The Goodwills Trio (Bob and Laurel Wilson and Helen Rowe) are performing on Saturday November 11 at 10.15am at the Maleny Music Festival. We will be at the Obi Obi venue following Brisbane Irish band, The Jar. We will have to keep to time for this set as one minute of silence is scheduled site-wide for 11am to mark Remembrance Day. This Facebook link should take you to the festival programme to help plan your time there.
This is one of the original songs we will be performing – a reflection on the hard times of the Depression when some Australian families lived in shanties on the edge of towns. See you soon.
We’re delighted to announce that the Goodwills Trio will be performing at this year’s Maleny Music Festival, which is on from Friday November 10 to Sunday Nov 12, 2023. Fiddler and singer Helen Rowe joins veteran duo Bob and Laurel Wilson to present what is becoming known as ‘harmonic folk’. – mainly originals with our special 3 voice blend.
This is the 10th anniversary of the Maleny festival, which was re-invented by Noel Gardner and friends. As we all know, the original Maleny Folk Festival, which started in 1987, morphed into the Woodford Festival, which has become one of the biggest music festivals in Australia. There was always a hankering to return to the small-scale, good vibes feel of a smaller festival. Apart from the Covid-19 interruptions, it has all gone well.
The programme looks good and we will be camping there for the duration. As to when we are performing, you’ll need to check the programme later in the year.
If you are within cooee of Nambour on Sunday June 18 what better way to spend an afternoon that a concert with celebrated songwriter Fred Smith and a reunion with The Goodwills.
Fred will be launching his new CD ‘Look,” a departure from his material about Afghanistan. Fred says it is about “the ordinary stuff of our lives and the world we live in: the speed of modern life, love, isolation, and the internet in a world that seems to be lurching forward by a rolling series of crisis.”
The Goodwills Trio are the support act for this concert at Nambour’s Black Box Theatre. Bob and Laurel and fiddle player Helen Rowe will present some of Bob’s songs arranged for three-part harmony. Maleny people will remember our long-running series of house concerts at Maleny. Fred performed there three times before his popularity necessitated a move to the RSL!
Sunday Folk organiser Karen Law tells us bookings are being made even at this early stage. A booking link is included below.
Sunday Folk is at the Black Box Theatre, 80 Howard Street, Nambour. Tickets are $25/$23 and children under 18 – $18.
The question Bob gets asked most about this song is – “Is there a book called The Theory of Control”? The title track from our most recent studio album was included on the compilation CD, Pick of the Crop 8, produced by the national folk music publication, TradandNow.
Featuring the exquisite fiddle playing of Silas Palmer.
Students protesting about abolition of free education Image courtesy of www.solidarity.org
I will be forever grateful to the late Gough Whitlam for allowing me an opportunity to pursue a free education. I was 30 at the time with no qualifications and a chequered work history. My future lot in life was looking like casual labourer/dish pig. Not that there’s anything wrong with good honest sweat of the brow. But my undoubtedly sharp mind was frustrated by menial work and I was at a roadblock.
At the time unemployment was high and I was struggling to find any kind of work. I’d left school at 15 and had been in constant employment ever since, most of it unsuitable, apart from a three-year stint as a trainee psychiatric nurse.
Then came the concept of a mature-age tertiary degree or the prospect of studying screen-writing at the Australian Film & Television School. The latter proved a hard nut to crack, so I opted for a three-year course in journalism and media studies. What a journey. There were four school terms in a year at the time, so I figured by Easter of the first year I’d know if I could cut it or not. My results were mostly A’s and B’s so I knuckled down to full-time study, hammering out assignments on an ancient Olympus typewriter picked up at a police auction.
My student colleagues wasted no time explaining the privilege of a free university education. In 1974 it had been ushered in as one of the first in an astonishing array of social policy reforms by one Edward Gough Whitlam, without doubt our most controversial politician.
Yesterday was Remembrance Day but also the 46tht anniversary of The Dismissal, the fateful day in 1975 when the Queen’s representative in Australia, John Kerr, sacked a sitting Prime Minister. Gough Whitlam came to power in 1972 with the memorable campaign ‘It’s Time’. And it most certainly was. In a few short years Whitlam and his government dragged Australia out of a 1950s mindset into the era of afros, paisley shirts and flared jeans.
