East Street Singers (spot The Goodwills) photo by Joel Richters
Never too early for a date claimer (so you can plan your busy lives). We’ve been asked to open for Fred Smith when he revisits Nambour’s Sunday Folk on June 18. Fred has performed at house concerts held when we lived in Maleny and we keep bumping into him (Tasmania, WA, Woodford). See details of this gig at the end of this report on our recent gigs.
March was a busy month for a pair of septuagenarians. On March 19 we performed at Folk Redlands with our third member Helen Rowe. The following weekend (March 26) Laurel and I were part of the afternoon’s entertainment for a refugee fundraiser in Warwick. The occasion was National Harmony Week and the cause to raise money to help settle a refugee family in Warwick.
Eighty people attended and we raised $1353 on the day for the Southern Downs Welcome Circle, which is sponsoring a refugee family who move to Warwick in May.
We opened the show with a half-hour set followed by East Street Singers who sang contemporary music, a break from the Gilbert & Sullivan pieces we are learning at the moment. Laurel and I are both in the choir so much changing of hats went on through the afternoon. Penny Davies and Roger Ilott closed the concert with some lovely soft, melodic songs which they encouraged people to sing along with.
Penny was also MC on the day (talk about wearing too many hats) and Roger thankfully took over managing our Yamaha PA which we needed in St Mark’s Anglican Hall.
Then on Friday March 31 we were part of the entertainment at a U3A Warwick end of term social. The venue was a contemporary history museum, The Kompound, noted for its dedication to the humble Kombi wagon.
Other entertainment on the night included a Scottish Country Dancing demonstration, the U3A line dancers and a Djembe drumming group.
Our next formal gig is supporting Fred Smith for a concert at Nambour’s Folk on Sunday on June 18, 2023. The venue is Nambour’s old ambulance station (now the Black Box Theatre). If you’ve not heard Fred Smith before, it would be worth the effort to (a) look him up https://fredsmith.com.au/ and (b) come along.
Friday on My Mind – Good Friday or just another day
April 7, 2023
By Bob Wilson
At the start of Joe Cocker’s live album, Mad Dogs and Englishman Joe mutter (incoherently) “Uh, uh – it’s Easter.”
Pause – “I was just gonna say don’t get hung up about Easter,” says someone in the band, probably Leon Russell.
A poor pun and in incredibly poor taste when you consider (well, in Australia anyway), that 43.9% of the population identify as Christian.
On Easter weekend, Christians honour the epic Bible story of the crucifixion and the resurrection. They would not care for Leon Russell’s inappropriate pun and some might even be offended that I recounted it, today of all days.
Christians accept the story that Jesus was crucified (by the nasty bureaucrats of the day), locked away in a tomb after his death and then arose from the dead, leaving an empty tomb. This supernatural feat of resurrection underpins almost everything Christianity is about; that Jesus died for our sins and only by accepting his love can we be saved.
I was raised a strict Methodist, by kind-hearted Calvinists who took the Bible literally. At times, I had nightmares after a particularly vivid fire and brimstone sermon by crusty old Methodist Ministers, who, even in the 1960s, were presiding over ever-diminishing congregations.
It’s no accident that the Methodist church has all but disappeared, absorbed into the hierarchy of less extreme religions. I asked my parents one time why they decided to leave Scotland and travel to New Zealand and was loosely quoted scripture (Ruth) “Wither thou goest, so shall I follow.” This was a wee bit before Germaine Greer.
She Who Does Not Go To Church But Lives By Christian Philosophy asked what I was writing about this Friday. When told she replied: “Wither thou goest I go to Wednesday morning coffee group.” A right pair of blasphemers we are, but clearly our hearts are in the right place. Ask anybody.
The correct text from the book of Ruth 1:16 reads:
“And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”
That particular translation comes from the King James Bible. Theologians will tell you it is about fidelity. No way is it about a mere woman doing what she is told by a man who (citing the old marriage vows), must be honoured and obeyed.
If you are interested, this website cites at least 30 different translations or interpretations of the same verse.
The Census question about religion is the only one on the Australian Bureau of Statistics form that is voluntary. Nevertheless, 93% of Australians answered the question in 2021, up 2% on the 2016 result. This is where I got the statistic that 43.9% of those who filled in their Census form identified with Christianity. If you go back several Censuses, this figure has dropped from 61.1% in 2011. If you go back to 1966, 88% of Australians said they were Christian.
By contrast in 2021, 38.9% of Australians stated they had ‘no religion’ (it was 22.3% in 2011).
Other religions (the ones that are growing) include Hinduism (up 55.3% to 684,002 people (2.7% of the population).
Likewise, Islam has grown by 813,392 people, 3.7% of the population.
The Christian Research Association notes that the fastest rate of decline in numbers between 2016 and 2021 was in The Salvation Army (28%), followed by the Uniting Church (23%), the Presbyterians and Reformed (21%), Anglicans (20%), and Lutherans (16%). There was a slower rate of decline among the Churches of Christ (9%), Latter-day Saints (6%), Catholics (4%) and Pentecostals (2%).
When Easter approaches, it conjures up memories from my teenage years when I left school early and went to work with Dad in the bakery. Dad was an old-school baker, taught his craft in Scotland in the days when bakers used lots of dried fruit in hot cross buns. (I accidentally bought fruitless hot-cross buns- how ‘disappointment’! Ed)
As I recall, the production line began about 6pm on Wednesday and we’d still be hard at it by noon on Thursday. People came from all over the region to buy Dad’s buns. I seem to remember we made 100 dozen or so. We always sold out.
Hot cross buns, with their thin pastry cross tops, symbolise the crucifixion of Jesus on Good Friday.
They were invented by medieval monk Thomas Rocliffe in the 14th century. As the County Life blog opines, ‘were he alive today, he might stop and say a prayer for forgiveness when he reached the hot-cross-bun aisle of a supermarket’. These sticky fruit buns, sold all year round in an assortment of flavours, are pale imitations of the original.
“There are even buns filled with fudge, a sickly notion that might have Brother Rocliffe fleeing back to the safety of St Albans Abbey.”
Dad made his fruit mix a month or so before Easter, leaving it to steep in a marinade. Come the time for baking, he was very generous in his allocation of fruit.
