The Anectodal Aussie Larrikin is Really a Wuss

Traditionally, Australians have been perceived and represented in popular culture in a certain way. Laconic, dry, no-nonsense and with a healthy suspicion and disrespect for governments and authority. Certainly there is a strong tradition of political satire in this country with shows like the Gillies Report, Full Frontal, The Chaser and more recently, Shaun Micallef's Mad as Hell which have all been adept at lampooning politicians and governments of all persuasions.

However, unfortunately that's about as far as it goes, and the myth of the coarse Aussie larrikin who cheerfully thumbs their nose at authority is just that. For when it comes to calling out the actions of governments who abuse power or for insisting on protecting our basic civil rights, we Australians tend to be meek, apathetic, terrified and far too easily cowed into submission.

While not as endemic here as foreign totalitarian regimes, elected governments in Australia have often over-played threats for political gain or to frighten the bejesus out of everyone so as to justify some law or practice that would otherwise be unthinkable or highly unpopular. For example, it's easy to forget now that the Howard government was trailing Labor in the lead up to the 2001 election when two things happened to change the direction of the campaign. The first was the September 11 attacks in the US and the second was the "Tampa" children overboard affair. Both of these incidents were manna from heaven for a cynical and rat-cunning politician like John Howard who managed to stir up sufficient panic about terrorists and boat people to frighten everyone into not changing the government when of course, neither threat subsequently proved worth worrying about. 

However the legacies from that time annoyingly live on to this day in the form of a lingering societal xenophobia about asylum seekers and Neanderthals sticking wands down your underpants at airports before you are allowed to get on what is basically a flying bus. Of course, that last one hasn't been a particular problem of late but if and when we are finally allowed to travel interstate again, the mind boggles as to what new idiotic biosecurity measures have been dreamt up to "ensure our safety".

Which brings me to the latest thing that governments would like us to get terrified about, being the COVID pandemic. This time however given the nature of the crisis it's been left-leaning governments who've been engaging in abuses of power. Take Queensland for starters. On the basis of a "public health" issue, the Palaszczuk government has decided to outsource the critical decision on border re-opening to an unelected bureaucrat, whose sole focus in the government is stopping the spread of the virus in Queensland. Untroubled as Dr Young must be by matters such as the decimation of the tourism industry and disruption to border communities who were previously oblivious to arbitrarily-drawn state lines, not surprisingly she has adopted a Draconian approach which ensures she hits her KPI of zero cases but which must have thousands of people and businesses tearing their collective hair out.

Over in WA, you have Mark McGowan who has gone even further and refused to allow anyone into the state from anywhere for the foreseeable future. When pressed on his attitude last week, he finally let the cat out of the bag and confessed that it wasn't so much of a public health issue any more, but because he didn't want South Australians coming over and taking West Australian jobs, or West Australians going to spend money in the eastern states. Well, I think with that comment he's just made sure he's lost his High Court case with Clive Palmer, and if the Federal Government had any gumption they would immediately cut off WA's GST until he pulls his head in. Fancy for no valid reason having the hide to try and stop an Australian citizen from visiting another part of their own country, or stopping them moving to WA permanently to pursue a better career or life. If you want to secede, mate, by all means do so, but don't come cap in hand to the eastern states when Brazil's mines come back on line, the iron ore price tanks and Big Fat Gina stops paying you royalty tax.

However of course the gold standard of government abuse must go to our own inept despot-in-chief here in Victoria, Dan Andrews. You would think that any government with any sense of decency or shame having directly caused the current mess would first own up and apologise profusely for having done so, then do its utmost to try and minimise the impact of its stuff-ups on their constituents while they are trying to fix it.

But no, that's not how Dan rolls. Instead Victorians have been subjected to some of the most stringent lockdown measures in the world, with some not even recommended by health officials but rather imposed to suit either the government's convenience or to indulge Dan's autocratic instincts. Then when daily caseloads got back to a level where NSW somehow managed to cope with a more or less fully open economy, what we got was 8 more weeks of the same. Which, interestingly, hasn't worked as well as NSW's strategy when you look at the numbers.

Perhaps the most worrying thing though about how state governments are behaving is that people generally seem unconcerned about it. In Queensland there have finally been some rumblings which is why the government has had to make some concessions around re-opening with NSW border communities. However in WA, Labor enjoys a record approval rating, which suggests that 90% of people there are OK with the Premier illegally preventing them from leaving the state until he decides on his capricious whim to let them do so.

