Covid- it’s everywhere

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Washing line 2022 Willfried Wende – www.pixabay

On a quick shopping trip this week, it seemed that every second person was wearing a Covid mask, even though there is no legal obligation to do so. Friends, relatives, neighbours and friends of friends are either in isolation because of a positive RAT test or actually have Covid-19. There’s been a nasty flu getting around South-East Queensland at the same time. The only way to tell one from the other is to take a Rapid Antigen Test.

The statistics are a bit scary. The only saving grace is that the Omicron variants are said to be ‘milder’ than the Delta strain which was rampant in 2020.

As of this morning, Queensland reported 45, 824 active cases, including 6,366 new cases in the previous 24 hours. There were 907 hospitalisations and 14 patients in Intensive Care Units. There have been 73 deaths (people who died with Covid) this week alone.

There are many unanswered questions about this third wave of the Omicron variant. Like, how come we haven’t had it? Knock on wood. Or why do some people get “long Covid’’ where symptoms persist for months?

If you look at the historical charts, you have to wonder why governments decided to take their collective feet off the pedals of the crowd control machine.

On December 16, 2021, Queensland had 17 cases (a weekly average of 9). Then we opened the borders, relaxed the mask mandate and other rules like contact tracing which had thus far kept the virus out of Queensland.

By January 17, 2022, new cases had spiked to 31,056. While numbers have since fallen away, the State reported 32, 355 new cases (between July 11 and 15), with hospitalisation rates between 800 and 900.

Cumulatively, Queensland has now recorded 1.63 million cases (equates to 32% of the population) and 1,388 deaths. So much for Omicron being more infectious but less serious than Delta.

Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard has been quoted that catching Covid is “inevitable”. Ironically former chief health officer Jeanette Young, now Governor of Queensland, was also taken down by the virus.

Did you know that the entire Queensland Maroons rugby league team held a fan day in Warwick last week? The visit started with a sold-out dinner on Tuesday night with guest speakers including Maroons coach Billy Slater. Next day there was a street parade, breakfast in the park, coaching clinics for children and then the Maroons had a training session at the local footie oval. A few days later, two members of the team, Cameron Munster and Murray Taulagi tested positive for Covid and were unable to play in the decider on Wednesday.

I did notice that team members wore masks as they mingled with the thousands of fans who turned out to meet and greet.

Which brings me back to people wearing masks – in the street, in cafes, shopping centres and pharmacies. The latter used to insist on customers wearing a mask, but without the muscle of a state-mandated instruction, they can only make polite suggestions.

Remember the days of close contacts and contact tracing? The border closures, closed-down cafes and bars? Apart from hospitals, organisations with a Covid policy and employers, it seems you don’t have to prove you are double vaccinated. Hardly anyone checks to see the green tick on your phone. I was only asked to do so twice on a three-week trip to Tasmania in April. We did find you had to wear masks on public transport in Victoria and Tasmania (as you do in Queensland, although many do not wear masks).

An approved style of mask is your first line of defence to avoid being infected by Covid-laced aerial droplets. Second line is to stay home as much as possible.

The people I feel for are those who cannot avoid being in close quarters with other people (aged care homes, prisons, detention centres etc). It is now well known that residents in aged care are vulnerable; not only because of their living circumstances, but also because most are 75 and over and in the high-risk category.

Nationally there have been 2,881 deaths in aged care homes since the pandemic began in early 2020 and 2,580 residential aged care facilities have had an outbreak during that time. It’s probably misleading to include those two facts in the same sentence because the mind goes: ‘Hey, that’s an average of one death for each facility.’  
The Guardian reported yesterday that 100 aged care residents are dying with Covid each week, with more than 700 current outbreaks. The industry fears that two-thirds of aged care homes across Australia may be grappling with outbreaks over the next six weeks.

Amid reports of a Covid outbreak on a cruise ship anchored in the Brisbane River, I went looking for places in the world where the virus had been contained. Unhappily, the virus has caught up with some of the 10 or so island countries which, until the end of 2021, had managed to stay safe. They included Nauru, which went from zero cases in late 2021 to 40% of the population being infected. Nauru, as you may or may not know, is ‘home’ to 129 asylum seekers, most of whom have been on the island since 2012.

The World Health Organisation confirms that there are currently 121 new cases in Nauru and a cumulative 6,237 cases (and one death) since January 2022.

Citing global numbers, the WHO says that as of July 11 there have been 552.5 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 6.34 million deaths. As of 2 July 2022, a total of 12.03 billion vaccine doses had been administered. As for the United States, 87 million cases have been recorded since early 2020 and 1.02 million deaths. Donald Trump, we’re looking at you.

Compare that with Australia – 10,515 deaths since the first cases were seen in February 2020.

