Friday on My Mind Archives - Page 3 of 31

Coronation, what coronation?

How well I remember the coronation of Princess Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953. Then resident in Scotland, I was four years and seven months old and had just finished reading Das Kapital and was moving on to The Condition of the Working Class in England. I had also asked for Stories,Tales and Fables by the Marquis de Sade but faither said ‘Nae bairn should be reading that’ and offered instead ‘Noddy on the Runaway Train’.

Memories can be unreliable, as we know, certainly for people of my age, recounting the glory days of bygone youth. Just don’t ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday.

But I digress, as the world awaits tomorrow’s pageant involving the coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla. Charles officially ascended to the throne after the death of Queen Elizabeth. eight months ago. Now the official ceremony begins, just as many of us ask, will this ancient ritual then finally be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Charles has requested a lower-key affair than his mother’s coronation. For example, the guest list is capped at 2000 dignitaries, well below the 8000+ who attended Lizzie’s crowning at Westminster Abbey in 1953.

There’s a goodly scattering of Australians and expats among the invitees; including, of course, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and the Governor-General, David Hurley. I should observe that the invitation goes to whoever is Head of State at the time, so it could just as easily have been that back bench bloke.

Mr Albanese was then asked to nominate a certain number of Australians and expats to attend. No doubt Dame Edna Everage would have been on the list, had she and her alter-ego not so recently died.

Rock singer Nick Cave’s fans were perplexed by his decision to accept the invitation. It should be noted that Cave, though Australian, has not lived here since 1980 and usually resides in England.

On his quirky blog, The Red Right Hand Files, Cave answered fans who wanted to know if the young Nick Cave would have been so inclined.

Cave answered that the young Nick Cave, like so many younger selves, was ‘young and mostly demented’. Cave, who says he is no monarchist, nor a republican, is nevertheless fascinated by the royals.

“I guess what I am trying to say is that, beyond the interminable but necessary debates about the abolition of the monarchy, I hold an inexplicable emotional attachment to the Royals,” he wrote in his blog.

Cave is not listed as one of the performers at the ‘Coronation Concert’ to be held in the grounds of Windsor Castle the day after the ceremony. Lead performers include Kate Perry, Lionel Ritchie, Take That and Andrea Bocelli. The Coronation Choir, whose members include refugee choirs, NHS choirs, LGBTQ+ choirs, and deaf signing choirs, will also perform. Ten thousand tickets were issued free via public ballot. We’ll get to watch it free via the BBC, which is producing and broadcasting the concert on Sunday.

Rolling Stone, while delving into the Nick Cave controversy, named musicians who were reportedly asked to perform but declined, including Sir Elton John, Harry Styles, Adele and Robbie Williams. Gone are the days, it seems, of being ‘commanded’ to perform.

Australia’s entertainment world will be well represented at the coronation ceremony, with invitees including ballet dancer Leanne Benjamin, soprano Yvonne Kelly and comedian Adam Hills.

The Prime Minister’s selection includes indigenous artist Wiradjuri, and expats British gallery owner Jasmine Coe, Barbican Centre CEO Claire Spencer, NHS nurse Emily Regan and Oxford vaccinologist Merryn Voysey.

The Australian Financial Review reported that Mr Albanese and UK High Commissioner Stephen Smith this week hosted a function for the Australian group at the envoy’s Kensington residence. Smith, if you’ll recall, served as a Minister in the Rudd and Gillard governments from 1993 to 2013.

Charles and Camilla have invited foreign royals to Saturday’s ceremony, as reported by People magazine. They include Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik and Crown Princess Mary, Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia, and Monaco’s Princess Charlene and Prince Albert.

After much speculation to the contrary, it is confirmed that Charles’s sons, Princes Harry and William, will attend.

Our friends in the folk music world may be pleased (or displeased) to see the motif of the Green Man used in the official invitation (see above) by heraldic illustrator Andrew Jamieson. The Royals interpret this as “The Green Man (being) an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign”. We’ll take that as a win.

While Buckingham Palace is talking up the Coronation as an income-producing tourism event, economists are dubious. Bloomberg’s Tom Rees notes that the extra bank holiday is set to drag down what otherwise may be gathering momentum in the UK economy.

Forecasters warned that the additional day off on May 8 will help trigger a 0.7% slide in GDP in May and could tip the economy into a minor contraction in the second quarter.

It will be the second time in a year that royal events have weighed on growth, but analysis suggests the impact of those events is declining.

The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that extra tourism and spending in pubs, (which are allowed to stay open later over the weekend), will provide a £337 million boost to the economy.

Britain’s GDP was down 0.1% in the three months through September, after an extra day off at the end of the period for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.

There has been inevitable criticism of the cost of the coronation (upwards of £100 million). It comes at a time when Britons are battling a cost of living spiral (inflation of 10%), a nurses’ strike for higher wages and other dramas.

Despite a budget dramatically lower than the equivalent spent in 1953, there is still the largesse of the gold carriage.

After the coronation, the couple will take part in the Coronation Procession, seated in the Gold State Coach. The coach is 260 years old and used at every coronation since William IV in 1831. According to Yahoo News, which should know, the coach was commissioned in 1762 for a then cost of £7,562. Today it is worth over £3.5m.

Comparisons are odious, I know, but last year the Trussell Trust, which administers Britain’s biggest food bank, spent £7.5m, £4.5m more than in the previous year, replenishing food bank stocks for the needy. The Guardian explained that this is due to food donations from individuals and local charity food drives failing to keep pace with demand.

The coronation is undoubtedly an historic occasion and should be rightfully observed as such, even as members of the Commonwealth such as Australia may soon consider a referendum on whether we should become a Republic. Charles had reportedly asked that the coronation budget be a modest one, in light of tough economic times. Not that Charles will have to put his hand in his purse* – the coronation is funded by the British taxpayer.

As British songwriter Leon Rosselson said in his sarcastic 1979 song, On her Silver Jubilee:

‘Oh, the magic of the monarchy, the mystery sublime
Growing gracefully and effortlessly richer all the time’.

*King Charles inherited $500 million in assets from his mother and is overseer of a vast portfolio worth $46 billion. (Forbes magazine).

Anzac Day and a load of firewood

Light Horse representatives at Leslie Park, Warwick

Light Horse Regiment representatives, Warwick, Qld. Photo by Laurel Wilson

The firewood guy wanted to deliver a ute load to our house on Tuesday. “But it’s Anzac Day,” I said. He replied: “It’s just another day to me, mate.”

I was musing about this (while stacking firewood).

I’m guessing he would be a Millennial (born between 1982 and 1994). The oldest of this cohort would have been nine years old when George Bush Snr authorised the invasion of Iraq in 1990-1991 (the Gulf War). They’d have been 21 when George Jnr launched the immoral ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ invasion of Iraq in 2003.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War

Millennials missed Vietnam by decades and have been raised in an era where conflicts and civil wars are daily fare on mainstream and social media. The post-Vietnam conflicts have given rise to an anti-war polemic, given voice to by songwriters including Jackson Browne (Lives in the Balance):

There’s a shadow on the faces
Of the men who send the guns
To the wars that are fought in places
Where their business interests run.

Anzac Day was once solely to remember the fallen from World War 1 (1914-1918), which ended 108 years ago. It has been broadened to embrace the returned and fallen soldiers of all conflicts.

There were hundreds of school children among the thousands who attended Warwick’s Anzac Day parade and service in Leslie Park (photo above).

Their parents, we have to assume, are Gen Xers, born between 1965 and 1980. Old enough to have been aware of Vietnam and the divisive nature of the war and our involvement in it.

I have no argument with schools sending delegates to the Anzac Day commemoration and the laying of wreaths. In many small towns, schools attend dawn services and a speech is given by a senior student.

Taking half a day once a year to think about the 103,021 Australians who have died in all armed conflicts is the least we can do. It’s also a day to honour the returned servicemen of WWII, who number fewer every year.

