‘Tis the season of charitable giving

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Image: Hunger relief charity Foodbank Australia

When our internet landline rings (rarely), I know for certain it will be my sister in New Zealand or Guide Dogs Australia asking for “Mrs Wilson”. She Who Gives to Charity Sometimes is like most of us. If she feels inclined to donate to a charity, she likes to do it on her terms. Guide Dogs Australia is a worthy charity that we support in several small ways (calendars, Christmas cards and so on). In the weeks leading up to Christmas, Guide Dogs volunteers will offer gift wrapping at selected shopping centres. There is usually a dog to pat too.

If you have an email subscription to a charity like the Salvos, Lifeline or Red Cross, they do like to remind you that they’re there. On Monday I had an email from the CEO of Lifeline, Colin Seery. He began: “Christmas is upon us. People will need us. We have to be ready for what could be the busiest days we have ever faced.

“The festive season brings additional challenges to charities which support people in need. In 2021 Lifeline received over 98,000 calls in December, a record for that time of year.

“It’s sobering to think that of all the hardship we’ve faced over the past few years,” Mr Seery wrote, “The festive season remains overwhelming for so many.” 

Lifeline says it needs to raise $328,000 to ensure people find the support they’re looking for when contacting Lifeline.

The major problem for fund-raisers – and who knew there are 57,5000 charities in Australia – is that there is a lot of competition for a limited pool of money set aside for ‘giving’. Organisations which offer similar services to Lifeline (The Salvation Army, St Vincents, The Smith Family, Beyond Blue etc), all have their collection tins out at this time of year.

On a global scale, there are the large charities like Red Cross, Save the Children and World Vision. They draw funding from affluent Australians and those who donate as their means dictate.

As the weeks roll by, you can expect to hear about the need for Christmas food hampers and why flooding in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia will make them difficult to deliver. The ABC reported on events unfolding in southern states as suppliers struggle to source food hampers.

Hunger relief charity Foodbank said it had “real challenges” supplying its 1,000 charity partners and schools in New South Wales and the ACT. Chief executive John Robertson said fresh produce and sources of protein were particularly hard to secure when the pressures of natural disasters were factored in.

Foodbank Australia, which organises food hampers for needy Australians on a regular basis, has a big demand this year for its Christmas appeal. Mr Robertson told the ABC that even though production had been lifted from 20,000 hampers last year to 30,000, it was still not going to be enough. Christmas hampers include canned leg ham, Christmas cake, pudding & custard, along with a range of staple foods such as pasta, cereal, canned fruit and vegetables. Foodbank also does this in other states and territories, along with organisations including Anglicare, The Salvation Army, OzHarvest and FoodAssist.

A Foodbank spokeswoman told FOMM the supply chain issues include the recent freight train derailment, which will cut off a main route. The floods in both Victoria and New South Wales in very rich food-producing areas have also disrupted operations, she said.

There is clearly a demonstrable need for charitable organisations to provide food, clothing and shelter for those whose needs are not being met. It is comforting to know the scale of the not-for-profit sector, as outlined by its regulator, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC). As of 2021, there were 57,500 registered charities in Australia and another 600,000 not-for-profits. The latter are commonly small community groups put together for a specific purpose and not all are charities. If they are incorporated they can raise funds if needed, but fund-raising is not usually their core business.

The difficulty for smaller charities is that when they do need to raise funds, for whatever reason, they are competing with the big end of town.

The ACNC report on Australian charities shows that 65% of them are rated small (annual revenue of $250,000 or less). Medium charities are ranked as those with annual revenue of $250,000 to $1 million (16%). Large charities (19% of the total), have annual revenue of $1 million or more. One-third of small not-for-profits are uber-small – revenue of $50,000 a year or less.

The charity sector in Australia overall employs 1.2 million people – 10% of the country’s workforce, the majority employed by large charities.

McCrindle Research says charitable giving is deeply ingrained in the Australian psyche, with 82% of people giving to not-for-profit organisations in some capacity. Of these, 61% believe that not-for-profits are an essential pathway for Australians to fulfil their human duty of providing hands-on-help to others in need.

David Crosbie, CEO of the Community Council for Australia (CCA) said the sector had been transformed in just two decades.

“A charity space shackled with red tape in 2000 and lacking even a legal definition of its powers and purpose has (been) transformed into a vibrant sector with an effective regulator and legally-enshrined advocacy rights.

“But as the number of charities has grown, so too has the sector’s reliance on government funding.

“This in turn has increased the scrutiny on charities to be effective, as more organisations are forced to compete for fewer resources.”  

Mr Crosbie, writing in Pro Bono Australia’s annual report in 2020, said the biggest win for the sector was the establishment through the Charities Act 2013 of a clear legal definition of a charity. This definition included advocacy as a core activity for NFPs(Not For Profits).

Charities had fight again to protect their hard-won status in 2017. The Federal Government’s foreign donations bill threatened to curtail the sector’s advocacy rights, by broadening registration and disclosure requirements for non-party political actors including charities. (Could have been termed the ‘Anti ‘GetUP’ bill’. Ed)The sector successfully campaigned to amend the bill, arguing it would stifle advocacy and impose unnecessary red tape on many NFP organisations.

Flooding and subsequent clean-ups in NSW, Victoria and South Australia will make it difficult for families to regroup in time to celebrate Christmas. For those of us who live in places not affected by floods, look around and you’ll become aware of organisations that provide hunger relief for people who need it.

Foodbank, which is based in South Australia, operates nationally. The organisation sourced 48.1 million kilograms of food and groceries in 2021, equating to 86.7 million meals or 238,000 meals per day. Foodbank partners with farmers, growers and retailers including major supermarket chains to deliver food boxes to charities for distribution to those most in need.

A Foodbank report released in October showed that more than 2 million households in Australia ran out of food in the last year, due to limited finances. This meant sometimes skipping meals or going whole days without eating. About 1.3 million children lived in food insecure households during that time. Demand for hunger relief services is now higher than it was during the pandemic – much of it to do with the roll back of JobSeeker in early 2021.

Whether it’s with the aim of helping people right now or to lift spirits at Christmas, you can help. A donation of $50 can provide a hamper to a family in need.

 

One big climate COP-out

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Image: Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe reading a speech in 2021 delivered electronically at COP26. Source: Facebook/Ministry of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Tuvalu Government

The United Nations Secretary-General set the tone for the 27th annual COP climate conference by saying the world was “on the highway to climate hell”. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg no doubt agreed, earlier describing the two-week climate conference in Egypt as an exercise in ‘green-washing’.

Fair to say the representatives of 198 nations who gathered in Glasgow last year for COP26 have not done as much about climate change mitigation as we’d all hoped.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC he would not be attending the COP27 conference at Egyptian resort town Sharm el-Sheikh.

“This COP will be all about implementation,” he said, delegating the task to Climate Minister Chris Bowen and other representatives.

Team Albanese have made big strides in Australia’s climate policy since being elected six months ago. Albanese is banking on mending fences by backing his government’s turnaround of the Morrison administration’s poor climate record.

Unlike British PM Rishi Sunak, who has been forced by political pressure to reverse his decision to stay at home, Albanese justified his absence, saying “I can’t be in all places at once.”

“I have a very busy schedule of parliament, then the international conferences, then back to parliament again, making sure that our agenda gets through and that includes our agenda on clean energy and taking action on climate change.”

COP is a shorthand acronym for an alphabet soup of descriptors – the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Despite this being the 27th year this global talkfest has been held, there have been many promises and commitments, yet little has been done to slow the global ravages of climate change.