And in Victoria - well, bizarrely Dan is riding high on a 60% plus approval rating for how he's handling the pandemic. Let's think about this a bit more, shall we? 

This means that over 60% of people, most of whom are not criminals on parole, are perfectly happy to be told by the government the reasons for which they can leave their house, the times of day when they must be locked up in their house, how far they can travel from their house, and what they have to wear when they do.

More than 60% of people have no issue with a succession of ministers and senior public servants turning up to an enquiry and claiming to have no knowledge of who authorised what must surely be the most serious and far-reaching administrative stuff up in Australia's history.

Over 60% of people don't mind the Premier fronting the media for 90 plus days in a row to dismiss experts out of hand, to refuse to provide any detail about the advice which has framed his strategy, or outline what steps he is taking to make sure there aren't more screw ups when society opens up again.

The lion's share of people are fine with the government passing a law that has been condemned by a host of eminent QCs and former judges and which will enable any government official authorised by DHHS to apprehend anyone they think might offend a COVID lock down law and hold them indefinitely without charge.

At the time the original 13 states of the USA were negotiating their independence from Britain, Benjamin Franklin made a famous quote: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Right now, Benjamin must be looking down from that great internet cloud in the sky at what we meek, compliant and terrified Australians are letting our governments get away with during this pandemic and just shaking his head in disbelief.

Seriously - wake up Australia.

How the Internet has made Humankind Ignorant

Being educated like I was in a time before the digital age sometimes presented challenges, particularly when you had to carry out research for a school or university assignment. The primary place you had to go to for information was the library, and chances were that one of your more enterprising classmates had already borrowed one or more of the books which was going to be critical to your efforts. Therefore it was often a struggle to reference any more than the minimum two sources required to make sure your assignment wasn't blatant plagiarism and thereafter, submit a credibly researched paper.

This is one of the reasons in the mid 1990s I became quite interested in the development of digital encyclopedias like Encarta and then subsequently, on-line research tools. As the internet started to take off, the possibilities for education seemed huge. For the first time ever, all the accumulated knowledge of humankind became instantly available at the click of the button. Surely, I thought, if anything was going to make people informed and lead to a new era of enlightenment, this was it.

Well, fast forward about 20 years and it's clear how wrong I was. 

Instead of becoming more informed, humankind now exists in kind of bizarre "post fact" world where experts are derided, people form their view on issues not through a critical and objective assessment of facts but through the filter of their value system and language and debate has descended into an unintelligible morass of badly punctuated tweets and streams of emoticons. What the hell happened?

I think a significant factor is that while the internet has provided access to a lot of credible and properly researched information, at the same time it has enabled easy publication of complete rubbish, which over time has come to dominate online discourse. 

It's easy to forget in the digital age just how much gravitas used to be associated with publishing something, be that in writing or over a TV or radio network. Most of the news that was available for public consumption was provided either through newspapers or the major television channels, and while they would still often get things wrong, these outlets were subject to journalistic codes of conduct which required them not to distort the basic facts of a story, not to show overt bias, to declare conflicts of interest and certainly not to "troll" anybody because back then, the media companies were attractive targets for anyone wanting to mount a defamation case. Also any journalist who failed to have a basic understanding of grammar, punctuation and how to construct a sentence wouldn't make it past the front door. Similarly with scientific and other specialist journals, anyone looking to have a paper published would have their piece subject to fairly rigorous editorial scrutiny, usually by one of their peer experts in charge of publishing the journal. Quacks looking to promote some form of fringe theory which couldn't be substantiated by fact tended to be dismissed and therefore got the negligible airtime that they deserved.

Because the available "information" was much more limited before the advent of the internet, and was generally of much higher quality, this meant that it was much easier for someone to properly assess what was going on, consider things critically and then come to an informed opinion about the issue of the day, whether that was Australia's involvement in the Vietnam war, Gough Whitlam's sacking or whether taking thalidomide caused defects in unborn children. 

Now, however, with the internet awash with all manner of websites, blogs, v-logs and probably a lot of other things that I've never heard of, the situation is a lot more confused and garbled. While in a sense it is positive that publication is no longer the exclusive domain of a bunch of global media companies, enabling anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection to publish whatever they want online has led to its own set of problems.