In 2014 songwriter Eric Bogle told his hometown newspaper AdelaideToday why he was no longer performing ‘And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda’. In the 1970s, when Bogle wrote this song, Anzac Day looked as if it was on its way out. The song emerged at the time when anti-Vietnam war sentiment was at its peak and the RSL was on the nose. Hence one of the closing lines “Someday no-one will march there at all.”

I wasn’t around in the WWI era, so I can only rely on historical accounts to emphasise the nationalistic fervour of the times, when those who did not go to war had white feathers put in their letterboxes. There were conscientious objectors in WWI and WWII. They were society’s pariahs in those days and were often jailed for the duration of the war.

The jailing of conscientious objectors was less common during the Vietnam War, but there were those who, for personal reasons, chose not to engage in warfare and death. Vietnam instead gave rise to an emerging peace movement, particularly in the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. In short, the Woodstock generation did not want any part of a war where our troops were being sent on spurious grounds.

One of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s first policy decisions was to scrap conscription and complete the withdrawal of Australian troops in Vietnam. Subsequent to this decision, conscientious objectors were released from Australian jails.

I bring you this potted history only to make the point that Australia’s involvement in international conflicts since Vietnam (1955-1975) has been politically contentious. This was no more evident than when hundreds of thousands of Australians took to the street to protest PM John Howard’s decision to send troops to Iraq in 2003. Many people believed this was an illegal war and that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq had a despot for a leader, but special services could have taken care of that without involving Australia in an unpopular war that solved nothing.

Australia’s involvement in Afghanistan began in 2001 when Prime Minister John Howard committed military personnel after the attacks on the World Trade Centre. Howard invoked Article VI of the ANZUS Treaty – the only time the Treaty has been invoked, to justify our involvement.

That was by no means the end of it – from 2006 to 2013 Australian troops worked alongside Dutch and US soldiers in Uruzgan Province. 26,000 Australian military personnel were engaged in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021. By the end of the Uruzgan mission in 2013, Australia had lost 40 men in southern Afghanistan.

As diplomat and songwriter Fred Smith recounted in a song when leaving Afghanistan: “40 good men in the ground and we’re going home”.

Australia has spent $7.5 billion on the Afghanistan exercise, with, it must be said, ongoing support from both the ALP and the Coalition. The effort is looking wasted now, since the Taliban over-ran the country in August 2021. Fred Smith is currently touring a show, “The Sparrows of Kabul”, which updates the Afghanistan story and describes the tense days in August when Australia evacuated 4,100 Afghan civilians.

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook43p/adfafghanistan#:~:text=Australia%20first%20committed%20military%20personnel,the%20Treaty%20has%20been%20invoked

Anzac Day respects Australian soldiers, sailors, airforce and navy personnel who have been involved in 28 wars and conflicts, either as allies or peacekeepers. These include conflicts close to home – East Timor, Bougainville, Indonesia and the Solomon Islands.

This fascinating Wikipedia entry covers Australia’s military involvement from the Boer War (1899-1902) through to our debated involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the ongoing war against ISIL. This entry is unique, in that it also covers the military involvement of Colonial troops in the ‘dispersal’ of Aborigines and dispossession of land from 1799 to 1901.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Australia

Professor Robin Prior of the University of South Australia, commenting on a survey, said the Australian public would decide upon Anzac Day’s relevance.

“Ordinary Australians made Anzac Day what it is, and public opinion will probably determine its demise sooner rather than later.”

A poll taken in 2021 showed that 58% of Australians intended to go to a ceremony or march on April 25, 2021. South Australia recorded the lowest number (44%). The research also showed a growing number believe the Anzac story is losing its relevance. The poll was taken while many Australians were avoiding crowded places while Covid was running rampant.

The survey of more than a thousand people found that although almost all agree Anzac Day is well respected, a third hold the view that its significance is being forgotten.

“What’s interesting is whether as we get further and further away from the world wars, that trend will continue,” Prof Prior said.

https://www.zenger.news/2021/04/20/australias-anzac-story-being-forgotten-survey-shows/

Romain Fathi of Flinders University found that the number of Australians attending Anzac Day dawn services fell by 70% between 2015 and 2019.

Anzac Day dawn services were cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19, but attendance had started to erode well before the pandemic, he wrote in ‘The Conversation’. Fathi’s research looked at changing patterns in the commemoration of Anzac Day overseas and at Australian dawn services. The biggest decline in crowd numbers was at Gallipoli itself, where numbers fell from 10,000 in 2015 (the centenary year) to 1,434 in 2019.

https://theconversation.com/crowds-at-dawn-services-have-plummeted-in-recent-years-its-time-to-reinvent-anzac-day-157313

And yet 2023 commemoration services in Sydney and Melbourne reportedly drew big crowds, as well as in Brisbane, where rain did not deter people from attending.

I’m leaving the last word on this topic to the late great songwriter John Prine, from Hello in There:

“ We lost Davy in the Korean war
And I still don’t know what for, don’t matter any more.”

The future of battery recycling

Electric cars changing the recycled battery story – www.pixabay.com

Friday on My Mind – The future for recycled batteries

Luckily, the no-name brand batteries worked and the magnetic light above the stove once again works – but only until the batteries expire.

We are all of us dependent to one degree or another on the efficient workings of batteries, be it in our car or cars, caravans (the ones that draw energy from solar panels) or the many different types of batteries used in our many household devices.

One thing we older people notice (and grumble about) is that batteries don’t last as long as they once did. Not so long ago, it was typical to buy a car battery with a two-year warranty and it would probably last five years. We all know someone with a sad bad battery story.

In the future, we will all rely more heavily on batteries than we ever did before. As the world heads towards the transition from fossil fuels, batteries will play a critical role in sustaining green energy such as solar panels and wind farms.

A recent article in Nature flags the most important issue in this transition – the far-from sustainable end of life process attached to conventional batteries. A panel of leading global experts contributed to the Nature article, which looked at how energy technology development can integrate sustainability principles.

We should all know about rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. They have already revolutionised portable electronics. We all have at least a dozen lithium-ion batteries of one type or another running household devices.

That includes laptop computers, tablets, mobile phones, cameras, hearing aids (with chargers), clocks, power tools and all manner of electronic gizmos. Lithium-ion batteries will become critical in the future via decarbonisation of transport, enabling battery-powered electric vehicles.

But as usual, the world is not quite ready to cope with exponential market growth. Nature’s panellists agree this will lead to a sustainability problem. Other challenges include the scarcity of raw materials required for battery chemistry.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00876-x

There are places where you can leave dead batteries to be recycled or disposed of in a responsible manner. The Battery World franchise, for example, provides a drop-off facility for all types of batteries and so do Aldi, Officeworks, Bunnings and more.

As we’d know, town and city transfer stations have long provided a collection point for used lead-acid batteries, and many garages participate in the scheme.

Most recycle stations collect exhausted single-use alkaline batteries which, until the mid-1990s, contained mercury. These batteries too can be dropped at a recycling collection station. These batteries are a substantial problem if they end up in landfill. It’s not just the toxic chemicals that leach in the ground, used batteries pose a considerable fire risk. This is why we are now asked to tape the terminals. (News to me. Ed.)

There is an ongoing education programme to teach people how best to dispose of lead-acid batteries as well as a national network of collection stations. But the bigger problem is the proliferation of lithium-ion batteries (LIB) and other types of rechargeable batteries.

There are new laws now to enforce the considered storage and disposal of so-called ‘button’ or ‘coin’ batteries, after fatalities involving small children.The smart advice is to wrap these batteries in Sellotape and keep them in a jar for when you next go to an LIB recycling station.

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) says only 10% of Australia’s lithium-ion battery waste was recycled in 2021, compared with 99% of lead acid battery waste. Mind you, this is quite an improvement on Australia’s record from five years ago (less than 2%). We’ll need to keep up the effort, though. Lithium-ion battery waste is growing by 20% per year and could exceed 136,000 tonnes by 2036.

If recycled, 95% of lithium-ion battery components can be turned into new batteries or used in other industries, the CSIRO says.

