Friday on My Mind –Ring Christmas Bells And Other Carols

Tapestry choir leader Kim Kirkman usually introduces our version of Carol of the Bells by mentioning that it featured in the soundtrack of the 1990 movie, Home Alone. This brought back memories of the parlous times in 1990 when media baron Rupert Murdoch nearly went broke. Yes, he nearly did, back when News Ltd’s total debt was a scary $7.9 billion (this was 1990, remember). What saved Murdoch was an agreement between 146 banks that refinancing was a better solution than the collateral damage from a collapsing global media empire.

The other thing that saved Murdoch was the box office success of the Christmas movie, Home Alone, starring Macaulay Culkin. Home Alone became the highest grossing Christmas movie of all time (adjusted for inflation) taking $US477 million in box office sales world-wide, against a film budget of $18 million. Murdoch’s Twentieth Century Fox was the beneficiary of the film’s success. As a recently-employed journalist, I wrote a piece stating just that (News Ltd saved by Home Alone).

The movie spawned four sequels, none of which achieved the heights of the original.

As we all now know, Rupert Murdoch’s foray into film, television and satellite TV paid off. The timely acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 1986 helped Murdoch achieve more fame and fortune via a then unknown animated show, The Simpsons. Launched modestly in December 1989, The Simpsons is still going strong, 649+ episodes later.

As one of the most popular TV shows on Fox Broadcasting, the creators of The Simpsons repeatedly got away with satirising the Fox Network. Animator David Silverman is said to have based the appearance of Homer’s boss Montgomery Burns on Fox chief Barry Dillon, using the body of a praying mantis as a model. Monty Burns is the fictional owner of Springfield’s nuclear power plant, a greedy tycoon who exploits his workers and can rarely remember their names. Hmmm, as Marge Simpson would say.

The crew of Sunshine Coast radio station Hot91 were asked to rate favourite Christmas movies for a feature in the Sunshine Coast Daily’s Weekend Magazine (also owned by Rupert Murdoch). All three DJs rated Home Alone, along with other candidates including The Grinch, Bad Santa (execrable-Ed.), National Lampoon’s Xmas Vacation, Elf, Santa Clause and Love Actually. The latter is cerebral and worth watching but I remember Home Alone as being deeply silly with some dangerous-looking stunts.

Christmas songs often get written about at this time of year, which is hardly surprising as you rarely hear them between January and November. Last year I ranked my top 12 Christmas songs (only three of which are carols).

The FOMM alt-Christmas playlist

As a member of a choir, you are expected to sing Christmas carols, which almost always lend themselves to harmonies. Our choir Tapestry racked up five performances this month, which is some kind of a record. As a serious chamber choir, we mixed it up a bit, from the ancient (Veni Veni, a Gregorian chant in Latin) to an irreverent piece about Christmas excess (The Banquet Fugue), and a short protest song (‘The Wrong Present’ aka ‘Don’t sing me Christmas Carols anymore’). We did a good job of the Little Drummer Boy and worked an uplifting key change into the last verse of Handel’s Joy to the World.

Thankfully, Kim elected to stay away from the tedious (12 Days of Christmas) and the seasonally irrelevant (White Christmas and Frosty the Snowman), although we did perform Rudolph and We Wish You a Merry Christmas for those who might have been thinking we were being a bit too precious.

This month She Who Sings O Holy Night (that was in Home Alone too), with me in tow attended quite a few Christmas parties where carol books were handed out. I got chatting to a chap who was hovering out in the kitchen (my usual retreat at parties). We discussed why people are so attached to these songs, so many of which are deeply pious, with their references to the Virgin birth, three wise men, the holy infant and home birthing in a stable.

Statistics on religiosity are unreliable; even though the 2016 Census tells us that only 52.1% of Australians identify as Christian, it is an optional question, which 9.1% chose not to answer. Otherwise, 30.1% answered ‘no religion’ and 8.2% nominated a faith other than Christian (including 2.6% or about 630,000 people, who follow Islam).

You will find other surveys which suggest that Christianity is in decline and that Australia is becoming more secular. Which begs the question why people who probably last entered a church for a wedding or funeral will happily sing along with Good King Wenceslas and Oh Come all Ye Faithful. Ah well, it is all about peace, love and goodwill so what’s not to like.

As you might suspect, however, I prefer Christmas songs that take the piss. This year’s award goes to Keir Nuttall’s classic Christmas Landfill, performed here by Keir and his partner Kate Miller-Heidke. The combination of a sweet Christmas melody and Keir’s satirical lyrics (‘fleeting joy will never decompose’) is just perfect, moreso with the help of superimposed lyrics. This video also includes KMH’s cover of Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun.

