This piece appeared in the Melbourne Age in January 2004
I’ve just had my worst ever day of shopping and it had absolutely nothing to do with the annual post-Christmas sales. The crowds were fine, I managed to find a car park in less than 10 minutes and I even remembered my green carry bag so I wouldn’t destroy the environment.
No, my shocker experience was linked to something far deeper and more troublesome than crowds or parking. The sole cause of my daeus-horribillus was that creeping mug of a Christmas present – the gift voucher.
While there’s no formal research on the emerging popularity of the gift voucher, my highly academic questioning of three shop assistants revealed that this Christmas was, as one put it “a voucher boom Christmas.” In our hectic, self-absorbed world, the voucher makes perfect sense.
Now I don’t know how many others received these pretty bits of cardboard or plastic but I’ll bet you would number in the thousands or even hundreds of thousands. You know the ones, they usually have a line that says ‘From’ where the friend or relative nicely prints their name followed by a “To” where your name appears. Underneath that is a dollar amount that firmly fixes your value to the said relative or friend. I’d guess some vouchers have three figures or even four. Mine only had two, and I received three of ‘em. They were all for the same amount and all from relatives. For a while I was pleased that I’d managed to be consistent in my dealings with family. That feeling didn’t last long.
For what a voucher effectively does is put the effort of gift decision-making and purchase firmly back on the head of the receiver. Rather than taking time and effort to search for the right gift for the right person, the voucher buyer simply says ‘stuff it, I’m not gonna battle these Christmas crowds and search for a gift that shows I’m really thinking of ‘em, I’ll just buy ‘em some credit and they can do the work.” The buyers are actually thinking of themselves!
Now I know I’m male and not that much into shopping. I know going to a mall doesn’t thrill me much, and yes, I’ll admit it, I’ve also been guilty of buying gift vouchers. This Christmas I gave two. Yet my guess is that even the most ardent shoppers go through some anxiety when doing their inevitable voucher ‘dumping’.
My 10 year-old daughter is into shopping big time. She mainly hunts for earrings and clothes, yet is also into shoes, cosmetics and anything else she’s not allowed to buy with her pocket money. As she also had a voucher from a popular CD outlet to ‘dump’ and as she usually has no trouble making decisions, I thought I’d take her along.
We went to the popular CD outlet first. I thought a bit of solid 10 year-old decision making with swift purchase would set us off on the right foot. I was wrong. After 30 minutes browsing the racks I realised she really only knew two acts and both Shania and Missy were delivered by Santa. Faced with 40 thousand CDs and DVDs she went into buyer shock and was frozen by too much choice. I knew how she felt as I go through the same thing every time I go to the video-hire store. I’d rather they gave me a list of five and made me choose from them.
I then made the most crazy business deal I’ve made in 2004. “Would you like me to give you the $30 cash and I’ll use the voucher when I want to buy a CD?” Her decision was instant and now I’ll have to go back to the mall to dump the voucher at some other time. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
We then went to the bookstore to dump two of my vouchers and where I experienced the same decision anxiety as my daughter. Faced with millions of titles, I was bamboozled by choice. There was nothing I particularly wanted and ended up getting some books ‘on sale’ I had only remotely heard about and that added up to my personal two-digit value.
Our final voucher dump was at a large department store where I was determined to buy a new tie. Now I haven’t shopped for ties in years as ‘significant others’ have always given them as gifts. I have no idea what’s ‘in’ and what’s ‘out’ so using the video store idea I collected five reasonable ties in order to narrow down the field. I thought each tie would easily fit my voucher value and was stunned to discover that even at the sales, each tie was worth more than double the value one family member had put on me.
My daughter then came over with a tie she said was really cool. She had recently finished a geometry unit at school and the tie was covered in angular shapes. She pointed out a parallelogram. The best thing though, was that the tie fitted my voucher value. I now own the tie.
Giving a gift means caring about someone. It involves knowing what they like and taking the time to find the gift that will in some way add to their life, or at least not diminish it. My new-year resolution then, is to avoid the gift voucher completely during 2005. As hard as it may be in our fast-paced, news hardened world, I’m going to try to find the time and energy to choose meaningful gifts that are symbols of care, rather than symbols of my own self-focused busy-ness. By doing so, the ritual of gift giving for me at least, will hold so much more.
This piece first appeared in the Melbourne Age in April 2005
Anzac Day is over for another year, and this year for the first time, we’ve been sobered not by the ritual of what the day represents, but by the spectre of what the day could become.
This year we’ve seen TV footage of the tons of rubbish left on the hillsides…rubbish left by Australian patriots with a hunger for fast food and a reluctance to take their rubbish with them. We’ve seen images of the enormous video screens used to bombard the crowd with hits by the Bee Gees, James Taylor (what has HE got to do with Anzac Day?) and Eric Clapton (likewise!).
