Christmas - thegoodwills.com

‘Tis the season of charitable giving

charities-hunger-relief — 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.

A garden of viruses

Dear reader, please wear a mask and don rubber gloves before reading this none-too-subtle discourse about viruses and how little medical science knows about the common garden variety.

Since I tested negative to Coronavirus, after sitting in the car for two hours on December 28, alas, I still feel like shit. Excuse the language but there is no more apt description. Those lacking in empathy might dismiss it with “Oh it’s just a cold – build a bridge and get over it.”

Not that simple, sorry. There are more than 200 different cold viruses, and despite medical science’s skills in almost every other department, we don’t have a cure for any of them. The common cold virus lasts six to 10 days and the best advice is to stay in bed, or at least stay home until you feel better. There are many remedies which arguably speed the healing process and they include plenty of sleep, plenty of fluids, exercise (which seems counter-intuitive), and other more desperate measures like eating a raw onion and listening to jazz for 30 minutes.

I felt great on Christmas Eve, cooked pizzas for the family, tried to find something intelligent to watch on TV and failed. Went to bed early.

Christmas Day I woke with that post nasal drip thing – you know the one? Within hours my nose was running and I was going ‘ah-choo f***’, spreading germs around the house. I participated in Christmas lunch, feeling gradually worse as time went by. Boxing Day was bad.

“Perhaps you’d better go and get tested,” advised my sister-in-law, the nurse.

I did so on my return home, knowing I’d have a shorter wait than people were experiencing in Brisbane, where we spent Christmas.

While this was going on, reports were dribbling in that our Christmas lunch guest were succumbing to ‘#ahchoof***’. I got a negative test result within 24 hours so that was a relief. Or was it really?

I still felt like shit and Christmas lunch guests, including SWAGACF, were feeling equally miserable.

Cousin Alice rang to say she’s sorry she missed Christmas lunch (in isolation awaiting a Covid test), which proved to be negative. My brother-in-law started referring to me as ‘the East Coast distributor’.

As many people found out, there was something ‘going round’ at Christmas.

I chatted online to a friend who was dreading catching whatever was going through his tribe of grandchildren. Later he texted:

“I’ve got the wog – about to get a RAT test. Result in a bit. Timer on. And…Negative.”
“You were on the spot by proxy at this historic event.”

I spent much of the past week in and out of bed, binge-watching Succession and marvelling at the acumen of Shakespearean actor Brian Cox as the amoral, ruthless media baron. I also spent time wondering how I got this thing. Didn’t I wear a mask when going anywhere? Didn’t I wash my hands assiduously?

The best advice to avoid the common cold is just that – wash your hands after any contact with anyone or anything. Avoid contact with people who have the common cold. Ah, the tricky one. How do we know they have the common cold? They could be asymptomatic, as I was on Christmas Eve.

Through almost two years of dealing with a potentially deadly pandemic, it’s fair to say that the media, and medical science to a lesser degree, has been less focused on other viruses.

Having said that, researchers did note the sharp drop-off in influenza numbers in 2021. This phenomenon may well have been due to the general population taking Covid precautions.

In the August edition of the Australian general practitioners magazine, ‘newsGP’, it was noted that a year had passed with not one single death due to influenza.

Professor Ian Barr was frank when asked if he ever imagined the current situation; just 435 notified cases (to August 2021) and no hospital admissions.
Barr, who is Deputy Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza at the Doherty Institute, said: “No. It’s amazing. Never.”

Professor Barr says the absence of influenza is a positive, although he also points to a number of other respiratory illnesses beyond the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

“I think fighting one virus at a time is quite enough for the general public. I don’t think we should get too complacent. There are other viruses circulating and depending on which State you’re in, those viruses are circulating at different levels.”

For context, in Australia there were 21,005 notifications of laboratory-confirmed influenza by August 2020 and 35 deaths. In 2019 there had been 214,377 and 486 deaths. (One explanation I read for this situation is that many deaths from influenza happen in Aged Care homes – the increasing emphasis on hygiene resulting from the Covid epidemic has had the effect of reducing the number of influenza deaths.Ed)

On January 6, 2022, Australia had 330,289 active Covid cases including 32,312 in Queensland. Before Christmas we had bugger-all.