Much has been written about the decline of Christianity in Australia. The reasons are manifold, but statistics suggest the decline started with the cultural changes within the traditional family unit (Dad the breadwinner and Mum the housewife), which held sway in the 1950s. Then came the sexual revolution, hippies, Vietnam, the summer of love, women’s liberation and an ever-increasing level of higher education among people in general. In the past 20 or 30 years, people may have turned away from churches of all denomination after revelations of abuse of powers amongst ministers, clerics and priests.
Despite my stated position on organised religion, I salute those who attended Mass and other Easter services today. As the Census figures suggest, you are swimming against the tide. But it was always thus.
In the years of the Reformation (1550-1600), Thomas Cromwell became a notorious figure in politics as he cosied up to King Henry VIII.
Cromwell was involved in developing much of the religious legislation for the Reformation and was responsible for making sure it became law.
Monasteries owned over a quarter of all the cultivated land in England at the time. By destroying the monastic system, Henry could acquire all its wealth and property while also removing its Papist influence. Cromwell organised the dissolution of the monasteries in England, dissolving more than 800 religious houses in the 1500s. A brutal period in history.
There has always been opposition to (certain types of) religion and persecution often follows. We can see it today in the millions of refugees fleeing persecution, often because they are of a religious minority.
Today in Australia the agnostic among us and those who simply follow their own personal creed see no need to go to church. As comedian and composer Tim Minchin observes in his Christmas song, White Wine in the Sun:
I don’t go in for ancient wisdom I don’t believe just ’cause ideas are tenacious It means they’re worthy.
For many of us, this is just a four-day holiday weekend, complete with hedonistic rituals like rugby league and AFL matches and horse racing. For Australians who have declared themselves Christians, it also means time to reflect on their beliefs. Suum cuique, I say (to each his own).
One of Glengallan’s automatic mowers doing its autonomous thing – photo by Jonno Colfs
Friday on My Mind – We need volunteers – you, you and you!
March 31, 2023
By Bob Wilson
Last time I wrote about volunteering in Australia (2019), I confessed to having not done much of it at all. A lot can change in four years. I became re-acquainted with a former journalist colleague, Donna Fraser, who just happens to be chair of the Glengallan Homestead Trust. I had been to visit the partially restored sandstone homestead several times and could well remember what it looked like in the 1990s. Falling down, unoccupied and unloved.
“Why doesn’t someone save that old building?” we’d all say, and then forget about it until next time.
Donna suggested I might like to volunteer as a tour guide. I tagged along on a couple of tours with one of the long-term volunteers. A few weeks later, I was on my own – and enjoying it. I was at that stage still reading from a cheat sheet, put together by Donna from historical information. Glengallan Homestead was restored after the Trust received a $2 million Centenary of Federation grant in 2001. A new Heritage Centre was built, including a cafeteria, a gift shop and administration rooms. The restoration included replacing the old shingle roof and the rotting verandas, which had collapsed during the 70 years the homestead was neglected.
Glengallan is now one of the popular tourist destinations on the Southern Downs, with visitors and locals calling in from Wednesday to Sunday. General manager Jonno Colfs, who took over the job in September 2021, has introduced some innovations. The Trust recently purchased four automatic mowers, which quietly potter around the 5 acre Homestead block from 6am till nightfall, guided by GPS and smart enough to return to the recharging station at night. The mowers were bought with proceeds of a grant; and not only that, bought locally (from the Killarney Co-operative). Jonno says the mowers have become something of an attraction on their own. They are constantly on the move and the rule for visitors is – give way to mowers.
He also increased the cost of admission to $15 (it had been $10 since the Homestead was opened). He brought cafeteria prices more in line with what visitors would expect to pay In Warwick or Toowoomba.
Since taking on the job of General Manager, Jonno has been busy writing grant applications. One grant paid for upgraded signage, spotlights and a garden makeover. He’s also been promoting the seasonal market, which hit a new record in March, with 67 stalls registered. The next market day is the first Sunday in June- 4th of June.
I never tire of visiting Glengallan and its 5 acres of park-like grounds. If you have any sense of history at all it’s not hard to imagine this as the grand edifice at the heart of a 44,000 acre station. There were golden years in the 1800s, but when entrepreneur John Deuchar began building Glengallan in 1867, a drought and rural downturn was on the cards. Deuchar went broke and even though subsequent owners had some good years on the land, no money was invested in the house, which was left vacant and fell into disrepair.
As if being on a roster of volunteer tour guides was not enough, I joined a local refugee support group in 2020 and in late 2021 was asked if I’d stand as chairman.
“How am I going to do this? I asked a friend who has served on many boards as director and/or chair.
“You’ll be fine,’ my learned friend said, after a few probing questions. He emailed me a link to ‘your responsibilities as chair of a not-for-profit’. I also borrowed a book on meeting procedures from the library .
In 2021 I joined the University of the Third Age (U3A) committee as a ‘spare’. Over time, that morphed into newsletter editor, website editor and now publicity officer. In the corporate world they call it ‘mission creep’ which basically means, well, doing more than you signed up for.
If you volunteer for anything you have to accept you will be seconded on to sub-committees and working groups. That’s how it works.
Volunteering Australia’s definition of volunteering is “time willingly given for the common good and without financial gain”. The word ‘willingly’ stands out.
Much has been written about volunteer burnout. This is a state of mind very much like workplace stress, except you are not pulling in the big bucks to tolerate similar issues and hassles.
Like other community-minded people in this town who have ideas and energy, I have somehow managed to get a bit over-committed. I was so busy in March I found myself double-booked when asked to take a tour around Glengallan.
I do have a succession plan to scale down my volunteering in 2024. Apparently I am not alone. Volunteering Australia last month launched a Strategic Plan to avert the decade-long decline in volunteer numbers.
The size of the volunteer workforce has dwindled from more than 5 million people in 2019 to a low point of just under 3 million (according to the 2021 Census).
But that’s still a lot of people contributing selflessly to a cause they believe in. People aged 40-54 years are more likely to volunteer (30.5%) than other age group, which is interesting, given that most of them would have day jobs. For the 70+ group, the number is 28.0%.
The most common types of organisations for which people volunteered related to sport and physical recreation (30.7%), religious groups (23.1%) and education and training (18.8%).
The majority (66.4%) volunteered for one organisation only, 23.0% for two and 10.4% for three or more.
I realise the latter puts me in a minority and might also prompt accusations of ‘virtue signalling’ which is how young people describe making yourself look good or ‘skiting’ as we used to call it.