Despite Egypt’s police state reputation, climate activists are there and some have already said harsh things about COP27’s major sponsor, Coca-Cola.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it was baffling for COP27 to choose the “world’s biggest plastic polluter” as a sponsor, given that “99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels”.

On what it cost to stage COP26 in Glasgow last year, this year’s conference in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh will probably top $200 million. It is clearly now an annual ‘Expo” that wealthier countries want to host. It’s expensive to participate, with organisations being charged as much as $500,000 to hire a pavilion. More than 30,000 people registered to attend this year, representing governments, businesses, NGOs, and civil society groups.

Australia’s Climate Council, which has sent several delegates to Cop27, reminded us that Australia signed the Glasgow Pact in 2021.

The Pact called for countries to bring forward a 50% emissions reduction plan to COP27 and increase on that target during this decade.

Australia may be pressured to finally sign the Global Methane Pledge and other important deals it avoided under the Morrison Government.

Key issues which will emerge at COP27 include “loss and damage” financing. This refers to developing countries at the frontlines of the crisis who are suffering from the consequences of climate change. As one example, the low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu, population 12,000, is suffering serious consequences from the CO2 emissions of others.

The Climate Council says countries like Australia, which have built considerable wealth off the back of fossil fuels, can and must do more to support climate action beyond their shores.

Back in 2009, developed countries committed to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries, but have consistently fallen short. Australia would need to lift its annual contribution by 10 times to fulfil its share towards this global goal, the Climate Council said.

The UNFCCC Secretariat is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. There has been almost universal commitment to join, with 198 countries signed up. Until this year, Australia was seen as a laggard, to the extent that former PM Scott Morrison was initially not invited to attend COP26.

Heads of State and Government attended the Climate Implementation Summit at COP27 on November 7 and 8 with a high-level meeting for climate Ministers from 15-18 November.

The main aim of the UNFCCC is to uphold the 2015 Paris Agreement. As we all should know, this bare-minimum pledge was to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Seven years on though, only 190 of the 195 signatories have ratified the agreement.

The ultimate objective is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The sticking point, I suspect, is the proviso that this is done in a time frame which “allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development”.

The Guardian’s pre-conference report posed some scenarios for the Australian delegation, led by climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen. The Guardian’s environment writer Adam Morton said Australia can expect questions about what it is prepared to support on finance and loss and damage. Questions could be asked about the Australian government’s exit (under the Morrison government) of the green climate fund. Morton expects Australia to be under close scrutiny due to its bid to host COP in 2026.

There will (or should be) an examination of Australia’s support for an expansion in fossil fuel exports, at odds with its green policies at home.

The UN secretary-general’s COP27 opening address, where he twisted the meaning of the famous AC/DC song, was not wildly inaccurate. He was no doubt reflecting on the ongoing effects of flooding in Pakistan.

Since mid-June, unprecedented floods in Pakistan have killed 1,717 people. The floods were caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers; these events following a severe heat wave. All are linked to climate change, with poor urban planning playing a significant role.

In Australia, we might make pale comparisons with the inundated New South Wales town of Lismore, battered by one flood after another. There is talk of writing the town off and rebuilding it on higher ground. Many of those badly affected by the floods have not waited to find out, relocating to supposedly less flood -prone towns (like Warwick).

The agenda-setters for climate change mitigation may well be the world’s largest manufacturing industries. International vehicle manufacturer Volvo chose this week to announce it would stop making fossil fuel-driven cars in Australia by 2026. This is unlikely to stampede the manufacturers of cheaper, mass market vehicles. All the same, it is a line drawn in the sand. We must hope that rising tides do not wipe it away too soon.

As for Tuvalu’s social media post (above) which went viral last year, it is probably not much of an exaggeration. Climate change in Tuvalu is particularly threatening for the long-term habitability of the island state. The average height of the islands is less than 2m above sea level, which has been rising at 3mm per year, about twice the global average. On a per capita basis, its CO2 emissions are 0.9 metric tonnes, compared to between 15mt and 17mt for developed countries.

As Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner sarcastically comments, in a pithy song of the same name:

So it’s toodle loo to Tuvalu, it’s not that we don’t care

But I can’t support this warming crap, taxes and despair

We can’t reduce our standards, two houses, shares and land

So its Toodle loo to Tuva Lu, I hope you’ll understand.

 

 

The joy of short films

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Gympie’s Heart of Gold short film festival

The phrase most often heard during a four-day short film festival is that film-making, in particular short films, is a ‘labour of love‘.By that, the film-maker means he/she/they did not make a bean out of it – in fact probably lost money.

Gympie’s Heart of Gold International short film festival was held last weekend after a two-year hiatus through the Covid pandemic.

Festival director Jackson Lapsley Scott waded through 914 short movies from Australia and around the world to end up with a 170-film programme. We arrived at noon on Friday so despite the late start (the festival opened on Thursday night), we did well to sit through 32 movies, including two sessions under moonlight in an arena at the Gympie Showgrounds.

We’d been to this festival previously and found it most entertaining and absorbing. The joy of watching short films is, if you are not enjoying it, there’s only 10 or 15 minutes to sit through. Some of the films were really short. The endearing Irish animation, Gunter Falls in Love, runs for just two minutes. Gunter is a pudgy pug who falls in love on Christmas Day. The story is almost entirely conveyed with eye movements and sight gags. I’m not such a fan of animated movies, but at this festival there were some outstanding examples of the genre.

Some combine live action film with animated characters – this was first done to effect in 1988 with the acclaimed Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Who could forget the curvaceous character Jessica, who tells horny Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins): “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way!”

Wildebeest is a 20-minute film about a middle-aged couple who go on a trip of a lifetime safari only to be left behind with the wild animals in the South African savannah. This somewhat raunchy satire is darkly amusing. There were others that caught my attention – an Australian animation (Reboot), about an out of work skeleton actor whose famous old movie is being re-made using digital technology.  Skel’s not giving up without a fight.

Festival director Jackson Lapsley Scott’s name cropped up in a couple of movies as ‘executive producer’. I asked him did that mean he put up the money?

He explained that he had worked with Screen Queensland to help produce the movies, Thea Goes To Town and The Moths Will Eat Them Up. His role was to help facilitate script development, oversee budgets and be involved in other producer roles. Each film was allocated $50,000, which is quite generous in that some independent shorts are made with a $500 catering budget and a team of volunteers,

“With that sort of budget you can pay people properly. Fifty thousand might sound like a lot of money for a 12-minute film, but it can disappear very quickly.”

The Heart of Gold Festival was staged this year with the help of a $180,000 Federal Government RISE grant.

The Federal Government invested $200 million in the RISE programme to help arts organisations rebuild after Covid setbacks.

Jackson said the grant was vital to organising this year’s festival at a time when local sponsorship had dwindled due to the negative effects of Covid and floods and volunteer interest needing to be rebuilt. The grant also meant the festival could stage some free events to engage the local community.

“We probably would have been dead in the water or a very different looking festival without it,” he said.

“The grant allowed us to appoint people to paid positions and start rebuilding the festival after two years off.” 

Fortunately, audience numbers this year were higher than usual. So although the budget is yet to be finalised, safe to say HOG will be back in 2023.

“We were expecting numbers to be lower because of the way audiences responded to Covid,” Jackson said. “We were very heartened by the response.”

