Medevac, May Election, 3m missing voters

Parliament-Election-Missing-Voters
Parliament House, Canberra 1979, image by Steve Swayne https://flic.kr/p/q1Jkuq

If one believes that the Australian government will delay holding a Federal election until the last possible date (May 18) that’s just 92 sleeps away. Given the Morrison government’s historic defeat (75/74) when Parliament passed the so-called Medevac Bill, this week, I can’t see ScoMO heading up the hill to the Governor-General’s whare* for an early election. The electorate is clearly polarised and there is a high degree of suspicion about what both major parties say they’ll do and what they actually do when in power.

The problem for political parties running campaigns in such a tense environment, and why they need every one of those 92 days, is to work out how to recapture the estimated 3.14 million Australians who do not participate. That’s right, even though we’ve had compulsory voting since 1924, that’s the estimate of how many people failed to vote in 2016.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) analysis found that turnout at the 2016 House of Representatives was 91%, the lowest recorded since the introduction of compulsory voting ahead of the 1925 Federal election. Turnout at the 2016 Senate elections at 91.9% was also the lowest recorded since the 1925 federal election. The missing include 1.78 million who were enrolled but did not vote, an estimated 816,000 who should be on the roll and aren’t, and 550,000 who cast a ballot paper but either filled it in incorrectly or deliberately defaced it (informal).

We know some scrutineers who, over drinkies after election night, swap notes on the best insults or graffiti on informal votes. Penises are common, so too an added box to tick with a substitute name, e.g. “Duck, D (Animal Welfare Lobby), “Trump, D (Socialist Left) or SCOTLAND!

The informal vote includes ballot papers where voters intended to make their vote count but did not fill it in correctly. Australia’s enormous Senate ballot paper, which can have more than 100 candidates, claims many victims in this way.

Why are these numbers so important, then? In 2016 the not-for-profit Y Vote claimed that people aged 18-24 who were not on the roll, didn’t show up, or voted informally could have swayed the election result one way or the other in 10 marginal seats.

Y Vote calculated wasted votes using AEC data that one quarter of Australians aged 18-24 were not enrolled. The number of wasted votes outnumbered the margins several times over in key Liberal marginal seats.

The founder of Y Vote, Skye Riggs, said young Australians felt their voices were not valued because “they don’t see politicians investing a lot of time in them”.

I’d say the close tussle between the Ayes and Noes on the Medical Evacuation Bill reflects a deeply polarised electorate; polarised and politically volatile. Remember the Wentworth by-election – when former PM Malcolm Turnbull’s solid blue ribbon seat went to cross-bench Independent Senator Kerryn Phelps? There’s no telling what the people will do.

After reading on Monday how Labor intended to insist on amendments to the Medevac Bill, She Who Takes Direct Action rang Bill Shorten’s office. She was assured Labor was not going soft on the Bill but was just ‘having a look at the language’. As it turned out, Labor wanted three amendments (one of which insisted upon a ‘character test’). Labor wanted the Minister rather than doctors to have the final say on who is flown to Australia for treatment. The Greens refused to support the amendments as proposed.

A late amendment to Dr Phelps’s Bill stipulated that the advisory panel picked by the government to oversee decisions, receive no remuneration for their role. This nicely worked around the government’s late-mail advice that the Bill was unconstitutional.

It is important to note, given the government’s steamy rhetoric that it will encourage people smugglers to send more boats, the Medevac Bill applies only to the cohort currently held on Nauru or Manus Island and is (thus far) not extended to new arrivals.

One ought not to forget, as an astute friend reminded me last week, that 80% of Australians voted for either the LNP or Labor at the last Federal election. She reminded me that Labor’s policies on immigration and refugees are not that dissimilar to the current regime. Bill Shorten’s speech to the Labor Party conference last year made that clear enough.

“We cannot and we must not and we will not allow the criminal people smuggling syndicates to get back into business…

…It is not a crime to want to come to this country. But it is a crime to exploit vulnerable people, to put them in dangerous and unsafe vessels, and have them drown at sea.

We cannot, we must not and we will not permit the re-opening of their trade in human desperation and the drownings and the irreplaceable loss of life that it brings.”

To this end Labor would insist upon:

  • Rigorous security, character and health assessments throughout humanitarian and general migration programs
  • pursuing regional resettlement.
  • turning back boats where it is safe to do so.
  • maintaining offshore processing

Those who do not care for selective quoting can look it up (Chapter Nine of Labor’s policy platform).

So while Labor appears to be prepared to give the poor a better deal (e.g. promises to review NewStart and fast-track the NDIS), if you vote Labor you are voting for a continuation of the policy of processing asylum seekers and refugees through offshore detention centres.

Offshore processing is just one of the many important issues one could sift through when deciding who would best represent a voter’s interests. There are other key issues (many now showing up in the ABC’s social media poll), including climate change, the environment, water security, health and education, not to mention whether any government should allow a foreign company to dig up Australian coal and export it.

I was talking to a Labor stalwart who had been door-knocking in one of the Sunshine Coast’s blue-ribbon seats, electorates where you’d need a 11% swing to unseat the incumbent. Our doorknocker persisted, even when faced with less than polite rebuke from Sunshine Coast Tories. What surprised him, though, was the level of ignorance/apathy: “What? Are we having an election? When? Why?”

Some of those people were probably among the 1.78 million who were enrolled but did not turn up in 2016. No doubt some of them received infringement notices and a $125 fine.

The AEC says declining voter turnout observed at Australian federal elections reflects international trends. Voter turnout has been steadily declining in most developed countries over several decades. How do we lift our game, then? And why is it that Malta’s best voter turnout (92%) exceeded Australia’s effort, yet Malta does not have compulsory voting? Perhaps Malta is less exposed to ‘shouty’ commentators?

Defence Minister Christopher Pyne declared on Monday that politics in Australia was “trapped in a self-obsessed and panic-prone spiral that is damaging Parliament’s ability to work for the good of voters.” (Probably the first and last time I’m likely to agree with Christopher Pyne. Ed)

He told the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Wroe the political environment, which had bowed to irrational pressure from “shouty” commentators, was not good for the country and that he can’t see that changing.

Yep, that ought to get the 3.14 million Australian slackers motivated to contribute to the political process. No worries, mate!

*Maori for house

Further reading:

Moving North Queensland water to Murray-Darling

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Barron Falls demonstrates North Queensland water excesses. Photo by Coral Sea Baz

Australia’s mismanagement of water is coming home to roost now, with the highly visible deluge in North Queensland in sharp contrast to the water-starved Murray-Darling Basin.