The national science agency completed a major report in 2020 on the long-term potential for recycling and re-use of LIBs (lithium-ion batteries) (Ed trying hard not to make sarcastic remarks about the other sort of Libs.). As things stand, Australia’s economy is losing between $603 million and $3.1 billion by not fully utilising the value associated with battery metals and materials due to “poor LIB collection rates, offshore recycling and landfilling of the LIB battery waste.”

Australia is playing catch-up when you look at what’s going on in other jurisdictions, where manufacturers are forced to reclaim exhausted batteries.

https://www.batteryrecycling.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Battery-regulations-final.pdf

Depending on the type of battery, waste streams may consist of various heavy metals and toxic compounds, including hazardous metals such as mercury, lead, nickel and cadmium.
The most common battery types being recycled are lead acid (LAB), nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and alkaline batteries. Unfortunately, the re-cycling method used with lead acid batteries is not compatible for recovery of materials from lithium-ion batteries.

Australia has a national battery recycling scheme called B-Cycle. This program has partnered with approximately 100 organisations across Australia to provide recycling drop-off points for the public.

https://bcycle.com.au/

For example, Aldi supermarkets offer a free battery recycling service at all their Australian stores. All brands of AA, AAA, C, D and 9V batteries (both rechargeable and non-rechargeable) are accepted. Simply drop your used batteries into the dedicated bins in store.

Dumping lithium-ion batteries and their equivalent in landfill creates a long-term toxicity problem. Batteries can take 100 years to break down; and when they do, the heavy metals used in manufacture linger on in the soil.

Perth-based Envirostream is one company poised to benefit from the push to recycle LIBs, a relatively new industry in Australia. Publicly listed Lithium Australia is the parent company of Envirostream which also has a plant in Victoria. The West Australian reported that Victoria’s Environmental Protection Agency has granted Lithium Australia a 99-year operating licence. The agreement allowed Envirostream to continue processing up to 500 million tonnes of lithium and specified electronic waste a year at its Campbelltown premises. Envirostream also has a deal with Bunnings to collect spent batteries from all its Australian stores and selected stores in New Zealand.

That is more or less the state of play in Australia’s push to recycle lithium batteries. We can all play our part. For some years, I’ve been using rechargeable batteries whenever possible. There’s a small capital outlay at the start – say $50 for a battery charger and a set of AA batteries. Thereafter, we use solar-generated power to recharge batteries to operate devices like cameras, digital recorders, mouse and keyboard and so on. The batteries will (or should) last for years. If you take this approach, then your household is taking partial control of the battery waste problem. Rechargeable batteries don’t last forever, however, and they also should be recycled via collection stations.

Meanwhile, I’m relieved to know that my zinc air hearing aid batteries are considered to be non-hazardous. Nevertheless, they typically last for a week or 10 days and there is no commercial recycling solution. Also, they belong to the button/coin category of battery which could easily be swallowed by a child (or a dog). One of my peers has a sophisticated set of hearing aids which can be programmed to interact with a smart phone. They come with a charging station for (yes, you guessed it) rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Which is more harmful to the environment?

What’s that? You’ll have to speak up!

https://www.qld.gov.au/law/your-rights/consumer-rights-complaints-and-scams/product-safety-for-consumers/safety-advice-and-warnings/around-the-home/button-batteries

The Voice – try and understand it

*Uluru – A symbol of Aboriginal spirituality- Photo Laurel Wilson 2008*

That’s the problem when the media over-simplifies complex issues and frames them as four-word headlines. Perhaps it was an ill-conceived monicker from the start. Then there’s that popular song by John Farnham which has assumed anthem-like status – “You’re the Voice, try and understand it.”

Whatever they want to call it, allowing Australia’s first people to have a say in how they are governed is surely in the national interest. As we prepare in 2023 to change Australia’s constitution to ensure black fellas have a say, it seems absurd that anyone would oppose the idea.

It’s not that long ago we had a ‘White Australia’ policy and successive governments since have struggled to deal with indigenous people in an equitable way. Our recent past is littered with stories of neglect, mismanagement and outright racism. The voluminous Black Deaths in Custody report finalised in 1991 made 339 recommendations, few of which have been implemented.

Most involved procedures for black persons in custody, liaison with Aboriginal groups and police education. There have been 540 black deaths in custody since the report was concluded. In 2021-2022 there were 24 indigenous deaths in custody, well above the long-term average.

https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/deaths-custody-australia

In the 1980s and 1990s indigenous songwriters Kev Carmody and Archie Roach and indigenous bands like Yothu Yindi gave voice to the many grievances of Aboriginal people. A few academics kept kicking over the issues so many others tried hard to bury. The trenchant criticism of Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu is one example of how badly the “No” vote wants to supress any re-interpretation of white fella history.

We’re not the only nation to marginalise and mistreat our indigenous peoples. But per capita we stand out in the crowd. We may have got past the nanny state stupidity of the Stolen Children era, but in more recent times (2007) John Howard introduced the Intervention to once again interfere in the rights of Indigenous people to manage their own affairs. Nevertheless, Howard went to the 2007 election promising to hold a referendum on constitutional recognition.

Kevin Rudd won that election and in February 2008 delivered an apology in Federal Parliament for the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians. In the speech he committed to closing the gap on Indigenous disadvantage and made a statement of recognition.

In 2008, six ambitious targets were set to address the disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians in life expectancy, child mortality, education and employment. While some of these targets have been met, Indigenous people still have a lower life expectancy than non-indigenous.

Since then, there has been bi-partisan support for advances like the 2013 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Recognition Bill.

Two years later,Liberal MP Ken Wyatt tabled a report, with support from the Government, Labor and the Greens, on progress towards a referendum on Indigenous recognition in the constitution. Then followed a summit with 40 of the nation’s most influential Indigenous representatives. A Referendum Council formed at that time travelled to 12 different locations around Australia and met with over 1,200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representatives. The meetings resulted in a consensus document on constitutional recognition, the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

http://www.workingwithindigenousaustralians.info/content/History_7_Reconciliation.html

Now, after 16 years of lead-up work, the Labor Government led by Anthony Albanese has started work on its key election promise to give Aboriginal people a seat at the table.

On April 5, after months of fence-sitting, Opposition leader Peter Dutton said that the Liberal party would not support what he described as “the Prime Minister’s Canberra Voice”. (Can’t you just hear the dog whistle. Ed.)

The sticking point is the Coalition wants to remove the clause that says indigenous people can make direct representations to executive government.

Mr Dutton’s statement makes it clear that while the Liberals are saying ‘yes’ to constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians, it is only on their terms. The Coalition’s policy proposes that constitutional recognition be split from practical outcomes. The Liberals would instead legislate to establish local and regional Voices.

The Liberals, marginalised in Parliament and seemingly cast out into the political wilderness, are in no position to promise the Aboriginal people anything. Already, five Liberal MPs are advocating a conscience vote and there have been key defections, including this week’s shock resignation from the Liberal’s shadow cabinet by Shadow Attorney-General Julian Leeser.

Leeser, who was also Shadow minister for Aboriginal Affairs, revealed on Tuesday he was quitting the front bench to concentrate on the ‘Yes’ vote. This compounded the Liberals’ woes, after losing the safe Liberal seat of Aston to Labor in a by-election on April 1. Then followed the resignation of former MP Ken Wyatt, stating that he was quitting the party because of his opposition to the party’s position on the Voice.

It is worth recounting that Nationals MP Andrew Gee resigned in November 2022 when the Nats said they would oppose the Voice. Gee, now an Independent, cited his intention to back the Voice.

Meanwhile, Tasmania’s Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff has said he will support Anthony Albanese’s Voice proposal, as will Tasmanian Liberal Bridget Archer. While Mr Dutton’s statement binds his front benchers to follow the party line, back benchers are free to vote as they see fit.

Putting all that aside, what do Indigenous people think about the Voice, or did we forget to ask them? Since ‘Invasion Day’ in January, some indigenous people have made it clear that Labor’s Voice does not go far enough. Some disagree with the Uluru Statement from the Heart and there has been a mixed response to former Greens senator Lidia Thorpe’s opposition to the Voice. While Peter Dutton “wants a fight” as acting PM Penny Wong said this week, elder statesman Noel Pearson calmly says his people will “take the high road”.

