13,750 to 27,000 per annum by 2025. The Australian Greens want to ramp this number up to 50,000, while the LNP aims to increase it to 18,000 ‘within a couple of years’.

In September 2015 the Abbott Government responded to the Middle East humanitarian crisis by announcing that Australia would take an additional 12,000 refugees fleeing Syria and Iraq.

In February this year, the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Canada’s exceptional response to Syrian refugees, resettling 20,490 in just three months. Labor called on Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to explain why, as revealed in a Senate Estimates hearing, that Australia had resettled only 26 Syrian refugees since the emergency intake was announced. A spokesman for Mr Dutton said the government was conducting rigorous security and other checks that could not be rushed.

Social Services Minister Christian Porter has since told the ABC (on April 6), that 187 refugees had now been resettled in Australia and an additional 1,600 visas had been issued overseas. Meanwhile, Canada’s intake of refugees from Syria topped 26,000.

The indefatigable Refugee Action Collective is staging one last peak hour vigil next Thursday outside Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s office on Gympie Road Strathpine. The aim is to bring the Minister to account and remind people of comments made on Sky News when he criticised Labor and Greens’ proposals to lift the intake to 27,000 or 50,000 respectively.

“For many people, they won’t be numerate or literate in their own language let alone English,” he told Sky News.

“These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that.”

Greens lead refugees reform agenda

The Australian Greens is the only political party with a truly reformist answer to the asylum seeker/refugee question. The Greens say it is a better (economic) proposition to allow refugees to live in the community. The Parliamentary Budget Office estimates the average cost of allowing someone to live in the general community at $35,000, compared to $225,000 on Manus Island or Nauru.

The Greens’ plan to close down offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru and to close ‘the worst’ Australian detention centres on the mainland and on Christmas Island. They would establish 30-day time limits on detention in Australia, with ‘periodic judicial review’ of any detention thereafter.

A few of the minor parties are less forgiving: The Rise Up Party says it would ‘implement legislation that will send all illegal asylum seekers back to where they came from’.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has a policy of ‘zero net immigration’. By that is meant, if a migrant goes home, you let another one in. Sustainable Australia also has a ‘low immigration’ policy.

The Australian Liberty Alliance is running candidates in the Upper and Lower houses for the first time on a platform which includes stopping the ‘Islamisation of Australia’. You can read about the ALA here and watch their 15-second advertisement which has been banned from television. *

All you need is love (ra-ta-ta-ta-tah)

Sigh. It’s Refugee Week, did you know? I often wonder how this country lost its multicultural way after we welcomed and resettled 57,700 Vietnamese refugees between 1975 and 1982. Of these, only 2,100 or so were unauthorised arrivals by boat, although many more set out by sea and never made it to shore. The 1971 Census revealed there were just 700 Vietnamese in Australia.

Fifteen years later it was 80,000 and at the 2011 Census, the numbers of Vietnamese-born living in Australia rose to 185,039. Despite language barriers and religious differences (the main religion is Mahayana Buddhism), these new migrants were widely accepted.

Imagine an Australia without Luke Nguyen (chef and TV presenter), Anh Do (comedian), Nam Le (author), Caroline Tran (Triple J announcer), Hieu Van Le, (Lieutenant Governor of South Australia) or Vincent Long Van Nguyen (Parramatta’s Catholic Archbishop).

The Beatles were strongly opposed to the Vietnam War, or rather, western involvement in it. At the peak of the conflict, John Lennon wrote a famous song, which in Vietnam is known as Tất cả những gì bạn cần có là tình yêu.

*policy points drawn from the websites of political parties

 

 

 

 

Greens coalition bridge too far

Greens metaphor: Oresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark
Öresund Bridge between Copenhagen and Malmö photo by Fab-o-Paris https://flic.kr/p/oudRkh

You may have missed my Facebook link to the story from the Guardian Weekly about the alliance between New Zealand’s Labour Party and the (Kiwi) Greens. The two parties drafted a one-page agreement with one specific aim – to defeat the Nationals and Prime Minister John Keys at the 2017 election. There is no suggestion of a coalition beyond that point, just a muscling-up to push the incumbents from office.

This seems like a fond hope. On the 2014 election result, Labour/Green would still be 730,389 votes short. Still, the NZ Greens hold more sway in the New Zealand parliament, holding 14 seats and taking 10.70% of the popular vote in 2014.

My one line suggestion on Facebook (“memo Bill and Richard”) apparently fell like pearls into the Facebook pigsty. Only one person ‘liked’ it. (This aligns with research that suggests few Facebook browsers click through and read to the end of a lengthy article).

Last month, Australian Greens Treasury spokesman and the only Green MP Adam Bandt said on Q&A that the Greens were open to forming a coalition with Labor. But Labor Opposition leader Bill Shorten said Bandt was “dreaming”.

“Labor will fight this election to form its own government and to form a government in our own right. Labor will not be going into coalition with any party,” he told ABC North Queensland.

The Australian Greens remain incensed about Labor’s ads which suggested they were doing a preference deal with the Liberals. The Greens have since said they will put Labor ahead of Liberal on how to vote cards in all but 11 seats, leaving the latter ‘open’. PM Malcolm Turnbull told ABC Online last Sunday the Liberal Party will preference the Greens last, or behind Labor. “This is a call that I have made in the national interest,” the PM said.

Labor confirmed it will direct its preferences to the Greens in the lower house. There are reports of Labor promoting the Liberal Party over the Nationals in the South Australian seats of Murray, O’Connor and Durack. The Sydney Morning Herald also reported this week that Labor is considering a deal with Nick Xenophon that could see the independent senator pick up three Liberal seats in South Australia.

But is it, as Ben Eltham suggests, trivial to focus on preference deals (which are after all just recommendation on how-to-vote cards), instead of policies?

Conor Little, research associate at Keele University wrote in The Conversation about the difficulties facing Green parties in coalition:

 “Large centre-left parties often fish from the same pool of voters and compete on similar issues as the Greens. As a result, the Green parties are very often seen as a threat to mainstream centre-left parties and vice versa.’’

On any level, Green politics is less influential in Australia that in many European countries and, as we have stated, New Zealand.

The Greens served as the junior coalition partner in Germany’s parliament in 1998 and 2005 and came fourth at the last election (beaten out of third by one seat). In the UK, the Greens polled more than 1 million votes, holding its one seat (Brighton) in the British parliament.

Nordic noir (or verte)

In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance polled 7.8% of the vote and holds two seats in Opposition. Across the Oresund Bridge in Sweden, the Greens held 6.9% of the vote and 25 seats at the 2014 election, the fourth-largest party in the Swedish parliament.

I mention these two countries in particular as we have become armchair experts on things Nordic, watching acclaimed TV series including The Bridge, Borgen, Wallander and Unit One. So we now recognise useful Swedish words like ya (yes), nej (no), öl (beer) and kön (sex).

The word ‘Green’ can mean different things in global politics. Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance is the most socialist party in Denmark, advocating socialist democracy not just for Denmark but internationally.