Far North Queensland residents and emergency workers are still struggling to cope with the worst floods in living memory. Tully, arguably the wettest place in Australia, had 955mm over 27 days since New Year’s Day, about a quarter of its annual rain. Townsville broke all records with 1,200mm falling in just nine days, which accounted for unprecedented flooding and the decision to open the floodgates of Ross River Dam.

Residents of the seaside Townsville suburb of Balgal Beach, seemingly impervious to flooding, found out otherwise.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) recorded North Queensland rainfall totals in January and the first week in February ranging from 1,036mm (Cairns) to 1,325mm (Townsville) The highest weekly total in January was 766mm at Whyanbeel Valley. Crikey, that’s a few millimetres more than the annual rainfall for Australia’s second-largest inland city, Toowoomba.

Last time we were in that fair city (September), the only green grass around was in the city’s three parks, watered by Council to celebrate the Carnival of Flowers. That was the month parts of the Western Downs were added to the 53% of Queensland’s drought-declared local government areas.

Meanwhile in Southern states, BoM made the telling observation that annual rainfall in 2018 was the seventh-lowest on record (since 1900) for the Murray-Darling Basin.  Rainfall was low over the south-eastern quarter of the mainland in 2018, with much of the region experiencing totals in the lowest 10% of records.

This is brought into sharper focus when we are told that parts of Australia’s mainland from around Newcastle in NSW to Euroa in Victoria are now included on the United Nations’ list of the Top Ten Global Water Hotspots (see further reading).

Many readers will be familiar with the crisis facing the Murray-Darling system: blue-green algae, millions of dead fish, the Darling River drying up; water being diverted for irrigation to grow water-intensive crops like cotton and rice. The recently published report by the South Australian Royal Commission found that the 2012 Murray-Darling Basin Plan must be strengthened if there is to be any chance of saving the river system. Professor Jamie Pittock of the Australian National University writes that the Commission found systemic failures of the Basin Plan, adopted in 2012 to address over-allocation of water to irrigated farming. The Commission’s 111 findings and 44 recommendations accuse federal agencies of maladministration and challenge key policies that were pursued in implementing the plan.

Amid revelations of water theft, the awful legacy of dead fish in the oxygen-deprived Darling River and outback towns running out of water, plenty of people are having their say.

This week, South Australian independent Senator Rex Patrick dared to confront the cotton industry, demanding that growers justify the use of water and the right to grow that export crop. (The same could be said of rice, Ed.)

This is a long-running saga. In 2011 an article published by the Permaculture Research Institute explored a report that revealed Australia as the world’s largest net exporter of ‘virtual’ water (exported virtual water is defined as water consumed to create crops, livestock and industrial products for export). The report blamed the agricultural sector for the vast majority of the total volume of water exported from Australia in this way (72,000 gigalitres of virtual water exported overseas every year).

I’m not a scientist, hydrologist or environmental engineer, yet the answer seems desperately obvious. We need to channel and export North Queensland water to the arid south-eastern states and inland Queensland, NSW and South Australia.

One only has to think for five minutes about the Snowy Mountains hydro-electricity/irrigation scheme to see we are more than capable of funding, building and maintaining large and ambitious infrastructure projects.

Sydney food technology engineer Terry Bowring told The Courier-Mail in 2010 about his $9 billion plan to move water from the Burdekin and other north Queensland rivers to arid parts of inland NSW, Victoria and South Australia. Mr Bowring’s plan involved channelling about 4,000 gigalitres of water a year. The water would be transported 1,800kms by canals, with 60% of the water sold to irrigators. The rest would go to cities such as Toowoomba and Brisbane for domestic use.

Mr Bowring told FOMM yesterday the plan was similar to the Bradfield scheme proposed in 1938. Until Mr Bowring’s plan surfaced (he’d been working on it for years), no-one had taken Dr John Bradfield’s scheme forward to include costings.

Mr Bowring said the costings were based on experiences from the US, where he worked for some five years. The system would take six years to build but only four or five years to recover costs.

As with the Bradfield scheme, critics said the Bowring plan was uneconomic and impractical. The telling thing is that it would only take about 13% of the water that flows from the Burdekin to the ocean. Typically, more water flows to sea from the Burdekin than the Murray-Darling Basin and all city dams combined.

Mr Bowring, who is in his 80s, said he has no intention of pursuing the plan, but will make his research available for future use.

The other side of this argument was provided by the (then) Federal Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities.

The 28-page report generally scotches the idea, which is often raised when there are weather extremes in the north or the south.

“Moving water long distances is costly, energy intensive, and can have significant environmental, social and cultural impacts,” (item 1 under Key Facts).

“Using water that is locally available is generally more cost effective than transporting water long distances. Current studies show that local options, such as water conservation, desalination and recycling, cost around $1–2 per thousand litres; a supply from 1500 kilometres (km) away would cost around $5–6 per thousand litres.”

However the immediate problem is to make the Murray-Darling system a Federal and State priority, no matter the financial or political cost. It is shocking to consider that outback towns like Walgett, Wilcannia and Bourke have either run out of drinking water or are under extreme water stress. These events seem to have flown beneath the media radar that picked up on the early 2018 water crisis in Cape Town (South Africa).

The real danger is the risk to the fragile ecosystem of a river system that spans 77,000 kilometres of rivers over one million square kilometres across four States and the ACT. Environmental challenges include excessive water being diverted for agricultural, the blue-green algae that killed millions of fish, and salinity (in 2016-17, 1.84 million tonnes of salt was flushed out to sea through the Murray mouth).

As the Australian Conservation Foundation summed up, in an advertisement posted on social media:

“The heart-breaking death of these fish is no natural disaster. Powerful corporate interests and their cashed up lobbyists are bleeding our rivers dry. For too long, state and federal governments have let them get away with it.”

Further reading: https://www.fabians.org.au/australia_s_water_crisis (a (long), technical article by Watermark Australia’s Dr Wayne Chamley).

FOMM backpages:

 

 

 

 

Karen Law Band house concert

Maleny house concert Sunday February 24

Karen Law and her family band are our first house concert guests for 2019. Karen was last at our place in Maleny for a house concert in 2016. If you enjoyed that concert, we’re sure you’ll want to come again, and if you missed it, here’s your chance to see Karen and all of her family (husband David and children Murray, Hazel and Roanna) perform for you. Lovely harmonies and quite a variety of instruments, including guitars, flute, trumpet and didgeridoo. The band has performed at many folk festivals in recent years including the National, Illawarra, Maleny and Neurum Creek festivals.