This takes me back to an early report from Seattle, the US city that gave the world the TV soap opera ‘Grey’s Anatomy’. A community choir had met for a rehearsal in the early days of Covid when nobody knew what we were dealing with.

As Live Science recalls, 52 people were unknowingly infected with Corona virus at a choir practice in Mount Vernon, Washington. The event led to the deaths of two people.

The practice happened on March 10, roughly two weeks before Washington Governor Jay Inslee issued a ‘stay home stay healthy’ executive order, barring social gatherings and non-essential travel.

That story shocked Australian choral singers. Most community choir directors I knew decided to cancel rehearsals for the foreseeable future. We mucked around on Zoom for a while and had a few tentative practices outside, but it just wasn’t the same. Eventually in 2021, as case numbers began to fall, choirs and orchestras started rehearsing again under controlled circumstances.

Experts told us that singing in a closed room was a sure-fire way to catch the virus – 20 or 30 people spraying droplets everywhere. Nobody said anything about 52,000 people in a footie stadium shouting and screaming for 80 minutes. Yes, it was an open-air event, but even so, those patrons walked in and out of the venue, used the public toilets and struggled back and forth along packed aisles, spilling beer and spreading potentially lethal aerial droplets around. Because Queensland won the State of Origin series, there was lots of hugging, kissing and selfie-posing. Then they all got on trains and buses, noisily singing the team song on the way home.

Don’t get me started. (Yes, but ‘we’ won – wasn’t it sweet? Ed)

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Lockdown vs Covid easing

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How soon we forget. Musician Silas Palmer checking off the first of 112 days of lockdown in Victoria (see music video link further down

So let me see if I can understand this – almost 50,000 people crammed, yes, crammed) into Suncorp Stadium/Lang Park amid a global pandemic. It was the largest sports crowd in the world since Covid restrictions were applied in March. Biosecurity protocols involved in buying tickets and entering the venue, was proof enough for the Queensland Government, given that anyone attending could be contacted after the event.

Yes, amazing what governments, big business, broadcasters and multinational betting agencies can achieve.

Last time I went to Brisbane’s footie stadium with that many people, it was everything that social distancing is not. Ladies, as few of you will have ever seen a urinal, we stand shoulder to shoulder at the trough. If it is busy, there will be a row of blokes behind us, waiting for a gap to appear. Many, faced with a tedious wait for the wash basins, often dispense with the formality.

Just one example.

As of 4pm on Tuesday, rules were relaxed for pubs and restaurants in Queensland and ‘normal’ crowds welcomed back for entertainment venues, including theatres.

As of the 17th, we can now have 50 people in our homes (though why would you, I thought).

The State government allows itself an ‘out’ by being able to declare a restricted Local Government Area, should the need arise.

In this case, only 10 people are allowed in your home, and that includes people who already live there.

Queenslanders can travel anywhere within the State for any reason, with no limit on distance. You can stay overnight within the State for as many nights as you like.

It’s not a level playing field, though. Queensland Health says that special visitor rules apply for aged care facilities, hospitals and disability accommodation providers.

At the same time these changes were pending, an outbreak of Coronavirus cases in South Australia demonstrated once again that Covid-19 is the gift that no-one wants, yet it nevertheless keeps on giving. Queensland too was finding new cases, most associated with quarantine from people returning from overseas.

But regardless of mixed messages, Queensland Health advice is still that you must practise physical distancing as much as possible and wash your hands regularly with soap and water. Use (60%+) alcohol-based sanitiser, avoid hugs, kisses and handshakes and keep 1.5 metres away from other people. Or as we say here – a kangaroo apart.

While Queenslanders are getting all enthusiastic about the ‘return to normal’, the Covid cluster that emerged in South Australia is a timely warning that this virus is not going away. SA is dealing with its untimely cluster by re-introducing some restrictions, the oddest of which is that you are not allowed to stand and drink in a pub.

“Mate, don’t stand at the bar coughing over everyone. Come over here to my table and cough on us instead.”

SA was to go into a six-day severe lockdown to hopefully stamp out the growing cluster of cases (34 and counting). However, today the ABC news advised that the lockdown would end on Saturday night, three days early.

I realise that my somewhat cautious approach to full slather mingling may upset people who think Covid restrictions are too much-too long. I chatted to a few people who have either been through the quarantine ritual or are Aussie ex-pats looking on from a distance.

Morocco-based Suzanna Clarke, who operates an accommodation business in Morocco and France, can’t believe what she is seeing on social media. A Brisbane friend posted photos of musicians mingling at a ‘session’ (where folkies gather at an ale house to play diddly tunes and sing songs).