Heart of Gold took some short films on the road in late June to promote the festival, visiting Maryborough, Toowoomba, Pomona and Maleny. Jackson said the promotional tour was successful, so is planning to do it again next year and extend it to seven locations.

This year, the festival moved from its traditional home (the Gympie Civic Centre) to the showgrounds, making the most of the extra space, staging live music, an outdoor cinema, talks, workshops and podcasts.

The festival was not without some hiccups, including a savage storm on Thursday evening which brought strong winds, rain and hail. The storm damaged some of the festival’s outdoor tents and equipment and there was a blackout. But someone found a generator and a battery-powered PA, so the show went on!

The motivation for film-makers entering movies in a festival like Heart of Gold is that films are seen by a new audience and some are nominated for awards, judged by a panel of experts. Apart from cash prizes, winning awards brings street cred in the cinema business.

While there was a strong contingent of Australian films, there were worthy offerings from around the world. This year Heart of Gold introduced an audience’s choice award (won by The Invention).

This endearing 18-minute Irish film focuses on a Belfast lad who hatches a plan to steal cigarettes (for a good cause).

My favourite was Where is my Darling, a documentary about a homeless man, Lanz Priestley. Lanz organised distribution of bottled water during the drought to remote settlements in New South Wales. A charismatic character, he built up Dignity Water just using his mobile phone and a Facebook page.

Heart of Gold is one of 25 or more film festivals held in Australian cities and towns but is billed as the country’s biggest rural festival. It’s been going for 16 years, albeit with an absence during three of those years.

It’s plain to see there is no shortage of material. Heart of Gold’s brief is to find films that are positive and uplifting. But as Jackson said, post-Covid a lot of filmmakers focused on the darker side of life so it was difficult to find a balance.

The Best Short Film award was won by Like The Ones I Used To Know (Canada) directed by Annie St-Pierre. This is a bitter-sweet tale of a recently divorced man who visits his ex-in-laws on Christmas Eve to pick up his children.

Best Australian film, What Was It Like, was directed by Genevieve Clay-Smith. In this documentary, eight film-makers with intellectual disabilities interview their parents about what it was like when doctors delivered their diagnosis.

Which brings us to the question – where can you see movies like this if you don’t go to film festivals?

Many are available (free) on internet video platforms including YouTube and Vimeo. A link to the aforementioned Wildebeest is included here (don’t shoot the messenger!)

I’m wondering what it would take to convince the big cinema chains to reinstate the tradition of ‘shorts’ which used to precede feature films? It would be handy too if the big chains paid to screen the shorts, deriving much-needed income for independent film makers around the world.

Until that happens, the independent short film makers get by through applying for grants and asking sponsors and supporters for money. Many of the short films we saw stated in the credits that the film could not have been made without crowdfunding through the likes of Pozible, Go Fund Me and Kickstarter. As long-standing FOMM readers may remember, I canvassed the topic of crowdfunding back in 2015, as it was emerging. Good to see crowdfunding still supporting independent movies, art, theatre and music.

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Halloween, Guy Fawkes and other imports

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Image by Jill Wellinto9n, www.pixabay.com

As Halloween (and Guy Fawkes) is almost upon us, I decided to revisit a post from 2015, which, statistics suggest, most of you missed.

The prediction in 1940-something that Mother’s new bairn would be born in late October may have caused some angst. In Scotland, those of a superstitious nature would have been in a ‘swither’ (a state of nervous agitation). But “no worries” as we say in Australia, or ‘nae bother’ – I was born before Halloween.

One friend says that apart from it being her birthday, October 31 is a ‘non-event’. But her American friends are horrified, in a swither, even, because of the (pagan) tradition that deems the 31st to be the date departed spirits return to earth.

I have vague early childhood memories of Halloween in Scotland where bairns wear ghost costumes and go door knocking. You don’t get something for nothing in Scotland. You had to sing, dance or recite poetry to be rewarded with a sweetie.

Cultural invasion

Meanwhile, the traditions of Halloween, or to be more precise, the retail world’s version, have been imported to Australia, but is struggling to attract a new audience.

One in four Australians said they’d be celebrating Halloween in 2022, spending $430 million, according to the Australian Retailers Association and Roy Morgan.

McCrindle Research uncovered much the same in 2011. Of the 26% of Australians who planned to celebrate Halloween (in 2010), more than half were primary school aged children planning to ‘get spooky’.

As I write this, supermarkets in this town have stocked up on orange pumpkins – the ones most favoured to carve lanterns. The ‘Jack O’ Lantern’ and various witch and ghost costumes accompany ‘trick and treaters’ as they go door to door hoping for candy (lollies).

A former colleague, also an October 31 baby, says he was spared trick and treaters for years by virtue of living in an inner-city apartment, where door knockers rarely strayed. But since he moved to the country, it’s a different matter.

“I was quietly watching television on October 31 when I heard the doorbell ring and to my surprise there were children, escorted by a parent who cried out “trick or treat”. I did not chase these people away, but rummaged through my cupboard and found some lollies that I have for sweet tooth indulgences.”

He recalls stocking his country larder with fresh apples for next year’s trick and treaters.

“I think the spirit of giving is important, so if we are going to be dragged into another American cultural tradition, let us shape it and give children something that is good for them, rather than things that add to obesity and dental issues.”

Retail therapy for some

The hard facts are that the retail sector needs to cram its calendar with special days (e.g. Black Friday) that will boost turnover and present opportunities to sell unique stock. It starts with Australia Day and the related merchandise, which includes flags to fly from your car, real flags, Australian flag flip-flops, stubby holders and cigarette lighters, packs of cards, beach towels and sun hats. The upside for Australian retailers is that unsold stock can be stored away until next year.

Then comes Valentine’s Day – a big thing in Australia with almost 90% of people aged 18-24 said to mark the day of lovers in some significant way. The comparison website finder.com.au reckons we spend $1 billion on that one day alone, mainly on flowers and restaurant meals.

Except for Nine’s Ben Fordham who, upon finding that most eateries outside of Macca’s or a kebab shop wanted $144 for a set menu, decided to stay home and cook!

There are other imported anniversaries which cynics dub ‘Hallmark Holidays’, including Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day. While I’m a self-confessed Grinch about Halloween, I feel justified in ignoring Black Friday sales. The great thing about being old is that high fashion, gadgets and gimmicks no longer seem to matter.

In America, Black Friday is known as the ‘day of deals’ and marks the start of the pre-Christmas shopping spree in the US. It has nevertheless been gaining traction here since 2017. This year Black Friday falls on November 25. If you miss it, there’s always our traditional Boxing Day sales.

Penny for the Guy

Some of you Brits will notice how I skipped over Guy Fawkes (November 5), a macabre celebration which now barely registers in Australia. It was quite a thing when we were children and the custom is still big in New Zealand, albeit tightly regulated.

The sale of fireworks was banned in Australian states in the 1980s, partly because of injuries and burns, but also because of the risk of bush fires in November.

The custom is still popular in the UK, where people start building bonfires in October while children make ‘guys’ which are traditionally burned on Guy Fawkes’ night. For the benefit of readers under 40, a summary: The Brits foiled a plot to blow up the House of Lords on November 5, 1605. Spanish anarchist Guy Fawkes, who was found guarding a stock of explosives associated with the ‘Gunpowder Plot’, was arrested, tortured, and executed. Every year thereafter on November 5, effigies are ceremonially burned, with or without Guy Fawkes masks, while fireworks are let off.