Nambour-based Karen Law released her latest album, The Calm after the Storm, last year. It has been well reviewed and received radio airplay .

Karen has been writing upbeat and reflective folk songs for over 30 years. She began in the folk clubs of her native England, supporting the likes of Roy Bailey and Vin Garbutt. After moving to Australia in 1995, she soon became a regular at clubs and festivals around the country. Her debut CD ‘A Point on the Map’ was released at this time. A children’s CD followed, then some years later a new beginning, with a wealth of new songs and a band to perform them. Her CD ‘Asking Questions of your Soul’ (which includes Tommy Leonard on guitar and backing vocals), was released in 2014. Her latest CD, ‘The Calm After The Storm’ is gaining impressive feedback with fans. “Such beautiful harmonies, great stories about everyday experiences, amazing guitar and a nice variety in the songs…uplifting, yet soothing to listen to” was one such comment; a remark which could well sum up the band’s performance.

The Goodwills with guest Helen Rowe will perform the opening set of approx. ½ hour, from 3pm followed by afternoon tea. Our special guests will then perform from about 4pm to 5pm.

Tickets are $15, payable at the door. Owing to limited space, it’s essential to book. For bookings, and venue directions email Laurel goodwills <at> ozemail.com.au.

Thanks to Woodfordia Inc for sponsoring Goodwills house concerts.

FOMM’s Technology Failure Stress Scale

IT-stress-scale
This IT message (and others) can send some people’s stress levels off the scale.

After several weeks of persistent information IT problems, I’ve invented a Technology Failure Stress Scale that deals specifically with technology failure and the inability of many human beings to cope. Unlike the better-known Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, which measures the health impact of major life events like death of a spouse and divorce, mine is unscientific and highly subjective. Well, if it’s OK for leaders of major western governments to be unscientific and subjective, why not me?
The Holmes and Rahe stress inventory is still widely used, despite being created in 1967 (it mentions a mortgage of $20,000). The R&H test allocates points to each stressor. You take the stress test and tally up your numbers. Anything over 300 makes you highly susceptible to developing an illness. Death of a spouse (100), divorce (73), marital separation (65), imprisonment (63) and death of a close family member (63) are the top five. I was always under the misapprehension that moving house was in the top 10, but it apparently rates only 20 points. Try telling that to the renters, furiously scrubbing and vacuuming so they can get their bond back.

GPs use the Social Readjustment Rating Scale invented by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe to assess patients presenting in a highly stressed state. GPs also use the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), a more recent psychological test to assess anxiety and depression. The test asks the patient to perceive how they feel, ranging from not at all or hardly ever, to all the time, about their moods and reactions to situations. The latter is the test used to decide if you qualify for six rebated consultations over 12 months with a registered psychologist
The PSS has also been used by researchers trying to establish the links between technology and social media and psychophysiological well-being. If this subject interests you, try these links.

I was going to write about Brexit this week, a topic I have been assiduously avoiding since the silliness began in 2016. Then my laptop started misbehaving (again) after a clean install of Windows. My technology failure stress levels went off the scale.

On Saturday, when I went to retrieve my emails from an Outlook backup – it downloading 9,000+ emails (twice) into one folder. What happened to my carefully curated sub-folders? Moreover, new emails started arriving, in pairs. Time to call in a technology failure expert, who did his expert thing, then advised me to buy a new computer. Thanks to this friendly chap, my technology failure stress levels dropped from 275 (see test below), to around 75.

FOMM’s Technology Failure Stress Scale
1/ Blue screen of death, hard drive failure, complete loss of data due to hard drive failure, virus: 100 pts (deduct 50 points if you made a reliable back-up)
2/ Recovery but with poor prognosis/replacement recommended: 50
4/ Process of reinstalling programs and data: 45
5/ (Unbudgeted) cost of repair/replacement: 35
Operating system misbehaviour and user error
6/ Accidently deleting important files/emails or archives (or hitting send-all when that’s not what you meant to do): 60 (deduct 30 if you have backups)
7 Windows updates automatically, closing down when you are in the middle of editing your round-Australia video or watching the last 10 minutes of the final episode of Breaking Bad: 55
8/ Video/Music editing programs crash before you go file/save (see above): 65
9/ ITunes updates then you can’t find your music: 55 (some would rate this 100)
10/ Software manufacturers stop supporting something on which you have become dependent: 45
I’ll leave mobile phones, smart TVs, remote controls, Bluetooth and GPS devices for another time.
Rate your overall Technology Failure Stress (from a total of 550)
More than 300: your spouse will have an 80% chance of finding you irritating. Take the dog or yourself for a long walk. Unplug the computer at the wall if a storm is brewing.
200-299: your spouse will still be finding you irritating. Take the dog or yourself for a long walk. Eat chocolate.
100-199: This is a sign that you are sufficiently tech-savvy and adaptable but still prefer to leave it to the experts.
0-99: You either eschew computers or use the free ones at the library.

Technology Failure aside, what about Brexit?

As you’d gather, I get distracted when things get stressful and a bit beyond my ken, so it was initially hard to put together a coherent narrative on the topic of Brexit (short for Britain exiting the European Union).
Why should we care, you might ask? This is some far away turf war about trade and national identity. It may also be about Britain wanting to secure its borders as more refugees teem into Europe.
Basically, the politicians thought the Brits would say Yes to staying in the EU instead of No, we’re leaving. Between the 2016 referendum and now, the British parliament has been working on an agreement which will cut ties with the EU (and cost the UK about £37 billion), call it their Brexit fee).
In the ensuing years since the referendum, there has been considerable social discord (the vote was 52/48, after all), economic uncertainty and a tougher time for Britain’s poor, the perpetual victims of economic downturns.
The European Union was formed in 1972, forging together 28 countries with (in theory) a single currency, freedom of trade and movement between countries. The EU has its own parliament and all members have to pay to enjoy the benefits of economic unity. Over time, Britain became disenchanted with the return on its (annual) contribution of £13 billion (2017). The UK gets back about £4 billion a year as ‘public sector receipts’, so it can be seen that the UK pays more into the EU than it gets back. This does not take into account the harder to quantify benefits of jobs, trade and investment.

The Brexit debate has sharply defined what the Irish and the Scots had known all along – the United Kingdom is not all that united. The Scots voted to stay in the EU and so did Northern Ireland. Thus far, the debate has been vigorous between Leavers and Remainers. Of the Leavers, 94% believe Britain will be better off without the EU; 96% of Remainers think Britain will be worse off exiting the EU.