Canada’s ‘National Post’ on Tuesday described the Gallipoli crowd as ‘young people who spent much of the weekend drinking and partying at a campout near the site of Australia’s most significant losses of the First World War’. They went on to label the event as a ‘piss-up that rivalled any major concert weekend.’ Isn’t it great to see a leading overseas newspaper describe the event in such glowing terms?
Closer to home the supermarket shelves have been chockers with a dazzling variety of Anzac biscuits. No doubt Woolies and Coles did very nicely out of that thank you. We have Anzac footy games, Anzac flags and a burgeoning Anzac paraphernalia market that will soon rival that of Valentines Day. The Australian Ebay site is currently offering ‘Huge deals on Anzac products” Why, there’s even ‘Anzac Day flag style umbrellas with free post for $19.99’. Bargain!
Our television channels dedicated umpteen hours of highly paid commercial airtime to Anzac Day. The fact that the time delay meant we could actually watch the Dawn Service without getting up at dawn was a marketer’s delight. TV advertising types will be examining the ratings figures closely to tweak next year’s broadcast. Perhaps the March could be cut just a bit shorter so we could get a panel discussion thingy in prior to the actual service. Perhaps there could be an Anzac Eve Service as well and maybe a sponsored pre-dawn sound and light show could stretch the coverage a little.
I even heard people wishing one another a ‘happy Anzac Day’. Why then can’t we have Anzac Day cards that we give to friends and loved ones? Brilliant!
The new battle of Gallipoli lies not with some road going too deeply into a hillside or a car park being built too close to a battlefield. The new battle lies in the probable commercialisation of a significant date that needs no hype and no spectacle to pull the heartstrings of those who care. The new soldiers will be those like RSL Victoria Chief Executive John Deighton who was disgusted at the “lack of respect” shown by attendees at the Gallipoli service. They will be fighting not only the media types who see live coverage of the event as an enormously profitable advertsing vehicle, but the myriad of event organisers, promotion marketers and entrepeneurs who see the world as simply a marketplace.
No matter how badly it may sit with business, the world is more than just a shop. It is a children’s playground, a concert stage, a hospital, a game of hopscotch, a school and a garden. It is many things that don’t necessarily revolve around consumerism, advertising and hype. Anzac Day is also one of these things. A day when simplicity and silence can paint a far more memorable picture than any Bee Gees film clip or televised spectacle.
This whole concept is anathema to marketers around the world, yet lets hope that somehow, common sense can prevail and Anzac Day will be spared from the galloping maddness of contemporary consumerism.
This piece first appeared in the Melbourne Age in September 2004
The message from big business during the current reporting season is clear. We’re 
doing very well thank you! The past quarter has seen record profits from Newcrest, Woolworths, Rio Tinto, IAG and Pacific Brands to name just a few. These aren’t just profits in the millions, but profits rated in the billions. Rio’s last profit registered 1.4 billion. BHP Billiton’s was 7.6 billion. Now that’s a big number. I previously thought a billion was only a number astronomers used, yet a billion is actually a thousand million. I know because I looked it up.
Yet these figures represent only a third of the much-discussed ‘triple bottom line’ now expected from big business. The triple bottom line involves reporting not only on financial matters, but environmental and social factors as well. The recently published Corporate Responsibility Index (The Age, August 28) rated companies according to a number of criteria including corporate values and community involvement. It was a terrific start in assessing big business on more than just financial performance.
Yet Australian business is slow when it comes to thinking beyond the dollar bottom line. Community partnerships, the concept that big businesses can band together to support initiatives that advance society is far more popular in the USA and Britain. The Levi Strauss Company recently pioneered the Community Investment Team (CIT) approach, where over 100 CITs around the world identify and invest in worthwhile projects.
The London Benchmarking Group is another. This is an association of unrelated businesses that donate to specific need areas. Companies such as BP, IBM UK, Marks & Spencer and Whitbread view social investment as a business obligation, and see no need to ‘own’ the investment as a brand recognition or PR tool. The linking together of businesses to foster social development may provide some marketing leverage, yet it’s the power of joint investment that’s more important. In this way, massive investment from a group of companies can be made towards society, and massive results benchmarked. It’s really quite simple.
In Australia, the areas of social concern have always been education and healthcare. The robust argument lately has centred more on education, and specifically federal government funding to the private school system. There’s either rage over the perceived neglect of the public system or rage over the possible withdrawal of funds from private schools. There’s also an enormous chasm when it comes to educational resources across both sectors. Not every private school is well resourced, while not every public school is broke.
Yet what if our big end of town took the lead from some other countries and saw education not only as the responsibility of government and individuals, but of the corporate sector as well…and I don’t mean the corporate takeover of our schools by Krispy Crème or Macdonalds!