I should follow this with a reassurance that I’m not dissing Christmas or the joy it clearly brings so many people. You can tell how serious I am by the inclusion of this video of Tapestry performing The Little Drummer Boy, The women had the melody, so the job for the basses and tenors was to imitate drums (hence heads buried in scores).

I should also clarify my remarks about Christmas carols and religious music in general by observing that the charismatic church Hillsong has produced Australia’s best-selling CD on a fairly regular basis. Sydney Morning Herald reviewer Bernard Zuel harshly but probably accurately described Hillsong’s 2015 Aria winning album Empires as a ‘churchy songbook sung by mostly anonymous faces scrubbed clean of any travails’. Nonetheless, the album sold 7,000 copies in its first week of release, 2,000 more than the debut solo album of former Silverchair songwriter Daniel Johns. Go figure.

Since we exposed you to Tapestry’s version of the Little Drummer Boy, let me leave you with this version by Johnny Cash and Neil Young.)

Merry Christmas from FOMM. Take care on the roads (said he who got a ticket in the mail from NZ). 

Re changes at FOMM: Next Friday you will all receive a link to a New Year blog. Thereafter, the weekly email will direct you to the website www.bobwords.com.au. Anyone can subscribe (email link at the top of the page) and of course unsubscribe at any time.

Thanks to those who have already responded to my (optional) subscriber drive for payments of a suggested $5, $10, $15 or $20 to defray the costs of running the website.

Payments can be made via PayPal or direct debit (follow this link www.thegoodwills.com/shop). The subscriber drive ends on January 31, 2019.

How the Nine Fairfax merger affects regional media

Did you know that the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister in August cost the taxpayer $4.5 million? Canberra Times journalist Latika Bourke revealed this in a news report, adding that the cost included $1.9 million, paid out to 35 former Prime Ministerial staffers. Crikey, I’m in the wrong business.

 Labor’s finance spokesman Jim Chalmers told Bourke the sum was another cost to voters of the ‘meaningless’ leadership change.

“Scott Morrison can’t explain why Turnbull isn’t PM anymore and why taxpayers have to foot the bill for that.”

Chalmers (a former chief of staff to Wayne Swan) said 607 staff members’ employment changed as a result of Mr Turnbull’s removal as prime minister, with 136 staff terminated and the remaining 471 re-employed. The figures, which do not include the cost of the Wentworth by-election (approx $1.6m), emerged from a Senate estimates hearing.

 Enjoy that little public interest vignette from the Canberra Times while you can. Nine is shopping around for a buyer. Nine does not want the Canberra Times because it does not have a paywall; people who might otherwise pay to read the Sydney Morning Herald or the Age have been getting their news for free from the Canberra Times, chief executive Hugh Marks told staff on Monday.

The Nine Fairfax merger means much of its regional assets will be sold – the key question being, to whom, as there are not many takers in this tightly-held media market. The same applies in New Zealand.

Kiwi columnist Bill Ralston observed in The New Zealand Listener (owned by Bauer Media), that the media industry is in the process of ‘collapsing into an untidy heap as advertising revenues and profits decline’.

Ralston was bemoaning the fate of local media outlets in the wake of the Nine Fairfax merger. Nine has already said it is not interested in the newspapers Fairfax owns in New Zealand.

If you have ever browsed a popular Kiwi website, stuff.co.nz, you may not know that Stuff/Fairfax also owns nine daily newspapers, a Sunday newspaper and New Zealand’s TV guide. Stuff also owns community newspapers, 28 of which they want to close or sell.

We’ve seen a rationalisation of (free) community titles and regional mastheads in Australia too. As you should know, Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd bought all of the regional titles of Australian Regional Media in late 2016. This, added to the papers it already owned, delivered an absolute print media monopoly across Queensland.

News wasted no time syndicating Sky News conservative commentators including Andrew Bolt, Paul Murray, Peta Credlin and Alan Jones. A comrade in Toowoomba emailed me last year to say that the editorial space where once a column called Friday on My Mind appeared was now hosted by the aforementioned Mr Bolt.

AND WE ALL KNOW WHAT HE THINKS.

I was idly channel surfing late at night in a Rotorua motel when I stumbled upon Sky News Australia, where the hosts (Bolt, Credlin and Jones), were holding court about political events of the day.

Hold fast, my fair-minded side said, listen to what others have to say. By the time Alan Jones came on, with his scoffing dismissal of Liberal MP Julia Banks’s defection to the crossbench, I felt like the victim of a home invasion.

I switched briefly to Al Jazeera (Kiwis get a lot of free Sky channels), before finding respite in Hunting Aotearoa and a Mars Bar from the mini fridge.