The Guardian’s monthly reports on UK economic indicators shows that business investment has declined for three consecutive quarters. The housing market is at its weakest level since 2012 and retail sales continue to be sluggish, with visible signs of business distress on UK high streets. There have been reports elsewhere of companies moving their headquarters from England to Asia (Dyson and Sony).

The UK government is this week voting on amendments to PM Theresa May’s 585-page Accord (which was voted down on January 15). The amended deal has to be approved and then accepted by the EU. If the EU rejects May’s plan, England will be left to deal with a fragmented kingdom, Brexit representing, as commentator Fintan O’Toole observed, ‘the result of the invisible subsidence of the political order’.

At divisive, stressful times like these, one could imagine Theresa May and her staff would be quite happy if Outlook crashed and they had an excuse not to look at their emails.

More reading: Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole’s perspicacious view of ‘Brextinct’ and the fissiparous four-nation state is an enlightening read.

Australia Day and the beach

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Mindil Beach, Darwin, 2013 (not Australia Day). Photo by Bob Wilson

There’s nothing much planned here for Australia Day (aka Invasion Day) except a trip to the (doggie) beach and an evening neighbourhood gathering at a local park.

You won’t find much flag-wearing/waving, lamb eating, dunny-racing, gumboot-tossing fervour in this essay, probably because I am among the 16% of Australians who think a national day of commemoration is unnecessary.

(Robbie Burns’ birthday (today) being the exception to the rule – Ed).

The headline item in a recent Australian Institute survey was that 84% of Australians believe it is important to have such a day. The Australian Institute survey also found that 56% of us don’t care which day it is held, just as long as we have one.

Then, if you want to buy into the ever-growing Australia Day shouting match between the extremes of the conservative side of politics and the so-called bleeding hearts, 49% of people surveyed said Australia Day should not be held on a date that is offensive to our indigenous people. (Here, here – Bob and Ed)

The other 51% probably thought there was nothing ill-timed or insensitive about Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s announcement (a year ahead), of the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first voyage to Australia. Earlier this week the PM said the government will spend $6.7 million to sail a replica of Cook’s boat, The Endeavour, around Australia in 2020. The circumnavigation would be managed ‘sensitively’, Arts Minister Mitch Fifield added, and will present views both from the ship and from the shore.

The circumnavigation should, all things considered, lead to a lot of beach traffic, where sightings will be sought of The Endeavour in full sail. No mention of the fact that then Lieutenant Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia on his journey here.

Life’s a beach – unless you live in Birdsville

If you were one of the 225 people in the national survey of 1,417 who don’t see the need for a national day of commemoration, you should at least spend part of Australia Day at a beach.

Although Australia’s vastness straddles three oceans, we are in but 7th place when it comes to countries with the longest coastlines. Canada wins, by a long margin.

Where Australia has the advantage, when it comes to people who like to surf, swim, fish, walk or just lie in the sun, is that we have 11,761 beaches, about 3,000 of them suitable for surfing. Furthermore, the weather is suitable for beach activities all year round in most States.

It could be argued then, that the quest for an ideal beach is far easier in Australia. Ideal in this context means a beach where there are as few people as possible, like one of the remote beaches of New Zealand’s East Cape. Of course, I am assuming you prefer to walk on a deserted beach instead of sharing a swathe of sand with 40,000 people (Bondi). And there are plenty of seldom explored beaches to go around if you are keen. You can get to them by driving (4WD), walking, or by boat or helicopter. No mystery as to who uses them: Australia has 5 million fishermen, 2.5 million surfers and 110,000 members of Lifesaver clubs, for a start.

Beach-loving surfer Brad Farmer wrote a book in 1984 documenting the country’s best 1,200 beaches across six states. It didn’t stop there. In 2000, Farmer and his pal, coastal scientist Professor Andy Short, agreed to collaborate and produce the benchmark of Australia’s ‘best 101 beaches’. (Queenslanders may be miffed to find there were only four beaches in the top 20 for 2018, even if No 1 was Fitzroy Island’s Nudey Beach.)

cape-hillsborough-beach
Cape Hillsborough, kangaroo beach, photo by Bob Wilson

I have not read Farmer’s book, but hope that Cape Hillsborough near Mackay got a mention. This relatively small beach, surrounded by a national park with steep, walkable headlands, is inhabited by kangaroos, often seen on the beach and in the water. We’ve been there twice, the second time (left) it rained.

Farmer, who is now Tourism Australia’s global beach ambassador, wrote a piece in The Guardian Weekly in which he did not mention Australia Day once, although he believes beaches form an integral part of our national identity.

Even if you don’t belong to the majority who believe it is important to celebrate Australia’s place as a first world, mostly tolerant democracy, you could at least look to some of the nation’s virtues. A quest for the ideal beach is not a bad way to appreciate living in a spacious, mostly convivial and civilised country. Since 85% of us live within 50 kms of the coast, it is an inevitability that most of us will spend some time at one of the 11,000+ beaches catalogued by Brad Farmer.

Within an hour’s drive of our well-populated coastal strip, one can find a surf beach, a beach where the snapper are running, a flat, shallow beach suitable for small children, a (long) stretch of beach where dogs are allowed off-leash and so on.

Those of us who like to combine bush-walking with beach-going can have the best of both worlds in places like Cape Hillsborough or Noosa National Park. If you’re not fond of crowds and looking for some splendid isolation, you can clamber down a makeshift track to a small rocky beach and just enjoy it; sketching, writing poetry or just contemplating (until the tide comes in).

However, you can see how beaches can become crowded at peak times. Sydney’s Bondi Beach (2nd) somehow made its way into a list of the world’s top five most crowded beaches. The others are Ipanema (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), Coney Island (New York, US) Brighton Beach (UK) and South Beach (Miami US).

Tourism Australia research reveals that 75% of inbound tourists nominated visiting beaches as their number one choice of experiences. Occasional media reports of bluebottle plagues, shark attacks and crocodile sightings never seem to dent visitor enthusiasm.

Farmer, a beach enthusiast since he started surfing at 24, recommends choosing your beaches discerningly, based on all the elements you are looking for. In our case, a long, windswept beach where the tide goes out a long way is an ideal beach upon which to let dogs off the leash. Of course it must be a designated dog beach and owners must carry poo bags at all times.

He suggests that, increasingly, people are looking to combine their beach holiday with a digital detox. To do so, one must seek out the unfashionable, hard to get to beaches with poor Wi-Fi. As Farmer says (and perhaps he had Straddie, Bribie or Moreton Island in mind), they must be the beaches with “weathered characters with yarns as deep as the salt in their veins and a pristine natural environment”.