But can any one document (framed by constitutional lawyers) speak for the diverse wishes of 250 separate Aboriginal clans or tribes?

Academic Kelly Menzel writes that Indigenous people have been burned before in past attempts and campaigns to have Indigenous people included in the Constitution.

One example is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC)), an Indigenous national advisory body to the Australian government. ATSIC had limited executive powers and was abolished by the Howard government in 2004 . At the time, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner William Jonas condemned the the move, stating the government:

“Seeks to ensure that the government will only have to deal with Indigenous peoples on its own terms and without any reference to the aspirations and goals of Indigenous peoples.”

Prof Menzel, Associate Dean Education, Gnibi College, Southern Cross University, says indigenous people need better clarity around what the Voice actually means.

“What we have seen happen to (Lidia Thorpe) in speaking out about the Voice has made it difficult for mob to write and speak publicly on it if they oppose it.

“We risk being dismissed or attacked by both non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples.”

https://theconversation.com/for-a-lot-of-first-nations-peoples-debates-around-the-voice-to-parliament-are-not-about-a-simple-yes-or-no-199766

The constitutional referendum, to be held between October and December, needs a majority of yes votes in a majority of States and Territories. Polls so far indicate the ‘Yes’ lobby needs to do a lot of work in Western Australia and Queensland.

The more serious issue is that of the 44 referendums held in Australia’s history, only eight were passed. All of those had bipartisan support.

I assume I’m preaching to the converted here, but it behoves us all to at the very least understand what the constitution is and how it works.

(Ironically, when I was teaching in the early 70’s, the only students to study Citizenship Education were those deemed to be ‘too dumb’ to learn Geography. Ed)

https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-works/the-australian-constitution/the-australian-constitution-in-focus/

https://theconversation.com/how-does-the-liberal-partys-voice-policy-stack-up-against-the-proposed-referendum-203352

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-06/noel-pearson-says-dutton-betrayed-country-in-rejecting-voice/102194904

Good Friday or just another day

Easter buns photo by AlisonYo, www.pixabay.com

Friday on My Mind – Good Friday or just another day

April 7, 2023

By Bob Wilson

At the start of Joe Cocker’s live album, Mad Dogs and Englishman Joe mutter (incoherently) “Uh, uh – it’s Easter.”

Pause – “I was just gonna say don’t get hung up about Easter,” says someone in the band, probably Leon Russell.

A poor pun and in incredibly poor taste when you consider (well, in Australia anyway), that 43.9% of the population identify as Christian.

On Easter weekend, Christians honour the epic Bible story of the crucifixion and the resurrection. They would not care for Leon Russell’s inappropriate pun and some might even be offended that I recounted it, today of all days.

Christians accept the story that Jesus was crucified (by the nasty bureaucrats of the day), locked away in a tomb after his death and then arose from the dead, leaving an empty tomb. This supernatural feat of resurrection underpins almost everything Christianity is about; that Jesus died for our sins and only by accepting his love can we be saved.

I was raised a strict Methodist, by kind-hearted Calvinists who took the Bible literally. At times, I had nightmares after a particularly vivid fire and brimstone sermon by crusty old Methodist Ministers, who, even in the 1960s, were presiding over ever-diminishing congregations.

It’s no accident that the Methodist church has all but disappeared, absorbed into the hierarchy of less extreme religions. I asked my parents one time why they decided to leave Scotland and travel to New Zealand and was loosely quoted scripture (Ruth) “Wither thou goest, so shall I follow.” This was a wee bit before Germaine Greer.

She Who Does Not Go To Church But Lives By Christian Philosophy asked what I was writing about this Friday. When told she replied: “Wither thou goest I go to Wednesday morning coffee group.” A right pair of blasphemers we are, but clearly our hearts are in the right place. Ask anybody.

The correct text from the book of Ruth 1:16 reads:

“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

That particular translation comes from the King James Bible. Theologians will tell you it is about fidelity. No way is it about a mere woman doing what she is told by a man who (citing the old marriage vows), must be honoured and obeyed.

If you are interested, this website cites at least 30 different translations or interpretations of the same verse.

https://biblehub.com/ruth/1-16.htm

The Census question about religion is the only one on the Australian Bureau of Statistics form that is voluntary. Nevertheless, 93% of Australians answered the question in 2021, up 2% on the 2016 result. This is where I got the statistic that 43.9% of those who filled in their Census form identified with Christianity. If you go back several Censuses, this figure has dropped from 61.1% in 2011. If you go back to 1966, 88% of Australians said they were Christian.

By contrast in 2021, 38.9% of Australians stated they had ‘no religion’ (it was 22.3% in 2011).

Other religions (the ones that are growing) include Hinduism (up 55.3% to 684,002 people (2.7% of the population).

Likewise, Islam has grown by 813,392 people, 3.7% of the population.

The Christian Research Association notes that the fastest rate of decline in numbers between 2016 and 2021 was in The Salvation Army (28%), followed by the Uniting Church (23%), the Presbyterians and Reformed (21%), Anglicans (20%), and Lutherans (16%). There was a slower rate of decline among the Churches of Christ (9%), Latter-day Saints (6%), Catholics (4%) and Pentecostals (2%).

ttps://cra.org.au/religion-in-the-census-2021/

When Easter approaches, it conjures up memories from my teenage years when I left school early and went to work with Dad in the bakery. Dad was an old-school baker, taught his craft in Scotland in the days when bakers used lots of dried fruit in hot cross buns. (I accidentally bought fruitless hot-cross buns- how ‘disappointment’! Ed)

As I recall, the production line began about 6pm on Wednesday and we’d still be hard at it by noon on Thursday. People came from all over the region to buy Dad’s buns. I seem to remember we made 100 dozen or so. We always sold out.

Hot cross buns, with their thin pastry cross tops, symbolise the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.

They were invented by medieval monk Thomas Rocliffe in the 14^th century. As the County Life blog opines, ‘were he alive today, he might stop and say a prayer for forgiveness when he reached the hot-cross-bun aisle of a supermarket’. These sticky fruit buns, sold all year round in an assortment of flavours, are pale imitations of the original.

“There are even buns filled with fudge, a sickly notion that might have Brother Rocliffe fleeing back to the safety of St Albans Abbey.”

https://www.countryfile.com/how-to/food-recipes/seasonal-recipes/hot-cross-buns-history-why-we-eat-them-at-easter-and-best-recipe/

Dad made his fruit mix a month or so before Easter, leaving it to steep in a marinade. Come the time for baking, he was very generous in his allocation of fruit.

Much has been written about the decline of Christianity in Australia. The reasons are manifold, but statistics suggest the decline started with the cultural changes within the traditional family unit (Dad the breadwinner and Mum the housewife), which held sway in the 1950s. Then came the sexual revolution, hippies, Vietnam, the summer of love, women’s liberation and an ever-increasing level of higher education among people in general. In the past 20 or 30 years, people may have turned away from churches of all denomination after revelations of abuse of powers amongst ministers, clerics and priests.

Despite my stated position on organised religion, I salute those who attended Mass and other Easter services today. As the Census figures suggest, you are swimming against the tide. But it was always thus.

In the years of the Reformation (1550-1600), Thomas Cromwell became a notorious figure in politics as he cosied up to King Henry VIII.

Cromwell was involved in developing much of the religious legislation for the Reformation and was responsible for making sure it became law.

Monasteries owned over a quarter of all the cultivated land in England at the time. By destroying the monastic system, Henry could acquire all its wealth and property while also removing its Papist influence. Cromwell organised the dissolution of the monasteries in England, dissolving more than 800 religious houses in the 1500s. A brutal period in history.

https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Dissolution-of-the-Monasteries/

There has always been opposition to (certain types of) religion and persecution often follows. We can see it today in the millions of refugees fleeing persecution, often because they are of a religious minority.