Finland’s Green League has 15 seats in parliament after the 2015 election, having quit the coalition twice over approval for a Russian-backed nuclear power plant. Statistics Finland says the party won five more seats in 2015, its vote increasing by 1.3% to 8.5%. The League usually sits in the centre of the political spectrum, criticising both socialism and the free market. But it is also anti-nuclear, anti-conscription, pro same-sex marriage and takes the high moral ground that rich countries must lead others in mitigating the impact of climate change.

So it seems that as the various shades of Green in the world have gathered support and joined coalitions, some have stepped back from the more absolutist positions of their founders.

Conor Little says being in coalition is difficult for any small party. “Co-operating with (or in) a government is a balancing act and no matter how much they achieve, parties with only a few seats usually need to compromise on much of their platform.”

Sometimes the need to assert their identity leads these parties to end their coalition early, as the Australian Greens did, ending its alliance with Labor in February 2013. Likewise Finland’s Greens walked out in 2002 and 2014 over a nuclear power plant proposal. In 2002 the New Zealand Greens rebelled over the release of genetically modified organisms. As Little says, these moves tend to attract more support for Green parties.

Meanwhile, with just 16 days left until Australians vote, what is it about the Australian Greens that makes the LNP believe the party is a threat to the national interest? Perhaps this:

“The Greens are the only party that understands that the economy must work for the benefit of society and not the other way around. We have a progressive plan where tax reform starts at the top by removing unfair tax breaks and wasteful subsidies for polluting industries. Not only will this help address the structural deficit of the budget, but it will force money away from tax sheltered locations like superannuation, housing and mining and into productive areas that will set us up for the new economy and more equitable wealth distribution.”

The party polled 8.6% of the primary vote in 2013, yet because of our preferential voting system, the Greens have only one voice in Parliament, although they have 10 seats in the Senate. In New Zealand, with a first-past-the-post voting system, the Greens have 14 seats in Parliament. In Finland, the Greens hold 15 seats with just 8.5% of the vote.

The Australian media rarely portrays the Greens in a positive light. In one transparent example, a page one article in The Australian in April 2015 argued that only the “godless and rich” voted Green. An analysis of seats in the 2015 NSW election by Mark Coultan concluded that atheists and agnostics were more likely to vote Green, as were the wealthy.

Coultan said the primary Green vote averaged 17% in the top 10 electorates ranked by proportion of households with income of $3,000 a week or more (based on 2011 Census). In the top 10 electorates with the lowest proportion of rich families, the primary Green vote was 10.9%. Coultan added that this figure was inflated by outstanding Green results in the anti-CSG electorates of Tweed and Lismore.

Electorates ranked one and two for the number of atheists, agnostics, humanists, rationalists and people with no religion (Balmain and Newtown), were among the three seats picked up by the Greens in NSW.

So how relevant is this report and did it really warrant page one treatment? Judge for yourselves (i) the original yarn and (ii) a lengthy dissection by blogger Dr Kevin Bonham.

Having said that, we’re off to prune the roses before the fickle finger of climate change brings on unwanted early buds.

Rainy day at the ballet

 

Racheal Walsh and tap dancers performing during Queensland Ballet's Strictly Gershwin
Queensland Ballet guest dancer Rachael Walsh stepping out with tap dancers in Strictly Gershwin. Image courtesy of Queensland Ballet (David Kelly 2016)

So it’s not ballet, but last Thursday night I’m down at the local RSL supporting a new monthly music venture, Club Acoustic. Everyone gets charged $5 admission and then a succession of musicians and poets each have a 15-minute spot to entertain the punters. The evening closes with a guest band and people get up and dance. Organiser Regalia (not her real name), has a novel approach to raising money for the musicians. She asks people to ‘sponsor’ someone they particularly like and then at the end of the night the door takings and bonuses are recycled and most of the musicians get their $5 refunded. Some even end up in the black. It’s called subsidising the performing arts.

On Saturday, we took a punt on the wild weather warnings and drove to Brisbane for the matinee of Strictly Gershwin, a Queensland Ballet production. We are subscribers, (thanks to She Who Books Tickets Early), so the five of us ended up in the second row from the front. I became aware we were seated on top of what would normally be the Lyric Theatre orchestra pit. Yet I could hear an orchestra tuning up back-stage. Then the curtain rose and there was the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, spread across the back of the stage like a big band from the 1920s.

As is the way with professional shows, musical supervisor and conductor Gareth Valentine got stuck right into it, stirring the ensemble through a lively Gershwin overture. Pretty soon the dancers came on stage and a completely absorbing spectacle unfolded. Not just dancers and an orchestra, but a piano soloist,  four singers, tap dancers, two people on in-line skates, two French ladies wheeling prams, can-can dancers and a gendarme on a bicycle. One of our ballet companions, an experienced set designer and theatre producer was a bit dubious about the in-line skaters, imagining one or both of them ending up in our laps. But as is almost always the way with the world-class Queensland Ballet, there were no mis-steps or wardrobe malfunctions as up to 25 dancers negotiated the space between the orchestra and our laps.

Splendidly done!

One of the most popular performers of the afternoon was retired principal ballerina Rachael Walsh making a guest appearance, deftly stepping (in heels) alongside tap dancers.

As Anne Richards once famously said: “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”

For those who enjoy and understand ballet, this 5-star review by Elise Lawrence will give you the full flavour.

Did I mention the whole season, which ended on June 4, sold out? We subscribed in September last year and even then had to pick a matinee! Did I also mention our average subscriber ticket price per ticket for four ballets was $77.50?

People who bought individual tickets for this show paid as much as $140, but even then, what value! Sitting there in row 2BB, soaking up this world-class spectacle, I wondered how the hell they can afford to put this on.

As is my wont, I went off to investigate.

Downsize orchestras or provide more funding?

The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is one of six state-based professional groups that perform a wide range of classical and popular material for all age groups and interests. The QSO states in its 2015 annual report it employs 88 full-time musicians. This year the QSO scheduled 157 concerts over 47 weeks, performing on average at least three times a week. The Brisbane-based orchestra also takes on a free community engagement program and an extensive state-wide education program that connects with 30,000 students. So who pays for all of this? Certainly not the 1.6 million QSO punters alone.

The QSO, like many other professional performance troupes of this scale, is supported by Federal and State government funding, along with funds provided by sponsors, donors and supporters.

Federal and State funding ($11.147 million), accounted for 64% of the QSO’s budget of $17.516 million in 2015.

Ticket sales contributed 15% ($2.59 million) with philanthropy (sponsorships, donations, bequests, memberships) contributing $2.863 million. Employee costs and artists’ fees and expenses came to $11.981 million.

Queensland Ballet, itself supported by sponsors, subscribers, donors, and state funding, employs the QSO on a per-performance basis. Most orchestras are available to outside troupes needing their skills. A spokeswoman said that when QB is unable to have the orchestra, either through availability or budgetary constraints, they use QSO recorded music.

It’s a good sideline for the QSO, which earned $852,010 in orchestra hire fees in 2015. You might recall over the years the QSO accompanying artists as diverse as Harry Connick Jnr, k.d Lang, Dionne Warwick, Andrea Bocelli, Pavarotti, Anthony Warlow and george.

Unhappily for those who cherish State support for the arts, a recent article on the financial performance of Australia’s six orchestras shows the majority struggling to make an operating surplus.