Most people under 50 are unlikely to know this story unless they studied law, politics or social policy at university. On Labor’s election, Whitlam and his deputy, Lance Barnard, formed a duumvirate (a two-man cabinet). They then spent two weeks working on a massive amount of draft legislation. If you are of my generation, I suppose your life experience will dictate what you think is the crowning achievement of these social reforms.
For me it was a free tertiary education. For women (or men) going through an ugly divorce, it was the single-parent pension.
Regardless of a ‘free’ education, the life of full-time student was a pauper’s existence, devoting most of our time to qualifying for a job-related degree. I recall doing a deal with the university bookshop and my local dentist to pay off my debts in instalments. Meanwhile, I played guitar in a bush band, worked as a free-lance journalist and took casual jobs when I could.
It is now 32 years since free tertiary education was scrapped by Bob Hawke’s neo liberal Labor government, to be replaced with the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS). While Whitlam’s nemesis, Malcolm Fraser, tried ending free education in 1976 and again in 1982, it was Hawke who killed it off in 1986 by introducing a first-ever student fee. The Hawke government abolished free education by stealth, first with the $250 admission fee when students enrolled, then a fee system for international students before progressing to HECS in 1989.
The scheme began modestly, charging students a ‘proportion’ of the cost of their education. This morphed into open slather in 1994 when Labor allowed universities to ‘charge what the market would bear’, for tertiary courses.
As Tom Fiebig wrote in the socialist newsletter, Solidarity, a typical university student today will graduate with a $20,303 debt. Some 150,000 students now have more than $50,000 in debt.
Under HECS, students were given interest-free student loans, most predicated on not being due for repayment until one’s income reached a certain level.
So that was just one little thing that Whitlam and Barnard did, not nearly as universally acclaimed as the Medicare model. There was so much more: they abolished conscription, ended capital punishment, introduced no-fault divorce and a single-parent pension and started talks on Aboriginal land rights. There was equal pay for women, Legal Aid, the Federal Schools Commission, major subsidies for the arts and the National Sewerage Scheme, which put an end to Australia’s night cart collection system. While we are still today debating the need for an appropriate anthem, Gough got things started in 1972, giving God Save the Queen the flick and opting for Advance Australia Fair.
Whitlam finished our involvement in the Vietnam War, bringing the Australian Army Training Team home. Most troops, including conscripts, had already been withdrawn by his predecessor, Billy McMahon. What is not so well known is that when abolishing conscription, Whitlam arranged for the release of seven men who were in jail for refusing to go to war.
As one might expect when a new leader is stirring up a stagnant system, Gough Whitlam had his critics. He was hardly to blame for the 1970s global oil crisis, rampant inflation, lengthy recession and massive unemployment. But those disruptive events made Whitlam an easy target for those who successfully branded his government as poor economic managers.
I have chronicled many of these events in a song, ‘When Whitlam took his turn at the wheel’, which we posted on Bandcamp yesterday.
I did not have room for a verse about the ‘Blue Poles’ incident. Whitlam had opened the National Gallery, which wanted to purchase a modernist painting by Jackson Pollack. The asking price was $1.3 million (at the time a third of the gallery’s annual budget). The gallery director needed the PM’s personal approval. Although he did not need to make the purchase price public, Whitlam did so, creating a political and media scandal. Alternatively, it symbolised his foresight and vision (or his profligate spending). In 2016 there was a fresh furore when Victorian Senator James Paterson urged the government to sell Blue Poles (citing an insured value of $350 million), to reduce debt.
A fine orator and debater and a compelling public figure, Gough Whitlam went well on the international stage. He was the first PM to visit China, but as the song says – ‘today nobody knows’.
(Satire)
Here’s a short transcript from an interview with a sympathetic community radio station.
Natasha: Welcome, Comrade. So what made you think about writing this song, Bob?
Bob: Well, Natasha, I read a few stories recently which observed that it was the 7th anniversary of Whitlam’s death. I started thinking about the legacy that he’d left and how today’s generation is probably blissfully unaware of his achievements”.
Natasha: You have written in a previous episode of FOMM that you met Gough one time and that it did not go well?