So yes, it is wise to tune in and see what the right wing polemicists are saying. For example, at the time when the Kids off Nauru campaign was at its height, Paul Murray was writing in the Sunshine Coast Daily about indigenous children and venereal disease. He wasn’t saying one issue was more important than the other, he just chose that one instead.

Amidst the Nine Fairfax merger, leftish publications like New Matilda, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper and The Guardian Weekly kept on chipping away. The latter just had a magazine-makeover and a new cover price ($10.95), which might make you feel bad about reading it online (for free).

A friend recently shared an article on Facebook from Bauer Media’s The Monthly. Author John Birmingham waxed long and eloquent about Peter Dutton’s electorate and how alternative forces are plotting to overthrow the incumbent at the next election.

You might be able to read this here, though once I’d finished reading, The Monthly reminded me that I’d had my one free item and if I wanted more I’d have to subscribe. Well, I did once, for a few years.

Some of you will know that when someone shares a link to an article from The Australian (for example), you often can’t read it at all without being a subscriber. Many media companies use variations on the paywall theme. Some provide free articles (up to a specified number); some have free content and premium content.

Get used to this idea. Media organisations that opt for the paywall method will be on a subscriber drive, offering discounts, free gifts, vouchers and coupons and inducements like (trial) access to other titles.

So the Nine Fairfax merger is done and dusted, and with it went 144 back office, sales and support positions. Nine has pledged to honour the Fairfax code of editorial independence and thus far, no editorial jobs have been lost.

As Bill Ralston points out, it makes (commercial) sense for big companies to concentrate ownership of radio and TV stations, newspaper and magazines and online news outlets. They can offer better deals to advertisers and, by merging and consolidating, enjoy ‘synergies’ – shorthand for downsizing newsrooms.

Apropos the Nine Fairfax merger he makes a suggestion (which could also work in Australia), that the government-owned TVNZ ‘snaffle up the remnants of Stuff before the Fairfax papers die of exhaustion and thus, hopefully, reinvigorate both organisations’.

In Australia, a similar scenario could see the ABC ‘snaffle up’ the regional assets Nine don’t want and thus broaden the ABC’s remit from broadcasting into print and online newspaper publication.

This is an interesting proposition, given that the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission has just ruled that the ABC and SBS do not have an unfair market advantage over their commercial rivals.

In a busy year, the ACCC this week also released its preliminary report into the market power held by Google and Facebook.

Academics employed by Sydney University of Technology’s Centre for Media Transition analysed the ACCC paper. Derek Wilding and Sacha Molitorisz summarised the issues at stake, including $8 billion a year spent on online advertising revenue. This has happened at the expense of newspaper classified advertising revenue, which fell from $2 billion in 2001 to $200 million in 2016.

More than half of the annual online advertising spend went to Google and Facebook. And, as the ACCC notes, more than half of the traffic on Australian news websites comes via Google and Facebook.

One of the ACCC’s main concerns is the lack of transparency (consumers are not told how Google and Facebook algorithms work). The key concern is that we (the users) do not know how digital media platforms manage to target advertising with such uncanny accuracy.

Perhaps like me, you may have idly wondered how, after a private dinner conversation about bread makers, ads for bread makers start appearing in our social media news feed.

Toast, anyone?

Planned obsolescence strikes again

On Tuesday I joined the queue of people at the local computer shop, all clutching laptops, smart phones or PC peripherals suffering from planned obsolescence syndrome. Some of these items may still have been under warranty (joy). But in the case of my four-year-old Toshiba laptop, the optical drive, the fragile looking tray that slides out to take CDs or DVDs, had carked it.

It failed just as I finished burning a 58 minute video of our choir Tapestry’s Christmas performance. “Do you want to burn another?’ the video editing programme asked. “Yes” I clicked and the optical drive then made a noise like the dentist burnishing my teeth with plaque-stripping paste.

The young chap behind the counter (they’re all young), spent some time testing then pronounced it dead. “We have plug and play drives for about $50,” he said. “But we haven’t any in stock at the moment.”

Ah, so this is a frequent event in computer repairs and replacement land. A google search of ‘CD DVD drive failed’ brought a consensus that an optical drive in a laptop will rarely last five years.

A recent article in Lifewire explained why so many desktop computers and laptops sold today do not have CD or DVD drives installed. They are being dropped to save space and also because portable flash drives and hard drives have more capacity, perform faster and are definitely cheaper than sourcing a replacement optical drive (which includes an hour of labour to remove the old and install the new).