Author Hans Hoegh-Guldberg compared the financial performance of the six state orchestras in 2013 with a decade earlier.  In 2003, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), Sydney Symphony Orchestra (SSO) and the WA Symphony Orchestra (WASO) made profits.

Among the others, the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO) almost balanced its books while the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO) suffered the worst result (-$855,000) followed by QSO (-$445,000).

In 2013, SSO was the only symphony orchestra showing a surplus apart from TSO (a small surplus of $1000).

However, there were significant fluctuations in the net result from year to year. In 2012, QSO showed a large net profit of $2.26 million and in 2013 a loss of $273,000, almost entirely due to a $3m+ decline in funding revenue. QSO posted a net profit of $622,369 in 2014 and $655, 080 in 2015

Here’s the (ahem) key problem: it is not possible to increase orchestra productivity through technology; it can only be done by reducing the numbers of players, as recommended in the Strong Report (2005). Fortunately, good sense prevailed and the Federal government chose instead to increase funding and maintain the current size of orchestras.

But how long can we stave off the day when someone called in to do a cost-benefit analysis goes home and tells his wife: “Honey, I shrunk the orchestra.”

By now you will see that our $77.50 per head for a two and a half hour Australasian premiere by the Queensland Ballet and the QSO was somewhat of a bargain.

Not to mention a quartet of professional singers and pianist Daniel Le (he tackled Gershwin’s ground-breaking Rhapsody in Blue with considerable élan, looking splendid under the spotlight in his white suit).

Musical Supervisor and Conductor for Gershwin, Gareth Valentine, himself a showman, performed an animated dance routine through the overture and towards the finale joined Kylie Foster in a piano duet (whilst still conducting the orchestra and vocalists).

Not a page turner in sight.

Queensland Ballet, led by Li Cunxin, relies on Government funding for only 25% of its annual budget. Impressive contributions from sponsors, generous subscribers, supporters and donors (up 81.49% on 2014) and ticket sales cover the rest. Queensland Ballet set a new box office record of $3.23 million in 2015. It’s hard to see the man known world-wide as Mao’s Last Dancer topping that in 2017 or indeed, a show the calibre of Strictly Gershwin.

But as George and Ira Gershwin would say: “It ain’t necessarily so.”

 

The demise of Page Turner

Paige Turner 02
Beth Allen turns the page for Wendy Harper, accompanying soprano Marina Poŝa at Lift Gallery

Technology’s great, except when it does you out of a job. My friend Spike trained in the 1960s as a hot metal typesetter, a printing technique dating from the late 1800s. This industry relic was replaced by phototypesetting, which produced columns of print ready to be ‘pasted up.’ This last bastion of the printing trade was made obsolete by digital newspaper publishing systems, the personal computer and desktop publishing software.

In the music world, the traditional role of page turner is threatened with obsolescence by the advent of clever new apps for Ipads and tablets, controlled with a foot pedal. You may have seen singers at gigs with an Ipad attached to their mike stand – foot pedal optional. This is the modern musician’s answer to the wind snatching your chord charts or lyric sheets from the music stand during the four bars between the end of the chorus and the next verse. The job of piano page-turner, however, is a little harder to render obsolete, because the pianist relies on a human being to know, by visual cues and musical knowledge, just when to turn the page.

Our photo today shows Beth Allen turning the page at a critical point in the aria La Maja y el Ruisenor (The Maiden and the Nightingale) by Granados for Wendy Harper, accompanying soprano Marina Poŝa at Lift Gallery.

This is old school and Beth, who is a good sport, puts up with her partner Kim’s jokes, introducing her as ‘Miss P. Turner!’

Just so you know, Page Turner is a Korean TV drama and there are at least two people who go by a similar moniker, one being Daniel Frank Kelley, aka Paige Turner or Showbiz Spitfire, an American drag queen, comedian and singer.

There’s more, but this is a family show, so I won’t be directing you elsewhere.

The classical music page turner does indeed have to read music, pay attention and not beat the pianist to the turn. Wikipedia describes the typical page-turner as ‘a friend or acquaintance of the pianist and preferably a pianist as well’. The job is a handy earner for music students; to wit, notes left on conservatorium noticeboards – “free-lance page-turner, available nights and weekends – attentive and reliable.”

Now there are Ipad apps which will turn the page for you, including Tonara for Ipad and Pageflip, an Ipad app which comes with a foot pedal. Ipads and tablets have become quite the thing among musicians and sound engineers. You may have been at a live gig and seen the sound guy wandering around the room, tablet in hand – that’s his mixing console.

My versatile musician friend Silas Palmer scored a gig last year accompanying octogenarian balladeer Kamahl on a tour of Queensland. They were using backing tracks, with Silas on whatever brand of grand piano was in residence at the various venues. I noticed he had a tablet on the music stand, where pianists normally put their scores.

“What’s with the tablet?” I asked after the show.

“Oh that’s just chord charts,” said Silas, “and the set list”.

But getting back to the human page turner, sitting patiently to the left of the pianist, watching and waiting for the moments (there could be dozens of turns, depending on the length of the piece), to show their skills. Some classical musicians scoff at the notion of using a tablet or Ipad, saying good page turners have a ‘job for life’.

Organist Michael Hammer, someone whose knowledge of page turning seems beyond reproach, has devoted an article (with photos) to the subject, leavened with a noteworthy sense of humour.

He advises page turners to ask the pianist to perform a “windmill’ with their arms so the turner can judge how far away to sit, given that some pianists can get a bit carried away. It is also important, he says, to watch the pianist to see where they are up to on the score.

“If he is short enough, you might be able to make out when he is at the top of the page. Despite their good looks, it is still advisable to look at the music and not at the pianist.” 

But on to more weighty matters

I came to this subject after pondering the business world’s most common response to declining revenues: making do with fewer people. Along the way, big business appropriated the words redundant (defined by dictionary.com as the state of being not or no longer needed or useful) and retrenchment (the act of retrenching; a cutting down or off, as by the reduction of expenses.) The meanings of these words are so closely entwined the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) considers them interchangeable. (Some, perhaps more sensitive, employers try to soften the blow by explaining that it’s the job, not the person that is ‘redundant’. However, given that ‘the sack’ is still the result, it is questionable whether this does actually make the ‘sackee’ feel less unwanted. (SWSLTHAS) (She who sometimes like to have a say.)

The hardest form of retrenchment is the list posted on the cafeteria wall of those whose jobs will go on (date). The softer form is what is known as ‘a round of redundancies’, typically offered to well-paid middle managers, those whom upper management may have identified as not delivering value for money. So they go home, do some sums on the back of an envelope, talk it over with their spouse and maybe go to work next day and say “Yes thanks, I’ll take the redundancy.”

Some big companies offer up to four weeks for every year of service, plus accrued holiday and long service leave entitlements. The trouble with waves of redundancies and retrenchments, they are often linked to companies doing it tough or going broke, usually at a time in the economic cycle when it is difficult to find another job, especially when your last position was made redundant. The word has some pejorative connotations that cannot be easily shrugged off.

According to the ABS, retrenchments peaked at 7.3% of employed persons in 1972, fell away to 4.1%-4.6% between 1986 and 1990, but rose again to 6.5% during the 1990s recession.