First and foremost, it greatly dilutes the quality of information available to people, for the reason that crackpots who would not previously had a platform to spread their misinformation and conspiracy theories and who aren't constrained by journalistic codes of conduct or inconvenient facts are free to run riot.

Secondly, it has encouraged the human tendency to seek out and take as gospel information which is supportive of their world view, even if the source of that information is unreliable or incorrect. It's much more comforting if you are anti-vaccer to read about what an unqualified person like Pauline Hanson has to say on the topic than to take the AMA's expert advice.  It's something I think we are all guilty of to some extent and has no doubt led to the increasing polarisation of the political debate. Witness the situation in America recently where what was basically objective common-sense public health advice in terms of wearing a face mask during a pandemic got turned into another front in the culture wars. Ridiculous as it sounds, if you wore a mask, you were tagged as a Democrat and if you didn't, you were tagged as a Republican. 

Thirdly, the dumbing down of information or its over-simplification such that it gets conveyed by a Facebook post or a 15 word tweet is very dangerous. It is just not possible to communicate complex ideas and concepts that merit lengthy and careful consideration into a throwaway tweet and expect good decisions or outcomes to follow. Worryingly however politicians of all colour seem to have taken to social media like ducks to water, possibly because of the instant publicity it can bring. However as we have seen over the last few years, ignoring key facts and over-simplifying difficult problems are two of the key hallmarks of populism, which method of governing sooner or later ends up in disaster.

I mention all this because looking at the current state of the Presidential campaign in the USA, the same depressing script as 2016 is playing out. It's hard to think of one thing that has got better in the USA over the past 4 years as the country has alienated its allies, weakened its institutions, started an "easy to win" trade war with China and Europe that shows no signs of ending, run up record government debt of $25 trillion, has major civil unrest and is on track to record 300,000 plus COVID-related deaths by the end of the year. Even the economy which was going fairly well before the pandemic has now collapsed, in no small measure due to Trump's complete lack of interest in controlling the virus beyond promoting a couple of dangerous quack cures and telling the country back in February it would somehow just "magically disappear".

Yet in spite of that, you just know what's coming in the run up to the election. Multiple clusterbombs of misinformation, self-serving statements, insults to the Democrats and bald-faced lies will be dropped in the coming weeks. Twitter and his more traditional enablers in Fox News will be awash with constant propaganda which extols Trump's virtues, praises the fantastic job he has done and warning that Biden will do stuff like sell the country out to China, stand down the police force and perhaps most egregiously in the eyes of Republicans, extend health care to all US citizens. Of course, many Americans who have experienced the realities of a Trump presidency won't fall for his BS, but it's almost certain enough of them will to re-elect him for another term. 

Unfortunate though it is, this sort of thing is a salient reminder of the dangers of what can happen when people don't think critically or long enough about the information they take in and the reliability of the source. When people pay heed to the loudest voice in the room instead of the smartest and most qualified, invariably bad outcomes follow. 

It's true that since its inception, the internet and digital communication more generally have played their role in enabling a lot of loud, ignorant voices to drown out the ones who know what they are talking about (and who also know how to spell). However ultimately it's up to humans to decide which voices they are going to listen to, as the information is certainly all there. 

I hope we all make the right choices, because I'm pretty certain the internet with all its foibles is going to be here for the foreseeable future and going back to the library to do our research isn't going to be the best option.

Where to for Employment From Here?

In the brief period between the initial lockdown and the Andrews government stuff-up lockdown, I managed to catch up with 2 colleagues from my Macquarie Bank days for lunch. As usually happens on these occasions, there was a lot of reminiscing and discussion about how different work was 15 or so years ago. Thinking back on our chat later on, I was struck by just how true a statement this is.

The press have always liked to paint a picture of Macquarie as a rapacious money-grubbing organisation with the morals and ethics of your average house cat, but my experience for most of my time there was that they genuinely cared about and tried to look after their staff. When faced with an economic downturn or some other crisis, rather than respond by sacking great swathes of people, the business groups most affected were encouraged to adapt to changing circumstances, or re-deploy excess people into other areas. 

Also while like any big company there were poor performing staff, rather than throwing up their hands in frustration and making them redundant at the stroke of a pen, the inclination of management was to try to make them work in other roles and then if that still didn't work, send a subtle message through the profit-share system to suggest to them that they might be better served looking for employment elsewhere. As a lot of people tend to confuse ambition with ability, this worked surprisingly well. But importantly, while they did look around for another job, even the least effective employees could go about their daily lives knowing that their employment was reasonably secure.