You may have seen the stylised face mask designed by British artist David Lloyd as part of the 1988 book series V for Vendetta. The mask has become well-known through the movie of the same name. It has also been appropriated by the Hacktivist group Anonymous, worn at protests and rallies, including Occupy Wall Street.

The Pagans and the Christians

Some Christian families want to redeem Halloween from unsavoury associations (wearing scanty clothing to Halloween parties).

Mother of six Samantha curates the blog www.cultivatingcatholics.com in which she reclaims Halloween as a Catholic tradition.

Halloween is, after all, the evening before All Saints’ Day, which the Church celebrates on November 1st. All Souls’ Day follows on November 2nd, when Catholics pray for all the dead.

“All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows’ Day) is a major feast day on the Catholic Church’s calendar!” writes Samantha.

“On this day we honour not only the saints we know by name in Heaven, but also any saints whose names we don’t know! All Saints’ Day is a day dedicated to them”.

As for those orange pumpkins, those left unsold are unlikely to be a threat to the market favourites, Kent and Queensland Blue.

We keep a close watch on pumpkin prices here at FOMM HQ as our dog lives on a diet of cooked chicken mince and mashed up pumpkin and sweet potato. Those orange pumpkins are edible, if they have not already been carved or left outside for days. Just check the prices.

This week marks the start of a month-long subscriber campaign. Those on our email list would have received a message on Wednesday. WordPress followers please refer to the website page “FOMM Subscriber Drive 2022.”

‘Together we will win’

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Before it all started – a soldier guards the Ukraine border at Belarus, December 2021, Wikipedia CC

Group One winning jockey Craig Williams took a moment on national television last Saturday to remind people about the war in Ukraine.“Razom my peremozhemo – it means together we will win,” he said, raising three fingers* for the Channel Seven camera, only minutes after winning Australia’s richest race, the $15 million Everest sprint.

Williams, 45, knows all about winning big races – he’s won 68 Group 1 races – the top races for the best horses. Among them he’s won the Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate, Caulfield Cup, The Doncaster and now the Everest. But there’s another side to the champion jockey and that is the humanitarian aid programme he and his Ukrainian-born wife Larysa started this year. Larysa’s parents are safe, but they started thinking ‘What can we do?’

Craig and Larysa flew to Poland in June with a consignment of suitcases containing 92 trauma kits for distribution to civilians and soldiers.The initial project was funded by donations ($30,000) but for the second, winter campaign, Rotary Australia got involved as did the Australian racing industry. Last I checked the tally was up around $300,000. It will take all of that and more. The team purchased vehicles in Poland to take humanitarian aid packages directly into Ukraine. For the second campaign (mid-November), Craig and Larysa are hoping people will donate warm clothing to help people through the harsh northern winter. The couple established the fund with the humanitarian objective of supporting the people of Ukraine by supplying vital equipment and clothing. This includes medical trauma kits for treatment of wounded Ukrainian civilians and soldiers. Trauma kits usually contain tourniquets, chest tubes, compression bandages and other life-saving equipment used by medics in the field.They made an eight-minute documentary about their first mission which can be seen here.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is now in its eighth month, with the world looking on anxiously as Ukraine fights back. As Craig says in the couple’s latest video, people in Ukraine have no electricity, no heating, no fresh water and in some places where there have been missile strikes, they don’t even have a roof over their heads.“Everything is deemed essential. We are looking for companies who can supply clothing, anything suitable for minus degree temperatures (thermals). There is also a need for hydrolytes and water purification (tablets) for the trauma kits”.

In terms of the disruption within the country and the humanitarian plight of refugees, Craig and Larysa’s campaign is a relatively small gesture.The Australian Red Cross says it is 64% of the way towards its $10 million target and there have been many other humanitarian fund-raisers. Australia’s Ukranian community (around 38,000 people) includes 16,830 people who were born there, according to the 2021 Census. The Ukrainian connection is small compared to Canada, where people born in the Ukraine comprise 4% of the country’s population. But here, everybody knows someone who knows a person with connections to Ukraine. Warwick resident Sally Edwards is hopeful the Ukrainian family she raised funds for can be brought to Australia by Christmas. Sally, whose Ukrainian friends live at the Gold Coast, raised $25,000 in a three-week campaign, to bring their extended family to Australia.

As we see every night on our television news and on social media videos, things are grim in Ukraine. Martial law has now been declared in occupied parts of the country.As New York Times correspondent Matthew Mpoke Bigg reported in a month-by-month update on the conflict, Ukraine started fighting back in August.

Ukraine deployed newly arrived missile systems supplied by the US and other Western countries to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and other military infrastructure. In September, Ukraine recaptured much of the north-eastern Kharkiv region, including the city of Izium, a key Russian logistics hub. The advance, which continues, enabled Kyiv to seize the momentum in the war, he wrote.

Meanwhile, Russian leader Vladimir Putin looks increasingly isolated, not just on the world stage, but inside Russia as well, according to academic Matthew Sussex, writing in The Conversation last week.

“The longer the war goes on, the harder it will be for him to extricate himself with any credibility, either at home or abroad,” said Assoc Prof Sussex of the Australian National University.

Sussex detailed the obstacles facing Putin, not the least the estimated 700,000 Russians who exited the country when Putin called for more troops to be mobilised.

Then there was the United Nations General Assembly’s vote condemning Russia’s sham “referendums”, annexing chunks of Ukraine. The vote censuring Russia was 143 votes in favour, 35 abstentions and five against (including Russia itself).

Sussex notes that among countries abstaining from the vote were China and India; both have publicly signalled their disquiet about Putin’s war.

What do we know about an unexpected war between two countries that were once part of the Soviet Union? Given past events, millions of Ukrainians did not wait to find out, fleeing the country in late February and March. Millions more have been displaced within the country as a result of occupation, attacks and missile strikes.

What we do know is that by early October, 6,200 people had died in the conflict, including 396 children. There have been similar numbers of casualties on the Russian side.

In any conflict, there’s the other side of the story and in this case it is Russia believing it has the right to re-claim territories it once regarded as part of the Soviet Union.

You may recall it did so in 2014 when annexing the republic of Crimea from previous control by Ukraine.

Lacking any real understanding of geopolitics in that part of the world and suspecting bias of one kind or another in reporting, I sought out an independent source.

The Institute for the Study of War keeps a watching brief on this and other conflicts around the world. In its latest bulletin, Frederick Kagan claims that Ukraine has every right to fight to liberate all the territory Russia has illegally seized.

“Kyiv’s insistence on regaining control of Ukrainian territory to the internationally-recognized borders is not an absolutist or extremist demand. It is the normal position of a state defending itself against an unprovoked attack as part of a war of conquest.

Ukraine must regain certain specific areas currently under Russian occupation to ensure its long-term security and economic viability,” he writes.

The more chilling ramifications of this conflict boiling over into other countries rests on what Kagan calls “Russia’s demonstrated irresponsibility toward nuclear facilities in Ukraine.”

Russian forces damaged the inactive Chernobyl facilities, and then used Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) grounds as a base for conventional military operations.

“(It) shows a similarly cavalier attitude toward the dangers of bringing war to a massive nuclear power plant.

“Allowing Moscow to retain control of the ZNPP puts Ukraine and all Black Sea states at permanent risk of the downstream consequences of Russia’s willingness to play with nuclear fire.”

Given the news that Russia has knocked out 30% of Ukraine’s power generation, there will be much need of blankets and warm clothing.