We can compare those historical figures (almost half of those retrenchments happened in the manufacturing sector, by the way), with the period 2000 to 2013, when the rate fell from 4.0% in 2000 to a low of 2.0% in 2008, before increasing sharply in 2010 to 3.1% and remaining at that level through 2012 and 2013. But it does depend where you live and work. The Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia had the highest retrenchment rates, harking back to February 2000 (6.0%, 5.4% and 5.1%).

The future for manual workers looks bleak. A study by real estate firm CBRE and capital management group Genesis forecasts that robots will make 50 occupations redundant by 2025.

And if you are training (or re-training after a redundancy), this Daily Mail report includes two handy lists: (i) which jobs are most likely to succumb (e.g. telemarketers, photographic process operators and tax preparers) and (ii) those occupations which may prove to be retrenchment-proof (e.g. chiropractors, orthodontists and supervisors of correctional officers).

Journalists did not make either list, which is surprising, given the recent flood/spate/outrage/raft of media redundancies. This scary story by Ross Miller in The Verge is cause to ponder the omission:

 

Chasing the youth vote

Melbourne climate change rally, photo by John Englart https://flic.kr/p/p3bVBw

Some of you may remember Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten’s bid for the youth vote last year, proposing a voting age of 16. There was a hue and cry about this (in the meaning of a loud public outcry…from the French huer or loud cry). Shorten’s gambit coincided with his worst-ever polling (17%) in the preferred leader stakes.

The nation’s voting age should be lowered to 16, he said, because young Australians do not see their views reflected in Parliament. Shorten told the New South Wales Young Labor conference in Sydney that if people aged 16 and 17 could drive, work, pay taxes, join the military and make choices about medical treatment, they should be allowed to vote.

As the law stands, you can apply to be on the electoral roll at 16 or 17, but cannot vote until you turn 18.

The magic age of sweet sixteen triggers the legal right to say yes or no to some interesting things without asking one’s parents.

This notably applies to consensual sex (careful, the sex has to be with someone who is also 16 or older). If you live in South Australia or Tasmania, the age of consent is 17, and in Queensland, the law differentiates between homosexual sex (18) and carnal knowledge (16).

In most states and territories, a 16-year-old can move out of home without their parents’ consent and unless they are at risk, child welfare authorities are unlikely to force the youth to return home. Teenagers with a need to know about their rights, wherever they live, are often referred to www.lawstuff.org.au

Shorten wisely stayed away from the issues that provoke family brouhaha (a state of agitation over something relatively minor) like consensual sex, the right to leave home and the rights of (a girl) to be prescribed contraceptive pills.

He hedged his bets by including 17-year-olds because, for example, the Australian Defence Force only admits people aged 17 and over, although they can apply at 16. You can get a driver’s licence at 17 in all states and territories except the NT (16 and a half) and Victoria (18). At 16 you can leave school, work full-time, join a union, join an industry super fund, pay taxes, apply for legal aid, consent to medical and dental treatment and get your own debit card without involving Mum and Dad. You can get married, but Mum and Dad have to sign off, likewise if you apply for a passport. A 16-year-old can’t buy cigarettes or alcohol, although their peer group will smoke and drink if someone else buys it for them and it is consumed in private.

Shorten talked about other jurisdictions where people get the vote at 16, naming Austria, Scotland and Brazil. There are eight other countries where people get the vote from the age of 16. But there are just as many jurisdictions which cling to a voting age of 21.

In Australia, the latter was dropped to 18 in 1973, just one more major reform by the far-sighted Whitlam government.

Shorten’s big play for approval to drop the voting age was to tell us that more than 17,000 Australians under 18 paid $41 million in taxes (2012-2013 data). But his admission that 400,000 people aged 18-24 are absent from the electoral roll was not a great selling point. And it’s a bit early to say how many of them signed up for the 2016 election by the time the roll closed on Monday, May 23.

Kids are too immature to vote, aren’t they?

Many of the online replies to the ABC’s report panned Shorten’s youth vote idea, although Treefrog said if 16-year-olds were disadvantaged by policy (education cuts in the 2014 budget), they should get a say. Some wanted the voting age raised to 30 because ‘anyone under 30 was too immature to make the right choice’. Oh, and some correspondents wanted optional voting for the over-60s because ‘they have too much influence on public policy’. The public reaction to Shorten’s suggestion seems in line with an Australian Election Study in 2010 in which  94% of respondents opposed any change.

An analysis of Newspoll data by the Whitlam Institute, updated in 2013, suggests the youth vote may have determined the outcomes of the last four Federal elections. Director Eric Sidoti says of the research he did with Dr Chris Brooker that the collapse of the youth vote for Labor between 2007 and 2010 among 18-34 year olds and their intentions to switch to the Greens went a long way to explaining the hung parliament.

Despite a relatively high level of non-enrolment, many young people (15-24) are now directly engaged in big issue politics – human rights, racism, the economy and the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald said organisations like GetUp! And the Australian Youth Climate Coalition provided a glimpse of this changing political landscape.

Those who doubt the ability of youngsters to make informed political decisions should check out this elegant piece of research forwarded by Mr Shiraz. It tests voter turnout and the quality of choice in light of Austria’s decision to lower the voting age to 16 in 2007.

This is a weighty document but worth reading to reach the authors’ conclusion that: “a key criticism of lowering the voting age to 16 does not hold: there is little evidence that these citizens are less able or less motivated to participate effectively in politics.”

Smart kids with important things to say

The Whitlam Institute’s What Matters essay competition reveals more reasons why the youth vote is important. Overall 2015 winner Amelia Browns of Sutherland Public School (Grades 5 and 6) wrote a touching essay “Ben Matters’’ about losing her baby cousin to Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

Runner-up Madeleine Sylvester of St Agatha’s Catholic Primary School (also in grade 5/6), urged Australians that “Watts Matter,” explaining how our households squander electricity. Other category winners wrote about refugees, climate change, endangered species and the importance of physics. So tell me again why teenagers are not ready to vote at 16 or 17? These students, aged 10-14, are already putting together lucid prose that demonstrates they have a handle on the world and ideas to make it a better place.

Sunshine Coast songwriter Karen Law brought her family band to our lounge room a couple of week ago. The repertoire included a song about Nauru, written by Karen’s 13-year-old daughter Hazel. “What will they do with the island, in five years,” the writer putting herself in the asylum seeker’s sandals.

“Why do I keep living when no-one throws a thought my way?

So is something wrong with me, or something wrong with you?

Do you feel pain, or are you just oblivious

To the world you’re standing in?

There could be a hidden message in “What will they do with the island, in five years” – ostensibly about the government’s promise to process everyone on Nauru within five years. In five years Hazel Law, who shows a capacity at 13 to think and feel deeply about social issues, will be 18. If Bill Shorten gets the keys to the Lodge, she might even be eligible to vote at the next election, circa 2020.

 

Morris dancing 101


They say Morris dancing is good for aerobic fitness. Plus, you get to drink cider and belt people with sticks. I was musing about this while getting down on one knee in the kitchen looking for a salad bowl and, having found it, then thinking about having to get up again. I’ve increasingly noticed a difficulty/disinclination to rise from sitting/ kneeling/squatting to the upright position. The physiotherapist and the yoga teacher tell me this is a deterioration in ‘core strength’ as one’s body ages.