Fast forward a few years however to the Global Financial Crisis and everything suddenly changed, at least in the business I worked in. The senior executives who'd pocketed 10 figure bonuses for years off the back of our exceptional profitability all of a sudden couldn't get rid of us quickly enough. Instead of providing support to work through the issues in the business, we were requested to sack 25 per cent of the staff then make those who were left work crazy hours to stabilise things so they could sell it off to the highest bidder. Of course, being 2009, pretty much no-one had any cash to buy a used property funds business (a fact that seemed completely lost on senior management) and we wound up being flogged off at a bargain-basement price to an organisation that at the time was very much a second tier operator.

In what seemed the twinkling of an eye, more than 100 staff found themselves suddenly parachuted into an organisation where the working environment was very different. Where previously, independent thinking and good ideas to advance the business were encouraged, all of a sudden we found ourselves in a place where we had to accept the fact that the boss was always right. Even when he wasn't, which was quite a lot of the time. 

Not surprisingly, a lot of the staff including myself found this deeply unsettling. It's not great feeling suddenly unwelcome in a business you have spent 13 odd years helping to build, and I for one was quite relieved when 2 years later they put me out of my misery and made me redundant. However, I found the whole process of being parcelled up and sold off to an organisation that I would never have voluntarily have worked for so distasteful that I subsequently decided to go and work for myself and it was a long time before I was prepared to commit to being a salaried employee again. Ultimately however time heals all wounds.

I mention all this, because observing the corporate environment in the time since the GFC, working condtions for employees have not reverted to the relatively benign conditions of pre-2008 but have continued to be quite fraught as far as job security is concerned. The current COVID-induced recession has also made this much worse, with even high-performing staff not being safe, particularly if they are on the wrong side of 45. Recently I've had two exceptionally capable colleagues who are also among my best friends in the industry summarily punted from their senior positions, one because the business he worked in doesn't seem to have any handle on how to deal with the current situation and the only idea they could come up with was to lay a lot of people off, and the other presumably because the management thinks his replacement will somehow do a better job. Well, good luck with that, because this guy is one of the most diligent and hard-working people I know and they are big shoes to fill.

However, can you just imagine how morale must be among the remaining staff seeing this sort of behaviour from their employer, and the stress particularly among junior staff thinking, hang on a minute, what's to stop this happening to me? And as we slowly come out of the mess wrought by COVID and start to try growing the economy again, having employees worrying about this sort of thing is a big, big problem.

It's convenient for Baby-Boomer demographers to dismiss Milennials as a bunch of flaky commitment-phobes who go round eating smashed avocado, drinking awful beer and growing scraggly beards. However, thanks to being part of a large family, I'm related to quite a few of them and I can say confidently that they all want the same things as their elders which is to say, owning their own home and starting families. But when their employers display no patience or inclination to work through short term problems and instead react by flicking off employees at the drop of a hat, can you really blame them for putting off long-term life and investment decisions for as long as possible?

I watched with interest on "Insiders" last weekend as Josh Frydenberg talked up the government's strategy to implement bold changes to stimulate economic growth. I'm not sure how far he's going to get negotiating with the trade unions by invoking the ghosts of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but it's true they are going to have to make some sweeping changes because the Reserve Bank has run out of ammunition in terms of providing cheap finance as a stimulus. However another key driver of growth is consumer spending and perhaps by giving business an incentive to stop behaving like they have over the last 10 years and instead adopt a more pre-GFC way of thinking, employees will start to feel more secure about their situation and start making longer term life decisions with all the requisite consumer spending that entails.

Ok, so here is an idea. The government wants to pass its company tax cuts but the Senate currently won't let them. But what if they made access to the tax cuts subject to companies signing up to a new employee-employer charter which required companies to offer improved job security? Some of these measures could include:

• A minimum 3 year's salary redundancy payment in circumstances where an employee is not otherwise eligible for dismissal
• Having a minimum percentage of employees hired as either full time or part time employees as opposed to casual labour
• Casual employees having a guaranteed minimum of paid hours each week and being entitled to superannuation and leave benefits after a certain period of service
• Sale of any parts of the business being prohibited unless the purchaser of the business is also a signatory to the charter or agrees to honour the existing employee arrangements

While this would obviously give businesses less flexibility in its labour arrangements, it would however force them to think twice about how they deal with their staff, and cutting their tax bill by a third is probably a big enough incentive to get them to sign up to the charter and make them adopt more longer-term thinking about their business instead of just reacting to problems in an off the cuff way. Particularly seeing if they don't sign up to the charter, the best employees will naturally gravitate to the firms that are prepared to do so.