An Australian equivalent of the London Benchmarking Group may consist of companies like Rio Tinto, Woolworths, BHP Billiton and IAG. Lets call them the ‘Aussie Helpers’ just for fun. These ‘Helpers’ may identify a few specific issues that need to be addressed during a year, and may decide that 5% of their total net yearly profit is all they can afford. They may argue that they already give to other charities, the arts, sports and community events so 5% is reasonable. Fair enough.
If 5% of net profit came from these four companies alone a total of 512.6 million dollars could be dedicated to particular issues over the year.
Then let’s say they decided to allocate just half of this towards the public and private education of Australians. Let’s call this the ‘Aussie Helper Education Fund’…a fund with 256 million dollars. If my research is correct, this is more than the total public works budget for Victoria’s schools in 2004.
Their advisors may nominate 150 public schools and 50 private schools that really need a hand across the country. Some may only get enough to build a new classroom. Others may get an assembly hall, specialist teachers or new heaters. Two and a half million among 200 schools buys a lot of resources.
Now if the top 30 companies in Australia gave 2.5% of net profit, we would see such a dramatic balancing in our education resources that the great private/public school divide would no longer be an issue. Imagine!
I can hear the cries of ‘red under the bed’ now. Yet doesn’t it seem a little odd that in the days of record profits from the big end of town, we are still experiencing an enormous chasm in the educational resources available to our children? Perhaps with just a little cooperation from our corporate champions we could not just narrow the divide, but fill it completely. By doing so, these champions would add substantially to their triple bottom line at a time when Australians are suddenly realizing the true meaning of billion…a potentially dangerous piece of learning.
This piece first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2005
In 2000, Bilal and Mohammed Skaf were sentenced to a total of 79 years jail for their part in a horrifying series of gang rapes in Sydney’s western suburbs. Even with their collective 79 years imprisonment, the youngest of the Skaf brothers could be released as early as 2013….eight years from now. The victims, who undoubtly know their rapists’ possible release dates all too well, will be around 29 years old. I wonder how they’ll feel as 2013 ticks over?
In our search for a just and appropriate punishment for such crimes, we’ve opted to take the easy option once again. Our penal system, a system where ‘like meets like’, creates an uneasy sense of security in that it’s a system that many sex offenders ultimately leave in order to rejoin the community. It’s a system where ‘rehabilitation’ revolves around psychological counselling and where repeat offence is nothing unusual.
Its time therefore to look at a different punishment and rehabilitation formula; one that will create a sense of security for the victims, a sense of security for a community obviously alert to the horror of sex crimes, and one that in many ways creates a more tolerable after-prison experience for the perpetrators.
Castration is currently the sex-crime punishment in several US states and is used as a treatment for repeat sex offenders in many European countries. The actual form of castration varies from chemical castration, where the perpetrator needs monthly injections, to surgical castration which involves removal of the testicles. Whatever the form, castration is a proven method of reducing not only the offender’s sexual urges, but the aggressive traits that produce the violent sex crimes we’ve seen over the past five years.
A recent German study compared 100 surgically castrated sex offenders and 35 non-castrated sex offenders ten years after their release back into the community. The repeat sex-crime rate of castrated offenders was 3%, while the repeat rate for non-castrated offenders was an astonishing 46%. Other studies from Demark and Czechoslovakia reveal similar results, with the Danish study revealing that the few repeat sex-crimes by castrated offenders were all non-aggressive and non-violent.
In Alabama, legislation is currently being debated where perpetrators of certain sex crimes are chemically castrated for a period of 10 years after their release from prison, and are required to wear electronic anklets for the remainder of their lives. While the actual legislation is likely to be tempered, Alabama won’t stand alone in introducing chemical castration. There is even a call that chemical castration doesn’t go far enough, and that mandatory surgical castration is the most appropriate penalty for violent sex crimes. In light of the violent gang rapes experienced in NSW, many in Australia would agree.
There will no doubt be a cry from civil libertarians that castration in any form is barbaric and not a punishment suited to a civilized and democratic society like Australia. I would urge these individuals to also consider if the degree of child sexual abuse is a hallmark of our civilized society? If the number of rapes, only of fraction of which are reported, is also an indication of our advanced system of being? 11,000 people contacted NSW Police in the year to June 2004 to report a sexual assault. This included 63 gang rapes and 320 child sexual assaults. Our ‘civilized’ punishment and rehabilitation approach is clearly working.
A true civilized society sees the sociopathic behaviour of the child sexual abuser or rapist as a condition that must be dealt with on both psychological and physiological levels. Our current fixation with prison-based psychological rehabilitation programs is not only costly, but clearly not providing either the victims, or the community with any sense of continued security. Strangely enough, the current system also provides no security for those offenders who claim to be at the mercy of urges that are virtually impossible to control. In the USA, it isn’t uncommon for sex offenders to undergo voluntary castration, knowing that a life out of prison is far preferable to a life inside.