No social distancing, no masks needed! Consider yourselves extremely lucky,” Suzanna wrote. There is no way I would be attending a similar event on this side of the planet.”

Morocco (pop 36 million), has recorded 307,000 cases and 5,031 deaths. Suzanna says it is hard to know what’s currently going on.

“It’s also very hard to get a PCR test – even if you can afford it. So the numbers are likely to be much higher. The government doesn’t want to go into lockdown again because people will starve. Literally. Unemployment benefits are only available for a few. My business here has been shut since March. My business in France was starting to pick up, and they went back into lockdown.

So every booking I had was cancelled. We still have wages to pay, so we’re trying to get by on what we have, and raiding our savings. We are, of course, are among the lucky ones.”

Musician friends Silas Palmer and Sarah Busuttil recently posted a series of videos on Facebook depicting 14 days of life at the Howard Springs quarantine facility in Darwin. They flew from Melbourne to the Northern Territory, en route to Queensland and northern NSW to visit a gravely ill family member.

Since this week’s missive is somewhat dire, I thought I’d share this cheerful video the duo made during Victoria’s 112-day lockdown.

(Collins’ Dictionary word of the year, by the way!).

 Meanwhile, the world’s share markets have, as usual, over-reacted to news that Big Pharma has a vaccine ready to go. Global share markets rose 10% in a week.

FOMM reader Mr Shiraz, a strict follower of Covid prevention protocols, had this to say on Facebook:

I have been thinking about the excitement elicited by Covid vaccine announcements (Ed: described in share market reports as ‘vaccine optimism’).

It has taken us more than three decades to get polio 99% eradicated. To imagine a Covid planetary vaccination program being anywhere near good enough for “normal” life to resume in five years is silly.”

A recent article in the UK’s pre-eminent medical journal, The Lancet, advised that we get used to social distancing, hand sanitisation and wearing masks because it will be with us for “several years”.

Science magazine Nature concurred, citing a team of researchers  in virus hotspots at Anhembi Morumbi University, São Paulo, Brazil. They ran more than 250,000 mathematical models of social-distancing strategies.

The team concluded that if 50–65% of people are cautious in public, then stepping down social-distancing measures every 80 days could help to prevent further infection peaks over the next two years. Bear in mind that this research was published in August, which in the context of a fast-moving pandemic is probably a bit old.

Current international statistics are extremely worrying:

  • US 11.6m cases, 250,000 deaths;
  • India: 8.91m cases, 131,000 deaths;
  • Brazil: 5.91m cases 171,000 deaths;
  • France: 2.71m cases, 46,698 deaths;
  • Russia: 1.99m cases, 34,387 deaths’

Australia looks comparatively healthy when you consider there have been 27,777 cases and 901 deaths since January.

However, there have been 93 recent cases, including 21 reported in the last 24 hours. Drilling down into Queensland’s stats, we have had 1,190 cases, 6 deaths and 12 active cases, including 3 in the last 24 hours.

Well excuse me. Much as I loved watching Queensland snatch the Origin series away from New South Wales, I won’t be going to any major sporting events, this year or next.

As Mr Shiraz says: “Let’s adopt a new normal expectation.

Covid Election Wins Could Be Catching

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Walking the covid election tightrope: Marc Hatot, www.pixabay.com

Election days in New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) were carried out last weekend in the Pacific region’s usual civilised fashion. Voters had to run the gauntlet of volunteers handing out how to vote cards, but safe to say no-one carried assault rifles or acted in a menacing way.

Both elections resulted in clear Labor victories, which ought to be a portent for Australia’s Government. Not that Scott Morrison’s Liberal Coalition will be panicking, as the next Federal election will not be held until 2022 – barring ‘incidents and accidents’ as Paul Simon observed in Call Me Al.

Speaking of, did you know that impossible bass riff in the aforesaid song was achieved by playing a conventional bass run backwards? A digression, sure, but pretty important news for bass players, yes?

As I was saying, the next Australian Federal election is at least 18 months away and probably more. That is one of the problems of four-year terms. If you inherit poor, indecisive leadership (Aus), or worse, leadership that seems quite nutty and dangerous (the US), you will have to live with it for what amounts to 17.5% of your conventional life span.

We may not be able to vote in the US election, but many of us are making our feelings known via social media – in short, we’re worried about the future of the world.

We are worried what the higher echelons of the Republican Party might do if Trump loses, calls foul and refuses to leave the White House.

Despite being deemed ‘vigilante groups with no standing in law’, self-styled militia groups have warned they will turn up at polling booths on November 3. I tried to imagine what would happen if two or three armed people wearing para-military gear turned up at a polling booth in, say, Sunnybank (a Brisbane suburb). Safe to say someone would call triple-zero and armed police would arrive in numbers, arresting said people on suspicion. The charge would most like be ‘going armed in public so to cause fear’.