I’m spending a lot of sick-bed time consulting Dr Google. If you want to minimise the chances of getting Covid, head to Tasmania. The Apple Isle and the Northern Territory have the lowest cases numbers in Australia, although at this time of year the climate is more attractive in Tassie than in the NT.

There were only 785 cases in Tasmania on Monday, increasing to 3,653 yesterday but well below the 268,787 cases in NSW and Victoria, the States you drive through to get to Tassie.

As an island State, though, one can fly directly to Tasmania, with only one border check. In WA, closed borders explains its low tally of 74 cases. The prosecution rests.

It fell to me then, viruses aside, to go on an emergency shopping expedition. I rationalised it thus: past the contagious stage, wearing a mask, washing my hands. What could go wrong?

On my last quick trip to buy juice, tissues and toilet paper, I witnessed an exchange between two customers (who apparently knew each other well enough to drop their masks under their chins).

“It’s all a bit much, eh?”

“Yeh, this flu’ll get us all eventually.”

One old bloke tendered a limp-looking ten dollar note. The (masked) checkout person picked it up in the manner of someone removing a gecko from a windowpane.

Then I went home and Dr Googled some more, finding along the way a study done in Germany which says listening to music can help heal the common cold.

Dance music, soft rock and jazz were genres most favoured to increase the levels of antibodies in the bodies of those listening to such music. (The jazz will drive me out of the room, thus achieving the aim of isolation. Ed.)

Research by the Max Planck Institute in Germany concluded that certain types of music boost the immune system and help to decrease the level of the stress hormone cortisol. Enthused by this research from 2008, latched on to by radio DJs and pop culture writers, I put together an appropriate playlist.

Our music advisor Franky’s Dad listened to the playlist and replied:

“This playlist gives an insight into the way a virus can addle the brain.”

“I see that you’ve been guided by the theme of illness & medicine,

“It’s a bewildering mix of genres though!”

FD (who also has the wog) contributed If I Could Talk I’d Tell You. Anyway, we agree – avoid listening to your favourites when unwell.

This eclectic playlist of 25 tracks – not all about feeling poorly – includes a pithy little ditty from our album, The Last Waterhole. I recommend Don’t Crash the Ambulance, not for the image it conjures, but as a piece of political history, with George W Snr advising the next president: “Watch and learn, Junior. Watch and learn.”

Germ Boy’s Mix

I won’t be home for Christmas

Christmas-expats-covid19 — Image: ThePixelman, www.pixabay.com.au

Every year at this time, Australians who live and work overseas are making plans to visit their families for Christmas. When you live and work in places like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Manchester, Edinburgh, Auckland, Hong Kong or Singapore, three weeks at the beach in Oz is the perfect escape from chilly winters.

But not this year, dear reader, as the second, or is it third wave of Covid 19 has sent cities in Europe and the UK in particular into lock-down.

The above destinations are where Aussie ex-pats are most likely to live and work, according to employment agency Apply Direct. Using figures from the Department of Home Affairs, Apply Direct singled out the top destinations where many of our ex-pats live. Figures are hard to pin down, but it is estimated that of the eight million Aussies who travel abroad looking for adventure, one million or so will decide to stay and work.

The United Kingdom hosts by far the largest ex-pat population (160,000). Many young Australians can claim parents or grandparents who were born in the UK, which gives them an automatic right to live and work there.

Our extended family is no exception, with family members living in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, the US and elsewhere.

Many young Australians head for the UK when making their first trip abroad. It is easy enough to base yourself in London, find some kind of job (ex-pats often take the casual jobs the Brits won’t do), and make forays to Europe whenever possible.

As often happens when you are in your 20s and single, matches are made and romance sometimes blooms.

Morocco-based ex-pat Suzanna Clarke uses technology to keep in touch with her siblings.