It’s also true that a civilized society must look at what is best for the victims of these crimes ahead of what is best for the perpetrators. A sense of security for the victims above all else is what we should be aiming for. Knowing that the perpetrator is unlikely to commit the same sort of crime on release, and be largely incapable of doing so, would give some degree of security to those who have surely suffered enough.
As we hear this week of yet another series of violent rapes, committed it seems by one perpetrator, we must look at a punishment that fits the crime. If the outcry surrounding Otto Darcy-Searle is any indication, it’s a debate Australia is ready for.
This piece appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in July 2005
Attention professional sportsmen everywhere. Now listen up lads. I understand that after a few beers post-game you may get a bit testy and feel like a rumble with someone who’s given you some lip. I can understand you getting hot under the collar during a game and having a wild swing at someone just to relieve the tension. I’m even beginning to understand that as 21st century men you find it tempting to send smutty text messages to women you’ve just met or may not have met at all.
The thing that sticks in my craw is something that no one’s mentioned over the past few months, yet is irritating to me and my family. It concerns language, and I know you’ve had enough of academics telling you how to speak and what to say, but this is pretty important.
My 10-year-old daughter and I like to watch the footy on TV occasionally.
Now while she can’t spell “league” or “union” and would probably spell the “Aussie” in Australian Rules Football with an “O”, she can understand when someone mouths the “F”-word clearly on the television.
She won’t ask anything about the umpire’s rulings or the crazy mixed metaphors of the commentators, yet when it comes to that “F”-word, she knows every time one of you screams it out. “Dad, he said that word again!” she says – often. As a matter of fact, we’ve started to keep score to see which team says it most in each game. Sometimes there are more “F”-words than actual points (but that’s usually only in Carlton or Newcastle games).
Now if you were Lleyton Hewitt yelling the same word at the Davis Cup you’d be fined a few thousand dollars, lose a point, be reported to the match referee and even be disqualified if you kept it up. If you were the member of any Olympic team you’d be sent home on the first available plane.
So why do we accept it from you? What gives you the right to openly use the “F”-word in a family viewing timeslot and when there hasn’t been a network warning about “mature, adult content” or “occasional coarse language”?
One reason may be that no one has said anything. Perhaps by being silent we’ve all given our consent for players to swear their heads off. Yet perhaps all that should change.
If we have put the off-field behaviour of players under the microscope over the past year, it’s time to do the same to their on-field behaviour.
Players’ language during a game can be just as detrimental to their code and just as influential on the thousands of youngsters who hang on their every word. As the football finals approach, it may pay our sporting heroes to realise that someone is keeping tabs on more than just the game score.
There’s a particular tenet of democracies that is so basic, we often tend to forget about it. Its basic premise is that any organisation, big or small, survives only by public consent. Now this concept doesn’t exist in a non-democratic society because in reality, those government systems don’t give a damn whether the public consents to something or not. In a democracy such as ours however, the notion of consent is paramount for the survival of the system.
In Australia as in all democracies, we give consent through many different means. Because of the consumerist nature of democracies, the dominant way we give consent is by buying. Yes, every time we buy something from Myer, Macdonalds or Macquarie Centre, we implicitly give consent for that business to keep functioning. Without our combined dollars, they would crash, and it’s only by consumer consent that our major businesses survive.
Another way we give consent is by voting. Every three years or so, we vote for the government of our choice. We either give consent for it to keep going, or shift consent and give another party a go. Simple.
Yet there’s two very large differences between consuming and voting. Besides us not having to pay to vote, it’s also true that we only get the chance to give or shift our consent every three years. The last possible date for the next Federal election is January 19, 2008. In anyone’s language, that’s a long time between drinks. Much can happen in three years, and without a means of withdrawing or shifting our consent, we’re pretty well stuck.
Now in ages past, if a society wasn’t happy with government decision making, the people would engage in social action. Burning and looting were common in the industrial era, while protests and strikes were more common toward the end of the 20th century. In 2005 however, the entire concept of social action has become so remote that we seem to have lost the ability to even think about it. It is as if our new-found national wealth has robbed us of any initiative to act in order to improve our already improved lot.
There is no doubt that de-unionising and the societal shift from working-class to professional class has weakened our inclination to act for change. The swift and almost total rise of the white-collar class has meant not only new-found individual wealth, but a work ethic that serves to preserve that wealth at the expense of everyone else. This is the very nature of competition, and in many ways we are all our own personal competitive business nowadays. I’m OK Jack…bugger you!
So what do we do when we suddenly start to understand and detest a government policy that’s been around for yonks…let’s say one like mandatory detention. What do we do when the true nature of the policy starts to sink in? The recent stuff-ups by the government highlighted by the Cornelia Rau and Virginia Leong affairs have made all sorts of people speak out…people who wouldn’t have spoken out before. People like Coalition Government ministers. People like TV personalities. People like you and me.