A while ago, I gave a copy of our latest CD to someone who has been helping me retrieve my sense of perspective. Last time I saw him he confessed not to have listened to it yet, the problem being he had nothing on which to listen to a CD except his (work) laptop which, I suspect, is never used for anything other than work. CD players are becoming obsolete. If you still have one and it has started to misbehave, it probably won’t be worth repairing. Most late model cars don’t have CD players, preferring USB, WiFi and Bluetooth to extract music from the ether.

Like so many Millenials in Australia, most of my younger relatives in New Zealand have Bluetooth speakers,which play (compressed) music streamed from their phones or tablets.

“I couldn’t find you on Spotify, Uncle,” said one.

Let’s examine the logic here. The average lifespan of a laptop computer ($400 to $1,800) is three to five years. Bluetooth speakers ($40 to $1,000) have not been around long enough for lifespans to be established,but there’s an amusing exchange on techguy.org about this very subject “until it stops working”, one wag offers. Two years seems to be the current guess, and that is largely based on the lifespan of the battery (some of which are replaceable, and some not). And don’t even start me on mobile phones (I’m on my third one in four years).

 The trick might be to buy top quality gear in the first place. One of the five components in my Technics stereo (a top line model, circa 1985 – before planned obsolescence became widespread), is showing signs of failure. The CD changer plays OK but then inexplicably stops, or skips to another track or to the middle of another track. In the office downstairs I usually play music through computer speakers from my iTunes library.  ITunes and streaming services compress music, the downside being an unavoidable degradation of audio quality. The advantage for musicians in compressing a 24MB audio file to a 2MB MP3 that can be emailed is obvious. I once emailed a demo to London at 10pm our time, to a songwriter friend who listened to it over morning coffee and sent immediate feedback.

The convenience and the speed with which music can be recorded and disseminated (and listened to on a virtual jukebox), outweighs the loss of sonic integrity.

Or you can reject planned obsolescence and go retro. One of my relatives has a quality audio system which is set up to play vinyl. There was just something so real about the velvety voice of Marlon Williams coming out of those speakers that made a mockery of my MP3 version of the same album.

Aotearoa has had a long love affair with vinyl records. EMI produced the first one from its Wellington factory in 1955 (the WinifredAtwell selection). The last vinyl record production unit closed in 1987 and EMI shipped the hardware to Australia. Many Kiwi (and Australian) artists still produce vinyl versions of their music for those who have fallen in love with or rediscovered the quality of analogue sound. A few pressing plants keep the faith, including Peter King’s King Worldwide in Ashburton (NZ) and Zenith Records in Melbourne.

As Ted Goslin writes, when explaining why vinyl is making a comeback (14m copies sold in the US alone last year); it’s become cool. Half of those buying vinyl are millennials, although 27% are over 35, buying new albums or raiding their baby boomer parents’ LP collections. 

But as we established, the immediacy of digital music is its strength. Someone once emailed me the words to an amusing parody of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, “I burnt the toast on both sides now” is funny and somehow sacrilegious, the perfect foil to slide into a broader discussion about planned obsolescence.

A friend had a toaster given to her in 1971 which had spring-loaded ‘gates’ on both sides. Although she has since bought a four-slice, pop-up toaster, the old one still works and is brought out sometimes to remind us of the days when a lot of kitchen work was not automated. Some even washed dishes by hand.

According to a blog in The Spruce, a toaster should last six to eight years. When you think about it, there’s not much to a toaster and it only has to do one job. Choice Magazine said just this when handing out one of its Shonky Awards to the (RRP $189) KitchenAid2 two-slice toaster, to which Choice gave a score of 0. The testers even took it back and got a replacement with the same poor result. Choice branded it a ‘pricey paperweight’.

We’re familiar with consumer goods which don’t come up to scratch and it’s not always a case of getting what you paid for. At FOMM HQ we’re on our third microwave in five years and this one appears to be rusting on the bottom. The Spruce blog reckons a microwave will see out nine years, a slow cooker and a coffee machine six to 10 years and a vacuum cleaner eight years. Writer Lauren Abrams say much depends on the quality of the appliance, how often you use it and how well you look after it.

The toaster in our caravan, now in its third year, gets a wipe over every three months or so and, like the house toaster, the crumb tray gets emptied at least once a year! It was an impulse buy ($7 from a Goondiwindi discount department store). It works just fine so long as I adjust the timer (if She Who Toasts Gluten-Free Bread has been there first).

In the words of Canberra parodist Chris Clarke:

I’ve burnt the toast on both sides now,
Both front and back – to charcoal black,
The toasting time I don’t recall,
I really can’t make toast, after all.