Also by framing the tax cuts this way, the government could quite rightly heap political pressure on both Labor and the capricious cross-bench in the Senate by pointing out they are holding up an initiative that is designed to improve job security. Even in this partisan and uncooperative age, that ought to be enough to get them through.

As well, it would probably be enough to get people spending again and help grow the economy. God knows I wouldn't have bought the house I did in 2005 if I'd known in 4-5 years time our business was going to be sold off to who it was,  but in the comfort zone I was in at the time, I was more than happy to make that decision. I'm sure the younger generation would too given the same chance.

Plus if they have to spend cash on things like houses, cars and baby infrastructure, they won't have the leftover cash to spend $40 on a slab of undrinkable wheat beer brewed in some converted outhouse in the Adelaide Hills. Which would mean craft breweries would probably all go out of business, and wouldn't that make for a much better Australia?

The Failings of a Federal System

Imagine for a moment that in this modern age, an uninhabited new island continent about the size and latitude of Australia was suddenly discovered in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The United Nations invites 25 million people from around the planet the opportunity to move there, and then selects a panel of 20 erudite men and women to come up with a system of government. They sit around and deliberate for 3 months, then they deliver their recommendations.

They say there should be a national government which deals with matters like defence, foreign affairs, the environment, health, education, treasury and industrial relations. Next they say there should be a series of councils at local level which deal with more day to day things like waste removal, town planning, parks, childcare, road maintenance and so on. So far so good.

But then in addition to this, they recommend an intermediate level of government who will have responsibility for 8 discrete areas whose borders are determined either by the course of a river or arbitrary lines running through the middle of the desert. Six of those areas who can fund their own operations via taxation will be called "states" and the two that can't and will remain financially dependent on the national government will be called "territories".

In addition to the national health, education, treasury and environment departments, these states and territories will also have their own departments in these disciplines and the question of where responsibility for different costs lie between the national and state governments will be left deliberately ambiguous. They will also have their own different and incompatible land title systems, their own parliaments which operate on different electoral cycles, and the train networks they build will be on different gauges, meaning that trains from one state can't travel into any neighbouring state.

They also recommend limiting the national government's powers by specifically writing into the constitution that it can only make laws about certain specific things, and then by establishing an unrepresentative upper house of parliament which gives the state with 2% of the population the same voting rights as the state with 32% of the population.

Finally, apart from Christmas, Easter and New Year, the public holidays in each state will be different, and during summer, some states will go on daylight savings time and some won't, meaning that one of the western states will be half an hour ahead of their eastern counterparts, and an hour ahead of the territory directly to their north.

Now if that was what the panel recommended, you would seriously have to wonder what they had been smoking. However, due to accidents of history rooted in European settlement of the country, this more or less exactly describes the system of government we have here. Unsurprisingly, its operation is always problematic, and at times like this when every state retreats into its own shell, very damaging and disruptive.

Coming originally from Queensland, there are times when I identify as a native of that state and enjoy things that are unique to there, as I expect most people do about their home state. However in my case, this is limited to things to do with sport, such as the annual State of Origin contest, or occasionally, beer. After nearly 30 years living in Melbourne I still can't understand why no one drinks XXXX Bitter south of Coolangatta. By the same token, I also identify as Australian and it's hard to escape the conclusion that the way the Federal system of government is set up creates a massive handbrake on economic and social progress in  the country as a whole.

For a start, state governments are responsible for imposing two of the most economically regressive taxes you can get in stamp duty and payroll tax. The first acts an a disincentive to business activity and the second acts as a disincentive to employing people.

Then you have the impediments to changing the Australian constitution which were included to appease state governments at the time of federation. Not only do you have to have a majority of people in the country approve any changes, you have to have a majority of people in a majority of states do the same. This brings about the potential of an absurd result where close to 80% of people in the country want something changed, but because a majority didn't carry in Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, it can't be implemented. It's damn lucky then for people in same-sex relationships that the Commonwealth already had the power to make laws relating to marriage otherwise what turned out to be a demonstrably popular thing probably wouldn't have happened.