There’s no doubt this will be the most watched election in history, so in view of the complexity of the US system, here’s an interactive guide produced by the BBC.

Next weekend, Queenslanders will go to the polls, to decide whether to support the Labor Government for another four years, or choose the Liberal National Coalition. We are sending in a postal vote as we will be away from home on the day. Incumbent leader, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of the Labor Party, has some hurdles to overcome. Three good ministers have, for one reason or another, decided to resign. Then there are those who opposed the government’s decision to allow the Adani coal mine to go ahead. Opposition leader Deb Frecklington has promised a massive four-lane upgrade of the State’s major highway from Cairns to Gympie (1,513 kms). Colourful independent politician Clive Palmer, who may or may not help the Coalition get elected, mounted an attack campaign just two weeks out, claiming that Labor was planning a ‘death tax’. Labor refuted the claim, made in TV ads and social media posts by Palmer’s United Australia Party.

It might be an over-simplification, but I see 2020 elections being decided almost solely on how well or poorly the incumbent political party managed COVID-19. There can be no doubt that Premiers, Presidents and Prime Ministers are being marked on their response to COVID-19. We could (and should) speculate about what percentage of the close relatives of America’s 216,000 COVID-19 victims, for example, would vote for Donald Trump. Not to mention the close relatives of the 7.89 million Americans who caught the virus.

In New Zealand, PM Jacinda Ardern took a hard line and went straight to a strict lock-down that lasted months. By doing so, the country limited the incidence of the virus to 1,883 cases and 25 deaths.

The ACT also continued to hold the line. On October 16 it said there were no new cases of COVID-19 in the Territory. Official figures show that of the 113 cases since the pandemic began in March, 110 have recovered. There are no COVID-19 patients in Canberra hospitals. The ACT has recorded three deaths.

What is astonishing is that the Territory has tested what amounts to 24% of its 2020 population of 418,800. The number of negative tests recorded in the ACT is now 100,630.

And, despite motions of no confidence and a seemingly relentless campaign of disparagement and criticism of Victorian Premier Dan Andrews, that election too is not until November 26, 2022. Andrews has most recently taken to comparing COVID-19 case results in Victoria with the UK, in March and now. The contrast implies that Victoria dodged a bullet, with additional daily cases mainly reduced to single figures.

By contrast, a Pew Centre research report in August found that 39% of Americans know someone who had been hospitalized or died of the virus.

No-one can under-estimate the scale of work involved in testing people in the US (population 331 million). The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) reported that since March 1, 61.12 million specimens have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 by public health laboratories and clinical and commercial laboratories in the US. As of October 16, the weekly result was: 2.61 million specimens tested for diagnostic purposes and 141,317 (5.4%) were positive. In short, 18.5% of the population has been tested.

Compare this data with Queensland’s Covid results (1,184 cases and 6 deaths since March). Sure, it makes the mitigation measures look like over-kill, but look where we are today – 4 cases between October 4 and 19.

As for next week’s Queensland election, Premier Palaszczuk has refused to be swayed to open the border between Queensland and New South Wales prematurely. It’s been an unpopular decision in some quarters and will cost her votes. But the statistics support the border closure (on March 17): 1.19 million tests have been carried out in Queensland since January 2020, with 0.1% returning a positive result.

That’s equivalent to 36% of Queensland’s population being tested. This figure may be unreliable insofar as some of the tests may have been done on people from outside the state. But even so.

So be thankful we do not live in the US or the UK, where the virus has run amok, as it apparently does in densely populated countries. In an understatement, Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently conceded the UK’s Covid figures are worse than when the country went into lockdown in March. The cumulative tally is 789,000 cases and 44,198 deaths. But the second wave (or is it a third?), took daily new cases from 7,143 on September 29 to 26,687 on October 21. Ironically, given criticism of Johnson’s handling of the crisis, he will not have to face an election until May 3, 2024.

As Paul Simon (or is it Chevy Chase?) sings in this video: “I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore.”

Call me Al: https://youtu.be/uq-gYOrU8bA

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The future for bushfire volunteers

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A well-attended training night of the Eukey (Qld) Fire Brigade

On my late evening dog walks in the rural village of Yangan near Warwick, it has become customary to wave to the volunteer firefighters as they arrive back at base. If they can lift their arms, they wave back.

These volunteers, known in Australia as ‘firies’, are holding containment lines around multiple fires burning in the ranges around Cunningham’s Gap. The Cunningham Highway between Warwick and Brisbane has been closed for two weeks due to poor visibility and debris on the road. The highway opened yesterday, with restricted speeds on several sections.