The onset of Covid-19 in March 2020 tore a huge hole in the framework of national volunteering. A study conducted by the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods found that the proportion of adult Australians engaging in formal voluntary work, which is done through an organisation or group, fell from 36% in late 2019 to 24.2% in April 2021. In the 12 months leading up to April 2021, only 54.4% of those who had stopped volunteering had resumed, exacerbating a decline in the national rate of volunteering from 36% in 2010 to 29% in 2019.
More recent research by the Institute of Community Directors reveals that 58% of charities reported a decline in volunteering. The report speculates about generational change as one reason, citing a YouGov Consumer Sentiment Survey. This survey found that 23% of Baby Boomers volunteer several times a week, compared with 14% of Gen Xers, 11% of Millennials and 9% of Gen Z (those aged 12 to 24). Those are scary statistics when you realise that 51% of Australian charities are wholly dependent upon volunteers.
As I write this, three U3A volunteers are reviewing my spelling, grammar and syntax before we email the Term Two newsletter out. That will be the easy part, unlike the First Term newsletter, 160 copies of which were printed, folded, labelled and mailed to members by a small army of volunteers. Nothing wrong with signalling other people’s virtues. They know who they are.
One of our readers commented that on the same day the media were banging on about the Federal Government’s $368 billion submarine plan, a lone SBS panel programme focused on the national housing crisis.
It is tempting to compare spending on affordable housing with the capital cost of up to five nuclear-powered submarines. The Federal Government’s (annual) commitment to affordable housing (currently $1.6 billion), equates to about 13% of its annual submarine budget (ie if the $368 billion is spread equally over 30 years). This assumes that successive governments will continue to spend that much on affordable housing (and submarines).
While housing is the responsibility of individual States and Territories, the Federal Government develops national policy and funds it with grants to the States and Territories.
That’s the theory, but in reality the critical shortage of housing, the cost of housing and the rising tally of homelessness is a clear and present danger to Australia’s social stability. Just this week the 2021 Census data on homelessness was released – what kept them, you might ask?
More than 122,000 people in Australia experienced homelessness on Census night, an increase of 5.2% from 2016, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The ABS interpreted the numbers as representing 48 people for every 10,000 people, compared with 50 people for every 10,000 in 2016.
While that is a reduction, the historical snapshot would seem to be an unreliable statistic, given that measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19 throughout 2021 contributed to some of the changes in the data.
“During the 2021 Census, we saw fewer people ‘sleeping rough’ in improvised dwellings, tents or sleeping out, and fewer people in living in ‘severely’ crowded dwellings and staying temporarily with other households,” ABS spokesperson Georgia Chapman said.
The affordable housing issue is not just about people sleeping in doorways. A new report produced by the Queensland Council of Social Services (QCOSS) clearly shows that working families are among those falling prey to the acute rental housing market shortage. It’s worse in some States than in others.
The report from QCOSS and The Town of Nowhere campaign is sobering reading. It predicts more than 220,000 households in the State will not have affordable housing within 20 years.
The report was prepared by national housing expert, University of New South Wales Professor Hal Pawson, and UNSW colleagues.
The tough conclusions include that there are around 150,000 households across Queensland with unmet housing needs. This includes 100,000 households who would typically be eligible for social housing. These households are either experiencing homelessness, or are low-income households in private rentals, paying more than 30% of household income in rent.
The figure is more than twice the official indicator of 47,306 households on the Queensland social housing waiting list. The latter has grown by 70% over the past three years.
Un-met housing needs are highest in satellite cities south of Brisbane. Pawson’s study shows that 10% of all households in Logan, Beaudesert and Gold Coast are homeless or living in unaffordable housing.
Professor Pawson said Queensland would need 11,000 affordable and social homes each year for the next 20 years, about 2,700 of which would need to be social housing.
He told the ABC the government had promised to build 13,000 social and affordable homes by 2027. But the QCOSS report found that the number of people with “very high need” for social housing was 37% higher than the system could accommodate.
In the decade leading up to 2017, there was “minimal” investment by State and Federal governments in affordable and social housing, Professor Pawson said.
“Unless they can get a grip on the situation, it’s a problem that over the next generation will continue to become more stressed and more pressurised.”
Much of the blame for the current problem is laid at the feet of private landlords. Private rentals in Queensland have risen as much as 33% since 2020. The sharpest increases, however, have been in regional markets. For example, over the past five years median rents rose by 80% per cent in the industrial town of Gladstone, by 51% in the tourist town of Noosa and 33% in the Gold Coast area. Nearly 60% of low-income households in the private rental market are facing unaffordable housing costs, with 15% in extreme housing affordability stress (rent accounting for more than half of total income).
While rentals have risen steeply, the bigger problem is a lack of rental accommodation. Rental vacancies are close to zero not only in Brisbane and the Gold Coast but also in regional towns.
The report states: “Queensland’s private rental housing has seen several years of declining vacancy levels and rent inflation rates far above the national norm. More generally, the sector remains entirely dominated by small-scale investor landlords whose usual prioritisation of capital growth over rental revenue inherently compromises tenant security.” The upshot of this is that landlords are selling on the rising market, resulting in fewer houses for rental. Coupled with this is the inadequacy of tenant rights on rents, security and conditions. The Queensland Government enacted significant rental regulation reforms in 2022, but these fell far short of the changes advocated by tenants’ rights campaigners.
The Productivity Commission reported last year on the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement framed by the Albanese Government.
The agreement provides $1.6 billion a year in federal funding to the States and Territories, with the aim of improving access to affordable and secure housing.
However, the Commission judged the programme ineffective and in need of a major shake-up. With rents rising and vacancies falling, low-income private renters are spending more on housing than they used to. One in four households have less than $36 a day left for other essentials, the Commission said.
For those who might argue against more investment in social housing, there are success stories. The Queensland Government has funded a small number of permanent supportive housing (PSH) tenancies for people who have experienced long-term homelessness. PSH combines subsidised long-term housing with access to intensive but voluntary support services. One PSH programme, Brisbane Common Ground (BCG), established in 2012, is a 146-unit apartment block with 24/7 on-site support. Studies reported high tenancy sustainment rates and tenant satisfaction levels. It also produced significant savings via reduced use of emergency services and crisis accommodation. (QCOSS Report).
Despite the success of projects like BCG, there are many examples of State governments backing away from the commitment to social housing. For example, the New South Wales government is reportedly preparing to sell its Waterloo social housing complex in Sydney. The ABC reported that Waterloo Estate, the biggest social housing estate in Australia, houses almost 2,500 people.