I could cite many more examples of inefficiency, waste and missed opportunity for reform directly deriving from the very existence of state governments, but of course right now the more pressing concern for the Federal Government and indeed, everyone living in the pariah state of Victoria is, how the hell do we get the different states to co-operate and get the country open again?

I make no secret of the fact that I despise the unpleasant communist jackass we currently have as  Premier, and I am furious that he had the gall to lecture everyone like naughty children back in April while at the same time completely stuffing up the hotel quarantine programme which all other states somehow managed to get right. However, I will concede he has finally done something sensible this week. That is, by recognising that the latest batch of virus outbreaks are concentrated in certain specific localities, the government have imposed a set of restrictions that are also quite localised and don't impact on areas with no infections.

And this, I suppose, leads to my main point. Governments in Australia at all levels have always made laws and regulations which pertain to discrete, local areas with particular characteristics. A good example are national parks which enable the government to protect areas with unique flora and fauna. Another area is town planning where Councils typically don't give you permits to open brothels next to childcare centres, unless of course you live in inner Sydney. None of these laws or regulations are put in place because the areas in question happen to be situated in one state or another, but rather because of the need to have different rules applying to different local areas.

Let's face it, this sort of local, nimble approach makes a lot more sense to governing parts of the country than just drawing a line on a map and saying one set of laws apply to the 400,000 square kilometres on the left side and another to the 300,000 square kilometres on the right side. To me it is just illogical to say someone from Albury can fly to Queensland or South Australia in 2 weeks time, but someone from Wodonga can't, even though both areas have no active cases. However if they'd said no-one from the Moonee Valley or Hume Shires can travel, that would make perfect sense. Alas for we marooned Victorian residents, this sort of thinking just doesn't seem to be registering with  most state governments right now, who seem far more interesting in gloating or exchanging barbs in the media.

The simple fact is, unless and until a vaccine is discovered, the country needs to find a sensible way to live with this problem in a way which allows trade and commerce between the states to resume without having one or more of their governments slam their borders shut every time there is an interstate outbreak.

I suppose in a way you can't blame the state premiers for acting the way they have, because their first priority is to act in the best interests of the people of their state. However sometimes I dare to dream that one day, they would wake up and realise that in fact, its in the best interest of their constituents to just vote themselves out of existence. An irrelevancy in the modern age, they should move out of the way to allow the Federal Government to deal unimpeded with the big picture issues and Councils to expand to deal exclusively with local issues.

Right now I'd be delighted if the Victorian Government would do just that and leave sorting out this mess to someone who knows what they're doing.

Liberate Victoria

It might seem a bit strange to anyone under 35, but growing up in the 1980s involved having healthy and valid concerns about totalitarian governments. The Cold War was in full swing and the USSR was actively trying to spread its economically and socially repressive form of communism across Europe to the west and to any country ending in "stan" to the south. Closer to home, the Bjelke-Petersen regime in Queensland was well known for its brutal crackdown on protests, prolific government corruption and suppression of any form of fun which offended Joh's Lutheran sensibilities. I still dine out on the story about the police coming to confiscate a condom machine at Queensland University in 1986 on the basis that it immorally encouraged young people to have sex. Never mind that the whole of Fortitude Valley was dotted with illicit brothels, strip clubs and casinos which many of his own cronies used to frequent.

Fortunately, communism in eastern Europe collapsed in 1991, freeing up former Soviet bloc countries to join the European Union and become capitalist democracies. Prior to that in 1989, the 20 year old National Party government in Queensland got turfed unceremoniously out of office on the back of the findings of the Fitzgerald enquiry, and Brisbane finally emerged from its slumber to begin its transition to the vibrant international city it is today.

Happy in the knowledge I'd never have to worry about that sort of thing again, I packed my bags in early 1992 to move to Victoria .... not realising just how wrong I would be one day. Because worryingly, the Andrews government is starting to behave more and more like a tinpot communist dictatorship than the modern Australian democracy it is supposed to be.