“My sister is in Adelaide, my brother in Oxford and me in Morocco. (Our parents died a few years ago.) We also have a catch up video call via Skype on Sundays, although sometimes we use the video function on WhatsApp. I love the ease of communication these days. I have kept letters between my great-grandmother and my grandmother, who were living in Brazil and England respectively from the 1930s to 1950s. The letters have two to three month gaps, as they were transported by ship. Even when I was travelling in India and Europe in my 20s, the lag was at least a couple of weeks. We are so fortunate these days!”

Meanwhile, in the worst-hit country by far (the USA), some of the 90,000 Aussie ex-pats, and like-minded Americans, will be self-isolating over Christmas. Most Australians congregate in just three cities – Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Fair to say that many of them are people with a talent in some aspect of music production or movie-making. We know a few musicians who have had periodic flirtations with the country music capital, Nashville. We also know one or two who came to visit and stayed.

Musician George Jackson, who lives outside of Nashville with his wife Rachel, says he is keeping a low profile at Yuletide.

“We just cancelled all Christmas plans with any of Rachel’s family and are now planning to basically have it at home by ourselves. Obviously the virus is surging pretty badly here in the US and we decided it was best for everyone if we didn’t risk any gatherings for Christmas this year, particularly to protect the health of Rachel’s parents.

“I’ve been keeping in touch with friends and family back in Australia. I saw my parents in January last year, so it’s coming up a year since seeing them and I know they are missing being able to be with me and my brother, who’s living in France. So that’s tough, but we’re sticking it out and waiting for that vaccine to get approved and distributed and looking forward to perhaps a mid-summer Christmas in July next year with family.”

.It is beginning to sound as if the vaccine will be a prerequisite for people wishing to fly from one country to another. Australia’s major airline Qantas flagged this requirement in an announcement that made headlines around the world.

Forbes magazine reported that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said his airline would eventually only allow vaccinated travellers to board its flights. The move would essentially allow travellers to move around the globe unhindered by quarantines.

The ready adoption of video streaming technologies has helped families with relatives living abroad (or even on opposite sides of the continent), to connect or re-connect.

A Sydney-based Kiwi friend has planned a holiday in Melbourne, knowing that a visit home would involve a 14-day quarantine stay. She usually travels to New Zealand at Christmas to spend time with family. The only way to do that now is to go into quarantine for two weeks, at a cost of $2,000 on top of the airfare. Like so many others, she is relying on digital connections. Fortunately her family has gravitated to a weekly chat on WhatsApp.

Irish Joe Lynch, a performance poet who lives in Maleny, spoke of the unexpected constraints on travel to visit family members.

“Taking my freedom completely for granted, I returned to Ireland many times over the past 40–odd years, visiting family and friends. I still have five ageing siblings overseas whom I would dearly love to visit, but of course that is not available to me now ever since the outbreak of Covid19. What is most distressing is the knowledge that most of my family are currently undergoing Stage 4 and Stage 5 lock-down restrictions, and are terribly frustrated and lonely.”

You may not know that the UK, one of the worst affected by Covid 19, appointed its first Minister for Loneliness in 2016.

Loneliness is a big deal in Britain, where 45% of people polled in 2016-2017 admitted to feeling lonely “occasionally, often or always”, One in 20 adults felt lonely often or always, which equates to 1.4 million people, a 49% increase on the same survey in 2006-2007.

A mental health survey during the UK’s lock-down in April found that one in four (24%) had feelings of loneliness in the “previous two weeks”. This was more than double the response before lock-down. One in three females (34%) and one in five males (20%) reported suffering from loneliness while working from home during the COVID-19 social restrictions period.

On Sunday, I had my first-ever video chat with my sister, who does not have a computer or mobile phone. We usually talk on her landline (equipped for the hearing impaired). On Sunday, we chatted via a relative who was visiting and who rang me on Messenger. It was good to be face to face again and realise (with some shock) how we have both aged since I was there in 2017. I made a note on the calendar to ring my other sister (who does have a mobile phone) at Christmas, although she has told me she prefers ‘ear-to-ear’.