Bob: I made the mistake of handing him my card from the Courier-Mail where I was employed as a business journalist. He looked at the card, made a scathing comment about the newspaper’s campaign against historian Manning Clark, gave my card back, turned and walked away.
Natasha: You don’t mention that in the song, although you do take a swipe at Gough’s vanity?
Bob: Yes, he probably would have thought the song was about him.
Natasha: Thanks, Bob Wilson. This is Socialist Songs Hour and here is that song, When Whitlam took his turn at the wheel.
You can listen to the song on our Bandcamp page https://thegoodwills.bandcamp.com/ and if you like, add it to your digital music collection. Share with your friends.
Image: Passenger ferry The Pearl asunder in the Brisbane River, February 1896. Source State Library of Queensland
Most weeks this 1200-word essay comes with a copyright illustration. I’m not entirely sure it really needs one; as often when readers reply, they strip the image out. The weekly sourcing of a relevant image can be a bit time-consuming, but a worthy task.
It’s not an issue when the topic is covered by photos I have taken on the road or around town. She Who Also Takes Photos and other family members also contribute.
As a rule, I use images which are covered by a Creative Commons license, or I browse websites which provide free images.
On occasions, photographers and cartoonists I have worked with in the past positively respond to a request to use an image. As ours is a not-for-profit enterprise, the goal is to source free images.
I was lured into writing about copyright and images after emailing the media department at Queensland’s State Library. I was clarifying permission to use an image of a ferry disaster on the Brisbane River in 1896 to illustrate a new song. I have seen this image used in the media but assume those media outlets also sought permission. It is folly to assume otherwise.
When I worked in the daily newspaper business, I attended a workshop for journalists about using other people’s images. A professional photographer had written to (an un-named newspaper), complaining that it had used one of his images without permission or payment. Yes, honest mistakes happen in every business, but it won’t get you off the hook. Even though the image in question had been used as an icon (postage stamp size), the publisher still had to send the photographer a cheque. And fair enough too. The difference is that a license for a one-off use would have cost a fraction of what the publisher eventually stumped up.
That was a long time ago, when free-lance photographers roamed the continent and took ‘stock’ photos which they would sell and re-sell to media outlets all over the world. I once met such a character on the road in the Northern Territory. He was away from home a lot but made a handsome living taking images in remote locations and licensing them to media outlets.
Now, in the age of smart phones and instant communication, everyone’s a photographer. Many of us freely give our images away, sending in stunning winter morning or sunset snaps for the daily weather reports. What we used to call ‘spot news’ – that is, a news story derived from being in the right place at the right time, is also the province of anyone with a smart phone and an email account. Certainly if the story is big enough and the image one of a handful, whoever took it will command a fee.
You would probably be aware that many media outlets have made photographic departments redundant in recent years. This often involved giving long-serving staffers sizeable payouts. News Corp alone laid off about 100 staff photographers between 2017 and 2021.
Some ex-news photographers continued to work as free-lancers – weddings, parties, fashion shoots. But it seems clear that in many instances photo licensing agencies like Shutterstock, Alamy, Dreamstime and Getty Images have replaced staff photographers. As you might expect, some ex-staffers make a less reliable living providing images to said agencies.
Warning: copyright laws can and do keep changing
We should be clear about copyright. If you take a photograph, the copyright is automatically yours. Even if you have offered it to a media outlet, the copyright remains with you. The small print (non-exclusive license), is important, so make sure you are covered.
At this point I should talk about social media and sharing of content. Many publishers now allow sharing under a creative commons license (you can use the content but must attribute the source). Where the water gets muddy is when someone tampers with the original work or imitates it. For example, you will sometimes see on social media a photo of the famous five crossing Abbey Road, with other characters (e.g.The Simpsons) substituted. Correct me if I’m wrong, John, but is this now an infringement of copyright? A law passed in the UK in 2012 argued that if you intentionally re-create a famous photo, you may be in breach of copyright.