  • The three-finger salute, a pro-democracy gesture, symbolises the emblem of Ukraine

 

 

Adopt a duck in mental health week

https://youtu.be/Lw8zTuC4sOg

It’s Mental Health Week, aptly coinciding with a self-diagnosed bout of post-viral depression. Those of you who suffer the ‘Black Dog’ will know that a flu or virus can tip you into a depressive cycle. She Who Also Gets It commonly says: “Don’t be depressed – it’s boring.” Fine for her to say if she’s OK.

(Read to the end then come back and watch this 43 second video by Bob)

As my Ma would have said (and maybe yours too), ‘misery loves company’. Statistically-speaking, about 40% of my readers will have suffered from some kind of mental health episode in their lifetime. The other 60% will probably let this FOMM go by (“Why doesn’t he write something nice and fluffy, grumble, grumble, or at least say what he thinks instead of quoting other people?”)

The latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) tells us that more than 40% of Australians aged 16-85 years have experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life. One in five (21.4% or 4.2 million people), had a 12-month mental disorder. Anxiety was the most common group of 12-month mental disorders (16.8% or 3.3 million people). Young people were most at risk with 39.6% aged 16-24 years reporting a 12-month mental disorder.

Note: 12-month disorders are categorised as including anxiety, mood, impulse-control and substance use disorders.

The latest national study into mental health and well-being was released in July. Among its findings are that 3.4 million Australians aged 16-85 years (17.5%) saw a health professional for their mental health in 2020-2021. Of these, 57.4% had a 12-month mental disorder, 17.7% had experienced a mental disorder at some time in their life and 24.0% had no lifetime mental disorder. (To quote the quintessential Aussie singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers- ‘If you ain’t worried now, you’re not paying attention..’Ed)

That latter cohort (the 24%) are probably those referred to in this World Health Organisation (WHO) report. The WHO said that in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25%.

“The information we have now about the impact of COVID-19 on the world’s mental health is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. “This is a wake-up call to all countries to pay more attention to mental health and do a better job of supporting their population’s mental health.”

The WHO’s Mental Health Atlas showed that in 2020, governments worldwide spent on average just over 2% of their health budgets on mental health. Many low-income countries reported having fewer than 1 mental health worker per 100,000 people.

Australia stands out from the crowd in terms of investment. Government spending on mental health-related services in 2019–20 was estimated to be around 7.6% of total government health expenditure.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says $11 billion was spent on mental health-related services in 2019-2020. Of the $11.0 billion, State and Territory governments spent 60.0% ($6.6 billion). The Australian Government’s $3.8 billion contribution covered Medicare-subsidised mental health services and prescriptions.

Australian Government spending on prescriptions equates to about $22 per person. Anti-psychotics (48.1%) and antidepressants (32.5%) accounted for the majority of mental health-related subsidised prescriptions.

That may well be, but I pay something close to full price for mine, mainly because my doctor told me not to accept the generic version. On the other hand, I paid $6.90 for the antiviral meds prescribed when I tested positive to Covid-19. The full price on the packet was $1,130, Now you see why Australia is so lucky to have Medicare.

Ah Covid, that was almost a month ago. I still have a cough and after walking the dog on the river circuit, I have to take some Ventolin and lie down. Multiple research reports have emerged which discuss the serious implications of ‘long Covid’ and lingering symptoms such as lung problems, fatigue and ‘brain fog’. Clearly there is much work yet to be done to establish the long-term risks of having had Covid-19.

And yet the collective Australian government response to Covid seems to be aligned to President Joe Biden’s recent claim that the pandemic is ‘over’. We shall find out after today, which is when Australian State and Territory governments agreed we should no longer be required to quarantine after testing positive. My view of it is simplistic. As of today, 10.3 million Australians have had Covid and 15,399 died with Covid – more than people killed on the roads in 2020.

Perhaps it was coincidence that the US health administration also eased its quarantine recommendations. The Center (US spelling) for Disease Control and Prevention said in August it was no longer recommending that adults and children quarantine at home after having been exposed to Covid-19. The CDC instead recommends those exposed wear a mask for 10 days and take a test on day five. The CDC is, however, saying that Covid is ‘here to stay’, recommending that people who have tested positive to the virus isolate for five days.

Greta Massetti, chief of the CDC’s Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch, said the changes reflected data indicating 95% of the population has some protection, either from infection or vaccination.

On September 29, Australia’s National cabinet unanimously agreed to scrap the mandatory Covid isolation requirement, with exemptions for those working in high-risk settings such as health or aged care.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said (in the same breath) that disaster payments for workers diagnosed with Covid would end, with the same exemptions for high-risk workplaces.

As The Guardian reported, all State Premiers and Chief Ministers agreed to the change, claiming it was “not sustainable” for governments to keep paying workers to stay home.

Predictably, the Australian Business Council and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry welcomed the decision.

I was taken by surprise, not expecting a Labor Government to make what is clearly an economic decision, rather than support measures that lower the risk of the virus spreading in the community.

Chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly cautioned that quarantine measures may be re-introduced if pandemic conditions such as transmission rates dramatically changed. (Something reminds me about stable doors and horses bolting..Ed)

“We wanted to make sure that we have measures which are proportionate and that are targeted at the most vulnerable,” Mr Albanese said after the meeting. “We want to continue to promote vaccinations as being absolutely critical, including people getting booster shots.

“We want a policy that promotes resilience and capacity-building and reduces a reliance on government intervention.”

(Ed: Capacity building is ‘the improvement in an individual’s or organization’s facility to produce, perform or deploy’.

Mr Albanese was asked whether casual workers would now be forced to work while sick. His response was that the government could not keep paying for such financial supports, comparing the strategy to influenza.

“The flu has existed, and health issues have existed, for a long period of time, and the government hasn’t always stepped in to pay people’s wages while people have health concerns,” the Prime Minister said at a press conference.

While the advice here and in the US is (still) to wear a mask for 10 days after contracting or being exposed to Covid, the mask mandate for public transport was removed in all Australian jurisdictions last month. Apart from medical centres, hospitals and aged care centres, mask-wearing has become optional.

I wore mine while filming the short duck video (above). Avian flu – you can’t be too careful.

Cybersecurity, scams and data breaches

cybersecurity-scams-databreaches
Image of programming code by Lorenzo Cafara www.pixabay.com

Call it coincidence, but I was in the midst of a domestic internet security overhaul when news of the Optus hack broke. As we know, what the press is calling the biggest hack in Australian history left the private information of up to 10 million Optus customers open to potential abuse. Optus customers are clamouring to have their drivers’ licences and passports re-issued and there is talk of class actions.

Like most of us whose lives are largely lived online, we are, or should be, aware of the threat posed by scammers. Any day of the week you will hear of pensioners who lost their life savings, falling for some elaborate call centre scam. The sophisticated level of social engineering being employed by scammers is such that even savvy older people are falling victim to seemingly plausible communications via mobile phone, social media apps and email.

Just as we all lock doors and windows and turn on security systems before going on holidays, we should all be thinking about security for our electronic communications. My IT adviser swears by password managers – that is, subscribing to a company that will encrypt all of your online logins and passwords. You manage things at your end with a master password. But wait, I ask, isn’t this putting all of your eggs in one basket? If someone nabs your master password you’re screwed, right?

The best protection against electronic fraud is to use a two-step authentication system. This may be as simple as: login, password (now enter the four-digit code we just sent to your mobile phone).