“These low-key, under-the-radar beaches are often the ones that create lasting, formative memories for our children and the beach child in all of us.”

So think of that on Saturday, while you are sun-baking, swimming, walking, surfing, fishing, playing cricket with a tennis ball or just simply walking the dog.

The lamb roast is happening on Monday.

Further reading: FOMM back pages

My friend Angela writes lively travelogues including this tribute to Queensland.

A final reminder that the (optional) FOMM subscriber drive closes on January 31. Thanks to those who already subscribed $5, $10 or more to help cover website administration costs.  If you want to know how to do this, email me directly at bobwords <at> ozemail.com.au.

 

Why political parties can spam without penalty

call-centre-spam
Call centre image by Richard Blank https://flic.kr/p/dZhyjR

I should feel miffed, being one of the 14.4 million Australian mobile phone owners who did not receive an unsolicited text message from the political party led by the aspiring Member for Herbert, Clive Palmer.

Some of my Facebook friends, and even those not on Facebook, let the world know in no uncertain terms what they thought of receiving an unsolicited text from the United Australia Party (UAP), previously known as Palmer United Party (PUP).

Alas, I was not one of the 5.6 million people who received texts, so had to rely on second and third-hand reports to tell me they were (a) brief) and (b) geo-targeted, (the ABC’s example of a text sent to S-E Victoria promised fast trains for Melbourne – ‘one hour to the CBD from up to 300 kms away.’) Another forwarded to me by a Queensland reader promised a tax reduction of 20% for those in regional Queensland.

Those who were affronted by receiving the unsolicited text complained, but it fell on deaf ears because (a) it is not illegal and (b) it’s January and everyone is at the beach.

When asked about the electronic media campaign, Clive Palmer told the ABC the Privacy Act allowed for registered political parties to contact Australians by text.

“We’ll be running text messages as we get closer to the election because it’s a way of stimulating debate in our democracy,” he said.

Despite Mr Palmer and AUP receiving some 3,000 complaints, he told the ABC more than 265,000 people clicked through to the link ‘and stayed for more than one minute.’

The text should have come as no surprise, as United Australia Party has been letterboxing electorates for months with the party’s distinctive yellow colours and prominent use of the leader’s image framed against the Australian flag.

As I temporarily forgot that Mr Palmer re-badged and re-launched his previously de-registered party last year, I did an internet search for PUP. All I came up with was the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, a Canadian punk rock band and the internet acronym Potential Unwanted Programs (how fitting-Ed.)

It was an easy mistake to make, so thoroughly had Clive Palmer embodied the fledgling PUP (which he de-registered after serving only one term and ‘retired’ from politics prior to elections in 2016).

But last year Clive Palmer changed the name of the party he founded and under whose name he served as the Member for Fairfax from 2013-2016. As it happens, he re-used the historical name of the UAP, under which Prime Ministers Joseph Lyons and Robert Menzies served. He told The Australian last year that the re-establishment of a UAP was ‘a significant milestone in Australian politics’.

So it is true, alas, that registered political parties can text people they don’t know without fear of reprisal. All they need is a list and Mr Palmer, who says he does not own the list or know where it came from, told the ABC you can buy such a list from ‘any advertising agency in Sydney’.

According to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), the Spam Act allows registered political parties to send commercial emails and SMS messages to individuals as long as the message identifies who authorised the sending of the message.

Likewise, we are all fair game to receive unsolicited telephone calls at home leading up to an election (yes, I’ve had a few of those). You’d wonder why, though, given that telemarketing or cold calling has a 2% conversion rate.

ACMA says: “Opinion polling calls and calls from political parties, independent members of parliament, or candidates for election that contain a commercial element—that is, they are trying to sell you something or are seeking donations—are permitted by the Do Not Call Rules and may be made even if your number is listed on the Do Not Call Register”.

If that seems wrong to you, you can write, complain and generally make a nuisance of yourself by contacting ACMA. Tell them I sent you.

We have been dog-sitting/house-sitting in Brisbane, my laptop has been in the PC workshop for a week and it’s been too humid to think about much. So apart from tennis and binge-watching The Bureau, we have been mostly cut off from social media and its twittering masses.

The reason I knew about the UAP texting campaign was that a friend, who I will call Irate Step-mother of Three, cc’d me the reply she sent to Mr Palmer’s party. It was blistering.

Also invading our telephones and in boxes over the Silly Season were messages from people running  ATO scams (someone calls and pretends to be from the ATO, saying things like – if you don’t send us money immediately you will be arrested (and so on).

The recent round of scams prompted the ATO to provide an update and a warning on its website in December.

The golden rule, be it a scam, a marketing call or a (legitimate) electioneering contact), just hang up. You don’t even have to say ‘hello’.

As for unsolicited texts, you can delete and block sender, although you might be busy. As a marketing strategy, texting is gaining favour – the industry claims a 98% ‘open’ rate (email is 22%).

Professor of Law at University of Queensland Graeme Orr reminded us that other political parties use this tactic. Writing in The Conversation he said the Labor Party sent out texts ahead of the 2016 election purporting to be from Medicare itself, as part of its ‘Mediscare’ campaign (the LNP had talked about privatisation). This ploy led to a tightening of rules and a new offence of ‘impersonating a Commonwealth body’.

In breaking news yesterday, UAP sent out another text promising that if they were in government, they would ban the practice!

I take ACMA’s ruling on political texting and emailing quite personally. As my followers would know, I am obliged to publish a disclaimer at the end of every post where I offer subscribers the chance to opt out. All bloggers and purveyors of marketing emails and newsletters (don’t they have a habit of worming their way into your inbox), have to do this.

Registered political parties, however, can do whatever they like, so long as they don’t pretend the email/text came from somebody else. It is a travesty (something that fails to represent the values and qualities that it is intended to represent) – Cambridge Dictionary.

Now that I’ve been presented with a squeaky clean hard drive (even my contacts lists have vanished, awaiting an (edited) backup, this is the perfect opportunity to do a little electronic house-cleaning. Like everyone, I subscribed to far too many seemingly promising websites and newsletters in 2018. Yikes, some of them email every day!

The best solution is scroll down to the end of the document where you will find in the fine print an option to unsubscribe, or as the Urban Dictionary defines it:  To take yourself out of a convo (conversation) or email because it’s boring or has lost its initial humour.

That was an explanation, people, not an invitation.