Today in Australia the agnostic among us and those who simply follow their own personal creed see no need to go to church. As comedian and composer Tim Minchin observes in his Christmas song, White Wine in the Sun:

I don’t go in for ancient wisdom
I don’t believe just ’cause ideas are tenacious
It means they’re worthy.

For many of us, this is just a four-day holiday weekend, complete with hedonistic rituals like rugby league and AFL matches and horse racing. For Australians who have declared themselves Christians, it also means time to reflect on their beliefs. Suum cuique, I say (to each his own).

Volunteers needed – you, you and you!

One of Glengallan’s automatic mowers doing its autonomous thing – photo by Jonno Colfs

Friday on My Mind – We need volunteers – you, you and you!

March 31, 2023

By Bob Wilson

Last time I wrote about volunteering in Australia (2019), I confessed to having not done much of it at all. A lot can change in four years. I became re-acquainted with a former journalist colleague, Donna Fraser, who just happens to be chair of the Glengallan Homestead Trust. I had been to visit the partially restored sandstone homestead several times and could well remember what it looked like in the 1990s. Falling down, unoccupied and unloved.

“Why doesn’t someone save that old building?” we’d all say, and then forget about it until next time.

Donna suggested I might like to volunteer as a tour guide. I tagged along on a couple of tours with one of the long-term volunteers. A few weeks later, I was on my own – and enjoying it. I was at that stage still reading from a cheat sheet, put together by Donna from historical information. Glengallan Homestead was restored after the Trust received a $2 million Centenary of Federation grant in 2001. A new Heritage Centre was built, including a cafeteria, a gift shop and administration rooms. The restoration included replacing the old shingle roof and the rotting verandas, which had collapsed during the 70 years the homestead was neglected.

Glengallan is now one of the popular tourist destinations on the Southern Downs, with visitors and locals calling in from Wednesday to Sunday. General manager Jonno Colfs, who took over the job in September 2021, has introduced some innovations. The Trust recently purchased four automatic mowers, which quietly potter around the 5 acre Homestead block from 6am till nightfall, guided by GPS and smart enough to return to the recharging station at night. The mowers were bought with proceeds of a grant; and not only that, bought locally (from the Killarney Co-operative). Jonno says the mowers have become something of an attraction on their own. They are constantly on the move and the rule for visitors is – give way to mowers.

He also increased the cost of admission to $15 (it had been $10 since the Homestead was opened). He brought cafeteria prices more in line with what visitors would expect to pay In Warwick or Toowoomba.

Since taking on the job of General Manager, Jonno has been busy writing grant applications. One grant paid for upgraded signage, spotlights and a garden makeover. He’s also been promoting the seasonal market, which hit a new record in March, with 67 stalls registered. The next market day is the first Sunday in June- 4^th of June.

I never tire of visiting Glengallan and its 5 acres of park-like grounds. If you have any sense of history at all it’s not hard to imagine this as the grand edifice at the heart of a 44,000 acre station. There were golden years in the 1800s, but when entrepreneur John Deuchar began building Glengallan in 1867, a drought and rural downturn was on the cards. Deuchar went broke and even though subsequent owners had some good years on the land, no money was invested in the house, which was left vacant and fell into disrepair.

As if being on a roster of volunteer tour guides was not enough, I joined a local refugee support group in 2020 and in late 2021 was asked if I’d stand as chairman.

“How am I going to do this? I asked a friend who has served on many boards as director and/or chair.

“You’ll be fine,’ my learned friend said, after a few probing questions. He emailed me a link to ‘your responsibilities as chair of a not-for-profit’. I also borrowed a book on meeting procedures from the library .

In 2021 I joined the University of the Third Age (U3A) committee as a ‘spare’. Over time, that morphed into newsletter editor, website editor and now publicity officer. In the corporate world they call it ‘mission creep’ which basically means, well, doing more than you signed up for.

If you volunteer for anything you have to accept you will be seconded on to sub-committees and working groups. That’s how it works.

Volunteering Australia’s definition of volunteering is “time willingly given for the common good and without financial gain”. The word ‘willingly’ stands out.

Much has been written about volunteer burnout. This is a state of mind very much like workplace stress, except you are not pulling in the big bucks to tolerate similar issues and hassles.

Like other community-minded people in this town who have ideas and energy, I have somehow managed to get a bit over-committed. I was so busy in March I found myself double-booked when asked to take a tour around Glengallan.

I do have a succession plan to scale down my volunteering in 2024. Apparently I am not alone. Volunteering Australia last month launched a Strategic Plan to avert the decade-long decline in volunteer numbers.

The size of the volunteer workforce has dwindled from more than 5 million people in 2019 to a low point of just under 3 million (according to the 2021 Census).

2021 Census data release

But that’s still a lot of people contributing selflessly to a cause they believe in. People aged 40-54 years are more likely to volunteer (30.5%) than other age group, which is interesting, given that most of them would have day jobs. For the 70+ group, the number is 28.0%.

The most common types of organisations for which people volunteered related to sport and physical recreation (30.7%), religious groups (23.1%) and education and training (18.8%).

The majority (66.4%) volunteered for one organisation only, 23.0% for two and 10.4% for three or more.

I realise the latter puts me in a minority and might also prompt accusations of ‘virtue signalling’ which is how young people describe making yourself look good or ‘skiting’ as we used to call it.

The onset of Covid-19 in March 2020 tore a huge hole in the framework of national volunteering. A study conducted by the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods found that the proportion of adult Australians engaging in formal voluntary work, which is done through an organisation or group, fell from 36% in late 2019 to 24.2% in April 2021. In the 12 months leading up to April 2021, only 54.4% of those who had stopped volunteering had resumed, exacerbating a decline in the national rate of volunteering from 36% in 2010 to 29% in 2019.

https://theconversation.com/loss-of-two-thirds-of-volunteers-delivers-another-covid-blow-to-communities-159327

More recent research by the Institute of Community Directors reveals that 58% of charities reported a decline in volunteering. The report speculates about generational change as one reason, citing a YouGov Consumer Sentiment Survey. This survey found that 23% of Baby Boomers volunteer several times a week, compared with 14% of Gen Xers, 11% of Millennials and 9% of Gen Z (those aged 12 to 24). Those are scary statistics when you realise that 51% of Australian charities are wholly dependent upon volunteers.

https://communitydirectors.com.au/help-sheets/volunteer-help-sheet-how-to-build-your-support-base

As I write this, three U3A volunteers are reviewing my spelling, grammar and syntax before we email the Term Two newsletter out. That will be the easy part, unlike the First Term newsletter, 160 copies of which were printed, folded, labelled and mailed to members by a small army of volunteers. Nothing wrong with signalling other people’s virtues. They know who they are.

Volunteering and election fatigue

Submarines or social housing?

housing-crisis-homelessness — Image by Jon Tyson www.unsplash.,com

One of our readers commented that on the same day the media were banging on about the Federal Government’s $368 billion submarine plan, a lone SBS panel programme focused on the national housing crisis.

It is tempting to compare spending on affordable housing with the capital cost of up to five nuclear-powered submarines. The Federal Government’s (annual) commitment to affordable housing (currently $1.6 billion), equates to about 13% of its annual submarine budget (ie if the $368 billion is spread equally over 30 years). This assumes that successive governments will continue to spend that much on affordable housing (and submarines).

While housing is the responsibility of individual States and Territories, the Federal Government develops national policy and funds it with grants to the States and Territories.

That’s the theory, but in reality the critical shortage of housing, the cost of housing and the rising tally of homelessness is a clear and present danger to Australia’s social stability. Just this week the 2021 Census data on homelessness was released – what kept them, you might ask?

More than 122,000 people in Australia experienced homelessness on Census night, an increase of 5.2% from 2016, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The ABS interpreted the numbers as representing 48 people for every 10,000 people, compared with 50 people for every 10,000 in 2016.

While that is a reduction, the historical snapshot would seem to be an unreliable statistic, given that measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 throughout 2021 contributed to some of the changes in the data.