But as Suzanne said, in the 1950s people wrote letters to loved ones overseas, patiently waiting months for a response. Since we have the technology to simulate face to face communications, we really ought to use it, eh.

Black Friday and a spot of retail therapy

Black-Friday-retail — “Get in there, damn it’ – Image by Sean Leahy

We who have always associated ‘Black Friday’ with Friday the 13^th (unlucky for some), were no doubt confused by the retail rallying call of the past week.

According to McCrindle Research, the US concept of Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is gaining traction in Australia. Back in 2017, a McCrindle survey showed that 1 in 4 (24%) of Australians had never heard of Black Friday. Two years on, only 6% of Australians have never heard of Black Friday. This year’s research showed that almost 45% of respondents were going to take advantage of sales and discounts.

In the US, Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), is a signal for 100 million Americans to walk off their turkey dinners and go shopping. Americans typically spend more than US$50 billion on this one day.

She Who Researches Before Buying was following me around one of Brisbane’s biggest retail barns on Sunday. The shopping list was (1) a smart TV (2) a portable air conditioner (3) a microwave (4) a vacuum cleaner and (5) an entertainment unit. SWRBB had decided that only item 2 was needed immediately. Things changed once we entered the blissfully chilled domain of a category killer retailer (when I say chilled I refer to the room temperature, not the ambient noise level).

We’d done a bit of research into items 1 and 2, so were quickly persuaded by the price of the short-listed TVs (both $250 below the RRP). Those of you who shop early and often will know that RRP stands for recommended retail price. Since the majority of such items began to emerge from factories in China, very few retailers insist upon RRP. I’m not privy to the wholesale figures, but it’s a fair bet that 30% off something made in China still allows the retailer to make a profit.

This might be a good time to confess that my One And Only (O&O) and I, to borrow a term of endearment from blogger Kathryn Johnston, are the most sales-resistant people outside of hard-core hippies and those with no cash or credit. When we buy big-ticket retail items, the drill is that I produce my credit card and between us we pay the balance off at the end of the month. Did I mention we had earlier bought two ceiling fans from a lighting sales room which cried out ‘while you are here’ ?

Back at the big barn front counter, after resisting attempts to have us upgrade to a five-year warranty, I noticed a sign warning buyers that TVs 55 inches or bigger may not fit into a normal vehicle. Time to tell us now.

After heading to despatch behind the enormous tilt-slab warehouse, we encountered a fit-looking guy who checked out the vehicle. He suggested we move this here and that there and let the back seats down. Between us we got the 55 inch TV into the vehicle, leaning it on the portable air conditioner (itself a substantial package) the two fans, an esky, two folding chairs, a bag of dog crunchies and a yoga mat. Wisely, we left the microwave, entertainment unit and vacuum cleaner for another day, vowing to shop locally.

In relating this rare venture into retail sales, I am more aware than ever that while the car park was full and people were milling about purposefully, the latest studies on consumer confidence suggest the retail sector is in recession. Even the most bullish retailers concede they are unlikely to set new spending records this month. I genuinely wish it were different, as a few people I know work in retail (and a few more that work part-time).

The Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment Index fell by more than 5% in October to 92.8 points, the lowest reading since July 2015. A reading of 100 sits on the barbed wire fence between optimism and pessimism. Even though the index bounced back (up 45% in November to 97.0), the survey authors say the mood is still downbeat as we enter the Christmas shopping month. Another long-running survey, the ANZ-Roy Morgan Consumer Confidence index, is at a four-year low of 106.8. The index averaged 114.4 this year, down 3.5% from 118.5 in 2018.

The weekly survey also showed a 1.5% drop in the numbers of respondents who thought they were better off at the same time last year.

Australia has its own economic quirks, but it is interesting to note that similar surveys in the US have been on the slide since August.

As the Australian Financial Review’s Sue Mitchell reminded us, Harvey Norman chief executive Katie Paige warned back in August that the government’s tax cuts were unlikely to stimulate retail spending. A concurrent ATO crackdown on individual and business taxpayers prompted small businesses and consumers to keep their heads down (meaning to avoid being involved in something/anything).