Since you read this far, my subscriber drive to cover website maintenance costs is doing quite well but you only have till the end of January if you want to make a subscriber payment.  Follow this link (or not)

 

I’m not dead yet

i'm-not-dead-yet
I’m not dead yet – pondering the future

The world’s media has a poor track record when it comes to reporting the deaths of celebrities, going early often enough to invoke the classic Python-esque protest, “I’m not dead yet”.

Singer and actress Olivia Newton-John was the latest victim of tabloid hyperbole, when reports described her as ‘clinging on to life’. The star of Grease took to Facebook to cheerily confirm her existence, even though it is known she is ‘battling cancer’ for the third time. Reports said Newton-John was privately upset by the reports which emanated from the US supermarket tabloid National Inquirer.

Earlier this month a report on the BBC quoted Scottish comedian Billy Connolly saying that his life was ‘slipping away’. Billy, who has been enduring Parkinson’s Disease and prostate cancer for some years, posted a video on Twitter a few days later, playing the banjo and singing that he wasn’t dying just yet and sorry if he’d made everyone depressed.

In regional media circa 1980s, it was drummed into us that one should not report the death of a person without double-checking with the police, the family and/or the undertaker. But that was when newspapers could afford the luxury of a second and third line of checking and, moreover, there was only going to be one, unretractable edition, so you had to get it right.

Now, obvious errors can be corrected in an instant online, although probably not before thousands of people have shared and re-posted the original erroneous report.

Such was the case last year, when multiple publications carried reports of rock star Tom Petty’s death, some hours, as it turned out, before his actual demise from cardiac arrest. In that case, the media outlets which gave Tom an early exit cited Los Angeles police, which just goes to show that official sources are not always spot on either.

So numerous have been the instances of inaccurate reports of people’s deaths, prematurely published obituaries and so on, Wikipedia has a whole page devoted to the topic, hundreds of examples, arranged in an A to Z format.

Australian country comic Chad Morgan should be aggrieved that premature reports of his death are not included.

Chad has twice been reported as dead. In 2008 a regional radio station reported Chad Morgan’s death, which led to him coming out with the classic comment ‘I’m not dead yet’.

(The phrase might well reference a scene in the classic film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Python Eric Idle and others are wheeling a cart through a village calling ‘bring out your dead’. John Cleese emerges with a villager over his shoulder. The villager assures the collectors he’s not dead yet and a comic three-way conversation ensues until Idle’s character smites Mr Not Dead Yet with a cudgel.)

Rock star Tex Perkins and director Janine Hosking subsequently produced the 2011 documentary of Chad’s life on the road, fittingly called “I’m Not Dead Yet”.

Last year the rumour of Chad’s demise surfaced again, the Courier-Mail reporting that it came about through misinterpreted sharing of a social media report of jazz musician Chuck Morgan’s death.

It ought to be funny but it’s not if you have been the victim of erroneous reporting. The prime retort still belongs to author Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), for the oft misquoted ‘reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” (he actually said: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”)

As you’d imagine, large media companies pre-prepare obituaries of famous people and archive them for the appropriate day. This explains why, on the sudden death of David Bowie, hundreds of in-depth obits appeared so quickly in publications around the world. In large news organisations, an individual is often assigned to manage the obituaries section. This person manages the delicate business of persuading people to supply tributes and photographs.

Some mis-reported deaths have occurred as a result of accidental publication of pre-prepared obituaries. In 2003 CNN accidently released seven draft obituaries of major world figures. Gaffes like this have been associated with three premature obits published about Pope John Paul II. There’s been no shortage of examples. Steve Jobs, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Marx, Paul McCartney, Beyonce, Whitney Houston and Charles Manson are among those killed off early.

Folk musician Dave Swarbrick’s obituary was published in the Daily Telegraph in April 1999 after he was admitted to Coventry hospital with a chest infection. Swarbrick, who died in 2016, saw the funny side. After reading his own obituary he quipped: “It’s not the first time I have died in Coventry.”

Australian media outlets alarmed and upset monarchists in 1993 by reporting that the Queen Mother had died (eight and a half years early as it turned out). Even the national broadcaster got caught out, with an ABC news bulletin attributing the news to ‘unconfirmed reports’.

Perhaps cashing in on the familiarity of the phrase, variations on the phrase ‘I’m not dead yet’ have been used as band names, album names, song names (I found three songs with Not Dead Yet titles – Styx, Bullet for my Valentine and Jen Ledger) and the titles of at least three movies. This year rock drummer and singer Phil Collins, 67, is touring the world with his ‘Not Dead Yet’ show. The tour itself is named after Collins’s autobiography released in 2016.

In addition to the Chad Morgan-Chuck Morgan confusion mentioned above, celebrity-spotter website avclub.com identified a few misreported deaths involving similar-sounding names.

In 1998, James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader), was reported dead (it was Martin Luther King’s assassin, James Earl Ray, who had died). When comedian Jerry Lewis died, several outlets announced the demise of rockabilly pianist Jerry Lee Lewis. Rocker Bob Segar (Silver Bullet Band) also suffered a similar fate on the death of activist songwriter Pete Seeger. Urgent text messages to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office (during a 2009 tour by former British PM Baroness Margaret Thatcher), were resolved when it was established the texts referred to the death of then Transport Minister John’s Baird’s cat, Thatcher.

More soberly, a national grassroots disability support group in the US and UK has taken the name as part of a protest movement. Notdeadyet.org opposes the legalising of assisted suicide and euthanasia, saying it is an extreme form of discrimination.

In this era of instant social media ‘news’ some of it fake and much of it un-vetted or corroborated, I’m picking we haven’t seen the last of Not Dead Yet.

You might wonder what led me down this path. She Who Plans Ahead has been suggesting we make advanced health directives. You know – where you instruct doctors to take or not take heroic measures if you are incapacitated. I went for a lone stroll through the old part of Hemmant Cemetery (see photo above) on Tuesday to ponder this unpalatable development.

Part of me wants to resist, worrying that perhaps someone will misinterpret notes on a chart and pull the plug, just as my brain is trying to get my mouth around…I’m not dead yet.

 

One person’s rubbish another’s treasure

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Kerbside rubbish in Stirling WA, photo by Henry Kujda https://flic.kr/p/bNqCRz

During a recent stay in a Brisbane bayside suburb, a kerbside rubbish collection was in the offing. You could tell by the untidy piles of trash lining the footpaths of suburban streets. On my daily dog walks, I became aware of a steady stream of cars with trailers doing the rounds, beating Council trucks to the treasure.