The 18ha site will be redeveloped under a NSW government strategy called Communities Plus, where public land is offered to developers on the proviso 30% of what they build is dedicated social housing. This is clearly a retrograde move away from a project that is 100% dedicated to social housing. Meanwhile, more than 51,000 hard-pressed households are waiting for a home in NSW.
In an even more backward step, Darwin’s local Council has reportedly been issuing $162 fines to ‘rough sleepers’. The latter may or may not be indigenous people known as ‘longgrassers.’ (see link below)
Darwin Council issued a statement saying it had been subject to significant pressure from some current Northern Territory government MLAs. The MPs wanted to increase the number of infringements (and the size of fines), issued to vulnerable people who are sleeping rough in public places. (And what happens when these people cannot pay the fines? Imprisonment for non-payment? I guess that’s one way of getting people off the streets..Ed)
In its defence Council said council rangers issued fines as a “last resort”.
“We do not consider the fining of vulnerable people the solution to complex issues such as homelessness.”
Amidst the airport’s security cameras, facial recognition technology and contactless check-in, it took a dog (and a human) to catch me out. We were about to exit customs in New Zealand when a customs officer with a beagle on a lead passed us by. The beagle tracked back, put his front paws on my trolley and sniffed at my black shoulder bag.
“Have you had food in that bag, Sir?” the Customs Officer asked.
“I bought a sandwich at the airport in Brisbane and ate it on the plane,” I explained.
“What kind of sandwich was it?”
“Um, chicken – chicken and avocado.”
She smiled: “Right, well he’s trained to sniff out chicken.” She gave the dog a treat and we continued on to the exit.
Apart from a side trip to the duty free shop, this was the only human contact we had, coming and going, apart from a tired-looking Brisbane customs officer at the end of a very long queue, collecting arrival forms and pointing us to the exit.
When tackling the now ubiquitous automatic check-in kiosk, I began to realise that my new passport, complete with a photo of a stern-looking 74 year old, contains a microchip which identifies me on facial scanners.
As Smart Traveller summarises:
All Australian passports, except for emergency passports, are ePassports. An ePassport contains an electronic chip that helps to confirm your identity. International airports in Australia, and some overseas, allow Australians with ePassports to use automated passport control machines.
At our point of departure were check-in kiosks where your boarding passes are printed from a machine, along with baggage tags. The first time I tried this I accidentally pasted the baggage receipt (which you are supposed to detach but nobody explained that) on the checked-in bag. A burly chap watched as I hefted my 16kg bag on to the conveyer belt. He kindly retrieved pieces of bar code from my sticker and pasted them on the side of my suitcase. Then we proceeded to Customs check-in where you had to pour out perfectly good water, remove everything from your pockets (belt, wallet, passport, phone, even a soggy hankie) and stand like The Terminator in the X-ray machine.
I dislike having to remove my belt as I have enough trouble keeping my pants up with a belt. Once I’d passed through X-ray and been re-united with my stuff, I stood around in everyone’s way and took as long as possible to put my belt on, stuff the hankie back in my pocket, etc.
“Move along please, Sir.”
Now to the duty free shop, where assistants (all two of them), limited conversation to “$72.99 – on card?”
By the way, who carries cash in these times? One day we are all going to get caught out like we did when trapped in a post-Cyclone town.
Power cuts and cell phone outages neutered ATMs and EFTPOS machines all along New Zealand’s east coast. Did they not think of that?
(I distinctly remember whingeing about that at the time, as well as complaining on behalf of our country cousins who can’t rely on the Internet. Ed)
My lasting memory of leaving Auckland (after going through the same contactless palaver), was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a smiling airport employee, bidding us ‘Haere Ra’ (goodbye come again).
The people that used to do that sort of job are probably working unsociable hours at one of the airport’s fast-food joints.
One of my friends who found himself unexpectedly flying to England for his mother’s funeral, clutching an emergency passport, commented on Facebook about travel in 2023 – “It’s not like it was.”
One could imagine he was not in the mood, but he’s right – the absence of friendly people making sure we end up in the right place together with the security overkill at both ends is exhausting. On a brighter note, at least no-one comes through the aircraft spraying insecticide before you disembark. Remember that?
Dirk Singer writes that the contactless travel trend began during the Covid pandemic as a means of limiting human contact. Understandably, the whole world was concerned about this in 2020 and 2021, Maybe not so much in 2022 and 2023, but the trend has been accelerated by the acceptance that our face is now our boarding pass.
Biometric scanners can be quite confronting if you are among the 40% of people who get anxious when they travel. The machine barks at us: stand there, remove your glasses, stay still, don’t smile. If we somehow manage to put our feet in the right place and follow the rest of the instructions, the little gate will slide open just long enough to let one person through. I briefly wondered what would happen if you just stood there in the gate, like a reluctant sheep? How long would it take for one of the few remaining airport employees to arrive and sort you out?
There’s more social distancing to come. Some companies are trialling robotic food deliveries within airports. How long before the food trolley coming down the aisle is driving itself? Crikey, even the dunny flushes itself.
The latest developments envisage robots staffing airport check-in desks, carrying out security protocols, cleaning and even delivering food to passengers waiting in airport lounges.
The proponents of contactless travel (airlines) like to tell us it is safer, healthier and less stressful. Yes, but what about those of us who routinely lose our minds when in the confines of an airport (or to a lesser degree, a railway station)?
According to kiwi.com, 40% of people become anxious to some extent at the thought of travelling on an airplane. Moreover, 6% of people are affected by aviophobia — the clinical fear of flying.
As for Facial recognition scanning, it has been around for a long while now. In addition to its use at airports, these days it is used by police and security services to review CCTV footage. As you probably know, Great Britain once led the western world when it came to installation of CCTV cameras (4 million). I clearly recall a Billy Connolly travelogue where he encountered one of the silent watchers on a bridge in Scotland. Billy being Billy leaned into the lens and extended his middle finger.
‘Person of Interest’, a TV drama series frequently featured investigators scanning crowds, using facial recognition technology. Suddenly they have a hit. The person of interest’s file pops up on the right side of the screen. Nowhere to hide, just like George Orwell’s protagonist Winston Smith in 1984.
The combination of CCTV and facial recognition used by governments and private enterprise has the personal freedom movement in a panic.
Last year there was considerable outrage when Choice magazine broke a story that major Australian retailers were collecting biometric information in-store. Bunnings, KMart and the Good Guys all agreed to ‘pause’ their use of the technology while the legality is being assessed.