More reading:

The Waste Makers: Vance Packard (1960)

Made to Break: Giles Slade (2007)

Fixing your PC with a hairdryer

Ten days in Aotearoa

Aotearoa-Te-Urewera
Aotearoa – Te Urewera, looking towards East Cape. Image by Brucieb, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2260517

As the doors swished open at Brisbane International Airport and I walked out into 35 degrees and a dusty, smoky atmosphere, I very briefly wished I hadn’t left Aotearoa behind. How I love the mellifluous way that Maori word trips off the tongue – Ao-tea-ro-a.

The Maori language uses vowels more than we do in English and it also uses them in combinations. The language has fewer consonants, preferring the use of Wh to replace the letter F, for example. The Maori alphabet has 15 letters including two digraphs (Ng and Wh) and five vowels, each of which has a short and Continue reading “Ten days in Aotearoa”

Get the kids off Nauru, maybe

kids-off-nauru
Nauru refugees are welcome – photo by Takver – flickr

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

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

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

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

Apartments, starter housing and the impatience of youth

housing-apartments
Housing: Inspiration for the song ‘Little Boxes’ – tract housing in Daly City, northern California; image by Tim Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boxes

A developer friend from my days as a business journalist sent me his frank appraisal of the housing affordability crisis, which he described as more of a ‘crisis of expectations’. There are many Brisbane suburbs, Dan wrote, where post-war houses sell for less than $450,000. He named a few – Keperra, Ferny Grove, Grovely, all 12 kms from the CBD with good public transport networks and excellent shopping amenity.  Most of these homes are ex- housing commission or ex- war service homes built in the 1950s & 1960s. They tend to be on larger blocks of land than is common in the more sought-after inner city. But they are not on the shopping list of generation X or Y.

“Young home buyers don’t want a bar of them,” Dan said. “They want to be in the trendy inner suburbs with cute Queenslanders which have already been renovated.

“These (older) suburbs are ripe for gentrification and renovation, but the young guns want four bedrooms, a plasma screen on every wall and hip cafés on every corner.

“And they don’t want to dedicate their weekends to renovations, mending fences, tidying up yards, gardening and landscaping.”

As we observed last week, in the first part of this commentary on residential development, many of today’s generation think they can bypass the ‘starter home’.

This means buying a sound, but probably tired, older property in an outer suburb and gradually improving it as time and money allows. At some point in the property cycle, there will be an opportunity to take a profit and move up another rung. And at least older suburbs have character.

In 1962, US songwriter Malvina Reynolds wrote the quintessential commentary on middle-class conformism, ‘Little Boxes’. American activist songwriter Pete Seeger made it a big hit in 1963. You are maybe familiar with the song from its revival as the theme song to the TV series ‘Weeds’ or Roz Pappalardo’s cover with the Wayward Gentlemen.

“Little boxes, on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky-tacky

Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes all the same.”

This satire on fast-developing tract housing in the sprawling outer suburbs of San Francisco does not seem out of place in Australia, 2018. The Little Boxes of our generation are stacked one atop the other in apartment blocks where you can step out on to the balcony and listen to the traffic, admiring the view of your neighbour’s balcony.

The little boxes analogy also exists in the fast-developing outer suburbs of Brisbane – the conurbation developing along the transport corridors between the north and south coasts. The typical house and land package in these new suburbs are quite generic, dominated by a two-car garage which typically takes up a quarter of the house. The house often takes up 80% or more of the land on which it sits, so there is little opportunity to adapt the property as your family grows.

There are advantages and disadvantages to buying an older house in an older suburb. The main disadvantage is it will probably have been rented for years and the upkeep let slide. The main advantage is there will be enough land for kids and dogs, a garden and maybe even a pool!

Older housing such as the ones described by our property developer can be bought by anyone who has saved up a deposit of about $90,000, along with sufficient income to service mortgage repayments of about $2,000 a month.

Considering that many young people in Brisbane are paying between $1,600 and $2,400 a month in rent, that seems like an affordable deal.

While the humble starter home in the post-war suburbs is an option, younger people seeking affordable housing are attracted to inner Brisbane’s proliferating apartment blocks. There was a time (the 1970s and 1980s) when the only people who lived in city apartments were the caretakers of city office blocks. Now, the CBD and its close neighbours (South Bank, New Farm, Fortitude Valley, West End, Kangaroo Point, Milton etc.) have a well-documented over-supply of new apartments.

Brisbane inner city is the only Queensland region where a majority of households’ dwellings are flats/apartments (50.1%) and townhouses/semi-detached (7.4%). The Australian Bureau of Statistics 2016 Census showed that 41.7% of inner Brisbane housing stock is detached houses (compared with 76.6% for Queensland overall).

My take on the Census data for inner Brisbane suggests that the majority of people living there can afford the city lifestyle.