If you are an artist promoting your work on-line, take care when ‘curating’ content for a slideshow or video. It’s no defence to say, ‘I found it on Google’, which at the end of the day, is a only search engine which finds appropriate images on command. If your browse YouTube videos you will often see slideshows accompanying songs with not a credit in sight. Likewise, people who edit someone else’s image to to make an on-line joke (meme) are taking a risk if the image is not theirs to use. Anyone can use a reverse search app like TinEeye to see who owns a photo, so there are no excuses. Pixsy, a US-based tech firm which monitors photographic use for more than 100,000 clients, estimates that 85% of the images uploaded to the web are used without permission or license. In 2017 Pixsy compiled this fascinating list of the 10 most famous copyright cases.
Since 2012 or so, the massive improvement in smart phone photography has led to a process academics call “the democratisation of photography”. In social media you may also come across the phrase ‘pixels for all’. It’s all to do with the speed by which images are taken and then posted.
In a recent episode of the SBS crime drama Bosch, maverick detective Harry Bosch and partner Jerry Edgar visit a Los Angeles gang house, ostensibly to ask questions. The process goes awry as suspects are taken in for questioning. Punches are thrown and Jerry ends up throwing a suspect to the ground in a choke hold
“Police brutality!” yells one suspect (a gang enforcer). By the time Bosch and Edgar get back to police HQ, footage and photos taken by neighbours and bystanders are all over Facebook.
When I worked in newspapers (before digital anything), a photographer would have to (a) attend the scene), (b) take photographs and (c) hightail it back to the office to develop the film and come up with prints for the 2pm news conference.
Today, someone can lift an image from Facebook and slap it on to the relevant on-line news page in the time it takes to walk to the editor’s office and say, “we got the headshot”.
While daily media standards may have slipped, here at FOMM HQ we strive to do the right thing. If someone has decided to share their creative content with our wider audience, the least we can do is give them a byline. The free content websites (Pixabay, Unsplash, Free Images and others), link to photographers’ websites. Commonly the photographer suggests – “Buy me a coffee’’ – which is a hint to drop a few coins in their PayPal account.
As for historic images, anything taken before 1955 is in the public domain. The photo of the Pearl, a cross-river ferry that came to grief in 1896, originally appeared in The Queenslander, attributed to N Colclough. It may be out of copyright, but full marks to the librarians and photo editors who saved negatives like these for future generations to see.
This week is a 2 for 1 special – not only do you get to learn a few things about copyright, you can follow this link to my new song ‘The Pearl’. It’s free to have a listen.
A month after releasing their new EP ‘Culloden’, awarding-winning Celtic group Gone Molly will perform at a Goodwills house concert on Sunday April 28.
Brisbane-based Gone Molly comprises Sally Harris (singer-songwriter), Rebecca Wright (cello, vocals) and a new member, multi-instrumentalist Lachlan Baldwin.
Sally has been quietly building a repertoire of songs that bring together a love of history, mythology, traditional song, tunes and sessions. Sally, Rebecca and Lachlan bring these stories to life with exquisite cello lines, heart-melting harmonies and a flair for the theatrical.
Their debut album Gone Molly features songs that breathe life into colourful characters and tales imagined or discovered.
Gone Molly took home three gongs from the Australian Celtic Music Awards in 2018, including Artist of the Year and Celtic Group of the Year. Maleny sound engineer Pix Vane Mason won Producer of the Year for his work on the debut album.
Gone Molly was a finalist in the 2019 Queensland Music Awards, which came a week ahead of the launch of their EP “Culloden” in late March.
The debut album has received favourable reviews and radio play in Australia, the UK, Canada and the US, resulting in many requests from other folk musicians to cover their songs. A second EP is due to be released in November 2019 ahead of a planned tour of the UK in 2020.
The Gone Molly house concert on Sunday April 28 starts at 2pm with an opening set from hosts and house band The Goodwills (Bob and Laurel Wilson and guest Helen Rowe). Tickets are $15. Afternoon tea will be available for a gold coin donation.
Evan Mathieson at the Dorrigo Bluegrass and Folk Festival
Evan Mathieson is your genuine old-fashioned ‘folkie’ who makes and plays his own unique ‘Aussieharps’. He is also an accomplished guitarist and blues harpist who has a wide-ranging taste in music, from Songs of the Sea through Jazz and Blues as well as Trad and Contemporary. Evan is also known for his recordings of the late Harry Robertson’s songs about seafaring and whaling.
Those who frequented the UpFront Club’s monthly folk sessions, a Bit of Folk on the Side, will remember Evan’s entertaining sets.