As for the spread of CCTV cameras, Comparitech.com’s Paul Bischoff ranks China at the top of a global survey of cities under surveillance.
China has an estimated 540 million surveillance cameras (54% of the global total) to cover 1.46 billion people. That’s 372.8 cameras per 1,000 people. (The latest development in China is to identify people jaywalking and send them an instant fine (by text).
Sydney, at the other end of the scale, has 4.67 cameras per 1000 people and Melbourne 2.13. So where would you rather live?
There’s a lot in this study and it is hard to make comparisons. But the inescapable truth of it is, like Orwell’s Winston Smith, we are all being watched.
“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away.” Winston Smith, 1984.
The Australian cash rate since 1998 (Reserve Bank of Australia chart)
I just happened to be reading a novel set in the Edwardian era at the same time as the media was going bonkers (again) about the Reserve Bank raising interest rates by 0.25% to 3.6%. In Louis de Bernieres’s* book, The Dust That Falls from Dreams, one of the characters is holding forth about the sudden rise in the bank rate and subsequent collapse of the share market in 1914.
Hamilton McCosh, a daring entrepreneur and investor, is at first delighted when the bank rate goes to 4% because he has ‘a few bob invested here and there’. Then the rate doubles to 8% and quickly rises to 10%.
“Just as I was gleefully rubbing my hands the blighters closed the Stock Exchange”, he tells his pals at the Atheneum, a gentlemen’s club.
This is late July 1914, you gather, a few weeks before World War I broke out. McCosh didn’t know then that the stock market would stay closed for five months. Rather than cause inflation, this financial crisis functioned like the ultimate credit squeeze. Inflation stayed low, well at least until 1915, when it rose rapidly to 12% then to 25% in 1917.
In the pre-war period, De Bernieres’s McCosh is aghast – you can’t get credit anywhere and there’s a rout on the stock market. “What’s Serbia got to do with us?” he complains.
In 2023 you could insert “Ukraine’“and immediately realise that we have seen cycles like this before. In times of war, the supply of money is tested, oil is expensive and hard to source, there is much unemployment, securities can’t be sold and supplies of necessities are dwindling.
The 1914 financial crisis in the City was a liquidity crisis of massive proportion, the likes of which was not seen again until 2007/2008. Amidst much intervention by the government and the Bank of England, the day was ultimately saved.
In De Bernieres’s novel, McCosh regroups and singles out two stocks he thinks will do well – Malacca Rubber and Shell Oil (as he calculates where money will be spent in the war effort).
Self-interest and venality arises quickly whenever a country’s financial welfare is threatened. Survival of the shiftiest is the order of the day.
At this point in time, many of Australia’s mortgage holders must be in a state of anxiety as yet again the goal posts are moved.
Not that the RBA had any option. Monetary policy is under pressure from forces beyond the Reserve Bank’s control. We are not the only country where inflation and interest rates have risen sharply. You can chart the increases in Australia back to the onset of a pandemic in March 2020, then steeply rising since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022.
The impact of Covid is what initially sent the cost of living index soaring. From March 2020, when it was 2.2%. Inflation rose steadily through the Covid years, driven up by stock shortages, the impact of bushfires and floods on production, disruptions to supply chains and the ever-rising cost of fuel.
Inflation reached 7.3% in the September quarter of 2022, about six months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The RBA now thinks inflation may have peaked (at 7.8% in December 2022). But as ABC business reporter Peter Ryan observed, the March quarter figure will be the one to clarify matters when released on April 23. Wherever it rests, Australia’s inflation rate is a long way north of the 2%-3% range promised in 2019.
When inflation rises, central banks almost always use monetary policy to beat it into submission. This week’s interest rate rise – the 10th in a row, takes the official cash rate to 3.6%.
As Peter Martin observed in a timely piece for The Conversation, Tuesday’s interest rate hike was the culmination of a process that has added $1,080 to the monthly cost of payments on a $600,000 variable mortgage.
Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, calculated this increase ($12,960 per year) by comparing payments on the National Australia Bank’s base variable mortgage rate before the Reserve Bank started its series of hikes in May 2022.
Before the Reserve Bank began raising the cash rate, the base variable rate was 2.19%. It’s about to be 5.49%, pushing up the monthly payment on a $600,000 mortgage from $2,600 to $3,680.
The Reserve Bank acknowledges it is a “painful squeeze”, but hints it might not need to squeeze much harder.
There’s more pain across the ditch. NZStats revealed that the annual inflation rate for 2022 reached 7.2%. Housing and household utilities was the largest contributor to the annual inflation rate. This was due to a 14% hike in the cost of building a house and rentals also rose.
As if to demonstrate its independence from the government of the day, New Zealand’s Reserve Bank pretty much ignored the impact of Cyclone Gabrielle. While all around people were shovelling silt out of their houses, the RBNZ increased the cash rate from 4.25% to 4.75% on February 22. This was a more dramatic increase than seen this week in Australia. But New Zealand is anxious to suppress the spiralling cost of housing. You’d think a country which is over-endowed with pine forests would have this covered, eh?
I guess the new UK prime minister will want to take credit for the drop in inflation recorded in January (8.8%) compared with 9.7% in December 2022. The Bank of England Governor has warned that it may need to raise rates again if inflation re-asserts itself. After 10 successive increases since December 2021, the official rate is at 4%. Meanwhile in the US, the Federal Reserve is flagging higher and faster rates rises (4.75% in February), despite inflation dropping below 7%.
Why does all this matter and who does it matter to? If you are young, working and buying your own home, yet another 0.25% increase in the cash rate wrecks your household budget. Those who borrowed their deposit (from the Bank of Mum and Dad) will be desperate for another pay rise, as inflation eats into the recent 4.5% increase in wages.
As The Guardian reported just last month, almost 25% of borrowers were at risk of mortgage stress as of December 2022. Another 800,000 borrowers face higher repayments as fixed loans end later this year and revert to the variable rate.
Tim Lawless, research director at CoreLogic, says the clear reason for mortgage stress is that interest rates increased faster and earlier than anyone was thinking. (Whatever happened to the notion of buying a modest first home then upgrading as finances permit?Ed.)
“We are expecting that the rate of mortgage stress will push higher into 2023,” Lawless told The Guardian, “partly because of higher interest rates, but also because of the cost of living.”
Theo Chambers, chief executive of Shore Financial added: “People probably borrowed more than they could have today. With borrowing capacities down almost 35% from 12 months ago, these people wouldn’t get approved today.”