As a result of fires at Spicer’s Gap, Swanfels, Clumber and elsewhere in the district, we have been ‘smoked in’ on multiple occasions. On Wednesday, a wind change brought smoke down to ground level as district people turned out for the Festival of Small Halls gig at Freestone.

This event, featuring local lads the Fern Brothers, well-travelled duo Hat Fitz and Cara and British songwriter Blair Dunlop, was a much-needed morale boost after two years of drought and two months of bushfire concerns.

You could be forgiven for not knowing there are tens of thousands of Australians who volunteer as firies. When not involved in extinguishing and containing bush fires, they are often out and about cutting firebreaks. Apart from periodic encounters outside bush fire brigade sheds or local pubs, we don’t see these people, who melt back into the community once the danger has passed. It is important that we do not take for granted the vital services they provide to rural communities.

You hear stories – a note left inside a house, surrounded by charred vegetation. “We saved the house…we owe you a bottle of milk.”

Friends who had a rural property in the Grampians returned from travels, unaware that bushfires had swept through the district. Once again, the land was charred but the house saved.

If there is a risk to the heroic status of rural firefighters, headlines announcing that a teenage volunteer in NSW had been charged with multiple counts of arson, were not what the fire services needed. While the volunteer is yet to have his day in court, he has been charged with setting seven fires in the Bega district and then returning to help fight them.

“Our members will be rightly angry that the alleged actions of one individual can tarnish the reputation and hard work of so many,”  RFS commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said in a statement to the media.

As explained on The Feed (TV station SBS programme ), bush fires are best managed by a predominantly local, volunteer workforce.

Stuart Ellis, a former Chief Officer of the Country Fire Service in South Australia, said that as fire seasons intensify, the need for firefighters at any one time will vary across Australia.

“It’s difficult to predict when and where the largest bushfires will be;  even once fires start, a shift in wind direction can rapidly change things.

“When volunteers are required, they need to be present in significant numbers and often close to the areas where the fires will occur.”

Local firies are more likely to have the knowledge, familiarity and expertise in fuel, weather conditions and topography

The numbers are impressive – 70,000 volunteers keep the NSW Fire Service going – the largest such brigade in the world. The size implies a huge management task for co-ordinating fire brigades, involving around 900 paid staff. A further 7,000 paid firefighters are employed by Fire and Rescue NSW to handle the metropolitan areas, via some 335 fire stations.

In Queensland, 36,000 people have signed up to the Rural Fire Service, with 5,000 currently active. Volunteers (hereafter known in Australian parlance as ‘vollies’), are in the same category as those enlisting with Emergency Services. They never know when they will get the call, but when they do, it’s an open-ended job with no ‘knock-off’ (quitting) time.

Ellis told The Feed that Australia would be unable to manage the largest fire events without the ‘surge capacity’ volunteers represent.

If you have ever met a ‘firie’, they will tell you they are doing it for the community. Signing up to be a bush brigade volunteer is a selfless task, which for the past 30 years has drawn reliable numbers of people.

But despite the large numbers answering the call to fight spring bushfires in NSW, Victoria, South Australia,Tasmania and Queensland, volunteer numbers are dropping.

A Productivity Commission report shows that 17,000 volunteer firefighters have quit over the past five years. Stuart Robb of the NSW Rural Fire Service told The World Today the main issue was that long-serving firefighters were getting older. In NSW, where vollies outnumber career firefighters 10-1, 40% of firies are over 50.

Robb said people in the age group 25-45 were less able to be involved in community firefighting because of work and family responsibilities.an

The trend is also evident in the US, where a study showed that volunteer numbers dropped from 814,850 in 2015 to 682,600 in 2017. The National Volunteer Fire Council said these were the lowest numbers since the survey began in 1983. The decline in volunteer activity is most noticeable in communities of fewer than 2,500 people. Ageing is a noticeable factor, with 53% of volunteers aged over 40 and 32% over 50.

The US government is working to alleviate this issue, with a grant of $40 million to help pay for volunteer recruitment and retention. Congress is working towards making volunteer firefighters eligible for student loan forgiveness and housing assistance.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has been lobbied by a group of 23 former fire and emergency service leaders. They want the government to declare a climate emergency and commit to investing in more water-bombing aircraft and firefighting resources.

Researcher Blythe McLennan of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University says that bushfire volunteering is at a crossroads.

If we are fighting bushfires into the next decade with the same or declining numbers of volunteers, using the same approaches we use today, then clearly the job will be much harder and the demands on volunteers will become more extreme.

One of the major reasons for a decline in volunteer numbers, particularly after prolonged and serious fires, is that volunteer firies may suffer financial hardship as a result of missing days at work.