His tongue-in-cheek philosophy is: “There are only two types of music- good and bad.”
Hosts ‘The Goodwills’ (Bob & Laurel Wilson) will play an opening set, followed by afternoon tea and then the featured artist.
To book and for venue directions, please phone Laurel 5435-2333 or email: goodwills@ozemail.com.au
Adm: $15. Homemade afternoon tea/coffee and goodies available.
Goodwills’ house concerts are sponsored by the Queensland Folk Federation
House concert dates and other news
We are currently juggling dates for house concerts in April, June, August and October. We are pleased to announce that Brisbane trio Tin Star (Cathy Bell, Penny Boys and Dan Grant) have confirmed for June 10. Other dates will be added later.
Hopefully some of our house concert fans got to hear Fred Smith and Liz Frencham play at the Maleny RSL on February 2. Fred has played three house concerts at our place but last time we had to turn too many people away. The RSL gig, which we helped to promote and also played at, was most successful with 130 people attending.
Cat-lovers look away now. Land management and wildlife conservation groups have been increasingly concerned about the escalating feral cat population, particularly in northern Australia, where wild cats have few predators and vast swathes of unpopulated territory to scour for food.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) estimates there are 15 million feral cats in Australia, with each killing an average five animals a night.
These figures are conservative and already two years out of date. Consider this: an average cat has one to eight kittens per litter and up to three litters per year. A single pair of cats and their kittens can produce as many as 420,000 kittens in just seven years.
Whatever the numbers, they are truly, as Grand Designs host Kevin McLeod might say – “vast”. So far the control of feral cats has fallen to commercial hunters and rangers (using humane traps and rifles), trapping and monitoring and baiting programs. The Federal Government has in recent years been trialling a new feral cat bait ironically dubbed Curiosity, specially formulated to cull feral cats and minimise the incidental deaths of other natives species. It is hoped the new poison will replace Eradicat (1080-based bait).
Yes, yes, I know – this is reminding you of a Little River Band song, (‘Curiosity killed the cat.’) I dimly recall interviewing John Farnham for a student newspaper and asking if he was going to perform the song that night. Farnham, who was lead singer with LRB from 1982 to 1986, admitted he had not yet learned the song. That’s a fair digression from the original subject, although now you’ve got the bloody tune stuck in your head, right?
Curiosity ® was the subject of a 2013 trial at Roxby Downs in South Australia, to trap feral cats in a trial area and monitor their survival using radio transmitting collars before and after baiting. Native wildlife species were monitored to determine whether or not the baits led to a decline in population size at the site. Here are the results.
In 2014 Environment Minister Greg Hunt appointed Gregory Andrews as Australia’s first Threatened Species Commissioner. The Commissioner’s role is to develop priority actions to prevent extinctions and halt the decline of Australia’s most threatened species. The Commissioner will oversee the next stage of Curiosity, which Mr Hunt said was showing promise as ‘an effective and humane approach to the problem.’
Curiosity comprises a meat-based sausage containing a small hard plastic pellet filled with toxin. Feral cats do not chew their food so will reliably swallow portions of the sausage including the pellet. Most native animals nibble and chew their food so will reject the pellet.
“The Curiosity bait for feral cats uses a new toxin called para-aminopropiophenone, or PAPP, which is considered best-practice world-wide and is analogous to putting the animal into a sleep from which they do not wake up,” Mr Hunt said.
Feral cats, which are notoriously difficult to trap and appear to be less interested in baits than live prey, have forced 20 species into extinction and are putting 124 others under threat.
In July RMIT University began a research project into the extent of feral cat control across Australia and to estimate the number of cats removed from the environment each year.
Research director Richard Faulkner told FOMM the aim of the survey is to see how (as a nation) we are measuring up against the Threatened Species commissioner’s strategy/target – a cull of two million by 2020. Mr Faulkner was surprised by the strong participation rate.
“When we launched the survey six weeks ago we were not sure how it would go. We anticipated that 500 participants would be good – we are now at 3,400 and counting!”
The national survey aims to gather responses from rural and remote regions of Australia as well as suburban areas.
In 2014, Greg Hunt, confronted with damning evidence from the CSIRO, called for an eradication program including development of a biological control. The CSIRO study found that mammal extinctions were 40% higher than previously estimated and feral cats ranked higher than climate change as the primary cause.