As for De Bernieres’s Hamilton McCosh, how is he supposed to earn a living in Edwardian Britain, he fumes, saddled with four children, a truculent wife and two mistresses current (one retired), all of whom have children to feed?
As the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen once said, “Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt“.
Victoria Point Bowls Club, 3 Poinciana Avenue, 1pm.
The Goodwills Trio (Bob & Laurel Wilson and Helen Rowe) have been performing at clubs and festivals for the past six years. Bob & Laurel have been performing together since the late 1970s, so have a large repertoire including songs Bob has written. Bob’s songs have been featured on the ABC radio show, Australia all Over. Three songs, Big Country Town, Courting the Net and If It Doesn’t Rain Soon, Mate, have been included on Ian McNamara’s compilation albums.
In 2022 Bob won the Alistair Hulett Songs for Social Justice award with his song When Whitlam Took his Turn at the Wheel. Subsequently, The Goodwills released an eight-track EP containing five new songs and live versions of three older songs. They have released six CDs since 1998. although two of the older albums are out of print.
Bob and Laurel live in Warwick now, so the logistics for rehearsing with Helen means she gets to spend time in the country. Helen adds vocal harmonies, whistle and fiddle and occasionally sings her own songs.
The usual format for Folk Redlands is blackboard artists first, who each perform two or three songs, a break and then the guest act from 3pm to 4pm. Bar and snacks are available.
Photo 01: Forestry waste (slash) piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach
A Pakeha (Non-Māori) friend in Auckland, who has been studying Te Reo Māori language for some years, thinks all New Zealanders should know at least 100 words.
On our visit there between February 9 and 24, I began to realise how many Māori words I do know, and this time I learned a few new ones including Huripari.
This is Māori for storm or, if expressing the extremity of a cyclone, hurricane or tornado, you might say: He āwhā nui, ā, he tino kino te pupuhi o te haumātakataka.
Cyclone Gabrielle swept through Northland, Auckland, Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Waikato and down the East coast.
Gabrielle did not receive much media coverage here in Australia, despite inflicting a damage bill conservatively estimated at $NZ13.5 billion. More than 250 roads are closed; 1000 people are still living in shelters, many cannot return to their homes and at least 11 people died. Roads cut between Wairoa and Napier and Taupo and Napier could take months to clear, rebuild and re-open. Many homes have been red-stickered, which in local parlance means they are ‘munted’. (A non-Māori word meaning destroyed)
I’ll admit we took the Cyclone warnings too lightly. We landed in Auckland on February 9 and stayed with friends, who had their own disaster stories after Auckland’s dramatic deluge on January 30.
From there, we drove to Rotorua for a truly immersive experience. We were surely among the few Australian Pakeha people at the Indigenous All Stars vs NZ Māoris rugby league match. It was a beautiful sunny day with no hint of what was to come. The sport started early with a mixed touch footie game (a draw), then the Indigenous women’s team played their Māori counterparts (who won).
Then to the main event. Former NRL legend Greg Inglis appeared on camera, looking good in a suit. He was being interviewed by Sky Sports before the match. The crowd of 25,000 got involved in the pre-game Indigenous welcome dance and Māori haka. Much of the cheering and roaring was saved for the advancing haka party.
The match was played in good spirit; few injuries and only one sin bin for a high tackle. The Māori team more than held their own, but thanks to the athletic brilliance of Brisbane Broncos player Selwyn Cobbo, who scored three tries, the Indigenous team won 28-24.
We chatted to a group of Aboriginal women from Moree and other places. They flew over especially for the game and were ready to fly back on Sunday, weather permitting. They seemed happy to be among whanau (extended family). (I loved the whole experience. Ed)
Next morning we set off to walk through Rotorua’s Redwood forests, which are quite impressive, the tracks heavily used by locals cycling and walking their dogs. My sister texted, anxious about the weather report. She wanted us to drive through the Waioeka Gorge to Gisborne ASAP. There was evidence of previous slips on this road, which is quite often closed for a day or two while road crews clear the way. It is a mountainous valley road with steep hills prone to slips (landslides).
By the time we arrived in Gisborne, the ominous black clouds we saw building up beyond Rotorua had pursued us to the coast. We bunkered down for the night as strong winds and heavy rain developed. My sister lives close to but on the ‘high’ side of the river. Her house is sheltered and well insulated, so the only real clue we had to the ferocity of the weather was to watch the big pine tree swaying around behind her neighbour’s house.
We lost power on Monday, but thankfully it was restored by the evening. The Hawkes Bay towns of Wairoa, Napier and Hastings were less fortunate. By the end of the week, power had only been patchily restored in Napier, where a major substation was submerged by flood waters.
Our collective anxiety levels were high as we lost cell phone and internet connection so had no idea what was going on in the outside world, apart from staying glued to the 24/7 coverage on NZ1 TV. At least I had contacted my other sister in Hastings on Sunday night to tell her we had arrived safely in Gisborne. Then there was no phone communication for six days. So much for the VoiP phones foisted upon us all in place of reliable copper landlines. (What ‘genius’ didn’t foresee that this lack of communication would happen in the case of widespread power blackouts? Ed)
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Chris Hipkins was quick to get to the front line – no side trips to Hawaii for Hipkins, who replaced Jacinda Ardern as leader after her resignation on January 13.
One story I found while browsing Australian media was filed on Monday by the ABC, with Hipkins announcing a global fundraising effort.
The appeal will fund longer-term recovery projects and target wealthy expatriates, businesses and ‘anyone with affection for New Zealand’, Hipkins said.
According to the Department of Home Affairs, around 660,000 New Zealanders live in Australia, a third of them in Queensland.
Despite the obvious interest in news from home, people who were looking for it went to Stuff.co.nz. The Weekend Australian, by contrast, made no mention of Cyclone Gabrielle at all.
This FOMM was aided and abetted by the aforementioned ABC report and news drawn from Stuff.co.nz, the Gisborne Herald, Hawkes Bay Today and the NZ Herald.
Cyclone Gabrielle hit New Zealand’s North Island on February 12, taking out roads and bridges and leaving tens of thousands without power or connectivity. A National State of Emergency was declared for only the third time in the nation’s history. Disruption to supplies of clean water was just one of the problems.
The drama is by no means over. Police are still searching for four people who are not accounted for. Heavy rain at the weekend hampered clean-up efforts and, as is common in this part of the world, the occasional earthquake came along to ramp up anxiety levels.