Scavenging from kerbside collections is a time-honoured tradition. Whole generations have furnished their share houses with the kerbside rejects from other people’s homes. We are talking here of household items too big to fit into a wheelie bin, but none so large two people could not lift them. So a fridge is OK, a barbecue (sans gas bottle) probably OK. The large dead limb off the ghost gum that fell on the shed is probably not OK. Most Councils have lists of items you can leave on the kerb and things that won’t be collected (like old tyres, fuel cans, pesticide spray containers, gas bottles, fire extinguishers and so on). Anything made of MDF will probably be left for Council to collect, especially if it rains before collection day.

I helped my brother-in-law carry surplus items to the kerb (an old office chair, a baby’s car seat, a single foam mattress, a dismantled bed frame, a (new) security window frame and so on). No sooner had items been placed by the kerb, a car and trailer would pull up and the driver would start throwing things into the trailer.

Further up the road the same thing was going on, with a certain frisson of tension between scavenging crews. In some ways, it seemed singularly distasteful and desperate, on the other hand, why would we care – we were the ones throwing the crap out.

As part of its War on Waste series, the ABC’s Alle McMahon looked into how different States and Territories viewed the practice of kerbside scavenging. For example, the ACT only provides kerbside collections for seniors and concession card holders. As such, it is illegal to leave items out on the verge or nature strip.

The City of Sydney carefully states: “Our legal advice is that anyone who picks up items left outside for bulky waste pick up is doing so at their own risk.”

As the saying goes: Caveat Emptor, or in this instance, Seminiverbius Emptor.

There are signs that some Councils are abandoning kerbside collections in favour of recycling stations at their local landfill. Up to 60% of waste collected in Australian is recycled, although more than 20 million tonnes of solid waste per year goes to landfill.

While the independent Noosa Shire Council still has a kerbside collection every year, the neighbouring Sunshine Coast Regional Council dumped the practice, which it deemed to be “outdated and environmentally harmful”.

Free annual kerbside collections stopped once the Sunshine Coast Councils amalgamated in 2008, but there has been some pressure to resume. Noosa Shire de-amalgamated and started kerbside collections again, the two Councils tabling vastly differing sums as to the cost of kerbside collections.

Cr Jenny McKay told FOMM she had always been a supporter of the kerbside collection concept but other councillors and staff disagreed for a number of reasons.

“A low percentage of people across the region actually take up the offer, thus making the cost per property very expensive.”

Cr McKay pointed out the council waived fees on some large items (e.g mattresses), when taken to waste facilities.

Early January is the traditional time for household clean-ups. We all warm to the task as a result of disposing of after-Christmas detritus, including careful disposal of prawn shells; the merry rattle of bottles and cans being tumbled into the recycling bin.

But all too often the cycle of change signalled by January 1 prompts people to revisit concepts of decluttering and downsizing, adding specific items to their New Year resolutions.

January often signals the impending departure of the elder child to university or the workforce. If said child is leaving home, there is often a recycling of family junk; the student gets the old fridge and the non-smart TV while the parents go to a department store and buy brand-new everything.

For older people, children long gone and developing their own hoarding habits, it becomes a tussle between feeling comfortable with the familiar and needing to let go for reasons of space and relevance.

Empty-nesters and retirees contemplating a move to a smaller living pace have a different set of problems. If they are moving from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom unit, then they will need to get rid of two sets of bedroom furniture as a bare minimum.

The options are: hold a garage sale, list the items on Gumtree or your favourite Facebook free ads site, donate them to charities like the Salvation Army or Lifeline. In many locations, the bigger charities will come and collect the items.

If you are in a state of flux and need to store your household goods for a while, there are no shortages of businesses ready to rent you a lockable storage space.

The self-storage industry large warehouses housing hundreds of lockable storage units – is a $1 billion+ business in Australia, busier than ever as more people relocate from large houses to small units.

But just as EBay and Gumtree disrupted the second-hand store sector, the digital sharing world has caught up with self-storage.

Spacer.com.au acts as a broker for people wanting to store personal belongings, hooking them up with citizens who have spare rooms or garages.

Spacer co-founder Mike Rosenbaum explained what his then year-old business was aiming to do in an article for Domain. Spacer’s customers are typically looking to store household goods, business stock or large items like recreational vehicles, sporting equipment or even nursery items.

“What we’re finding is [extra storage] allows people to live the lifestyle they want to live – typically close to the city or closer to amenities,’ Rosenbaum said.

The average user spends about $250 a month renting space, which typically pays for a single lock-up garage in Sydney or Melbourne.

Spacer now claims to be the largest renter of storage space in Australia, with more than 30,000 units.

The bottom line for anyone who is paying to store household goods off-site is whether the outlay (over the time kept in storage), exceeds the cost of replacement.

For those whose circumstances demand that they scour suburban streets to claim household items ahead of what is sometimes called Hard Rubbish Day, that debate is completely academic.

The Band Who Knew Too Much summed up the life of kerbside scavengers in their pithy song Hard Rubbish Night in Kew.

“This tele’s just a beauty, it’s just like the one at Mum’s, it’ll be great for watching footie; though it’s missing just one leg, I suppose I’ll have to watch it from the broken rocking chair.”

Happy New Year to all FOMM readers, wherever you are.

 

 

Revisiting a New Year call for compassion

Here’s a look back in time to my first New Year blog, January 2, 2015. I was eight months into writing the weekly essay and feeling brave. What’s ironic about this New Year call for a little more compassion among Australians is that four years later (in government at least), nothing much has changed.

This is the first edition of Friday on My Mind to link you to my website, www.bobwords.com.au. All mailing list subscribers will automatically receive the weekly posts from now on. So you don’t have to do resubscribe. If you don’t want to receive the blog you can of course unsubscribe.

I’d like some feedback on the website as it is being thoroughly reviewed in coming weeks. I already had a suggestion that the font is a bit small on mobiles, so I’m looking into that. For those of you who just joined, or those who’d forgotten I wrote this, enjoy. I’ll be back next week.

New Year compassion – photo by Eric Parker, flickr

January 2, 2015: There was a fellow selling lottery tickets in Kuranda Village last week. He was trying to gain the attention of passers-by, 99% of whom rushed past, oblivious. Sadly, I count myself among the rushers-by. I had just dropped my wife and son at the Skyrail terminal and was on a deadline to drive down the mountain to Cairns, fuel the hire car and pick them up at the other end. Mission accomplished, but now I’m feeling a teensy bit guilty about ignoring the ticket seller (I deliberately walked behind him on the way back, to avoid the crowded village streets). On reflection, I often walked past a chap with cerebral palsy who was a Queen Street regular when I worked in Brisbane and not once bought a lottery ticket. Was I just being a cheap-arse? Or did I find cerebral palsy confronting? Did I object to this fellow’s tactic of pushing his wheelchair just far enough forward that you had to make a conscious effort to go around? Perhaps I was just lacking in New Year compassion.