Yet gee, it’s also just sunk in that we only recently elected our government and if they decide to stick with the status quo like Mr Howard is indicating, we may have this awful policy for years to come! It’s like we’ve been on another planet! What can we do?
We personally can’t do much and to be honest, taking to the streets won’t do a lot of good. It will help show numbers, but won’t really hit the Howard government where it hurts. That can’t happen for another three years at voting time.
But while we as individuals can’t make a meaningful statement now, there is one extremely powerful group in Australian society that can land the Howard government such a body-blow on mandatory detention that it would easily turn policy. This group has increased in power dramatically since the arrival of the Howard Government and is arguably the most powerful sector in Australian society today. It’s also the group that is the quietest on social issues, as if they’re somehow deaf to any debate that doesn’t impact on them specifically. As if they’re somehow uninvolved in the greater community they work in.
The group I’m talking about is the business sector, and particularly the CEOs and directors of our Aussie businesses both big and small. Imagine if you will, that Australian businesses, in a combined show of ‘non-consent’ for the Howard Government policy on mandatory detention, or any damn policy for that matter, decided to actually make their feelings felt. I don’t mean taking to the streets here. I certainly don’t expect Gerry Harvey to pick up a placard or Richard Pratt to go on strike.
I’m talking money here lads, and I’m specifically talking about the considered non-payment of your quarterly ‘ GST payable’ your ‘Pay as you go instalments’ and your ‘Pay as you go withholdings.’ Now to the non-business person, this probably all seems like gobbledygook. Yet business people have now become so accustomed to paying these regular amounts to the government they don’t give it a thought. They especially don’t consider the absolute power they hold in NOT making the payments.
I can feel the quaking of the accountants now. What, refuse to pay our company tax! Preposterous! But listen up lads…it’s easy. I suggest its just a simple matter of writing the words ‘NO Mandatory Detention’ in large letters in black felt pen on a copy of your quarterly BAS statement (I’d use a copy just in case the ATO fines you for desecrating a legal document). Phase one could be simply making the statement. Let’s claim the next BAS due date of July 28 as ‘No mandatory detention day’. Phase two, in the next quarter, involves you not paying a cent and risking a fine.
Of course the government will say they’ll fine you just as Bob Carr in NSW stated that everyone who didn’t pay their train fare on Sydney’s recent ‘No fare’ day would be fined. In the face of such overwhelming public action, he backed down.
What perhaps the bean counters forget is that we, the public, give consent for their businesses to exist. By buying from them, we give permission for them to run their department stores, their factories and their fast-food restaurants. While we may like their products, it’s probably high time we also know where these businesses stand on the important issues in our society. If as individuals we have unconsciously relinquished our power for social action, we now rely on you, our business leaders to do the right thing and sway policy where you can. Where does the NAB’s Chief Executive John Stewart stand on mandatory detention? What is BHP Chief Executive Chip Goodyear’s view on Australia’s presence in Iraq? Does Kerry Packer support the Howard policy on industrial reform? And what lads, are you prepared to do about it?
Perhaps the most overlooked way we give consent in a democratic society is by being silent. If as has been the case, Australia’s business sector continues to remain silent on the important social issues present in our society, we can only assume they agree with policies such as mandatory detention. This being so, it is then up to us as consumers to direct our spending dollars to the business that makes a stand, and takes some action for change.
So accountants, CEOs and directors of small and big businesses everywhere, it’s time to realise there’s more to being in our society than just operating your business. As BAS time approaches, it’s high time you consider how you can act to make Australia a better place to live. Get that felt pen ready.
This piece first appeared in The Courier Mail in September 2006
Sanctions are very high on the USA’s agenda lately. Not only are they pushing the United Nations to support sanctions against Iran for their pursuit of a nuclear program, they have just recently announced sanctions against Thailand because their military did what nearly every Thai citizen wanted them to do. As Australia debates whether to go along for the Iran sanctions ride, it’s perhaps time to examine this whole sanction issue more closely.
It would be true to say that the entire idea of sanctions against Iran is losing favour. Russia, China, France and now Norway have stated they would vote against sanctions due to the right of any country to access peaceful nuclear technology. This right to a nuclear future seems even more sensible and indeed necessary when we consider the global warming crisis we inarguably face. With coal-fired power stations being a major contributor to global warming, it’s far more responsible to support a country’s drive towards peaceful nuclear power, than insist the coal-fired status quo be maintained.
The USA’s insistence on a coal fired future for Iran comes from a country that is the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in the world, with its yearly share equalling 24.3% of the total. Iran has long stated that its drive towards nuclear technology is solely for power generating, while the USA (of course) has argued that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Naturally, the USA would be right here. They were right about Iraq’s ‘Weapons of mass destruction’ stash weren’t they? Who could honestly doubt their intelligence now!