Hipkins said early on in live TV broadcasts that it was time to ‘get real’ about New Zealand’s transport, power and communications infrastructure. Opposition Leader Chris Luxon started off well by acknowledging the role climate change had played in this catastrophe. But he later mounted a law and order campaign, after reports of looting and intimidation by gangs.
He described ex-Cyclone Gabrielle as the most damaging natural disaster in a generation. That didn’t stop the Reserve Bank from raising interest rates to 4.5%, in times when ordinary working Kiwis are finding it hard just to pay for groceries and fuel.
The New Zealand Government has announced an inquiry into forestry practices which saw tonnes of debris (known as ‘slash’) washed down rivers and into the ocean. Along the way, this trash inevitably aggravated damage to bridges and roads. The photo above shows forestry waste piled up on Gisborne’s Waikanae Beach. On a good day, it is the East Coast’s favourite safe swimming beach. What more can I say other than share this second photo.
On a positive note, hundreds of Kapa Haka groups from all over New Zealand (and a few from Australia), took part in Te Matatini, a celebration of Māori culture and traditions held at Auckland’s Eden Park.
I was particularly impressed by the group from Wairoa, a coastal town devastated by flooding. The dancers smeared their lower legs in mud, as if to say ‘Cyclone – what Cyclone?’ These are resilient people, caring for family and community, and, despite catastrophe, still with a sense of humour. Kia Kaha.
In case you were curious, the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Iranians who interact with the internet are by definition risk-takers.
Photo Christopher Rose
As recently as late 2016, five Iranians were sentenced to prison terms for writing and posting images on fashion blogs. The content was decreed to ‘encourage prostitution’.
The Independent quoted lawyer Mahmoud Taravat via state news agency Ilna that the eight women and four men he represented received jail time of between five months to six years. He was planning to appeal the sentences handed down by a Shiraz court on charges including ‘encouraging prostitution’ and ‘promoting corruption’.
The immediacy of blogging appeals to those who live under oppressive regimes. They use the online diary to inform the world of the injustices in their country as and when they happen. I cited Iran (Persia) as just one example of a country where expressing strong opinions contrary to the agenda of the ruling government is extremely risky business.
The founder of Iran’s blogging movement, Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger, spent six years in prison (the original sentence was 19 and a half years), before being pardoned by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Derakhshan also helped promote podcasting in Iran and appears to have been the catalyst that spawned some 64,000 Persian language blogs (2004 survey). Clearly there is/was a level of dissent among people who think the right to free speech is worth the risk of incarceration or worse.
Blogging can be a lot of things in Australia, but risky it rarely is, so long as you are mindful of the laws regarding defamation and contempt of court. Not so for bloggers or citizen journalists of oppressed countries who try to get the facts out.
It is no coincidence that most of the countries guilty of supressing free speech are among the 22 countries named by Amnesty International as having committed war crimes. They include Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and, closer to home, Myanmar, where persecution and discrimination persists against the Rohingya. Amnesty’s national director Claire Mallinson told ABC’s The World Today that not only are people being persecuted where they live, 36 countries (including Australia) sent people back into danger after attempts to find refuge.
Amnesty’s 450-page Human Rights report for 2015-2016 does not spare Australia from criticism, particularly our treatment of children in custody, with Aboriginal children 24 times more likely to be separated from their families and communities. We are also complacent when it comes to tackling world leaders and politicians accused of creating division and fear.
Still, at least if you live in Australia you can openly criticise something the government is doing (or not doing), apropos this week’s Q&A and the Centrelink debt debate.
According to literary types who seem to have warmed to my turn of phrase, FOMM is not a blog as such, but an example of ‘creative nonfiction’ which I am told is not only a genre, but also something taught at universities.
I never knew that.
Bloggers in comfortable democracies like ours use blogs to write about cats, dogs, goldfish, cake recipes, fashion, yoga, raising babies, travel adventures and produce how-to manuals about anything you care to name.
The definition of a blog is ‘a regularly updated public website or web page, typically run by an individual or small group, written in an informal or conversational style.’
Scottish comedian and slam poem Elvis McGonagall, who you met last week, satirises the blog format with this entry.
Monday:
Woke up. Had a thought. Dismissed it. Had another. Dismissed that. Stared at the cows. The cows stared back. Scratched arse. Shouted at telly. Threw heavy object at telly. Had a wee drink. Had another. Went to bed.
Tuesday to Sunday – repeat as above
The definitive blog is an online daily diary, kept by people while travelling, carrying out some stated mission like preparing for an art exhibition, producing an independent album, dieting or training for a triathlon. Most of these literary exercises are abandoned at journey’s end, or on completion of the mission. A fine example of this is folksinger John Thompson’s marathon effort to post an Australian folk song each day for a year. He did this from Australia Day 2011 to January 26, 2012.
Some of the tunes have ended up on albums by Cloudstreet, Thompson’s musical collaboration with Nicole Murray and Emma Nixon.
The social worth of a blog, though, is when an oppressed human being writes a real time account of what atrocity or infringement of human rights is happening in their third-world village, right now.
There are millions of blogs circulating on the worldwide web, many of which are concerned with marketing, selling, promoting and luring readers into subscribing to the bloggers’ products and/or clicking on sponsors’ links. It is nigh-on impossible to find a list of blogs independently assessed on quality, although some have tried.
The Australian Writers Centre held a competition in 2014 to find Australia’s best blogs, dividing entries into genres like Personal & Parenting, Lifestyle/Hobby, Food, Travel, Business, Commentary and Words/Writing. The competition attracted hundreds of entries which were whittled down to 31 finalists.
The AWC told FOMM it has since switched its focus to fiction competitions but has not dismissed the popularity of blogging. Even so, continuity is an ever-present issue.
The 2014 winner, Christina Sung, combined travel and cooking, two topics which spawn thousands of blogs worldwide, into The Hungry Australian. But as happens with blogs, the author has somewhat moved on since then. As Christina last posted in September 2016: ‘Hello, dear readers! Apologies for my lengthy absence but I’ve been working on a few writing projects lately’.
Likewise, the author of The Kooriwoman, the Commentary winner for a blog about life as an urban Aboriginal in Australia, has not posted since January 2016.
It is not uncommon for finely-written blogs like those mentioned to have a hiatus or disappear without notice, for a myriad of reasons linked to other demands and distractions in the authors’ lives.