The Volunteer Fire Fighters Association (NSW) has asked the NSW Rural Fire Service to investigate the feasibility of providing financial support via a welfare/relief fund to volunteer fire-fighters during protracted bushfire emergencies.

Eukey Qld Fire Brigade volunteer Rob Simcocks says it’s not just about time off and lost income, but also the sheer exhaustion and mental health concerns after such big efforts.

“It’s not just the time on the fireline, but also a lot of recovery time where you just have to rest, getting nothing else done.”

He agrees volunteer numbers are declining but thinks the age estimates are conservative, given that his local brigade has an average age of 60.

This reminds me of the story my late father-in-law used to tell, of his time fighting forest fires in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.

“I retired when I turned 75 because I was embarrassing the young blokes who told me they couldn’t keep up with me.”

That may be a shaggy dog story, but it typifies the attitude of people who take on a dangerous job to keep their neighbours out of harm’s way.

 

Human Rights and Halloween

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

that respects and promotes human rights; and

  • to help promote a dialogue about the nature, meaning

and scope of human rights.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Roads More Or Less Travelled

All roads lead to Canberra – at least that’s what most politicians think. This week we’re having a break from politics, the plight of refugees and why Australia’s asylum seeker policies are on the nose. Today guest writer Laurel Wilson (aka She Who Also Writes) looks at the hazards of the highway for travellers. This post contains 21 images. – Ed.

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Definitely NOT our next road rig..

Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, I’m feeling quite refreshed after our 6 week, 6,000 kilometre road trip around Queensland in our trusty 12ft caravan (despite the occasional mishap, chronicled elsewhere).

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Not this one, either

One of the positives in travelling is that it can give you the opportunity and inclination to study the ever-changing surroundings. Unlike those who object to outback travel because “you can drive for ages and not see anything”, I’ve always found there’s something new to experience as you drive along. Some of these experiences, such as the pungent stink of Gidgee in humid weather, are perhaps not ‘must does’, but it was a relief to find the source of that odour, when I was beginning to think that we had a leak in the caravan’s gas cylinder or the car had developed some nameless fault.

Having a naturally curious nature (unlike the woman living in Dingo, who neither knew nor cared how that small town got its unique name), I was intrigued by the extent and variety of roads we travelled on during our latest trip.

I began to wonder just how many kilometres of designated roads there are in Queensland. According to a Department of Main Roads factsheet, as of 2013-14 there were over 33,000 kilometres of State controlled roads (which includes over 5,000 kilometres of the National network). In addition, Queensland Local Governments are responsible for almost 155,000 kilometres of roads in their respective areas.

In our latest trip around Queensland, we travelled on all but one of the designated ‘National Highways’, the only exception being the Barkly Highway, which runs westward from Cloncurry. In all of our trip around Queensland, we managed to stay off the highway called ‘Bruce’, except for the 400 or so kilometres from Cairns to Townsville, where we had tickets to watch a North Queensland Cowboys Rugby League game – one of Johnathan Thurston’s last games (I realise that the bulk of readers neither know or care, but I don’t get to write this blog very often, so thought I’d take the opportunity…).

This time, our most westerly destination was Winton, where we spent four fascinating days at ‘The Vision Splendid – Outback Film Festival’.

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The Not So Mighty Bruce Highway, North Queensland

What constitutes a ‘National Highway’ seems to be open to some interpretation, but I’ve used a list supplied by Wikipedia (I know, I know, not necessarily the best source, but should be adequate for this purpose).

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Two lanes and well-maintained –west of Charleville.

Whether the roads we travelled on were ‘National’, ‘State’ or ‘local’ wasn’t always possible to tell. (Apparently the various tiers of government have a similar problem when deciding which tier is responsible for building and maintaining them.) And we really didn’t care who was ‘responsible’; we were more interested in their state of repair (or disrepair). To be fair, of the 6,000 kilometres we travelled, the great majority of the roads were at least two lanes wide, bitumen and either in very good repair or quite adequate.roads-travel

Give the road-trains a wide berth – they ain’t stoppingOnly a couple were gravel or ‘dirt’ and gave us (and the poor old caravan) a rough ride for our money. And one of those we can blame on the GPS, which decided to take us on a trip from Glenmorgan to Surat via the most circuitous route it could find.

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Hmm, wish we had a better map
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Do you guys know where we are?

The other was the ‘shortcut’ from Hughenden to ‘The Lynd’, some 250km to the North. We chose this road (The Kennedy Developmental Road) because it went past Porcupine Gorge National Park, which we wanted to visit, and was much shorter than the alternative route to our next destination. And after all, most of the lines on the map were solid red (indicating bitumen) rather than the dotted line for ‘dirt road’.