Yet just imagine, that just before the UN were to vote on sanctions against Iran, some scallywag country…let’s say France because they’re always taking a contrarian view, proposed sanctions against the USA for their failure to join the Kyoto Protocol and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Can you imagine the quiet on the floor of the UN? Can you imagine the deathly silence as Switzerland or Germany moved to second the proposal?
The average thinking UN Rep, after taking a few deep breaths and a stiff gin from the closest bar, would vote against the proposal. Any country imposing formal trade sanctions against the USA would effectively be shooting themselves in the foot, as the USA would swiftly retaliate with sanctions against them. Anyway, Australia has a free trade agreement with the USA, which means we can’t possibly impose trade sanctions. Trust the French to come up with silly ideas. Sacré bleu!
Yet informal public action, action taken by the populace without government endorsement is not so silly. This type of action against the USA could simply stop at mild first tier boycotts, or extend to the more ugly second tier model. First tier boycotts could involve US origin products like, shoes, software (yep, that includes you Mr Gates), Ipods, sports equipment and even holiday travel. Disneyland beware! These first tier actions wouldn’t negatively affect non-American enterprises to any great extent. Businesses selling USA origin products would simply redirect customers onto other brands. There are alternatives to the Ipod you know!
It’s not like we Australians haven’t done this sort of thing before. I clearly remember a dinner party in 1995, at the height of the Mururoa French nuclear testing crisis, where the host enthusiastically declared that there was nothing French at all on the menu. He even resisted French ingredients and French dressing. Restaurants at the time were advertising proudly on blackboards that there was “No French cheese served here.”
Second tier sanctions would be more painful yet potentially more influential. These would involve the boycotting of local companies with USA ownership including McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Oracle, Caterpillar and Dell. Certainly not the preferred option, this form of boycott would hurt local workers; yet create greater discontent, greater publicity and greater potential for change.
This piece appeared in the Melbourne Age in January 2003
Of all the paraphernalia that hung around my father’s bedroom thirty years ago, the 
item I remember most is his comb. It was tortoiseshell, and had an amazing amount of ‘stuff’ wedged between each tooth…just where the teeth met the jaw.
Months of accumulated Bryllcream, ‘Bardsley’s Tonic, dandruff and whatever else had formed a sort of grey sludge that never seemed to shift. My sister and I would look at the comb and marvel. How could anyone use such a thing? Didn’t he ever wash it? Was it alive?
Yet every New Years Day, without fail, the comb would be washed. Dad would perch over the concrete laundry tub with a small nail-brush and scrub the thing. In our childhood memories, the ‘cleansing’ seemed to take the best part of half an hour, yet childhood memories aren’t always accurate.
As we prepare to enter another year, little benchmarks about the past 12 months tend to spring to mind for us all. These are the little memories that help us mark the passage of time. My father’s cleansing of the comb was a benchmark for my sister and I; a pivotal memory we can’t forget. My daughter’s first school play was an enormous benchmark for her this year. My friend talks about his retrenchment as if it was his coming of age; his rite of passage. For another friend, it was her son moving out of home and living with his girlfriend. Little boy no more.
For me, this new year marks the sixth year of my father’s dementia…a disease that not only robs sufferers of their history, but of any small landmarks that helps them distinguish the years, celebrate or lament their passing and prepare them for the coming year. For dementia patients, there are few memories and few benchmarks.
Alzheimer’s disease and dementia generally are on the rise in Australia. The experts tell us that these conditions of old age are expected to rise by up to 250% over the next 40 years. Unfortunately it seems that being able to live longer and possess stronger physical health doesn’t always mean that our mental health will keep pace.
We first noticed dad having trouble driving. The Chrysler Sigma would suffer immensely from having both the accelerator and the brake pedal pushed at the same time. He’d forget to indicate and at one stage, completely forgot where he was going and needed to ask me why we were driving. God knows how many times that happened when he was driving alone.
Then were the fits of anger…anger yelled to the world after years of suppression; anger desperate for a voice. The voices were always inappropriate and misdirected. Sometimes at his wife, sometimes at me, sometimes at my young daughter, sometimes at the garden. On thinking about it, perhaps they were appropriately directed after all. It was the vitriolic expression that shocked us.
After a year it was the constant ticks, the incessant scratching of an imaginary piece of dust or crumb on his clothing. He’d also relate stories about this man or that who’d come through the house the night before. He’d always laugh at their boldness, and he’d always comment on their physical appearance. They were always fat.
Later on, through several bouts of bronchitis and an episode of pneumonia, he lost his ability to walk and talk. He hasn’t spoken for a year now. He sits, head down, dressed in his grey work pants as if he just stepped out of his shift at Grace Bros. His wife, desperate for normality, often props the newspaper on his lap as if he’s reading. Dad looks down for a while and then begins to scratch at the letters. It’s anything but normality.