“During the 2021 Census, we saw fewer people ‘sleeping rough’ in improvised dwellings, tents or sleeping out, and fewer people in living in ‘severely’ crowded dwellings and staying temporarily with other households,” ABS spokesperson Georgia Chapman said.

The affordable housing issue is not just about people sleeping in doorways. A new report produced by the Queensland Council of Social Services (QCOSS) clearly shows that working families are among those falling prey to the acute rental housing market shortage. It’s worse in some States than in others.

The report from QCOSS and The Town of Nowhere campaign is sobering reading. It predicts more than 220,000 households in the State will not have affordable housing within 20 years.

The report was prepared by national housing expert, University of New South Wales Professor Hal Pawson, and UNSW colleagues.

The tough conclusions include that there are around 150,000 households across Queensland with unmet housing needs. This includes 100,000 households who would typically be eligible for social housing. These households are either experiencing homelessness, or are low-income households in private rentals, paying more than 30% of household income in rent.

The figure is more than twice the official indicator of 47,306 households on the Queensland social housing waiting list. The latter has grown by 70% over the past three years.

Un-met housing needs are highest in satellite cities south of Brisbane. Pawson’s study shows that 10% of all households in Logan, Beaudesert and Gold Coast are homeless or living in unaffordable housing.

Professor Pawson said Queensland would need 11,000 affordable and social homes each year for the next 20 years, about 2,700 of which would need to be social housing.

He told the ABC the government had promised to build 13,000 social and affordable homes by 2027. But the QCOSS report found that the number of people with “very high need” for social housing was 37% higher than the system could accommodate.

In the decade leading up to 2017, there was “minimal” investment by State and Federal governments in affordable and social housing, Professor Pawson said.

“Unless they can get a grip on the situation, it’s a problem that over the next generation will continue to become more stressed and more pressurised.”

Much of the blame for the current problem is laid at the feet of private landlords. Private rentals in Queensland have risen as much as 33% since 2020. The sharpest increases, however, have been in regional markets. For example, over the past five years median rents rose by 80% per cent in the industrial town of Gladstone, by 51% in the tourist town of Noosa and 33% in the Gold Coast area. Nearly 60% of low-income households in the private rental market are facing unaffordable housing costs, with 15% in extreme housing affordability stress (rent accounting for more than half of total income).

While rentals have risen steeply, the bigger problem is a lack of rental accommodation. Rental vacancies are close to zero not only in Brisbane and the Gold Coast but also in regional towns.

The report states: “Queensland’s private rental housing has seen several years of declining vacancy levels and rent inflation rates far above the national norm. More generally, the sector remains entirely dominated by small-scale investor landlords whose usual prioritisation of capital growth over rental revenue inherently compromises tenant security.”
The upshot of this is that landlords are selling on the rising market, resulting in fewer houses for rental. Coupled with this is the inadequacy of tenant rights on rents, security and conditions. The Queensland Government enacted significant rental regulation reforms in 2022, but these fell far short of the changes advocated by tenants’ rights campaigners.

The Productivity Commission reported last year on the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement framed by the Albanese Government.

The agreement provides $1.6 billion a year in federal funding to the States and Territories, with the aim of improving access to affordable and secure housing.

However, the Commission judged the programme ineffective and in need of a major shake-up. With rents rising and vacancies falling, low-income private renters are spending more on housing than they used to. One in four households have less than $36 a day left for other essentials, the Commission said.

For those who might argue against more investment in social housing, there are success stories. The Queensland Government has funded a small number of permanent supportive housing (PSH) tenancies for people who have experienced long-term homelessness. PSH combines subsidised long-term housing with access to intensive but voluntary support services. One PSH programme, Brisbane Common Ground (BCG), established in 2012, is a 146-unit apartment block with 24/7 on-site support. Studies reported high tenancy sustainment rates and tenant satisfaction levels. It also produced significant savings via reduced use of emergency services and crisis accommodation. (QCOSS Report).

Despite the success of projects like BCG, there are many examples of State governments backing away from the commitment to social housing. For example, the New South Wales government is reportedly preparing to sell its Waterloo social housing complex in Sydney. The ABC reported that Waterloo Estate, the biggest social housing estate in Australia, houses almost 2,500 people.

The 18ha site will be redeveloped under a NSW government strategy called Communities Plus, where public land is offered to developers on the proviso 30% of what they build is dedicated social housing. This is clearly a retrograde move away from a project that is 100% dedicated to social housing. Meanwhile, more than 51,000 hard-pressed households are waiting for a home in NSW.

In an even more backward step, Darwin’s local Council has reportedly been issuing $162 fines to ‘rough sleepers’. The latter may or may not be indigenous people known as ‘longgrassers.’ (see link below)

Darwin Council issued a statement saying it had been subject to significant pressure from some current Northern Territory government MLAs. The MPs wanted to increase the number of infringements (and the size of fines), issued to vulnerable people who are sleeping rough in public places. (And what happens when these people cannot pay the fines? Imprisonment for non-payment? I guess that’s one way of getting people off the streets..Ed)

In its defence Council said council rangers issued fines as a “last resort”.

“We do not consider the fining of vulnerable people the solution to complex issues such as homelessness.”

More reading

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jul/12/queenslanders-miss-out-on-social-housing-due-to-failures-to-build-homes-and-inaccurate-waiting-lists

https://www.drbilldayanthropologist.com/resources/Longgrass%20people%20of%20Darwin%202012.pdf

A dystopian view of contactless travel

contactless-travel-cctv — A pigeon’s view of CCTV cameras

Amidst the airport’s security cameras, facial recognition technology and contactless check-in, it took a dog (and a human) to catch me out. We were about to exit customs in New Zealand when a customs officer with a beagle on a lead passed us by. The beagle tracked back, put his front paws on my trolley and sniffed at my black shoulder bag.

“Have you had food in that bag, Sir?” the Customs Officer asked.

“I bought a sandwich at the airport in Brisbane and ate it on the plane,” I explained.

“What kind of sandwich was it?”

“Um, chicken – chicken and avocado.”

She smiled: “Right, well he’s trained to sniff out chicken.” She gave the dog a treat and we continued on to the exit.

Apart from a side trip to the duty free shop, this was the only human contact we had, coming and going, apart from a tired-looking Brisbane customs officer at the end of a very long queue, collecting arrival forms and pointing us to the exit.

When tackling the now ubiquitous automatic check-in kiosk, I began to realise that my new passport, complete with a photo of a stern-looking 74 year old, contains a microchip which identifies me on facial scanners.

As Smart Traveller summarises:

All Australian passports, except for emergency passports, are ePassports. An ePassport contains an electronic chip that helps to confirm your identity. International airports in Australia, and some overseas, allow Australians with ePassports to use automated passport control machines.

At our point of departure were check-in kiosks where your boarding passes are printed from a machine, along with baggage tags. The first time I tried this I accidentally pasted the baggage receipt (which you are supposed to detach but nobody explained that) on the checked-in bag. A burly chap watched as I hefted my 16kg bag on to the conveyer belt. He kindly retrieved pieces of bar code from my sticker and pasted them on the side of my suitcase. Then we proceeded to Customs check-in where you had to pour out perfectly good water, remove everything from your pockets (belt, wallet, passport, phone, even a soggy hankie) and stand like The Terminator in the X-ray machine.

I dislike having to remove my belt as I have enough trouble keeping my pants up with a belt. Once I’d passed through X-ray and been re-united with my stuff, I stood around in everyone’s way and took as long as possible to put my belt on, stuff the hankie back in my pocket, etc.

“Move along please, Sir.”

Now to the duty free shop, where assistants (all two of them), limited conversation to “$72.99 – on card?”

By the way, who carries cash in these times? One day we are all going to get caught out like we did when trapped in a post-Cyclone town.

Power cuts and cell phone outages neutered ATMs and EFTPOS machines all along New Zealand’s east coast. Did they not think of that?