Almost 30% of households in this region earn more than $3,000 a week, with 56% earning between $651 and $2,999 per week. The proportion of people renting (49.9%) is higher than the state and national figures, but the income numbers suggest they can easily afford the median rent of $415 per week. This is not to say the inner city is completely populated by the well-to-do. Some 15% of residents earn less than $650 a week and 11.9% share expenses by living in ‘group households’.

The key demographics attracted to inner city apartments are international students, well paid young professionals and my cohort, older people who have downsized from big houses in established suburbs. If you own a big Queenslander in Ascot, it’s not hard imagine the property selling for $1.2m, which means the empty nesters can buy a three bedroom apartment in South Bank and have change left over to furnish it anew and take a cruise or two. They will also have to budget for storage costs, as there will typically be no room in the high-rise apartment for antique furniture, paintings, vintage cars, boats, jet skis and all the knick-knackery collected over a lifetime.

BIS Oxford Economics created a stir in April with a widely quoted report which highlighted the long-term oversupply issues facing Brisbane.

The report said 20% of Brisbane apartments were vacant and 52 projects had been shelved as a result of the over-supply, The withdrawal of 10,000 apartments before they were even built demonstrates the seriousness of the supply issue, which could last until 2025, report author Angie Zigomanis said.

Domain.com.au reported that BIS arrived at this (disputed) forecast by analysing occupier demand instead of sales demand. Despite the withdrawal of planned apartment buildings, there are another 3,500 apartments being added to the inner Brisbane market before Christmas.

So to answer the question posted last week (can tree changers afford to move back to the big smoke), it all comes down to the price cycle and what a long-term over-supply might do to apartment prices in coming years. The trick might be to shop around in the middle ring suburbs. Instead of looking for a starter home, determined downsizers might find there are three-bedroom apartments in the regional hubs (like Chermside), priced between $500k and $600k.

If you are willing to forego the inner city vibe, you’re still only a 20-minute bus ride from the CBD, but you won’t have to worry about what the over-supply will do to property prices. And the dog, if you still have one, will be able to ‘stretch his legs’ on the lawn outside.

Postscript: If you liked my Nauru song, I have made it available as an MP3 download, with 50% of net proceeds going to a local refugee charity. Here’s the link. http://store.cdbaby.com/cd/bobwilsonandthegoodwills2

 

Residential development – is anything sacred

residential-development
Culloden – residential development – is anything sacred? Photo by Laurel Wilson

To begin this two-part series on residential development and how it became not only unaffordable but also distressingly generic, we ask the universal question – is anything sacred? The example here looks at an unpopular proposal to build luxury houses on the doorstep of Scotland’s famous battlefield, Culloden. Regular readers would be familiar with this image on my website, cheekily captioned ‘Bob’s writer’s cottage’. In truth it is a stone crofter’s cottage within Culloden Battlefield, a spooky windswept moor near Inverness.

The proposal to build 16 luxury homes half a mile from Culloden Battlefield, a war grave, was given planning permission by Highland Council in May this year (12-8 vote). The BBC reported that the National Trust for Scotland, which manages the battlefield and opposed the housing project, said the case “Illustrated why Scotland’s planning system has to be reformed”.

Culloden Battlefield is where Jacobite and government forces clashed in April 1746. The housing development is within the battlefield’s conservation area and campaigners have argued that the fighting took place in a much wider area.

A protest movement continues to agitate, with a petition on Change.org attracting more than 100,000 signatures.

Much nearer to home, the story is depressingly familiar. The green hills of former dairy farms near Maleny Township have largely been given over to sprawling housing estates. It’s even worse on the Sunshine Coast, where houses on new estates are packed tightly together, not a tree in sight and often with only one road in and out. Pro-development people, and I know a few, would tell you that this is the free market at work – supply and demand. Affordable maybe, and eagerly sought-after yes, but not on my housing short-list.

Houses are ‘unaffordable’ – blame the baby-boomers?

We read a lot about how (we) baby boomers created the unaffordable housing market, buying, renovating and selling during a period when house prices doubled and in some cases tripled. Guilty as charged, but we just took the opportunities as they arose, as most people do. And in my experience, most ‘boomers’ bought a modest starter house, not always in a capital city, gradually up-grading as time and savings allowed.

So, apart from profit-taking baby boomers, the factors most prominent in the ongoing cost of housing include the rising cost and scarcity of development land, steadily increasing council infrastructure charges (passed on to the buyer) and population growth. Property investors, drawn to the sector by negative gearing (writing off costs on tax), also contribute to the affordability crisis by steadily increasing rents.

Too much house these days?

The flip side to the ‘baby boomers got rich on real estate story’ is what happens to our generation now, when we are all knocking on 70+ and need to downsize to more manageable properties? Downsizing in the same market, we are finding, is a rat race, as other people in the same circumstances move first. It is hard to find a smaller property of equal standard to the one you now have, and, take a profit on the way through.