The last six-week yoga session was eventful for the number of movements which (a) caused me pain or (b) were not possible at all. There are many ways those in the 65+ category can keep our bodies in shape and work on maintaining the core strength that makes everyday movements as easy as they were in our youth. (It should be pointed out to musicians that playing the piano, harp, fiddle, mandolin or guitar for two hours straight is not exercise).

No, I’m talking about yoga, Pilates, tai chi, aerobics or aqua aerobics, jogging, swimming, surfing or the more conventional group fitness activities like dancing, sparring, gym sessions and bike riding. There’s a local group known as the “Lycra Lizards” who put on helmets and bike riding gear then pedal to points far away and back again. A while ago, I met one of the Lycra Lizards aged 60+ who was hobbling up the main street. He told me they (the Lizards) had just ridden to Brisbane (93.9 kms) and a few rode back again. Others put their bikes and their smarting bodies on the train to Landsborough where mobiles came out and texts were sent to partners/friends to pick them up at the station.

NB: Holding a kindle upright is not exercise

In my book, riding a bicycle from Maleny to Brisbane and then back again (including the notorious 14.9 kms uphill climb from Landsborough) qualifies as extreme exercise. My fitness yardstick is to walk from the creek at the bottom of our property 250m uphill to the mailbox without huffing. Unhappily, I’m flat out making it to the lemon tree half-way up.

My GP is more than happy with my cholesterol levels, blood pressure and general fitness. But as any personal trainer will tell you, there is a lot of difference between walking to town and back and doing something which challenges your level of aerobic fitness (like rowing, kayaking, jogging, hefting weights, skipping, sparring or hauling both wheelie bins uphill to the kerb). If you are curious about your aerobic fitness, see how long it takes your pulse to return to normal after aerobic exercise. The YMCA yardstick for men over 65 is 59-81 seconds (good), 130-156 seconds (very poor). Do this at your own risk.

And now he talks about Morris!

This brings me to the Morris tradition, a relentless form of dancing that involves every muscle in the body. When my Morris dancer friend Eric turned 70 I asked him how much longer he could keep on dancing and he said he’d still be doing it when he’s 100. So of course I wrote a song along those lines, sitting hunched over my guitar for as long as it took to develop RSI symptoms.

For those who came late to Friday on My Mind, this is episode 103, the first of which, on May 2nd 2014, explained the ancient rituals of Morris dancing. This year, finally, I made it to the summit of Mt Coot-tha at dawn on the 1st of May to help the Morris men and women of Brisbane and surrounds dance up the sun. You might remember this:

“Songwriter John Thompson (Cloudstreet) penned a song a few years ago which starts: “Dance up the sun on a fine May morning, dance up to sun to call in the spring…” and traces the English tradition that spawned this annual event. Morris dancing is so old it figures in Shakespeare’s writings and it was ancient then. The May Day legend has it that if Morris men (and women), do not dance up the sun, the sun will nevermore rise.

Those with even a passing interest in folk music and folk festivals will have seen and heard Morris dancers as they walk around festival sites with bells attached to their legs. Dancers either use garlands of flowers or hankies for the gentle dances, or they clash sticks and bump bellies, symbolising the battle between the seasons. Morris dancers usually wear hats with flowers, and “tatter coats” and many paint their faces, but there are as many variations in dress and dance style as there are Morris teams. The tradition flourishes in the UK, but there are also about 150 Morris teams in the US and it lives on in colonial outposts like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Morris dancers are the traditional butt of jokes among the folkies who prefer to sit around tables in pubs playing tunes. You know the ones – the A part and the B part repeated until whoever is running the tunes session changes to another tune of the same ilk. This is a curious irony, as Morris dancers are accompanied by three or four musicians thumping out folk tunes using instruments like accordions, whistles, drums and hurdy-gurdys. The tunes are typically in 2/4, 6/8 or 4/4 time or a slow march tempo so the dancers have time to execute dramatic stick clashes, accompanied by visceral screaming and occasional bodily injuries.

Those who have no time for Morris men would remember this, from Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder: “Morris dancing is the most fatuous, tenth-rate entertainment ever devised by man. Forty effeminate blacksmiths waving bits of cloth they’ve just wiped their noses on. How it’s still going on in this day and age I’ll never know.”

Well to hell with Blackadder – some of my best friends are Morris dancers. A bunch of them came to my 60th birthday party and dragged me up for the Upton on Severn Stick Dance. I’m OK now.

That Australia’s Morris sides get up early on the first of May is a credit to them, as this is typically a misty mid-autumn day Down Under. What they are actually celebrating is an ancient Northern Hemisphere Spring festival – the darling buds of May and all that. May Day celebrations pre-date Christianity. The Romans celebrated the festival of Flora (the goddess of flower) and in Celtic countries this dates back to the Beltane festival.

These pagan traditions were stamped out when Europe was Christianised, but the maypole dance survives in many countries as a reminder of what Sigmund Freud interpreted as a phallic fertility ritual. Dancers assemble around a tall pole, each holding a coloured ribbon as they dance in a circle. The multi-coloured ribbons form a rainbow around the pole and when the dancers turn and go back the other way, the ribbons unravel.

Just don’t tell your kids about Freud – silly old man.”

 

 

Overdue letter to Ma

MumDad25th 01

Hey Ma, I’ve been meaning to write this letter for such a long time – like, 50 years or more. Excuse the casual introduction but that’s the way people address their elders in the 21st century. You’d be amazed at the technology today. We email, skype (video phone calls) and tweet (too hard to explain), using hand-held telephones which can take photos, home movies and, oh, make phone calls. You can be constantly in touch with family and friend on social media, firing off messages and photos through the ether.

You’d marvel (and I suspect not totally approve) of my putting your photo on the Internet where millions of people can check you out, if they have a mind. Life now is so different for teenagers. In your courting days, Dad had to ask permission of your father to take you out and have you back at the front gate by 10pm. You communicated with hand-written notes and secret glances across the high street or at the dance hall. Today, girls as young as 12 and 13 are allowed to have boyfriends and ‘sleep overs’ with their girlfriends and who knows what goes on when their hand-held computers are passed around.

You may already know this if there’s some kind of Wikipedia (online encyclopaedia) in Heaven. You believed in the Hereafter, which was probably a good thing, given that you had only 48 years on the planet, including 11 years in your adopted homeland, New Zealand. Women with breast cancer in the 1960s were often diagnosed late and treatment was limited to a mastectomy and radiation therapy. Then your doctor signed you up for new, experimental drug treatment.

“It may not help me, but if it helps some other puir soul in the future that’ll be a fine thing,” you said, faith grounded in the Scottish Methodist church.

It is true that the risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1960s was one in 20, and is now one in eight. However, this is mainly due to more people living longer – into the age bracket where they are more likely to get breast cancer. In the 1960s, the life expectancy of a female was 73. Since then, life expectancy has improved to 84 and a great many women live into their 90s and beyond, mainly due to the vast improvement in diagnostic techniques for cancer and all manner of illnesses, great advances in heart surgery, vaccines and treatment for the sort of chronic ailments that put people in a pine box in the 1960s.