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Porcupine Gorge
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The author and editor (after the 1600 steps down and back)
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You can get to Porcupine Gorge on the bitument, a longer way around

As it turned out, the accent should have been on ‘developmental’, rather than ‘road’. There were frequent patches of the dreaded ‘corrugations’, in which the road surface consists of a series of ruts which run at right angles to the direction of travel. This is a phenomenon common to ‘dirt’ roads and apparently results mainly from the numerous vehicles travelling over the moveable surface of such roads. Regular grading of the road helps smooth out the corrugations, so it’s worthwhile trying to find out whether an unsurfaced road has been recently graded before you travel on it. Being of fairly ‘senior’ years, I’m quite used to travelling ‘off the bitumen’ and have met corrugations before. The general wisdom about negotiating corrugations is to drive at a reasonable speed (not necessarily too slowly, but not highway speeds either) and to drop the tyre pressures a bit if you usually run to higher pressures- though not really worth the hassle unless you’re stuck with a long stretch of ‘corro’.

The Kennedy Developmental Road was the site of one of our minor mishaps this trip. The continual bouncing of travelling across corrugations was eventually too much for the 30year old+ hinges on the wardrobe door, and we arrived at ‘The Lynd’ with the wardrobe door lying on the floor of the van. Interestingly enough, the clothes remained in the wardrobe! (Finding new hinges to fit, putting them on and getting the door to shut properly was a small triumph for ‘Handy Mandy’ and her trusty sidekick.)

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Right- No-one’s looking- let’s drive on the smooth side…

This time next year the road will probably be a much more comfortable drive, as there was plenty of roadwork going on as we drove this stretch.

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The dreaded corrugations on the way to The Lynd

 

 

 

 

 

 

We met these International travellers at ‘The Lynd’ – It’s a 1915 Model ‘T’ Ford. They prefer the dirt roads (see below) and avoid highways in their world travels. They have travelled to over 50 countries, raising money for the charity SOS Children’s Villages International.  http://www.tfordworldtour.org/

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original Queensland outback road

As you would expect, most sealed roads are black or grey, but we do come across some which, to my eye, are a rather fetching shade of pink. Some may see it as ‘tan’, but the idea of pink roads somehow appeals to me. I haven’t been able to find out why they are ‘pink’, but my theory is that it has something to do with the roadbase containing a fair proportion of the red dirt/sand common in many parts of Queensland.

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The pink brick road
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Pink’, don’t you think?

One of my pastimes while travelling is to take pictures while we are inside the car (and I promise I only do this when I’m the passenger). Most of the photos in this ‘blog’ are of that type. And a few shots of the roads more or less travelled:

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The road not travelled – near Winton
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On the straight and narrow to Georgetown
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The road to Dingo

 

 

 

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Sometimes the best road is the one leading home..

 

 

 

 

Press vote now

Combo Waterhole, source of inspiration for Banjo Paterson’s poem. Photo by Laurel Wilson.

Queenslanders who voted ‘Yes’ for four-year fixed parliamentary terms last weekend may live to rue the day. The people have spoken, although there is a vigorous debate about how well-informed they were at the time they voted. And while vote counting is not complete, critics are saying 53.1% for the affirmative is a poor result, considering it had bipartisan support.

The people certainly spoke back in 1967 when a referendum was held to count Aborigines as part of the human population − 90.77% of registered voters said ‘Yes’. (Voters were also asked to approve an increase in the number of members of the House of Representatives without increasing the number of Senators. That one got voted down.)

Sometimes politicians do that – sneak an extra question in which is arguably the real reason they are having a referendum in the first place. But the people aren’t stupid, are they?

There have been referendums held to consider questions less vital to human rights and equality than whether or not Aborigines should count as people. For example, in 1968 Tasmanians were asked if they wanted a casino in Hobart and (only) 53% said ‘yes’. In 1975 West Australians were asked to vote for or against daylight saving (No) and again in 1984 (also No). In 1992, after a three-year trial, Queenslanders were also asked to vote on this somewhat vexed question  and the ‘No’ vote got up then too.

Didn’t we get asked this question 25 years ago?

In 1991 voters were asked if they wanted the Queensland Parliament to have four-year terms. The proposal was narrowly defeated, with 51.1% voting against and 48.9% in favour.

University of Queensland Professor of Law Graeme Orr told FOMM one of the travesties of this year’s referendum was the ‘bundling’ of two separate issues, ie the question of whether to have ‘fixed terms’, but also whether to have four year terms instead of the current three. According to Professor Orr, the government of the day could have legislated for fixed (three year) terms, without the need for a referendum, as “the three-year term was entrenched in the old Constitution”.