My concerns about Andrews' character began early on in his premiership when he summarily tore up the contract for the East-West link that has been entered into by the outgoing Liberal government. Sure, they probably shouldn't have entered into an agreement of that scale so soon before an election, and yes, it was a Labor campaign promise to not proceed with the road. But as far as promises go, given the prodigious cost to the taxpayer of not honouring the agreement, surely he could have deployed some of pragmatic politics that Bob Hawke or Jeff Kennett were good at when inheriting an unexpected grenade from an outgoing government. Yes, those rats in the previous government committed us to doing something we don't agree with, but to back out now will cost us a small fortune and damage the State's credibility with counterparties we deal with in the future. The whole thing reeked of an insecure little man trying to big note himself nationally as someone to be reckoned with, no matter what the consequences. In a way, and with the benefit of hindsight, it feels a little bit like Victoria's equivalent to Trump's Mexican border wall.

But it was Andrews' frankly odd behaviour whenever an incident occurred with a madman on the loose that really started to worry me. Breathlessly fronting the media when the Lindt Cafe siege was on to assure the Victorian public they were safe from a gunman 900km away and then engendering a statewide panic for days when the Pelligrini's owner got stabbed in the CBD just seemed weird. Until, that is, I realised what could be behind it - namely that this drab and otherwise unremarkable politician probably has despotic tendencies.

Tyrants throughout history have always used unsettled times to either cement their grip on power or impose more control on their subjects. Just think about the Nazis using the burning down of the Reichstag as a pretext for indefinitely suspending the German Parliament, or Dick Chaney using 9/11 as a pretext for passing the Patriot Act and invading 2 middle eastern countries. While it was a pathetic attempt to stir up panic in both cases, and while I don't know that Andrews would have either the intellect or self-awareness to realise why he was driven to act the way he did, it did make me concerned about how he might behave when something actually worth worrying about happened.

Well - here we are, and I for one am completely unsurprised at what's happened here in Victoria since the onset of the pandemic. By contrast with the measured, open and pragmatic approach adopted by the Federal government and most of the other states, the behaviour of the Andrews government and particularly the Premier himself has been heavy-handed, secretive, totally unsympathetic and at times downright contemptuous of the struggles people are going through and irritatingly, riddled with some trademark Andrews idiocy and double standards. To wit:

 - Almost half the police infringements handed out around the country have been to Victorians despite Victoria only boasting 25% of Australia's total population
 - A mother gets fined for giving her daughter a driving lesson as do 3 colleagues carpooling on their way to work. However, at a building site near my office in St Kilda Road I've regularly seen 10 workers standing round in a circle sharing cigarettes, in full view of any passing police cars. But they're probably members of the CFMEU, so that's OK, they get to do what they like
 - On the night the excrement really started to hit the fan, Andrews goes on television and announces that as of the next day, all "non-essential" shops will be closed, without providing any details. As a result everyone flies into a panic and go and strip bottleshops' shelves bare over the next 2 hours. Just so, so, so dumb
 - In stark contrast to the other states, failing to disclose any details whatsoever about a return to schools for teachers and staff, leading the federal education minister Dan Tehan to fly off the handle in frustration on "Insiders" last Sunday. Disappointingly, Tehan later retracted his comments
 - On the Easter weekend, when badgering people not to leave their houses, Andrews expresses a vehement wish for there to be a downpour all long weekend. What a jerk. How about sparing a thought for all the young families cooped up in cramped apartments whose only relief from log cabin fever is to take their kids to the park.

But perhaps the most galling thing of all is that despite all the hectoring press conferences, the cloak and dagger secrecy and the constant threats about more restrictions unless we behave like good little subjects, Victoria has been the least successful of all the states in containing the spread of the virus. As of today, Victoria is the only state still recording an increase in infections, and you know what that means - more weeks of lockdowns as the other states start to return to normal.

Which, to be brutally honest, is EXACTLY what Andrews wants. Relaxing any restrictions would mean giving up some of the autocratic power he has become giddy with over the last 8 weeks. Stuff the economy and stuff parents struggling with home schooling, as long as he gets to tell the toffs in Toorak whether or not they can go skiing in a couple of weeks, or dictate to Gillon McLachlan about when he can restart the AFL, then he's happy as a pig in you-know-what.

As I caught a tram home down a windswept and desolate Chapel Street last night, I was overcome with a genuine sadness about the damage this whole situation has done to this vibrant and enterprising city I call home. I then thought of what might lie ahead were this thoroughly unpleasant Labor apparatchik to secure another 4 years in power, and for the first time in a very long time I wondered about whether moving the family back to Queensland might not be the best thing for us.