Many older people take the retirement village option, the strictly legal but egregious models where you don’t own the real estate and pay rent and other costs which inevitably rise as time passes. Another real downside is that the retirement village unit usually ends up as someone else’s problem: the adult children of elders who are either in care or have died. So, Four Corners exposé or not, this arm of development will continue apace. The main reason, as once voiced by Spike Milligan’s Goons’ character, Eccles: “Everybody’s gotta be somewhere”.

Mobility –sometimes a choice, sometimes a necessity

The tendency is for Australians to be always on the move, looking for greener grass in a drought-stricken country. The 2016 Census found that just under half of Australians moved house between 2011 and 2016, with one in six moving in the previous 12 months.

This is a healthy state of affairs for people who earn a living in the businesses of development, property investment, real estate sales, conveyancing, house removal, storage and retail furniture, whitegoods and hardware. But as any psychologist would tell you, moving house is up there on the stress register with divorce and death of a loved one.

Young people are the most mobile, with one third of Australians aged 20-29 and a quarter of those aged 30-39 moved house between 2015 and 2016.

An earlier Australian Bureau of Statistics survey found that people living in young households without children were very mobile: the vast majority (90%) moved at least once and 40% reported having moved three or more times in the previous five years.  Young households were most likely to be private renters (58%) or owners with a mortgage 39%). Statistics like these do not change much over the years – as one might expect, the age group 75-79 are the least likely to move. although there is an upward spike in the 80+ age group, reflecting no doubt a move into care of one kind or another.

Young people are often forced to move from rented accommodation because of a range of factors including obtaining employment elsewhere, rising rentals, owners selling the rental property or eviction.

Therein lies the beauty of owning your own home – you don’t usually have to move until you decide.  Of course, the housing market may not co-operate when you decide to sell. You may not get the price you want/need or the property might sit on the market for months, if not years.

We moved to the Sunshine Coast hinterland in 2002 and bought half an acre with a two-level brick home. When we think about downsizing to a more manageable property (say 1,000 sqm and a one-level brick house), we find there is little on the market that fits the bill. There are plenty of spacious properties a few kilometres out of town with acreage, sheds, dams and ride-on-mowers. Those people are trying to downsize too. The alternative is to sell the house and buy a unit, with the issues of body corporate fees and the smell of burnt toast from close neighbours.

As we drove around Australia in 2014 and on many forays since, this is a story repeated all over the country. Many retirees, finding they are running short of cash, sell up and move to a more affordable town. They risk becoming isolated and lonely, split from support networks. On the other hand, they are cashed up and can afford to improve the cheaper property they bought in Mungadillabiddy-on-Trent. As for support networks, there’s always Facebook, Skype and travelling to stay with friends you made in your last six or seven moves.

Next week: Can you afford to move back to the big smoke?

Postscript: If you have not heard my song about Nauru, here is the YouTube link. Please share with your friends if you agree with the sentiments.

#bringthemallhere

 

Human Rights and Halloween

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that respects and promotes human rights; and

  • to help promote a dialogue about the nature, meaning

and scope of human rights.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Septuagenarian motorbike dreams

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She who also used to ride a motorbike, Mt Coot-tha, circa 1970

I’ve been having recurrent (and happy) motorbike dreams lately, a few days short of a significant birthday. I had no idea what septuagenarian meant. Also, as my spell-checker immediately informed me, I did not know how to spell the word either. A septuagenarian is a person between the ages of 70 and 79.

There’s a lot of this about, with the quintessential baby boomers (those born in the immediate post-war years (1946-1950), throwing big parties and telling people not to bring presents. Some have a late flirtation with their youth, buying a motorbike they couldn’t afford then or taking bucket list cruises to exotic climes.

We graduated from ‘sixty is the new fifty’ to feebly claiming that seventy is the new sixty. A few say I could pass for that, but they don’t see me in the morning, in the harsh light of the ensuite mirror.

Septuagenarianism causes one to reflect on mortality. Indeed, it makes one think of times when a premature exit was on the cards. In my case, this was a bad motorbike accident in 1969. If you fall off a motorbike at speed or hit something, you are always going to come off second-best.

A study by the Federal Department of Transport found that motorcyclists are 41 times more likely to sustain a serious injury than car occupants. Moreover, the study found that 10% of motorbike accident victims were not wearing crash helmets at the time.

Not that the statistics put people off riding motorbikes or indeed competing in motor racing, be it on dirt tracks or professional circuits. The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries estimates there are one million registered motorcycles in Australia, and twice that number of off-road bikes.