The few lists of Australian blogs you can find tend to rank them on popularity (numbers of followers or clickers). The top 10 blogs in this list are all about food or travel.
http://www.blogmetrics.org/australia
Hands-down winner Not Quite Nigella is a daily blog curated by Lorraine Elliott who according to blogmetrics has 28,523 monthly visitors. It’s not hard to see why – the blog is constantly updated with recipes, restaurant reviews, travel adventures and the like, featuring mouth-watering photos and a chatty prose style.
So there are those like Lorraine who make a living from blogging and those who start with a skyrocket burst of enthusiasm and fall to ground like the burnt-out stick.
Whatever your absorbing passion in life happens to be – cross-dressing, wood-carving, wine-making, writing haikus, collecting Toby jugs, quilt-making, proofreading or growing (medicinal) marijuana, you can bet someone out there has created a blog.
Just yesterday for no reason other than a bit of light relief after months of heatwave conditions, I searched for ‘grumpy spouse blog’ and got 22 hits. Have a look at this one – it’s choice.
Bob’s bedside table (an example) Zoom in to see what he’s reading
So I’m visiting John in hospital and it’s just as well I didn’t come the day before, he says, because he was in a world of pain. Knee operations are like that. Hospital rooms evoke all kinds of memories, most of them not very pleasant, even a private room with a TV, telephone and a view of the painless world.
John was telling how his daughter phoned on his world of pain day to see how he was. The phone, on the bedside table, just out of reach, rang and rang. Somebody had moved the bedside table so they could set up the contraption that monitors one’s vitals.
There’s a small fortune to be made for someone who invents and promotes a bedside cabinet suited to the largely bed-ridden. It may well be that someone already owns the patents or has actually produced a prototype. They would go well in hospitals. The standard hospital brand tends to be a metal box on castors, usually with two (lockable) drawers and a cupboard to store your clothes, shoes and toiletries.
What is really needed, if you happen to be supine in bed and unable to roll over and reach out, is a bedside table that will come to you. I’m not an inventor, designer or cabinet maker, but I envisage the patient with a remote control pressing ‘turn left’ and with a barely perceptible whir, the bedside table obediently turns so it is facing the bed. The patient presses ‘rise” and the table rises, until the patient presses ‘stop’. ‘Open top drawer’, and the top drawer slides open, to offer an array of things one might need: reading glasses, hearing aids, wallet, mobile phone, private medical insurance card.
Those of you quick on the uptake will immediately see the broader commercial opportunities of such a user-friendly bedside table. The home model would have a built in power board for mobile phone, e-reader, MP3 player or whatever gadget you keep in the bedside cabinet that might require recharging. Ahem.
At this stage of musing it is important to note the debunking of the myth that one risks brain cancer by keeping a mobile phone next to the bed. The ABC’s Catalystprogram is under attack for a program this week linking Wi-Fi and mobile phone use with brain cancer. According to the Australian government’s radiation safety agency ARPANSA, there is “no established evidence” that low levels of radiofrequency radiation from these devices cause health effects. The Conversation, an excellent source of analysis by academics and journalists, asked experts for their opinions.
If you search ‘bedside table’ you will find hundreds of designs (and prices) but nearly all follow the basic principle of a night-stand – a vertical cabinet with two or three drawers or two drawers and a cupboard. Once you’re in bed, only the top drawer is easily reachable and of course every time you lean over to look for something, there’s a risk you will knock something off the top (where many of us keep things like books, reading glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, a glass of water, e-reader, wallet, and so on – not unlike the illustration above.
The smart bedside table would have a tissue dispenser built in to the side (also touch of a button) to free up space on the top of the cabinet. Bedside tables (the typical bedroom suite comes with two), are not designed with age groups in mind.
The 18-35 groups could get by with a wooden chair, on which to place current reading (e.g. Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer, On the Road by Jack Kerouac), and the essential accoutrements of the young and impulsive.
The 36-49 groups used to favour clock radios so they could get up with the lark listening to classic FM. These days it is likely to be a smart phone alarm and an MP3 player programmed to play your early morning playlist. Books may include: The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People by Stephen Povey or conversely, Summer on a Fat Pig Farm by Matthew Evans.
We elders need a lot of space on the table top. There’s the aforementioned hearing aids, a glass of water (to drink), a glass of water (for our teeth), one or even two of those Monday to Sunday prescription boxes so you don’t forget to take what the doctor ordered. There’s often a torch so those of us with cataracts don’t walk into walls or doors.
The over-65 top drawer is likely to contain a plastic folder with five or six prescriptions repeats, boxes of medications, tubes of ointment for various aches and pains and itches, several old watches, cufflinks (who wears cufflinks?), pebbles, feathers and shells collected from the last beach walk, a Swiss army knife, a pedometer with a flat battery, hearing aid batteries, a scattering of coins, a few buttons that ought to be in the button tin, the thumb splint from last time you had a bout of tendonitis, a well out of date asthma puffer, a well-thumbed copy of Meditations for Men Who Do Too Much, five bookmarks and a card with all your pins and passwords disguised as telephone numbers.
How are we doing so far?
The second drawer of your typical bedside table might be the place you keep bulkier objects like a wheat bag (put in microwave for 40 seconds and apply to aching body part), the leather writing compendium a well-meaning friend gave you for your 21st birthday and which you cannot bear to throw away, even though it is a mid-20thst century curio containing five old address books and a Valentine from 1974.
The bottom drawer is where you should keep a pouch containing important personal papers so you can grab it and run if there is a fire.
If your bedside table has a bottom drawer or a cupboard, you could try a psychological experiment: Every Sunday night, list everything that has happened in the news this week that you don’t want to think about and lock it away.
A year later you can read these 52 pages: Cardinal Pell. Who was he again? Oh, the asylum seeker babies. The Hague ruled on that, didn’t they? Anyway, they all went live in New Zealand.
A cluttered bedside table can be a trigger for allergens. At least once a month you should throw everything on the bed and give the cabinet a jolly good clean. Then put back less stuff. Go on, you can do it – who needs two watches that don’t work, an empty floss container or a tube of Dencorub with a 2009 use by date?
Some of you might wonder why I didn’t write about asylum seeker babies or Tim Minchin’s song about the cardinal, or that proposal by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry – (journalist Paul Syvret called it a ‘brain fart’) – to turn age pension payments into a loan, repayable on the sale of the pensioners’ home.
As you can clearly see, especially if you zoom to 200% and examine the photo above, I had other things on my mind.