While advocating measures including “island arks” and biological controls, Hunt warned that the latter could be worse than the problem if not properly controlled.
The ‘island ark’ concept – where pests are removed from a fenced reserve or island which is then re-stocked with endangered species – has worked well in New Zealand. Predators including cats, possums, rodents and mustelids (ferrets, stoats and weasels), were removed from Tiritiri Matangi and Kapiti Island, both now havens for native birds (and bird watchers).
Meanwhile the vast northern Australian landscape has become a happy hunting ground for feral cats. Arnhem Land covers 97,000 square kilometres and has a human population of 16,000 or so. If you discount the probably rare moments when a feral cat goes down to a river to drink and becomes croc food, cats are free to roam and multiply.
Some of the newer baiting proposals include ecologist John Read’s “grooming trap” which sprays toxic gel on the cat (which licks it off when grooming).
There is also a project dubbed ‘Toxic Trojans’ using live prey to attract and kill cats.
There are arguments against biological controls, baiting and trap-alter-and-release programs and you will find most of them outlined here by animal rights group PETA.
Some of Australia’s feral cats are domestic moggies gone astray, but they are not the dingo-sized beasts seen in Arnhem Land and the western deserts. Many of Australia’s feral cats are believed to be descendants of those brought by Dutch explorers as early as the 1600s.
“Most of the cats we’re talking about are really wild animals that don’t engage with humans,” Richard Faulkner says.
Australian Wildlife Conservancy (AWC) manages more feral cat and fox-free areas on mainland Australia than any other organisation. The largest areas are Scotia in western NSW (a feral predator-free area of 8,000 hectares) and Mt Gibson in WA (7800ha). Larger still, Newhaven (65,000ha in the Northern Territory), is under construction.
My contribution to this subject was a dark song written after a few weeks travelling in the NT outback where we saw a feral cat cross the Stuart Highway in the middle of the day. His was an arrogant, purposeful trot, as if this cat knew its scant risks of being killed were limited to sparse road traffic and wedge-tailed eagles (the latter probably more at risk of being run over as they scavenge road-kill).
Sometimes at night, when I’m taking the wheelie bin up to the road (trying to beat my PB), I hear a tinkling bell. This would probably be the neighbourhood cat, alerting night critters to its whereabouts by a bell attached to its collar. Good move that, and it makes puss easier to find when the owners want to lock her away for the night.
“So keep your cats locked up at night while you’re sleeping,
Make sure they wear a bell,
Out in the desert they’re quietly creeping, just how many it’s hard to tell;
In Arnhem Land we sit around the campfire, singing the Feral Cat Blues,
While descendants of our long-lost cats make the cover of the NT News,
Now that we have your attention, perhaps you could advise us what to do about our modest portfolio of shares, the value of which, in line with the rest of the Australian share market, is down 20% from April last year. Retirees tend to be more jittery about share market gyrations than your high-earning 30-somethings who have another 30 or so years to remedy the situation.
She Who Has Been Telling Me To Sell Since April says the solution is to report the diminished value of the portfolio to Centrelink and our part-pension will part-compensate. In response, I wait for the market to bounce back. Methinks the cat is dead. “Now is the time to buy more of the same shares cheaply and lower our unit cost average,” I opine. (“Idiot” I hear someone say from the other side of the hedge, where we are doing our own trimming due to a lack of cash to hire a robust young person).
Veteran Queensland property developer Archie Douglas gave me some unsolicited advice at my “going away party” at a Brisbane hotel, circa 2005. Friends from my place of employment and city business people who had a grudging respect for me came along for drinks. I was 56 and had opted out of the mainstream media in pursuit of a calmer life, more music and more independence. We had some drinks, there was finger food and I got up on stage and played a half-dozen songs.
Time to smell the roses
Archie, who was 60-something then, backed me into a corner and told me about the dangers of letting the R-word creep into my consciousness. He urged me to never stop working, in one form or another. If I was fed up with what I was doing, step back, have a rest, then jump back into something less stressful and more suited to my temperament.