The ability to detect cancer early has greatly improved. These days, most women in the target age range have routine two-yearly breast scans (mammograms) which can find otherwise undetectable tiny tumours. And treatment with less invasive surgery, more effective drugs (chemotherapy) and/or radiation can then ensue.

As a result, of early detection and improved treatment, the survival rate has greatly improved since you were afflicted. The five-year survival in 1965-1969 was just 64%, according to the Cancer Journal for Clinicians. So if you’d been diagnosed late, your chances were slim. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says the five-year survival rate now is 89.4%.

Ma, at 67, I have a suspicion of blokes my age who talk too much about their mothers, living or dead. But I have sort of kept you alive in a sense, writing a couple of songs based on your observations and impressions and my memories of the new country. Lucky I kept a few of your old letters and notes of the six-week journey on the Rangitiki in 1955.

When children are left motherless, nothing fills the void and a step-mother, if there is one, is just a (hopefully nice) woman who loves your father. In the 1960s, teenage boys were not encouraged to grieve – we didn’t know how. We became blokes, drinking beer and listening to rock music, getting obsessed with the All Blacks and (trying) to chase girls. As life went on, it should have been obvious that crude sublimation was never going to help a sensitive lad who lost his mother at 17. That major life trauma shaped chapters of my 20s and 30s and got buried beneath the rest of the baggage until it came time to unpack and let go.

Yes, I should have persevered with the piano, as you insisted, because as you said, it could have earned me a living of sorts. Instead, I managed to harness this other gift for words. I came to music later in life − a self-taught musical dunce by the Conservatorium standards. Nevertheless, I’m told the words and music fit together fairly well.

And you missed my weddings, Mum. I married young, spent 12 or 15 years working, travelling, being a drunk, and getting sober. I met a great woman, well, actually I met two. The first one when we were both much younger. If you’d been around you might have persuaded us that 18 and 21 was a bit young. We sort of outgrew each other, but we both got re-married and went on with our lives. Now, this other great woman, she’s been in my life for 34 years. You’d be pleased with my choice, although she’d tell you the choice was all hers! (Who chased who? Ed.)

And then there’s this great extended family, in Australia where we live and back home in Aotearoa. In your last year there were just the seven of us and three wee bairns. Today in Australia, New Zealand and Canada the whanau, as the Maoris call it, number 42, all loyal, loving people, including your 6ft 5in grandson.

We keep in touch with your sister’s daughter in Scotland and another cousin in England. I went to visit your surviving sister in England a few years ago – she’s in her mid-90s and still living in her own flat.

When I saw this tiny white haired-woman come to the door it gave me a pang. When we lose mothers young, we forget what they looked like, but to me, she looked as if you might have done had you been alive today.

I gave her one of our CDs (the modern version of an LP), one of four albums, most of them songs I wrote. Your sister said: “You got that from Winnie, you know. She could play anything on the piano, your Mum. She didn’t need the music – if she knew it, she could play it.”

Well that does sound familiar. I have fond memories of listening to you practice the organ at the wee wooden Methodist church. I’d call in after school and try out the latest Beatles song, picking out the melody with one hand.

I knew there was a reason I loved all those great Hammond organ songs of 1967 – Whiter Shade of Pale, I’m a Man, Light My Fire. It was hardly Trust and Obey, but the music helped me through a difficult year.

So this is me, belatedly toasting my absent mother, and the countless other mothers whose leaving left their children bewildered and lost.

Yours aye,

Bob Jnr

 

 

Eulogies and celebrities

Guest writer, music trivia buff Lyn Nuttall (aka Franky’s Dad), ponders the outpourings of grief when celebrities die.

Amy Winehouse
(Photo by Fionn Kidney https://flic.kr/p/54TiAC flickr creative commons).

Back in January, when Bob and I discussed how lavishly some musicians are eulogised, it was David Bowie’s death that was in the news. Then Prince died a couple of weeks ago and my Facebook timeline filled up with posts from shocked friends. Still trying to digest this, said one, I just… I just can’t believe it said another.

There were Prince videos, and mentions of purple rain, Paisley Park and raspberry berets. A few days later, a friend said he had been listening solidly to Prince’s music for the past few days. Even literary magazine The Paris Review posted twice about Prince to Facebook. When my digital copy of “The New Yorker” appeared during the week, its cover was given over to a simple depiction of… purple rain. At the weekend, somebody at our monthly book club meeting repeated the (unfounded) gossip about Prince having had AIDS.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Prince was soaring to the top of the album charts as mourning fans rush to remember the artist’s legacy through his music. This sounded like clumsy reporting. A fan doesn’t wait for the artist to die, they go ahead and access the music whenever it’s available, and in any case there didn’t seem to be a need for anyone to rush. A dignified saunter, perhaps.

As Bob said in his post following Bowie’s death, “some will grieve, others are just sad,” and on that occasion I was in the sad group, but I couldn’t say I was grieving. I remembered individual songs with affection, but the bottom didn’t fall out of my world.

In the case of Prince, I was on the footpath, watching the wild and colourful funeral procession of a stranger passing by. Many had urged Prince’s music on me over the years, and I had often followed their advice and listened, but I never became a fan. My response wasn’t callous, this was the death of a man of 57, too young in any walk of life, but I wasn’t shocked and I can’t say I was grieving.

The extent of the reaction took me by surprise, but as an outsider I’m not qualified to belittle it. No doubt there were outside observers who didn’t get it when we mourned the deaths of Buddy Holly and John Lennon, two examples when I was an insider and did get it.

Jack Shafer at Politico, wrote about the “mega-obituary” and suggested that Prince died when his prime fanbase, “Prince-loving Boomers and Gen-Xers”, are in a position to call the “editorial shots”. In The Guardian, Ian Jack commented tetchily on the voluminous David Bowie tributes, including 24 pages in The Guardian. He went to that paper’s archives and discovered its muted reporting of the deaths of Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley, a contrast that seems to support Shafer’s point.

Regardless of generational bias, I’ve never understood the impulse to go out and buy – or stay in and download – the works of an artist who has just died. If anything, my impulse has been to give their works a rest for a while. Later, I get back to them with the old enthusiasm.

No doubt, there are a lot of people who discover the artist through the publicity around their death; they like what they hear, and go ahead and buy some of it.

It is remarkable how people can genuinely grieve for a celebrity they’ve never met (Amy Winehouse, Whitney Houston or B.B King). We are routinely saddened, even depressed, about the deaths of unknown people we’ve never met, victims of violence or epidemics. But the grief some people show for celebrities goes beyond that natural empathy for another human. When Steve Irwin died, the circumstances were shocking, and it was a wrench to see such a positive, larger-than-life figure suddenly taken. A teaching colleague and her students made tributes which she delivered to Australia Zoo. They clearly felt that they knew Steve as if he had been present, in person, in their lives. I read an online comment from a woman who said her three-year-old already missed Steve, a sentiment you often see: they miss the celebrity.