Last time I went to do some internet banking, I was informed that my security token would soon expire. This is a small gadget (most people call them dongles) which display six constantly changing numbers). The process is: logon, password (dongle code).

In theory it is unhackable, as the security codes are constantly changing. I decided to order another ‘dongle’, only to be told that the bank preferred me to use their secure phone app. Send me a dongle, I replied, via secure email. After jumping through a few security hoops, I ordered a new physical dongle. The bank employee I dealt with (online) said the bank would waive the $20 fee as I had been a valued customer for many years (Melbourne Cup, here I come).

As a result of increasing data breaches and scams, we can expect government organisations and others to tighten security. After thoroughly checking it out first, I found that the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) now requires all company directors to apply for a ‘digital security ID number’.

The recommended method for applying for a director identification number is by using the MyGovID phone app. The app requires you to scan identification documents into a mobile phone app. They also want your date of birth, physical address, email address and mobile phone number. Then you have to scan any unique identifying marks (moles, birthmarks, tattoos) – no wait, I made that bit up.

It’s quite an exercise.

But what if some enterprising Black Hat (master hacker) breaks into MyGovId? In theory this will create a lot of work for people whose professions involves producing ID documents. Just as we are seeing now with the Optus hack, everyone who uses MyGovID would need to replace their ID documents,

This new requirement by ASIC (which only applies to company directors), will, as they say, “help prevent the use of false or fraudulent director identities”. Directors who were appointed prior to November 2021 have until November 30, 2022 to apply. ASIC adds, “it is a criminal offence if you do not apply on time”.

If you think about it, multiple government and non-government organisations hold all manner of confidential information on us. At the very least, many of them already have our date of birth, passport and driver’s licence numbers, credit card details, direct debit for bank accounts and so on. When was the last time you booked online for a concert? Credit card?

In August, I was required to fill in an online hospital admission form when signing up for elective surgery. They wanted to know everything about me – even my BMI. I had to ask Sister Dee to explain that one. It’s a number arrived at by squaring your weight with your height. Anaesthetists need to know.

“They’ve got my height and weight,” I said to the admitting nurse. “He can work it out.” (Ed: It’s 23.6)

Then they wanted a copy of my power of attorney. I didn’t have a copy so had to ask our lawyer to send me one, post haste. Now that’s online too.

But methinks I doth protest too much – I did after all wake up.

It’s a good thing I decided to sign up for the now-obligatory company director security number. In the process, I discovered my passport will expire next year. Since we have plans to go to New Zealand, Canada and maybe Japan, I’d best get on my bike and order a new one. I suppose how long it takes depends on the Optus backlog, eh?

In the meantime, everyone who reads this column on a regular basis should know about the Scamwatch website. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) keeps a running tally of internet scams, pesky robot phone calls and phishing scams (someone pretending to be your internet service provider, bank, tax office – whatever). Currently Scamwatch is alerting Australians that fraudsters will seek to exploit the Optus data breach. Last month the ACCC warned people who use WhatsApp to watch out for the ‘Hello Mum’ scam. Briefly, someone who apparently knows you have a son or daughter overseas will start a text conversation.

“Hi Mum, it’s me. I lost my phone and got locked out of my bank. Can you help?”

The correct answer should be something like – “If you are my daughter, what was the name of our cat when you were 12 and what was her favourite food?”

It’s no laughing matter. On August 3 Scamwatch reported that consumers lost $20 million to imposter bond investment scams. These scams impersonate real financial companies or banks and claim to offer government/Treasury bonds or fixed term deposits. People often fall victim after searching online for investment opportunities. Watch out for fake third-party comparison sites and too-good-to-be-true returns.

I have had a few interactions with our internet service provider over the years about phishing emails. They would often arrive in my inbox on iiNet letterhead (the sender’s email address is always dodgy). The gist is usually, “There is a problem with your invoice (which I just paid). Please click on this link and update your credit card details.” My arse!

The last time I complained, I forwarded the fake email to iiNet as requested. iiNet (second largest ISP in Australia), must have had some success since, as these rogue messages appear to have stopped. Their customers are not the only target. There are myriad instances of bogus emails purporting to be from banks, finance companies, telcos, e-commerce companies etc. The best response is block/blacklist/delete and keep doing it until they move on. And always report it to the company being impersonated. Oh, and always log out of Facebook and Messenger. But you knew that.

 

You’ve got a friend

friends-friendship
Friends photo by Annie Spratt, www.pixabay.com.au

While resting and recovering from Covid (honestly, the virus I had at Christmas seemed worse), I started reflecting on friends and friendship. At this moment in time, my definition of friends are the ones who bring you groceries, chocolate and Panadol, walk your dog and check on your well-being every day (thanks, Sandra, Kaz and Dee).

The deal with friendship is the unspoken agreement that one will reciprocate as and when appropriate. Research on this topic tells us that, unsurprisingly, the main reason friendships end is that one friend feels that the other is being selfish; it is a one-way relationship. Other reasons friendships fail come under the heading ‘loyalty/betrayal’. Or it could simply be that your friend moved to another town or city, took up with a new partner after a divorce or bereavement, or has developed opinions and beliefs that conflict with yours.

The latter clearly was the case when people who believed Covid was a real and present danger and lined up for vaccinations, came into conflict with those who denied it existed.

The advent of social media around 2004 has turned the traditional concept of a ‘friend’ on its head. In short, they hijacked the word.

A former colleague/friend whom I had not heard from in a while posted a message on Facebook on Sunday warning friends he had been hacked.

“Ignore any friend requests from me – I’ve got too many friends already LOL.”

Like all of us, I have far more email addresses and mobile numbers stored away than any one person could categorise as ‘friends’. Many of them date from my journalism career, where ‘contacts’ are the key to everything. Over time I reduced my phone contact list from 1100 to around 300.

Despite having a recent clean-out, I still have 400 Facebook friends.

I deleted anyone I had never actually met, suspect accounts (where there appeared to be more than one) and people I’d had no contact with in the past 12 months.

Many of those ‘friended’ me because they read my weekly blogs or because they follow our music. One also tends to accumulate friends who use Facebook and Messenger to find people. The one-off reason for doing so comes and goes but the ‘friend’ remains on the list.

The irony is not lost on me that at least five of my oldest friends do not have a Facebook account and have no intention of starting one. Even when I share cat jokes. Prompted by the topic and these memories, I rang my old Kiwi school friend, who now lives in Sydney. He was his usual cheery self and I pictured his smile and that of his Dad, who he so resembles. This friend was best man at both my weddings, which is not something many people can say.

I told him we both had Covid and after commiserating he said he and his partner are still Covid-free. He attributes this to living something of a monastic life and wearing a mask when he does go places where people mingle.

We exchanged old war stories from school days. We were probably what people call ‘nerds’ now, before the term was invented. We were bookish and, even at a young age, interested in philosophy, psychology and comparative religions. We once got detention for riding a library trolley up and down the corridors (before school started), but that’s another story.

There’s been a lot of research done into the topic of friendship and how it is essential to our health and happiness. As we age, the number of friends in our physical address book dwindles. We lose people to cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. Others develop dementia and forget who we are.

Friends made when our children were growing up tend to fade away as the kids mature and move away to live their own lives. The vast size of the continent we live in contributes to the dissolution of friendships, as people move interstate for work or family reasons. I am probably fortunate to have kept in touch with a small group of men from school days. We are geographically scattered and to be honest do not have much in common these days.

Yet when we spend time together we are transported back to carefree teen years at the beach, drinking from tall necked beer bottles and daring each other to test the treacherous surf.