As 2003 dawns, perhaps it’s time to consider our own benchmarks a little more. To reflect on the important personal events that marked the passing of the last 12 months. To ‘measure out our lives’ while we still can.
Reflection on the pros and cons of the year gives us a template for the next, yet while reflection is important, it’s also the documenting of these benchmarks that is necessary.
The onset of my father’s dementia meant that our family lost an individual’s memory; a resource we all desperately need as we approach curious middle age. This memory contained much of our family story; a story important to us all and a story we’d only dipped into a few times.
Questions my family would now dearly love answered can never be answered. We have some photographs, a few medals, sports awards and our own childhood memories. Yet our story begins at chapter seven, not at chapter one as my father would have told it.
So rather than settling down on New Year’s Day to a good book, it’s perhaps the best time of all to begin our own book; to record even briefly the events and lessons that made 2003 great or disastrous for us as individuals or collectively as families.
The grammar need not be brilliant and the spelling can be lousy. It’s the documentation that’s important; the action of making our memory accessible by all at a time when our memories are still lucid. On thinking about it, perhaps the hangovers of New Year’s Day make it a bad choice for many. Thursday may be a better day to start.
Contemporary fashion has spelt the end of the comb. Its popularity went west with Brylcreme and Bardsley’s tonic. Instead my modern bathroom cabinet boasts a number of brushes…several of my partners and one of mine.
My daughter, who seems to collect brushes and hide them in her bedroom, never touches my tatty thing. My partner avoids touching my brush at all. If she ever does its to put it way below in the cabinet so others can’t see it.
So this New Year, after writing a few lines of the family story, I think I’ll reinstate a 30 year-old benchmark and give my brush a rinse. It may be hidden forever among fluffy toys and tweeny cosmetics, but it will probably make us all very happy.
This piece first appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in January 2007 during the Ashes Test between Australia and England.
It is no coincidence that the release of the new film version of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ last 
month coincided with the exact day that English spinner Monty Panesar bowling his first test delivery on Australian soil. OK, OK, that’s drawing a long bow and the two events clearly aren’t linked, but there’s something very similar in the lovable character of Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web and the man we’d really like to call our own but can’t.
There’s obviously something special about Monty Panesar. Not special in the same way as Shane Warne or Glenn McGrath, but special all the same. The chap in my bottle shop reckons he’s the ‘next big thing’ and a Google search shows 1.7 million pages mentioning the bloke. Day one of the 5th test in Sydney showed parts of the crowd sporting beards and headwear just like Monty. Youtube even contains a song about him. It must be serious.
But what is it about this man that makes even non-cricket followers admire him? Like the character of Wilbur is Charlotte’s Web, Mr Panesar seems the epitome of enthusiastic naivety. Just as Wilbur the pig was left out of the barnyard family for being a ‘runt’, Monty was left out of the first two tests for reasons only the English cricket administration understand. When Wilbur is finally embraced into the barnyard family, all he wants to do is play, and Monty is seemingly the same now he’s been given his chance in the English test team.
Commentators during the third test in Perth were giggling about the fact that he wanted the ball even though it wasn’t his turn to bowl; that even after he’d been hit for 19 runs in the previous over, he was putting his hand up for more. He’d bowl every over in the Sydney test if we’d let him and maybe he should. Bugger the strategy, it’s the passion we love, and Monty is showing a passion and unbridled joy of the game we haven’t seen in a long time.
But what really makes Monty Panesar so popular? A far cry from those fashionable, clean-shaven, sports superstars we see so much of these days, Monty seems the antithesis of fashion. Perhaps it’s the fact he seems oblivious to all the latest trends that make him ‘cool’. He’s clearly his own man. A devout Sikh, Panesar wears the patka (a mini-turban) with a dignity that makes the coiffured hairstyles of millionaire sportsmen like Matt Giteau or David Beckham look silly. Maybe I’m getting old, but I just don’t get this current fixation millionaire sportsmen have with their hair. Give me Monty and his patka anytime.
Yet there’s more to it than his passion, his patka and his facial hair. We live in a world of comparisons, and perhaps it’s the natural comparison we make with our own king of spin that makes him so popular.
Now as cricketers go, Warnie is a genius; there’s no doubting that. Yet in the numerous retirement accolades Warnie has received from the world’s batsmen, it’s his label as the ‘king of sledge’ that’s the biggest worry. As the volume on the Channel Nine stump mike is turned up (not in the live broadcast mind you, but in the pre-recorded, swear-checked ‘G’ rated version), we hear Warnie gabbling in a non-stop sledge to English batsmen. His verbal diarrhoea ranges from their ‘hopeless’ batting style to the size of their bottoms to their hairstyles. It’s amazing his team-mates can focus on the game let alone the batsmen! Like the gabbling of the geese in Charlotte’s Web, it portrays a tiresome arrogance; an arrogance that’s slowly wearing thin with Australian cricket supporters. Sure, it’s great to win; yet to win with integrity and grace is even better. As demonstrated in the Champion’s trophy last year when the head of Indian Cricket was jostled off the winner’s dais by the Australian team, Aussie cricketing grace is sadly lacking.
In Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte the spider tries to save Wilbur from being Christmas ham by writing certain words in her web. It’s not that Wilbur is ‘Terrific’ or ‘Some Pig’ that saves his life. Ultimately it’s the word ‘Humble’ that saves him from the smokehouse.
Here lies the secret of Monty’s popularity. Even in our brash and stylised world of cult celebrity, marketing hype and strategic media-managed sound bites, we still have some innate eye for legitimacy. ‘Humble’ would be too simple a word for a 21st century, university educated, representative cricketer like Mr Panesar, yet in the amazing support he’s generated from the Australian public, there’s clearly some lessons for our own cricketing heroes. A touch of humility could well be one of them.
This piece first appeared in The Melbourne Age in May 2001
It’s happening again! Every year about this time men come in for a bashing. Men’s role as dads, their position in the workplace and their even less secure position in the bedroom are all questioned. As usual, men are blamed for everything, yet this year men should prepare for a few new bruises.
The recent report by the Centre for Labour Research at Adelaide University paints a dire picture of working women and particularly working mothers. According to the report, working mums feel tired and guilty. Their sex lives are up the spout. Their partners are bastards and they feel ‘torn’ between the expectations of good mothering and the need to earn a buck.
According to the Head of the Centre for Labour Research, Dr Barbara Pocock, ‘Women find they can’t be a terrific worker, a wonderful mother and have great sex at night’.
Oh dear!
Of course, none of this is their fault, but rather the fault of men who simply haven’t kept up with the trend, who still don’t do any cooking, who still don’t care for children and who seem genetically blind to dust, dirt or anything that needs cleaning.
While no one denies that men and women see dirt differently, the real question that needs to be asked of the thousands of ‘tired and guilty’ women is ‘What on earth did you expect?
For hundreds of years, men have known all too well that giving sweat and blood in the workplace means giving less in the family. Men didn’t like it much, but in order to provide financially for families, it was simply something they had to do.
I remember my dad going off to a cleaning job at 5am, only to finish before his ‘real’ job began at 8.30. He then backed up three nights a week with a night cleaning job as well! I saw him perhaps 10 hours a week if I was lucky. Did he like the idea? Not much, but it paid the mortgage and kept us from that ever threatening bread and dripping.
Until the early 70′s, women accepted (and often enjoyed) being the dominant manager of family affairs because dad was busy turning the wheels of industry. If dad was the chief of business, mum was the chief of the family, and while nowhere near a satisfactory situation, the gender roles were tolerated as parts of a system that limped along.
But let’s get back to the original question. What did women expect when they made that bold foray into the workplace 30 or so years ago?
It’s true that many women saw the lure of work and career as a dangerous new frontier; a frontier that had prevented men’s intimate role in families and that could do the same to them if they didn’t look out.
Yet many others took the “women can have it all” approach to this frontier of work. It was simply another item to be included with the driver’s license, the credit card and the multiple orgasm.
Rather than forging a newer, more realistic model of work, 70′s feminists led the charge headlong onto the male white-collar career treadmill. Shoulder pads to the wheel, this charge held no thought for the sanity of the millions of women who would march after them. Like the followers of Jim Jones, or the victims of the Waco massacre, women have been led into the fire, and not surprisingly, they aren’t happy.
The ‘women can have it all’ ideal must rank alongside such other urban myths as the classless society, the level playing field or successful consensus decision-making. Women can no more ‘have it all’ than men can. There’s a price to pay for work that pays, and while we may not like it, our current workplace structure isn’t likely to change for men or women.
Yet perhaps the most distressing part of Dr Pocock’s report is her belief that ‘While women agonise about what it means to be a proper mother, there is no parallel debate over fathering’.
Oh Dr Pocock, where have you been? I know Adelaide is 10 years behind Melbourne but not even the residents of Manjimup have missed that debate.
The fatherhood business is booming, with books, seminars, government funded research, private research and a thousand ‘experts’ giving their tuppence-worth on fatherhood issues every day of the week.
And according to private research carried out in 1998, most dads hate the thought of having to work harder and longer in order to pay the increasing costs of mortgages, school fees and food bills. Most feel tired and guilty at not being able to give more to their relationships. Most feel torn between the expectations of good fathering and the need to earn a buck.
Not surprisingly, most find they can’t be a terrific worker, a wonderful father and have great sex at night’.
Sound familiar?