It appears to be an Australian character trait, although the 6.1 million people who volunteer for sporting, neighbourhood and charitable organisations would give me grief about that statement. Compassion is all about making room in your head and your heart to care about someone less fortunate than yourself. We’re a weird mob like that. We’ll run florists out of roses to fill Martin Place with tributes for three people we didn’t know who were killed in a hostage situation. But tens of thousands of Sydney workers brush past buskers, beggars, drunks, addicts, homeless people and Big Issue sellers every day of the week. What’s that all about?

The Federal Government isn’t helping us become more compassionate. The Abbott Government’s year-long reign so far has shown callous disregard for those less fortunate than themselves.
The new Minister for Social Services, Scott Morrison, seems hell bent on taking the razor to welfare, ostensibly to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme, although the Labor Opposition says is already fully funded. In 2008, the new Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton, became the only Liberal front bencher to boycott the apology to the Stolen Generations. This stance alone must raise questions about his empathy for asylum seekers and those in detention centres.

New Year compassion missing in action in WA

The West Australian Government could be said to be lacking in compassion, given its plans to close 100 small Aboriginal settlements in remote parts of the state. Premier Colin Barnett admits that closing communities is not a good option, but says the lack of a better one has tied his government’s hands. The Commonwealth Government has been the major funder of the 274 existing Aboriginal communities in WA but is “transitioning” that responsibility to the State over the next two years.

So here we all are, a kilo or two overweight from eating prawns, ham, pork, turkey, chicken and duck followed by Christmas pudding, fruit and custard, cream and pavlova and probably drinking more than usual if we knew we didn’t have to drive somewhere.
Did we stop to spare a thought for those who cannot afford to celebrate festive times like Christmas and New Year? Hands up those who dropped some festive fare into collection bin outside the local IGA, or who donated some money to one of the several charities collecting on behalf of needy families.

And can anyone imagine what it’s like working in an accident and emergency ward at this time of year? As of yesterday, 22 people had been killed on Australia roads over Christmas and New Year. More importantly, proportionately more people were seriously injured in car and motorbike accidents and admitted to hospital. We don’t have this year’s statistics yet, but in Queensland alone 6,173 victims of car and motorcycle accidents were admitted to hospital in 2013. Another 379 were cyclist or pedestrians, the latter two categories usually presenting with worse injuries than those who had the benefits of seat belts and air bags. So the survivors and their families need compassion as much as they need medical attention.

Since January 1, 2012, all Australian hospitals have had to admit or refer emergency department patients within four hours. This cruel deadline creates stress among medicos and nurses who routinely work 12 and 16-hour shifts. At least one of the politicians who imported this four-hour rule from the UK ought to go and spend 12 or 16 hours in the A&E of a busy city hospital and see how the workers cope with this added burden, while dealing with the human wreckage which survives road accidents.

Meanwhile we make our way in the world, perhaps developing a cynical shell from big city experiences with those less fortunate. In Adelaide last winter, a street vendor approached me waving the Big Issue. As street vendors go, this fellow was a little the worse for wear. I handed him a $20 note (the Big Issue costs $6) and he muttered something about having no change, so I left him with it. Ripped off?
A friend who has lived in Sydney for decades says professional beggars and hustlers feign homelessness in a bid to separate people from their hard cash. They can make up to $200 a day, he says, and maybe he has good reason to assume that all street beggars (Americans call them panhandlers), are on the make.
We stayed at a boutique hotel in Potts Point in March last year and were twice hustled by a women who looked a lot like the “after” photo on the posters you see of how a beautiful, bright-eyed girl turns into a smack addict. Her pleas for “Any spare coins” turned into invective after a fruitless pass along the street and back again. “Youse are all a bunch of tight-arses,” she complained.

You don’t have to give money to street people who ask you for it, be they beggars, buskers, raffle ticket sellers or Big Issue vendors. But if you allow compassion to overtake your indifference, you may at least start thinking about those less fortunate: for example, the one in 200 Australians who have nowhere to live.
There are many reputable welfare agencies which help people in need and could use donations. Or you could join the volunteer army and make a difference.
Continuing my endeavours to get my head out of the dark place it has been lately, I’ll let you know you how I’m going with my New Year resolution to show more compassion in 2015.

Seasons greetings from The Goodwills

It only ever dawns on me how much we are still doing as a musical duo (and trio- when Helen Rowe joins us) when I lodge my APRA live returns. (APRA is the organisation that pays song-writers royalties when their original songs are played).  

Highlights of 2018 included the Goodwills trio being booked at both the Maleny and Neurum Creek festivals. Both of these small festivals are staying true to the ethos of a folk festival as a community gathering of like-minded people. The latter has a cap on tickets and camping numbers, so if you are serious about going, get in early for the September 2019 festival.

In November, the trio performed at Brisbane’s longest running unplugged venue, Red Hill Folk. If you have never discovered this truly unique jewel in Brisbane’s entertainment scene, it’s at Red Hill Bowls Club every Wednesday night at 7.30. Entry is $2 and there is supper. Some nights it is an open floor event (anyone can get up and sing or recite) and occasionally there are guest acts.

We performed as a duo at the Australia all Over outdoor broadcast in Toowoomba in September. As a bonus, we got to watch the street parade and marvel at how Toowoomba has grown since we lived there in the 1980s.

Once again, we held unplugged house concerts at our home in Maleny with guests including Evan Mathieson, Cloudstreet, Tin Star and Sadie and Jay. In October Bob held a private function at the Maleny RSL to celebrate his 70th. Bob and guests performed to about 85 people and a jolly time was had by all. We called it our ‘out of house concert’. Bob sent emails to just about everyone he knows, so sorry if you missed it for whatever reason, because it is unlikely to be repeated!

Bob started writing songs again in 2018 and has a few in the works for debut in early 2019. We are working with Pix Vane-Mason to put some of these tunes down for perpetuity, so watch this space.

Bob wrote a song about refugees on Nauru, Manus Island et al and made a short video documentary to go with it. If you have not already seen this, it is worth a revisit. (

We’ll be back in the New Year with our house concert series- first one is in February. We’ll let you know the date and guest artists in plenty of time to book.

Finally, thanks to those who supported The Goodwills (and Bob’s blog, Friday on My Mind) through our website shop.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Bob, Laurel and Helen