Retail sales have been in a trough all year, despite the Reserve Bank’s optimistic forecast of a “gentle turning point” for the economy.

When working as a business writer in the late 1980s and 1990s, I researched retail sales trends, because they often foreshadowed upturns (or downturns) in the economy. The AFR’s Sue Mitchell was specialising in this sector in that era and she’s still there!

So when she tells you retail sales figures have recorded the biggest fall since the 1990-91 recession, you might want to pay attention. Year on year sales growth has slowed from 3.7% in September 2018 to 2.5% in September this year, Mitchell reported. Sales volumes fell 0.1% in the quarter and by 0.2% over the past 12 months.

Super Retail Group chief executive Anthony Heraghty told the AFR the sector was volatile.

“Customers are up and down and you’ll see a couple of good weeks and then a week that’s not so impressive,” Heraghty said. (This might be the right place to disclose that the Cheeseparer Superannuation Fund recently bought shares in Super Retail Group, which owns Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF and Macpac.)

The irony for Australian retailers is that the seemingly endless cycle of discount days has created an expectation that the RRP is permanently up for negotiation.

Conservative people who rarely lash out on ‘stuff’ will put their must-buy list aside and wait for the Boxing Day sales. Or the Back to School, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, End of Financial Year, Father’s Day, Singles Day, Click Frenzy, Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday or pre-Christmas sales. Hurry, hurry, all stock must go.

I’ll leave the last word to The Chaser’s 2007 spoof,’ ‘Killer Persian Rug Sale’. This 45-second mock ad was one of many such over the top send-ups of Australia’s fast-talking television retail sales arena.

“Must sell by midnight or die”.

Today’s illustration is by cartoonist Sean Leahy, one of Queensland’s best-known artists.

https://www.facebook.com/leahycartoons/

Catch a (brush) turkey for Christmas

turkey-christmas — Brush turkey for Christmas dinner? – image by She Who Takes Bird Photos, aka Laurel Wilson

The only thing more difficult than taking a photo of a brush turkey is selling the notion of preparing one for a (budget) Christmas lunch. Those of you quick on the uptake will have already registered that Mr FOMM is being ironic. Brush turkeys as you may know are a protected and even endangered species. Besides, they have a “stuff you’ attitude which is refreshing (bok!) And the chicks are cute.

As it happens, turkey is the least popular meat for people laying in provisions for Christmas. The ubiquitous Christmas ham leads the pack by a good margin, along with chicken, then turkey.

Northern hemisphere folk might find this hard to fathom, but rich hot food is not a priority for the Australian Christmas lunch. No, we prefer ham, chicken, prawns, a variety of cold salads and condiments, followed up with fruit salads, ice-cream, custard and yoghurt, all of it more befitting our typical 30+ degree Christmas Day. The diehards do Christmas pudding, but as we all know, it takes a long afternoon nap to sleep it off.

Retailers work hard at this time of year to sell us on the idea of (a) over-eating (b) over-spending and (c) eating food we rarely eat. The latter includes turkey, which has its biggest sales between December 20 and 24. I’m aware turkey is very big in the US and Canada on November 23 (Thanksgiving). According to the University of Illinois, 88% of Americans surveyed by the National Turkey Federation eat turkey on Thanksgiving; 46 million turkeys are eaten each Thanksgiving, 22 million at Christmas and 19 million at Easter

Compare that with Australia, where 3 to 5 million turkeys are killed and sold for meat every year. On average, Australians eat approximately 1kg of turkey per person per year, most of which is consumed during one week at Christmas.

You’ll pay about $110 for an organic turkey, or about $22 a kilo.

You can find loads of information on the Internet about meat consumption, much of it available on animal welfare websites, which point out the factory-like habitat of animals being fattened for consumption. I have a few things to say about that and one is that after being sent on an assignment to one of Queensland’s largest (cattle) feedlots, I went vegetarian for two or three months.

As you may not know, there are 2.1 million Australians (11.2%) who say they are vegetarians (Roy Morgan Research, 2016). Vegans are lumped in with vegetarians, though it’s not the same thing.