My accident (it traumatises me still to recount) resulted in smashing both kneecaps, breaking my jaw and a lip laceration requiring 37 stitches. The latter was the least of my problems. I had both kneecaps removed and lay in a hospital bed with both legs in plaster for months. I became close to the pigeons roosting on the roof outside my narrow window. And I took up studying racing form to pass the time.

It is a good thing the brain does not retain the memory of pain. Let’s just say when the IRA decided on kneecapping as a form of punishment, they were inflicting great pain and future disability on their victims.

In those days, hospitals routinely doled out synthetic forms of morphine ‘PRN’ (Latin for as required – pro re nata). After several months, they weaned me off Omnipon (synthetic morphine) as my body was starting to crave the drug. Thus began a difficult period.

We can skip over the bad parts, which are chronicled in a highly romanticised song, Motorbike Dreams.

After getting out of hospital, I went to a (physical) rehab unit where daily therapy aimed to get my legs back to normal. As those who have had a patellectomy would know, full flexion is rare. I kneel with difficulty, cannot squat and take extra care to avoid having awkward tumbles. Apart from not having much of a head for heights, I avoid climbing ladders beyond the third step and have never been on the roof of our house.

Rehab and the sci-fi hallucination

Rehab was a hoot, after four months of being cooped up in a public hospital. It was only when I first got on crutches and struggled up the halls of the orthopaedic ward I stopped feeling sorry for myself. There in rooms by themselves or shared with others, was a coterie of ex-bikies, all of them in various degrees of pain and disability far worse than mine.

In rehab, I learned to play pool, always being defeated by a Vietnam vet whose left arm was frozen horizontally at chest height. It made the ideal place to rest a pool cue but was otherwise quite inconvenient.

This impish Polynesian chap, whose name now escapes me, decided one night we should all disobey the curfew and slip down the road to the pub. The rehab unit was located in a dodgy south Auckland suburb. But as Tipu (let’s call him that) said, “Otara’s not as bad as it’s painted, Bro.”

We had a great night out, temporarily forgetting the daily struggle to regain our version of normal fitness. I dimly recall a fabulously rowdy public bar rendition of Ten Guitars (New Zealand’s unofficial anthem).

In July, the surgeon who operated on my right leg decided to try manual manipulation, in a last-ditch effort to improve on 97 degrees. An ambulance came; I was taken back to hospital, given an injection of pethidine and then anaesthetised. I woke up in recovery 20 minutes later, with the surgeon shaking his head. The ambulance took me back to the rehab unit (I’d had a shot of pethidine, remember). The rehab crew were gathered in the rec room watched a flickering black and white RCA TV set. In my altered state it seemed like a bad sci-fi movie.

“That’s one small step for a man,” said Neil Armstrong, as he stepped on to the surface of the moon, “One giant leap for mankind.”

‘Tipu, mate, is this for real?”

He grinned at my dilated pupils and patted me on the shoulder.

“It’s all fake mate, shot on a Hollywood film set.”

Maybe that’s when the rumour began?

By the way, if you didn’t know, there are (still) persistent myths about the Apollo 11 moon landing being faked. In 2008, the TV series Mythbusters came up with one of the more entertaining attempts to debunk the un-debunkable.

Later in ’69 I was discharged from rehab, having made four wooden collection bowls on a foot-operated lathe. It was a sad day, as we had all formed a bond forged by physical adversity.

I went back into the world, to a series of unsuitable jobs where my physical limitations became painfully obvious. The hardest one was steam-cleaning refrigerated railway wagons at 4am. It wasn’t a difficult job once you had clambered up into the wagon, but getting there was pretty problematic.

Just try going for a week without squatting when performing daily tasks and you will have some idea how I adapted to ‘bottom-drawer’ world. No complaints here, though. I got off lightly, as people who have had their kneecaps removed typically develop arthritis and other ailments as time wears on. As a physio once told me, “You’re a lucky lightweight”.

In my 40s, playing soccer with the kids at a birthday picnic, I did the quick about-turn and felt something go ‘pop’. Weeks of pain and hobbling later I ended up in the rooms of an orthopaedic surgeon. He examined the X-rays and asked me to perform a few basic knee movements.

“Is this coming good on its own, do you think?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“Well, forty year old knees with the surgeries you’d had, if it’s coming good, I’m not touching it.”

I give my knees a good talking to, most days, and keep them going with daily walking, weekly yoga and by avoiding the scourge of the over-60s (having a fall).

“Good and faithful servants,” I mentally tell my knees every morning, “Carry me through another day.”

I don’t ride motorbikes anymore, but I’ll never forget the free-wheeling euphoria of a downhill run. And I still have motorbike dreams.