(I distinctly remember whingeing about that at the time, as well as complaining on behalf of our country cousins who can’t rely on the Internet. Ed)

My lasting memory of leaving Auckland (after going through the same contactless palaver), was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a smiling airport employee, bidding us ‘Haere Ra’ (goodbye come again).

The people that used to do that sort of job are probably working unsociable hours at one of the airport’s fast-food joints.

One of my friends who found himself unexpectedly flying to England for his mother’s funeral, clutching an emergency passport, commented on Facebook about travel in 2023 – “It’s not like it was.”

One could imagine he was not in the mood, but he’s right – the absence of friendly people making sure we end up in the right place together with the security overkill at both ends is exhausting. On a brighter note, at least no-one comes through the aircraft spraying insecticide before you disembark. Remember that?

Dirk Singer writes that the contactless travel trend began during the Covid pandemic as a means of limiting human contact. Understandably, the whole world was concerned about this in 2020 and 2021, Maybe not so much in 2022 and 2023, but the trend has been accelerated by the acceptance that our face is now our boarding pass.

Biometric scanners can be quite confronting if you are among the 40% of people who get anxious when they travel. The machine barks at us: stand there, remove your glasses, stay still, don’t smile. If we somehow manage to put our feet in the right place and follow the rest of the instructions, the little gate will slide open just long enough to let one person through. I briefly wondered what would happen if you just stood there in the gate, like a reluctant sheep? How long would it take for one of the few remaining airport employees to arrive and sort you out?

There’s more social distancing to come. Some companies are trialling robotic food deliveries within airports. How long before the food trolley coming down the aisle is driving itself? Crikey, even the dunny flushes itself.

The latest developments envisage robots staffing airport check-in desks, carrying out security protocols, cleaning and even delivering food to passengers waiting in airport lounges.

The proponents of contactless travel (airlines) like to tell us it is safer, healthier and less stressful. Yes, but what about those of us who routinely lose our minds when in the confines of an airport (or to a lesser degree, a railway station)?

According to kiwi.com, 40% of people become anxious to some extent at the thought of travelling on an airplane. Moreover, 6% of people are affected by aviophobia — the clinical fear of flying.

As for Facial recognition scanning, it has been around for a long while now. In addition to its use at airports, these days it is used by police and security services to review CCTV footage. As you probably know, Great Britain once led the western world when it came to installation of CCTV cameras (4 million). I clearly recall a Billy Connolly travelogue where he encountered one of the silent watchers on a bridge in Scotland. Billy being Billy leaned into the lens and extended his middle finger.

‘Person of Interest’, a TV drama series frequently featured investigators scanning crowds, using facial recognition technology. Suddenly they have a hit. The person of interest’s file pops up on the right side of the screen. Nowhere to hide, just like George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith in 1984.

The combination of CCTV and facial recognition used by governments and private enterprise has the personal freedom movement in a panic.

Last year there was considerable outrage when Choice magazine broke a story that major Australian retailers were collecting biometric information in-store. Bunnings, KMart and the Good Guys all agreed to ‘pause’ their use of the technology while the legality is being assessed.

As for the spread of CCTV cameras, Comparitech.com’s Paul Bischoff ranks China at the top of a global survey of cities under surveillance.

China has an estimated 540 million surveillance cameras (54% of the global total) to cover 1.46 billion people. That’s 372.8 cameras per 1,000 people. (The latest development in China is to identify people jaywalking and send them an instant fine (by text).

Sydney, at the other end of the scale, has 4.67 cameras per 1000 people and Melbourne 2.13. So where would you rather live?

There’s a lot in this study and it is hard to make comparisons. But the inescapable truth of it is, like Orwell’s Winston Smith, we are all being watched.

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.” Winston Smith, 1984.

Squeezed between inflation and interest rates

inflation-interest-rates — The Australian cash rate since 1998 (Reserve Bank of Australia chart)

I just happened to be reading a novel set in the Edwardian era at the same time as the media was going bonkers (again) about the Reserve Bank raising interest rates by 0.25% to 3.6%. In Louis de Bernieres’s* book, The Dust That Falls from Dreams, one of the characters is holding forth about the sudden rise in the bank rate and subsequent collapse of the share market in 1914.

Hamilton McCosh, a daring entrepreneur and investor, is at first delighted when the bank rate goes to 4% because he has ‘a few bob invested here and there’. Then the rate doubles to 8% and quickly rises to 10%.

“Just as I was gleefully rubbing my hands the blighters closed the Stock Exchange”, he tells his pals at the Atheneum, a gentlemen’s club.

This is late July 1914, you gather, a few weeks before World War I broke out. McCosh didn’t know then that the stock market would stay closed for five months. Rather than cause inflation, this financial crisis functioned like the ultimate credit squeeze. Inflation stayed low, well at least until 1915, when it rose rapidly to 12% then to 25% in 1917.

In the pre-war period, De Bernieres’s McCosh is aghast – you can’t get credit anywhere and there’s a rout on the stock market. “What’s Serbia got to do with us?” he complains.

In 2023 you could insert “Ukraine’“and immediately realise that we have seen cycles like this before. In times of war, the supply of money is tested, oil is expensive and hard to source, there is much unemployment, securities can’t be sold and supplies of necessities are dwindling.

The 1914 financial crisis in the City was a liquidity crisis of massive proportion, the likes of which was not seen again until 2007/2008. Amidst much intervention by the government and the Bank of England, the day was ultimately saved.

In De Bernieres’s novel, McCosh regroups and singles out two stocks he thinks will do well – Malacca Rubber and Shell Oil (as he calculates where money will be spent in the war effort).

Self-interest and venality arises quickly whenever a country’s financial welfare is threatened. Survival of the shiftiest is the order of the day.

At this point in time, many of Australia’s mortgage holders must be in a state of anxiety as yet again the goal posts are moved.

Not that the RBA had any option. Monetary policy is under pressure from forces beyond the Reserve Bank’s control. We are not the only country where inflation and interest rates have risen sharply. You can chart the increases in Australia back to the onset of a pandemic in March 2020, then steeply rising since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022.

The impact of Covid is what initially sent the cost of living index soaring. From March 2020, when it was 2.2%. Inflation rose steadily through the Covid years, driven up by stock shortages, the impact of bushfires and floods on production, disruptions to supply chains and the ever-rising cost of fuel.

Inflation reached 7.3% in the September quarter of 2022, about six months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The RBA now thinks inflation may have peaked (at 7.8% in December 2022). But as ABC business reporter Peter Ryan observed, the March quarter figure will be the one to clarify matters when released on April 23. Wherever it rests, Australia’s inflation rate is a long way north of the 2%-3% range promised in 2019.

When inflation rises, central banks almost always use monetary policy to beat it into submission. This week’s interest rate rise – the 10^th in a row, takes the official cash rate to 3.6%.

As Peter Martin observed in a timely piece for The Conversation, Tuesday’s interest rate hike was the culmination of a process that has added $1,080 to the monthly cost of payments on a $600,000 variable mortgage.

Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, calculated this increase ($12,960 per year) by comparing payments on the National Australia Bank’s base variable mortgage rate before the Reserve Bank started its series of hikes in May 2022.

Before the Reserve Bank began raising the cash rate, the base variable rate was 2.19%. It’s about to be 5.49%, pushing up the monthly payment on a $600,000 mortgage from $2,600 to $3,680.

The Reserve Bank acknowledges it is a “painful squeeze”, but hints it might not need to squeeze much harder.

There’s more pain across the ditch. NZStats revealed that the annual inflation rate for 2022 reached 7.2%. Housing and household utilities was the largest contributor to the annual inflation rate. This was due to a 14% hike in the cost of building a house and rentals also rose.

As if to demonstrate its independence from the government of the day, New Zealand’s Reserve Bank pretty much ignored the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. While all around people were shovelling silt out of their houses, the RBNZ increased the cash rate from 4.25% to 4.75% on February 22. This was a more dramatic increase than seen this week in Australia. But New Zealand is anxious to suppress the spiralling cost of housing. You’d think a country which is over-endowed with pine forests would have this covered, eh?