If you were curious about what vegos eat at Christmas, musician Emma Nixon says she makes a roast vegie, quinoa and lentil salad.

“It’s good hot or cold. I take the leftovers to Woodford ”

Another muso, Karen Law, says her family eats fish but is otherwise fully vegan. This year they might throw some salmon on the bbq, plus a lot of salad, bbq sweet potato and kipfler potatoes.

Folk dancers Peter and Linda Scharf favour tofu kebabs, with satay sauce, falafels, bean patties, salads with extra trimmings and dressings. Not to mention plum pudding (no suet) and a couple of glasses of ‘fermented grape juice’.

To spew or not to spew

Meanwhile, non-vegan Aussies are very big on eating prawns at Christmas – 50,000 tonnes were consumed last year at this time. Just so you know, 80% of prawns sold in Australia are imported and it costs about $50 a kilo to buy locally-caught prawns.

As I am one of an indeterminate number of people for whom prawns induce violent chundering*, I cannot explain the appeal. I watch people spending inordinate amounts of time shelling prawns (is that the right term) and it always seems to me there is more to throw out than what makes it into the ice bucket.

One Christmas past we returned from a holiday at the beach to be greeted with an awful smell, which was quickly traced to a full, broken, leaking and putrid wheelie bin on the street outside our house. Someone had waited until our (clean) bin was collected and replaced it with their munted* bin full of prawn waste. Eeuuw, people!

Full credit to Brisbane City Council waste management who (a) picked up the offending bin within 24 hours and (b) replaced it with a brand-new bin.

But I digress (yet again)

We are a wealthy country with relatively high disposable income, low-ish unemployment and a reputation for spending more than we earn.

Australian Retailer Association executive director Russell Zimmerman told SBS News last year that food and drink accounts for 40% per cent of the total Christmas spend.

The Pork Producers of Australia said that in the four weeks leading up to Christmas, 8.4 million kilos of ham was sold in 2015 and about the same in 2016. In terms of traditional bone-in hams, it was about 4.3 million kilograms in 2015 and 4.6 million kilograms in 2016 – an increase of 7.6%.

Our local research found that the price of Christmas hams can range from as little as $7 a kilo in discount supermarkets to $18 a kilo for organic and/or free range ham bought from a butcher. A premium boneless leg of ham could cost you upwards of $30 a kilo.

That seems cheap when you read about Spain’s jamon imberico, the truffle of the pork world. A 7.5 kg leg can cost between $A180 and $A720. Iberian ham comes from blackfoot pigs, raised on pasture planted with oak trees. According to my favourite source (The Guardian Weekly), the demand for Iberian ham in China is such that the escalating price is denying humble Spaniards their once-a-year treat.

Just so you know what you’re eating, all fresh pork sold in Australia is 100% Australian grown. However, approximately two thirds of processed pork (ham, bacon and smallgoods products) is made from frozen boneless pork imported from places like Denmark, the Netherlands, Canada and the United States.

According to an international study by Caterwings, Australians chew their way through 111.5 kilograms of meat per year, per person. (Someone’s eating our share). This data probably does not take into account the 11.2% of Australians who are vegetarians and vegans, the 604,000 Muslims as well as those of the Jewish faith who do not eat pork; or the unknown number of people who have developed a mammalian meat allergy by exposure to ticks (more on that topic next week).

If you can’t afford $90 or so for a leg of ham, I have a suggestion. There are these prehistoric-looking birds that roam around the scrub. They are notorious for scratching up people’s vegie gardens and using leaf litter and mulch to make huge mounds, inside which they lay their eggs. Yes, they are protected and indeed endangered (the chicks are left to fend for themselves as soon as they can walk around). But who’s to know if you knock one off, pluck and gut it, stuff it and cook for 17 or 18 hours or until tender? Don’t forget the basil.

Just don’t throw the waste and left-over meat in the wheelie bin and forget to put the bin out. That would be unneighbourly.

*Munted – Kiwi for ‘damaged or unusable.’

*chundering – Oz for vomiting

Christmas 2016