Clinical psychologist Anastasia Hronis writes that it is hard making new friends at any age, which is one of the reasons for our epidemic of loneliness. Writing in The Conversation, Dr Hronis, of Sydney’s University of Technology, says that for most adults, making new friends is hard work.

“In school, making friends can be as simple as going on the monkey bars together. But as adults, making, developing and maintaining friendships can be much more difficult.

“This matters, because we need friends. And while old friends are golden, nothing stays the same forever. Old friends move away, or have their time taken up by child-rearing or their careers. Without action, loneliness can quietly grow around you.”

The onset of the Covid pandemic produced the perfect storm of conditions for making friendships difficult to maintain.

Dr Hronis cites research that shows 54% of Australians reported a keen sense of loneliness. Before COVID, around a third of Australians reported feeling at least one episode of loneliness.

When researchers in a recent study interviewed adults about making friends,,the most important challenge cited was a lack of trust. People found it harder to put their trust in someone new compared to when they were younger.

If you are an older person starting out in a new town or city, you may find this research dispiriting. US researchers estimated it takes roughly 50 hours of shared contact to move from acquaintances to casual friends. Progressing the contact to close friends can take more than 200 hours.

Dr Hronis says there are many other barriers stopping us from having friendships, including an introverted personality, health barriers and personal insecurities.

“It’s entirely possible to overcome these barriers as adults and build meaningful, long-lasting friendships. We don’t have to accept loneliness as inevitable,” Dr Hronis said.

“If you put in ten minutes a day, you can maintain existing friendships and build new ones. Send a text, forward a meme, add to the group chat or give someone a quick call. Don’t get caught up on how much effort, energy and time goes into building friendships. Ten minutes a day may be all you need.”

Now you know why I got in touch this week! It wasn’t exactly intimations of mortality that brought me to it; the trouble with technology is, it is too easy to dash off a text or an email (that may or may not be read).

Sometimes what we all need most is to hear a familiar and friendly voice at the other end of the phone – with no risk of catching anything.

I’ll leave you with this performance of the best-known song about friendship. We were fortunate indeed to hear Carole King and James Taylor duet her song in 2010, when they performed in Brisbane. The 2010 world tour band included bass player Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel, both playing in this 1971 video.

Now there’s friendship for you.

 

Public holidays irrelevant to retirees

public-holidays-Queen
The Queen’s coffin leaves Westminster Abbey. Wikimedia cc

I’m afraid to say the one-off public holiday to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth II passed me by. This was partly because we are both in isolation after testing positive to Covid.

Also, the concept of a public holiday, when you get paid for not going to work, ceased to be relevant to me about 2005 when I quit my full-time job. As happens in the media and many other organisations, some people are rostered on to work a public holiday. This is paid at double time and a half, compared to ordinary time if taking the day off. This is only so for full-time or part-time employees on an industrial award. Casual workers can take the holiday off, but they don’t get paid.

Public holidays in Australia (there are up to 16 national and State-based public holidays), have their own special act of Parliament. The act decrees at what rate an employee should be paid, if he/she takes the day off or has to work on a public holiday.

Public holidays are controversial in Australia, starting with Australia Day on January 26 and the ongoing debate that it is culturally insensitive to celebrate the day white people invaded the country and engaged in frontier wars. Queens Birthday is another holiday subject to the whims of whatever brand of politician is in power. Some states hold the Queen’s birthday in June, September or October. Ironically, the Queen’s actual birthday was April 21. I expect that in 2023 this holiday will either be gazetted King’s Birthday or perhaps we will celebrate both?

Labor Day was traditionally celebrated on the first Monday in May with union marches and music. But some states and territories moved the date to March, September or October. Only Queensland kept the tradition.

National holidays come in a bunch (two around Christmas and New Year and another two at Easter), despite some 10 million Australians reporting to the Census that they have no religion at all. Christianity decreased by more than 1 million people in the 2021 Census, but is still Australia’s most common religion.  Other religions continue to increase.

Then there is Anzac Day, which is becoming more popular rather than less, given that it mostly commemorates the fallen in WWI. As songwriter Eric Bogle famously said: ‘someday no-one will march there at all’.

Back in the 1990s, when careers and work/life balance were on our minds, we assembled as much annual leave as we could find and embarked upon a nine-week tour of the US and Canada. I was taken around a daily newspaper in Vancouver and the editor, on learning that Australian journalists (then) got six and a half weeks leave a year, pleaded with me not to share that with his staff. Canada, which is less generous than some, pays two weeks a year (if you have been with the employer for a year). This extends to three weeks if you stay for five years and so on. In Australia, the powerful federal Australian Journalists Union negotiated six and a half weeks, which was meant to reward the employee for working unsociable shifts. In the US, workers have no paid federal leave entitlements at all. Yet 77% of employers informally offer leave to their workers, along the lines of the Canadian model.

That still means that 23% of employers in the world’s biggest economy either cannot afford to pay workers who are not working or they don’t much care.

Compare that with some of the Nordic countries. According to whoseoff.com, which ranked countries by the quality of their annual leave, Spain, Austria and Finland emerged as the top three. The latter allows 25 days a year for annual leave and another 11 days for public and religious holidays. Spain offers 39 days a year (and a daily siesta) and 10 public holidays. Austria’s 39 holidays include 25 days’ paid leave and 13 public holidays. Austrians who have worked for the same company for a long time can take as many as 35 days annual leave.

You can see that this is not by any means a level playing field. In Japan the annual leave entitlement is 10 days. Workers who have been employed continuously for at least one and half years are granted one additional day of leave for each year of service to a maximum of 20 days. There are no legal provisions for pay on public holidays, despite Japan having 16 national public holidays. Japan’s leave entitlements may seem niggardly, but ironically employers find it hard to convince salarymen to take holidays. There is a culture of ‘attendeeism’, which could be interpreted as a fear of someone replacing you while you are holidaying in the mountains.

So how does Australia stack up? For each year of service an employee is entitled to a minimum of 4 weeks of paid annual leave. If the employee is a shift-worker, they are entitled to a minimum of 5 weeks of paid annual leave. Every employee is also entitled to 10 to 13 paid public holidays depending on the state and territory. Long service leave, which varies by jurisdiction, is also available to long-standing employees.

In researching this topic (under duress, dear reader), I came across a report based on a Unicef study on maternity leave. As you might have come to suspect, the US has no national scheme for paid maternity leave. At the other end of the scale are Estonia, Austria, Japan and Sweden where women can take up to 88 weeks of paid leave (Estonia),

As The Guardian story says, the UK rates in the bottom third of OECD countries. Australia is ranked second-last. Maternity and paternity leave in this country both fall under parental leave which is 12 months’ unpaid and for which parents can claim 18 weeks leave pay (at the national minimum wage). Only one parent at a time can take unpaid job-protected leave.

State public holidays are a bonus – for example Melbourne Cup Day in Melbourne, Brisbane’s Ekka show holiday and so on. Australian workers are perhaps known, but not exclusively so, for taking a day either side of a public holiday. For example, I’d love to know how many Australians didn’t go to work today, parlaying the mourning for Queen Elizabeth into a four-day weekend. Some people do this officially (taking a day off their holidays). Some just call in sick and hope their boss doesn’t spot them at the footie or the cricket.