I guess the new UK prime minister will want to take credit for the drop in inflation recorded in January (8.8%) compared with 9.7% in December 2022. The Bank of England Governor has warned that it may need to raise rates again if inflation re-asserts itself. After 10 successive increases since December 2021, the official rate is at 4%. Meanwhile in the US, the Federal Reserve is flagging higher and faster rates rises (4.75% in February), despite inflation dropping below 7%.

Why does all this matter and who does it matter to? If you are young, working and buying your own home, yet another 0.25% increase in the cash rate wrecks your household budget. Those who borrowed their deposit (from the Bank of Mum and Dad) will be desperate for another pay rise, as inflation eats into the recent 4.5% increase in wages.

As The Guardian reported just last month, almost 25% of borrowers were at risk of mortgage stress as of December 2022. Another 800,000 borrowers face higher repayments as fixed loans end later this year and revert to the variable rate.

Tim Lawless, research director at CoreLogic, says the clear reason for mortgage stress is that interest rates increased faster and earlier than anyone was thinking. (Whatever happened to the notion of buying a modest first home then upgrading as finances permit?Ed.)

“We are expecting that the rate of mortgage stress will push higher into 2023,” Lawless told The Guardian, “partly because of higher interest rates, but also because of the cost of living.”

Theo Chambers, chief executive of Shore Financial added: “People probably borrowed more than they could have today. With borrowing capacities down almost 35% from 12 months ago, these people wouldn’t get approved today.”

As for De Bernieres’s Hamilton McCosh, how is he supposed to earn a living in Edwardian Britain, he fumes, saddled with four children, a truculent wife and two mistresses current (one retired), all of whom have children to feed?

As the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen once said, “Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt“.

*author of Captain Corellli’s Mandolin

New Zealand’s under-reported cyclone

cyclone-forestry-slash — Photo 01: Forestry waste (slash) piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach

A Pakeha (Non-Māori) friend in Auckland, who has been studying Te Reo Māori language for some years, thinks all New Zealanders should know at least 100 words.

On our visit there between February 9 and 24, I began to realise how many Māori words I do know, and this time I learned a few new ones including Huripari.

This is Māori for storm or, if expressing the extremity of a cyclone, hurricane or tornado, you might say: He āwhā nui, ā, he tino kino te pupuhi o te haumātakataka.

Cyclone Gabrielle swept through Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and down the East coast.

Gabrielle did not receive much media coverage here in Australia, despite inflicting a damage bill conservatively estimated at $NZ13.5 billion. More than 250 roads are closed; 1000 people are still living in shelters, many cannot return to their homes and at least 11 people died. Roads cut between Wairoa and Napier and Taupo and Napier could take months to clear, rebuild and re-open. Many homes have been red-stickered, which in local parlance means they are ‘munted’. (A non-Māori word meaning destroyed)

I’ll admit we took the Cyclone warnings too lightly. We landed in Auckland on February 9 and stayed with friends, who had their own disaster stories after Auckland’s dramatic deluge on January 30.

From there, we drove to Rotorua for a truly immersive experience. We were surely among the few Australian Pakeha people at the Indigenous All Stars vs NZ Māoris rugby league match. It was a beautiful sunny day with no hint of what was to come. The sport started early with a mixed touch footie game (a draw), then the Indigenous women’s team played their Māori counterparts (who won).

Then to the main event. Former NRL legend Greg Inglis appeared on camera, looking good in a suit. He was being interviewed by Sky Sports before the match. The crowd of 25,000 got involved in the pre-game Indigenous welcome dance and Māori haka. Much of the cheering and roaring was saved for the advancing haka party.

The match was played in good spirit; few injuries and only one sin bin for a high tackle. The Māori team more than held their own, but thanks to the athletic brilliance of Brisbane Broncos player Selwyn Cobbo, who scored three tries, the Indigenous team won 28-24.

We chatted to a group of Aboriginal women from Moree and other places. They flew over especially for the game and were ready to fly back on Sunday, weather permitting. They seemed happy to be among whanau (extended family). (I loved the whole experience. Ed)

Next morning we set off to walk through Rotorua’s Redwood forests, which are quite impressive, the tracks heavily used by locals cycling and walking their dogs. My sister texted, anxious about the weather report. She wanted us to drive through the Waioeka Gorge to Gisborne ASAP. There was evidence of previous slips on this road, which is quite often closed for a day or two while road crews clear the way. It is a mountainous valley road with steep hills prone to slips (landslides).

By the time we arrived in Gisborne, the ominous black clouds we saw building up beyond Rotorua had pursued us to the coast. We bunkered down for the night as strong winds and heavy rain developed. My sister lives close to but on the ‘high’ side of the river. Her house is sheltered and well insulated, so the only real clue we had to the ferocity of the weather was to watch the big pine tree swaying around behind her neighbour’s house.

We lost power on Monday, but thankfully it was restored by the evening. The Hawkes Bay towns of Wairoa, Napier and Hastings were less fortunate. By the end of the week, power had only been patchily restored in Napier, where a major substation was submerged by flood waters.

Our collective anxiety levels were high as we lost cell phone and internet connection so had no idea what was going on in the outside world, apart from staying glued to the 24/7 coverage on NZ1 TV. At least I had contacted my other sister in Hastings on Sunday night to tell her we had arrived safely in Gisborne. Then there was no phone communication for six days. So much for the VoiP phones foisted upon us all in place of reliable copper landlines. (What ‘genius’ didn’t foresee that this lack of communication would happen in the case of widespread power blackouts? Ed)

New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was quick to get to the front line – no side trips to Hawaii for Hipkins, who replaced Jacinda Ardern as leader after her resignation on January 13.

One story I found while browsing Australian media was filed on Monday by the ABC, with Hipkins announcing a global fundraising effort.

The appeal will fund longer-term recovery projects and target wealthy expatriates, businesses and ‘anyone with affection for New Zealand’, Hipkins said.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, around 660,000 New Zealanders live in Australia, a third of them in Queensland.

Despite the obvious interest in news from home, people who were looking for it went to Stuff.co.nz. The Weekend Australian, by contrast, made no mention of Cyclone Gabrielle at all.

This FOMM was aided and abetted by the aforementioned ABC report and news drawn from Stuff.co.nz, the Gisborne Herald, Hawkes Bay Today and the NZ Herald.

Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand’s North Island on February 12, taking out roads and bridges and leaving tens of thousands without power or connectivity. A National State of Emergency was declared for only the third time in the nation’s history. Disruption to supplies of clean water was just one of the problems.

The drama is by no means over. Police are still searching for four people who are not accounted for. Heavy rain at the weekend hampered clean-up efforts and, as is common in this part of the world, the occasional earthquake came along to ramp up anxiety levels.

Hipkins said early on in live TV broadcasts that it was time to ‘get real’ about New Zealand’s transport, power and communications infrastructure. Opposition Leader Chris Luxon started off well by acknowledging the role climate change had played in this catastrophe. But he later mounted a law and order campaign, after reports of looting and intimidation by gangs.

He described ex-Cyclone Gabrielle as the most damaging natural disaster in a generation. That didn’t stop the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates to 4.5%, in times when ordinary working Kiwis are finding it hard just to pay for groceries and fuel.

The New Zealand Government has announced an inquiry into forestry practices which saw tonnes of debris (known as ‘slash’) washed down rivers and into the ocean. Along the way, this trash inevitably aggravated damage to bridges and roads. The photo above shows forestry waste piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach. On a good day, it is the East Coast’s favourite safe swimming beach. What more can I say other than share this second photo.

On a positive note, hundreds of Kapa Haka groups from all over New Zealand (and a few from Australia), took part in Te Matatini, a celebration of Māori culture and traditions held at Auckland’s Eden Park.

I was particularly impressed by the group from Wairoa, a coastal town devastated by flooding. The dancers smeared their lower legs in mud, as if to say ‘Cyclone – what Cyclone?’ These are resilient people, caring for family and community, and, despite catastrophe, still with a sense of humour. Kia Kaha.