I can think of times when I’ve missed a celebrity. I still miss Jon Stewart (still alive, I hasten to add) hosting “The Daily Show”, because I used to enjoy watching him every day, and now I can’t do that. When Phil Hartman died in violent circumstances it was shocking, and I missed him when he was no longer in the next season of “Newsradio”, but his absence was in the nature of a cast change, not in the sense that I was used to having him around the place and then he was gone. I was a little sad and reflective when Groucho Marx died, but I couldn’t really say I missed him. I didn’t come down to breakfast and think, “Gee I miss seeing old Groucho there every morning, cracking his egg open and making wise-ass comments over the morning newspaper.”

There is a persistent illusion that we “know” an artist through their work. Of course we know that important aspect of them, but we don’t know them as we know people we see every day. I’m not convinced that we can confidently claim to know a person through their works, in spite of attempts by some scholars of Shakespeare or J.S. Bach to extrapolate biographical details from the works. This is partly because a work of art has a life of its own that is beyond the control of its creator, especially after it’s published and every member of the audience puts their own construction on it.

Note the surprise when a well-loved celebrity disgraces themselves. Bill Cosby? Surely not! We know him so well, it’s not possible. Rolf Harris? Nooo, not Rolf! Please! tweeted the twitterers. We forget that we know only their published work, a little gossip and second-hand reportage, and a carefully crafted public persona that may tell us nothing about them out of the public gaze. Forgetting that, it’s a small step to grieving for them as if we’ve lost a family member or close friend.

I wondered why the cause of Prince’s death was so important to the fans. Then I thought of an example of my own. I’m a fan of British singer-songwriter Nick Drake who died in 1974 aged 26 without achieving much recognition. By the 1990s, when I discovered his albums, musicians were citing him as an influence, his songs were being heard in films, and he was being championed by MOJO magazine.

Even long after the events, I read everything I could, and hung out for the bio-doco “A Skin Too Few”, made by his sister Gabrielle who disagreed with the coroner’s suicide finding. I was interested in a theory that his depression was down to the grey English winters, a known syndrome. I was fascinated by a video snippet of a young man walking away from the camera at a music festival, in what might or might not be the only existing footage of Nick Drake.

See how they weave a spell on us, when we connect with their work?

All in all, though, a minimalist approach would suit me. Report the news succinctly and without gushing, write a well-researched obituary, and leave the rest to the reader. My ideals are those concise obits in the British press that manage to cover the life and achievements of an artist in one page. As a bonus, they usually get the details right and don’t demand any mass emotional response.

 

 

Housing bubbles here and abroad

(New housing in Pokeno, 57 kms south of Auckland city. Risky motorway photo taken by Bob, who will go to any length for FOMM readers!)

Kiwis and Aussies aged 45 and over share one obsessive thought at this moment in time: how will our kids ever be able to afford their own home? Unless the housing bubble bursts, they probably never will be able to, even when the Boomers die off and leave their kids a residual estate.

The housing market both here and in Aotearoa has got away from humble wage earners. On my all-too quick visit to the old country, Auckland’s steaming hot housing market was all anyone could talk about. After a January dip in median prices (a reaction to new tax laws introduced in late 2015), the March figures revealed a $100k hike in the median price to $820,000.

Stories abound of people who bought a cottage in a then-dowdy Auckland suburb for $100k or less in the 1980s and sold last week for $1 million. The New Zealand Herald’s front page on April 13 proclaimed “Here we go again” to head a story about Auckland’s median house price. The story continued on page 3 where Labour Housing spokesman Phil Twyford said the $70k increase in the median price in just one month was almost one and a half times the median income in Auckland.

Not surprisingly, investors accounted for 44% of the 3000+ sales used to determine this alarming figure. This is similar to the Australian trend, where for the past two years just over 50% of housing loans have been made to investors.

Buyers with cash and/or equity are surging into the Auckland housing market and many pundits feel it is inevitable that it will join Sydney in having a $1 million median house price.

Everyone I spoke to told me that Auckland/New Zealand has the highest income to mortgage ratio in the world. The crusty old journo in me demanded that this be verified. The International Monetary Fund, which keeps track of housing costs vs income, indeed placed New Zealand 1st, ahead of Germany, Estonia and Austria. In sixth place came the UK and in 9th place Australia.

The ratio compares housing valuations to average income, the higher rankings showing that house prices have risen much faster than income. (Conversely, if you can score a job in Spain, where unemployment is still running at 22%, you can buy a cheap apartment and go running with the bulls in Pamplona).

If you were wondering how this is relevant, Spain’s economy went pear-shaped after their real estate market tanked in 2008. Caveat emptor!

The problem when housing markets get hot is the price rises are not matched by the prospective buyers’ incomes. In 2015, the median house price in Auckland increased $83,000, against a median income of $46,800. The data for this NZ Herald story, headed “Does your house earn more than you do?” was sourced from NZ Work and Income and the New Zealand Real Estate Institute.

In Sydney’s over-heated market, house prices are up to 12 times median income, according to a Sydney Morning Herald report in November. In mid-2015, the median Sydney house price was a headline $1,004,767, against a median household income of $85,067.

Meanwhile in Aotearoa, those determined to get their toe on the first rung of the housing ladder are fleeing south, as far as Huntly (a former mining town 97.2 km from the big smoke on State Highway 1), and north to Wellsford 77.3kms away. The plan is to buy, commute, save and over time upgrade closer to Auckland.

Pokeno, once a small Waikato hamlet just outside Auckland city limits, is now a forest of houses, if not nestling, then sprawling over the once green rolling hills. New housing is evident on both sides of the four-lane motorway which now extends to Hamilton and beyond. I had a trawl through real estate.com and was unable to find much new in Pokeno under $600k. So the early birds have already got their worms and now it is just another suburb of Auckland, a 57 km commute to the city.

Others have absconded to small towns like Te Aroha, Wairoa and Dannevirke, where a decent house and block of land (known as a ‘sixtion’) can be had for less than $150k.

New Zealand has few barriers in the way of investors – until recently there was no capital gains tax (as such) and no inheritance tax. Prime Minister John Keys introduced new measures in last year’s Budget, one of which was a tax payable if the (investment) property was sold within two years of purchase. Keys refused to call this a capital gains tax, saying New Zealand already had one, but the government has to prove “intent” to make a profit.

New Zealand also tightened its foreign investment rules and now requires all foreign buyers to declare a tax identification number from their home country. Kiwis don’t call it negative gearing, but as in Australia, expenses relating to investment housing (depreciation, interest, maintenance etc) can be offset against rental income.

Those who support a continuation of negative gearing in Australia claim that if it was abolished the property market would collapse. The Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) said 79% of its members and landlord clients believed that investors would abandon the strategy if Labor’s negative gearing changes were brought in. (Labor proposes to restrict negative gearing to new homes and ‘grandfather’ or exempt existing investment houses.)

REIQ Chairman Rob Honeycombe said the findings confirmed that changes to negative gearing would be disastrous for the Queensland property market.

“That will have a crippling effect on house values and on the rental market, where the private rental market plays such a critical role in keeping rents affordable,” he said.Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, no doubt sensing the pre-election atmosphere, has declared he will make no changes to negative gearing in next week’s Budget. The estimated 1.5 million people who invest in residential property would be sure to vote for the politician with the least disagreeable tax policy.