As we’ve been told, yesterday’s national day of mourning is a one-off event. I’d have thought most of us would have had our fill with the blanket coverage on TV channels (ongoing). I’m still trying to work out if the bird’s eye view of Westminster Abbey was a camera or a drone. I did so feel for those eight sturdy chaps who carried the Queen’s coffin for what seemed an unreasonably long time. They didn’t waver, even when you read that the lead-lined oak coffin weighed something between 250kg and 317kg.

Meanwhile I struggle to carry a box of tissues from one room to another. I can’t believe we went all this time without getting Covid and now here we are.

Make sure you wash your hands after reading.

 

Safe from harm while Nanny’s there

Born two weeks or so before King Charles III, Bob reflects on the only monarch we have known in our lifetime and the phenomenon of ‘recreational grieving.’

Queen-Nanny-Monarchy
HRH Princess Elizabeth (aged 19) in the Auxiliary Territorial Services, 1945. Image from the Imperial War Museum cc

When I was still in the womb, my mother was keen on the idea that she and Elizabeth II would give birth on the same day. I made an entrance two weeks ahead of Charles, so whenever our birthdays roll around, I reflect on our status as 1948 babies, born on opposite sides of the track.

I did so chuckle at the meme on social media with a picture of Charles and the caption: ‘73-year-old finally gets a job’.

Like most people in Britain in the 1950s (and obviously even now), Mum was a royalist. There was much excitement upon the green and pleasant land and in neighbouring countries like Wales and Scotland ahead of the Coronation in 1953. I shall leave others to comment on Ireland.

As I recall (I was four), each household received Coronation souvenirs – a mug, a tin of Cadbury’s milk chocolate (it may have had the royal crest embossed on the chocolate but I can’t vouch for that). There were also flags and bunting. (Rule Britannia was one of the first songs I learned (the marmalade and jam version came much later).

The picture I’m painting here illustrates the genesis of the mass mourning which has accompanied the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8. The ABC dispatched Michael Rowland to provide daily updates to ABC Breakfast, which included vox pop interviews in London’s Green Park. The loyal subjects who wished to leave floral tributes, cards and letters were re-directed there after it was clear that soon you would not be able to see the Changing of the Guard behind the massive wall of floral tributes.

Ordinary folks were interviewed ‘Well, she’s always been there, inn it – she’s like our Mum’ and similar sentiments that demonstrated the depth of public love expressed in the memory of the 96-year-old monarch known fondly as ‘Nanny’.

My Facebook feed filled up with tributes by friends I might have assumed would be republicans in the true sense of the word. Greens leader Adam Bandt was rightly chastised for his too-soon statement:

“Rest in peace Queen Elizabeth II. Our thoughts are with her family and all who love her. Now Australia must move forward. We need a Treaty with First Nations people, and we need to become a republic.”

All the same, some of the emotional outbursts over the death of a woman in her 90s (that tends to happen), have left this Scots-born champagne socialist a little stunned.

The death of Lady Diana Spencer in 1997 sparked a similar, if more dramatic outpouring of what psychologists call ‘recreational grieving’.

In 2012 The Scotsman wrote about this phenomenon of mourning the ‘intimate stranger’.

“It’s an apt term for something that allows us to indulge in the ceremony of grief without feeling particularly upset. We mope, wallow and wail en masse, but we needn’t lose any sleep over our ‘loss’”.

The writer related how he ended up weeping in the shower while listening to Daydream Believer, after hearing that Davy Jones (of the pop band The Monkees), had died.

As he says, this is not a new phenomenon. When heartthrob actor Rudolph Valentino died in 1926, 80,000 people lined up in New York to file past his coffin. Just think back a few years to when we lost David Bowie, Prince, Robin Williams, Leonard Cohen, Amy Winehouse, John Prine and Mr Spock.

Although I am not a monarchist, there was much to admire about Elizabeth the Last (as poet Denis Kevans dubbed her). She worked with 15 UK Prime Ministers and 164  Commonwealth Prime Ministers during her rule. Her daily duties as Crown were never-ending, yet she never wavered (even during the furore that arose after her Australian representative sacked a sitting Prime Minister in 1975). (Still outraged. Ed.)

Much has been written over the decades about the concept of colonialism, inherited wealth and title. History would tend to suggest that the Scots, as one glaring example, should be the least likely people to be gnashing their teeth over a wealthy woman who only started paying tax in 1992. There have been sporadic reports of protests; people with placards saying: ‘Not My King’. One person carrying a sign that said ‘F*** the monarchy’ was arrested.

But they are a minority, as European correspondent Rob Harris explained in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Thousands of mourners lined streets in Scottish towns and cities, as the cortege made the 281km trip from the Queen’s favourite Highland retreat to the capital. Her daughter, Princess Anne, dropped a curtsy as her coffin was carried into the palace (Holyrood House) in Edinburgh, where her mother had stayed only weeks before.

“From Aberdeen to Dundee and along the motorway verges around the River Forth, veterans, army cadets, school children and families stood quietly or applauded, clutching flowers and Union flags.”

As wakes go, this one is only getting started. Such is the level of staged planning going into this production, we run the risk of important domestic news being relegated below the fold. As it is, our parliament has been suspended for 15 days so PM Anthony Albanese can attend the funeral. Morris dancing sources tell me that, in the UK, all dancing will stop for as long as the royal wake lasts.

As a former newspaper journalist, I know full well that this is one of the stories of the century, akin to a Pope dying. Every section of the newspaper is allowed to exercise creative process and contribute to the story. Hence business writers confirmed that the $5 note, on which QEII’s effigy is etched, will continue to circulate. A new coin, with Charles III’s profile, will circulate in 2023.

By tradition, details of the Queen’s will remain private. Despite Buckingham Palace publishing details of the Sovereign Grant (what it costs to keep the royal machine ticking over), estimates of the Queen’s wealth come from outside sources. Forbes Magazine calculated Queen Elizabeth’s personal fortune in 2021 (investments, jewels, art, and real estate) at $US500 million. Most of the real estate will be simply passed on to the next monarch.

When living in Edinburgh in the late 1970s, I was astonished to find that the Palace of Holyrood House, just down the road from the Royal Mile, was used by the Queen for only one week a year, in summer.

People I met in pubs and at folk clubs told me about the homelessness situation in Edinburgh. You would not want to be sleeping on the streets in that cold and ancient city, summer or winter. Yet just down the road from the tourism mecca of Edinburgh Castle sat the (empty) 16th-century historic apartments of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the State Apartments. The palace at that time cost 368,000 pounds a year to maintain, according to a 1978 Hansard record.

The palace is open to the public (for tours) throughout the year, except when members of the Royal Family are in residence. While Historic Environment Scotland maintains the Palace of Holyrood House, it is owned by Charles III, King of the United Kingdom.

Almost seventy million pounds was spent maintaining the other seven royal palaces in 2021-2022, expenditure drawn from the aforementioned (annual) Sovereign Grant (102.4 million pounds/$A175 million).

I’m leaving the last word to the venerable English songwriter, Leon Rosselson. He wrote a caustic song in 1978 about the monarchy’s profligacy – On Her Silver Jubilee.

(Advisory: this song contains references to a person who has died and may offend monarchists.)

Oh, the magic of the monarchy, the mystery sublime; Growing gracefully and effortlessly richer all the time; She’s the rock of hope and glory in the quicksand of despair; For although the pound may tumble, although panic fills the air; Although governments may crumble, and the cupboard’s nearly bare; Though the stairs begin to rattle, and the rats begin to stare; She enfolds in mystic unity her subjects everywhere; And we know we’re safe from harm while nanny’s there.