Prof Orr said it was remarkable that this referendum could only attract a 53% ‘Yes’ vote, given both major parties backed it, there was paid advertising, high-profile support, and no organized ‘No’ case.

“It shows how less trusting people are today of the two big but dwindling parties.”

Prof Orr added that the last referenda which had bi-partisan support (in 1977 – to allow Territories to vote in referenda) attracted a 77.7% ‘Yes’ vote.

Saturday’s poll was the third ‘Yes’ result from eight Queensland referendums held since 1899. The result also defied a national trend, with only 18% of referendums passed since Federation. An astute local political observer remarked that the referendums which are won usually have bi-partisan support.

Federal referendums are much harder to win because not only do you need a majority, but at least four of the six states must also say ‘Yes’.

Only eight of the 44 referendum questions posed to the Federal electorate (38 of them were held prior to and including 1977), have been approved. Canberra has clearly lost its appetite for referendums as there have been only eight held since 1984, the last one being the failed bid (at a cost of $66.82 million) to turn Australia into a Republic in 1999.

A conscience vote would be cheaper

While a referendum in Australia is always a proposal to amend the Constitution, a plebiscite is a non-binding vote used to determine the electorate’s position regarding an important public question. So while Australia has not had a referendum since 1999, a plebiscite vote on same-sex marriage is very likely in the next year or two, unless the electorate cracks up about the mooted cost ($158.4 million), although accountants PwC distributed a press release which stated that lost productivity could push it out to $525 million.

While some political interests get mileage from playing up the unseemly cost of democracy, we calculated the per voter cost of Saturday’s exercise at just $3.73. The budget for Queensland’s 2016 referendum ($11.5 million) was relatively modest as it was held concurrently with local government elections. The State Government said this strategy saved Queensland taxpayers $5.1 million. FOMM asked Electoral Commission Queensland to identify the biggest single expense in holding a referendum. Forty percent of the budget ($4.60 million) went on postage, which tends to support the e-voting alternative discussed below.

Elections and referendums chew through serious money. Data drawn from the Australian Electoral Commission shows the five Federal elections held since 2000 cost $745+ million while another $8.26 million was spent on 10 by-elections and another $21 million on a half senate election in WA. So if PM Malcolm Turnbull makes good his threat and goes to a double dissolution in July, democracy in Australia will have cost us close to $1 billion in just 17 years.

E-voting – a good question for a referendum?

Surely in 2016 we could have our democratic say on things and spend less money? After all, hundreds of thousands of Centrelink, Medicare and ATO clients can log on to MyGov and carry out simple administrative tasks on their own behalf.

We’d only need to raise the bar a little to allow voters to vote from home, using dedicated WIFI gadgets, smart cards and ASIO-level backroom security.

Hackers, electoral fraud, I hear you say? How could it be more full of loopholes than the current system?

The long-term savings seem obvious. An online scheme would involve a large up-front cost manufacturing terminals and cards and setting up secure data management. They would also have to be installed in public libraries to ensure people who do not own a computer or a smart phone still get a vote. Special arrangements would also be needed for those who are too remote to have access to such technology.

But once the scheme was operating, it could be utilised not only for Federal elections, by-elections and referendums, but by all states and territories and local governments. The accumulated savings over, say a fixed, four-year term would be significant. This is not some random FOMM fantasy either – check out the e-voting experiences of the State of Victoria and countries like Switzerland and Estonia.

Girt by dire songs

An online system would need a trial run, preferably using a non-critical issue. May I suggest we revisit the 1977 plebiscite that asked Australians to choose one of four songs as the National Anthem? I say this on the basis that people tire of old songs that get played to death, particularly if they were sappy songs in the first place: I Go to Rio, Don’t Cry for Me Argentina and Living Next Door to Alice were all big hits in 1977.

First we’d need a national songwriting competition to come up with a short-list of songs, including one written by a person of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island descent. Historically, 90% of the people should agree with this. You might say we’ve got plenty of existing songs to choose from – From Little Things, This is Australia, Land Down Under, True Blue, Great Southern Land.

Dame Edna Everage’s duet with Loudon Wainwright III singing C. Carson Parks’ Somethin’ Stupid is not a contender for our national song circa 2017.

I just thought since it’s a public holiday and you have time to spare, and given that this is such a turgid subject and what’s another 100 words anyway, you should know such a thing exists. Happily no video of that performance could be found. But there is this.

Should we include the runner-up from the 1977 plebiscite? Can anyone remember the names of the three songs which were not Advance Australia Fair? See if you can remember without using your favourite search engine. I realise that anyone under 40 will struggle with this question, so I’ll give you another subtle clue – one song relates to a bloke camped by a billabong in the shade of a Coolabah tree; he’s sitting, watching, waiting till his billy boils.