Meanwhile, the 25-44 age group, once the heart of the first home buyer cohort, is struggling to save for a deposit, faced by high rents and stiff competition for affordable housing. Assuming they could find a house in Sydney or Auckland for $700,000, it still means they have to save $140,000 for a deposit (about 14 years at $200 a week).

Their plight creates a dilemma for well-intentioned property investors, those who have simply decided that bricks and mortar is the best form of investment. Sure, they get the tax breaks, but they also have to take the investment risk in the first place and then the secondary risk that they might get the tenants from hell. The third risk may be a Pamplona-type charge for the exits if Labor gets up and changes the rules.

Part of the solution lies with the 814,000 Australians (2011 estimate), who have paid off their mortgages. Whatever their circumstances, they are the only people who, either by gifting money or using their equity for a loan, can help their adult children buy a house. Waiting for the bubble to burst is another option. Or you could move to Spain…there are apartments in Pamplona priced from 39,000 euros (about $A58,000). Buena suerte con eso

 (Thanks to Laurel (She Who Also Sometimes Writes) for being a splendid substitute when I was abroad )

 

 

Some things about Aotearoa

 

Giant old pohutukawa at Te Araroa, East Coast New Zealand. Photo by J Wilson

The most popular blogs, it seems, are the ones that compile trivia lists – the biggest, the best, the most awesome, the most very unique, etc. All you have to do is come up with a headline like “what this orangutan does next will truly amaze you”.

So I’m off to New Zealand for a couple of weeks, leaving you in the skilful hands of She Who Also Sometimes Writes. I had an idea of using my inside knowledge, as it were, to compile a little-known list of things you may not know about New Zealand. Surprise, Huffington Post and a half dozen others have already done it (several times). They go for the obvious, mind you. Did you know you can go bungee-jumping in NZ? Did you know NZ has midges which will make your outdoor treks a misery? Did you know the Moa is extinct and the Kiwi cannot fly?

Crivens, as they say in Montrose!

I wasn’t born in Aotearoa, but I got there as fast as I could. Went to school there, tried playing rugby and got my glasses smashed. Tried numerous ways of earning a living, travelled the world, went to Australia, met a girl and, like 650,000 other Kiwis, I stayed.

Now here’s the first thing you might not know about New Zealand. While it is well known that about 15% of the Kiwi population live in Australia (their 2014 estimate), you might wonder how many Aussies live across the ditch. Well, not that many – less than 1% of the population. The 2013 NZ Census showed that 22,470 people who identified as Australian were living in New Zealand on the 5th of March 2013. A third of them lived in Auckland.

Population experts .id.com.au went into this a bit further, noting in a 2013 blog that two-thirds (10,308) of the 15,755 people arriving permanently in New Zealand, after living in Australia for a year or longer, were in fact New Zealand citizens; 3,126 Australian citizens arrived to live in New Zealand permanently, making up just 4.3% of the total number (86,026) of people arriving to live in NZ in the year ending March 2013.

One in 4 born elsewhere

This is a well-known Australian statistic, but curiously, 25% of Kiwis were also born somewhere else. So when you combine this with the tendency for Kiwis and Aussies to travel freely back and forth between the two countries for work or pleasure, it is a moveable figure. The Australian Bureau of Statistics did a survey in 2010 which aimed to quantify the Kiwi/Aussie proportion of the population. The ABS concluded that the annual change in the size of the NZ-born population in Australia tended to hide the two-way movement of the NZ-born population. Although there was a net migration of 94,300 NZ-born people to Australia between 2005 and 2008, this included 156,000 NZ-born arrivals and 61,500 NZ-born departures. About one-third (32%) of people who departed in this three-year period had been resident in Australia for less than two years, while over half (58%) had been here for less than five years.

Demographics aside, here’s a few things about New Zealand that aren’t as well known (or expensive) as, say, bungee jumping from the Kawarau Bridge or a hangi and a show at a five-star hotel in Rotorua.

Day walk across the country

If you felt inclined, you could walk across the Auckland isthmus from the east coast to the west coast, from the Waitemata to the Manukau. The 16-kilometre walk takes you through the city, past, through or over five supposedly-extinct volcanos which are now famous parks and vantage points. They include the Domain, Albert Park, Mt Eden, and One Tree Hill. Pack a lunch; allow time for stopovers at the Auckland Museum and other historic points of interest. Take a brolly.

Island bird watching

Three Tuis 01
Three tuis on Tiritiri Matangi, island bird sanctuary Photo by Laurel Wilson

If you’re a serious bird-watcher, you probably already know about Tiritiri Matangi, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf. This is one of several islands where the Department of Conservation and community volunteers have eradicated all predators and introduced endangered species of birds, to mate and reproduce in safety. You can get there by boat from Auckland harbour. Busy in the school holidays. It’s a very small island.

Craters of the Moon

This self-guided thermal walk used to be a haven for those in the know, a way to experience the country’s geothermal wonders without the crowds and the tourism kitsch of Rotorua. Craters of the Moon is still a beautiful, isolated valley where you can wander alone through active pods of thermal activity. I see they have a kiosk now and an admission charge ($8). Last time I was there, it was free, although you could leave a donation in the metal box next to a sign warning you not to leave valuables in your car.

New Zealand the incorruptible

Jemima Skelley, a BuzzFeed contributor, compiled a list of 69 facts about New Zealand, one of which I found worth further exploration. It seems Kiwis are equal only to the Danes in terms of incorruptibility. The Corruption Perceptions Index ranks countries and territories based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be: Zero is highly corrupt and 100 ‘very clean’.

Denmark and New Zealand each scored 91 points, which suggests there is still some scope for the brown paper bag. Australia came in at 9th position with a score of 81, as did Canada. Two thirds of the 177 countries surveyed scored less than 50 with the bottom three (Afghanistan, North Korea and Somalia) on 8 points.

Transparency International says the index uses different assessments and business opinion surveys carried out by independent and reputable institutions. Surveys (TI uses a minimum of three), include questions relating to bribery of public officials, kickbacks in (tendering), embezzlement of public funds, and the effectiveness of public sector anti-corruption efforts.

Is there really a town called Waikikamukau?

Ah, no, that would be, in Kiwi-parlance, taking the pus. Pronounced why-kick-a-moo-cow, this is a fictional place where people are presumed to live. Waikikamukau is not unlike Springfield (the Simpsons’ home town), in that you know it’s not real, but somehow it seems to be.

Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu

Now to a real place, an otherwise undistinguished hill in central Hawkes Bay which boasts the world’s longest place name. Wikipedia’s somewhat Pythonesque English translation is:

“The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.”

Filleting the whitebait – A Kiwi urban myth

If you catch whitebait (tiny transparent fish, the immature fry of other fish), it is not necessary, despite what you may be told, to gut them, or cut off their heads and tails. A hundred or so whitebait washed and fried in batter actually makes a lovely fritter.

Pen-ultimately

Yes, I know I did it a few paras ago, but Kiwis really do not like their accent being mocked. They don’t. So if you’re at the chick-out and need a biro to sign a treveller’s cheek, don’t ask for a pin or a pun.

Next week: The joy of small towns