So advised, I set up one of those consultancies, you know, Bob Wilson and Associates Who Cannot Be Named. The first two years went really well; we got more work than we actually wanted, so in the third year downsized a bit. Just in time for the Global Financial Crisis. Timing, Bob.
Archie’s been good at jumping into something else. He and his brother Gordon, who founded PRD Realty (now Colliers International), started Halcyon, a property development company which creates over-50s communities on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Brisbane’s fast-spreading northern suburbs.
Although he’s chairman, Archie doesn’t have to go into work (unless he wants to). “I have the time to do the things I want to do,” he said, while agreeing with me that the notion of retirement had changed, probably for the better.
The closet songwriter emerges
When I first ‘came out’ as a singer-songwriter at my 50th birthday, a few of my business acquaintances were perplexed. “It must be good to have a hobby,” said one. “There’s no money in it, is there?” asked another. “Do you get royalties?” asked another.
Seventeen years later, I can answer all of those questions. Yes, it’s great to have a hobby and work at it as part of your day job, to wrap it inside your consulting business and make it official. Is there money in making music? A better question might be “how do you value making music?”
Blood pressure’s spot on, cholesterol not bad at all for a man who could afford to lose a few kilos, no heart problems, no diabetes, no outbursts of nuttiness as long as I take my ‘nutty pills’. Time has become my currency.
Not that the world in general needs to know, but I earned more in royalties than CD sales in 2014. That’s not to say CD sales have been that bad, I’ve been lucky to have songs included on compilation CDs with national and international distribution. A few people even cover my songs. It’s what you’d call an emotionally charged, passive investment.
Eighty is the new 65
There is a growing anti-retirement chorus, notably from former Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett. Some politicians have been urging older people to ‘stay in harness’ as a means of pushing the retirement age out to 70 or beyond, thus deferring the evil day when the state lurches into unsustainable deficit.
The discussion about retirement and whether it is an irrelevant concept has a lot to say about the collective perception of work and the value of work. Whose contribution to the good of the community is more valuable − someone who earns $100k+ advising corporate clients on communicating with their public, or the busker who puts a smile on people’s faces and mows lawns when he needs to pay the rent?
I was steered into this subject via a couple of people I know who ‘pulled the pin’ after working full-time into their early 70s. My advice to older people who want/need to keep working past 65 is to negotiate a four-day week; a rest day, a weekend, and they’ll pay less tax. It should go without saying that people who are still working and earning at 70 are (a) good at their job and (b) either have obligations to their clients that go well past earning an income, or (c) want to stave off the inevitable day when they will have to go home to an empty house, or to a distant partner who has become used to a day-time routine without the other half of the relationship.
Over the past decade I have come to perceive retirement as leaving your paid employment in search of alternatives, which is what Archie was advocating. The main risks for someone leaving the job they have been doing routinely for the past 25-35 years are the loss of social networks with workmates and acquaintances, the loss of a daily routine and the risk to your primary relationship which can happen when the previously absent partner is underfoot, 24/7.
And a word from Citizen Jeff
Jeff Kennett, who visited much rapid change upon Melbourne and Victoria in just seven years, has strong opinions about retirement.
“Retirement equates to death,” he opined in the Herald Sun in 2011. “One of the great lessons of ageing and witnessing ageing is the impact that retirement has on so many people, particularly men.
It can be deathly. I shall never retire.”
Many men are not properly prepared for retirement, he wrote. “You can only fish or play golf so many times a week.”
Kennett observed that as people advanced into retirement they often became less interesting. Their interests narrow as their interaction with work colleagues lessens, along with their interest in current affairs.
Kennett, chairman of the depression initiative BeyondBlue since 2000, is right insomuch that many men, particularly those who have held senior positions in government or private enterprise, feel lost when their networks are severed. The struggle with relevancy can be acute for people who have held positions of power and/or were held in high public esteem. They become the “Paul Who?” of a sarcastic song I wrote about the cult of celebrity.
When I left the orthodox workforce, people urged me to “keep up your contacts – stay in touch”. But as the years slid by it became apparent I did not have much in common with people still locked into high-stress careers and office politics.
Archie, we have smelt the roses and they smell just fine.
If you are within cooee of Nambour on Sunday June 18 what better way to spend an afternoon that a concert with celebrated songwriter Fred Smith and a reunion with The Goodwills.