The feeling will no doubt pass as the weeks pass and the Federal Government pressure to liberate Victoria and get life back to normal becomes overwhelming. But nonetheless, it has been very unsettling and uncomfortable living in an environment as we have the last few weeks where basic human freedoms are severely abrogated and punishment for transgressions has often been way out of proportion.

It's a salient reminder that totalitarianism is not as dead as perhaps we think it was, and can rear its ugly head in some of the most unlikely places. Which is why when this all finishes we need to hold this mean, abhorrent and hostile state government to account.

Could This Be Trump's "Vietnam"?

Watching the world COVID pandemic unfold over the past few weeks, first with scepticism, then with concern, and eventually, a sense of mounting alarm, I began to wonder - what is going to happen when this thing hits America given (a) its 3rd rate health care system, (b) their culture of favouring individual rights over the good of the country as a whole, and (c) the fact they have Trump as President?

Well, now we know. It's beyond question that there is a huge medical and humanitarian crisis coming over the next month.

When it had the chance to limit the spread, the US government's response, or more pertinently, the lack of it, was simply mind-boggling. At a point where Italy and Spain's situation was very publicly spiralling out of control but the US still had less than 100 reported cases, Trump as he often does ignored reality and released a series of tweets to the effect that the threat was overblown and the country would be over it all by the following Tuesday. So of course, everyone there went about blithely living their lives as usual.

As the days passed and while the Federal government dithered in terms of ramping up testing, imposing isolation and forcing manufacturers to produce medical supplies, state governors in densely populated states like New York, New Jersey and California had to take matters into their own hands. Without the ability to do blanket testing of patients, their only option was to tell people to get indoors pronto, and stay indoors. Sadly, looking at the growth in new cases, these measures look to have come too late and the genie is already out of the bottle. 310,000 plus cases this morning and growing in excess of 10% per day paints the grim picture. So who's responsible?

I make no secret of the fact that I despise just about everything about Trump the President and Trump the individual. However, I do understand his appeal to a certain demographic and why, prior to this happening, he was odds-on to get re-elected. In an increasingly globalised economy where traditional industries like manufacturing are disappearing offshore to base themselves in lower cost countries, and the old truism of the American dream whereby applying yourself and working hard, you can build a comfortable life for you and your family no longer holds, people of course get angry at their circumstances.

Anger, which of course was ripe for exploitation by an amoral snake-oil salesman spreading a message that it's all right to blame China, Mexico or other "shithole" countries for their plight and how he's going to make it all better by bringing all the old jobs back home. Which, of course, has proven to mostly a load of rubbish, but when overall, the economy is otherwise going all right and there isn't a major crisis to deal with, people who support him are happy to let it pass.

The problem though with the current situation is that all of Trump's worst characteristics -  pathological lying, his contempt for experts and his total lack of interest in governing - instead of just being irritating to liberals, are now responsible for costing lives. In order to get on top of things, the government needed to pay attention to what the medical authorities were saying and take decisive action to minimise the spread. Instead, at White House press briefings, Americans got the all too familiar sight of Trump confusing the message by talking over the top of his advisers, playing down the problem and insulting any reporters who were trying to elicit detail about what the government was doing. Compare this to what happened in most Asian countries and here and New Zealand, where measures were swiftly implemented and cases look to be relatively under control. And now, in breaking news, Trump has put his son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of the response, a man for who the word "mediocre" could have been invented. Medical professionals all over the country must be pulling what is left of their hair out.

I have always found it bizarre how in most aspects of life, people generally insist on dealing with experts in their fields, yet particularly in recent times, when it comes to the electing governments, this logic goes out the window. Why? Anyone with any sense wouldn't let their appendix be taken out by someone with no medical experience, so why would you think that when you're faced with a national crisis like a war or a pandemic, a narcissistic crooked businessman with no track record or interest in public service is the person best placed to run the show? Sadly for our American friends, they're about to pay a terrible price for their choice. It's hard to see any of the US presidents of the last 40 years let a situation get out of control like this, but with Trump it was all too predictable what was likely to happen.

In an eerie kind of way, the pandemic has some similarities to the Vietnam War in that at first, everyone rallied round the flag, but then as the public saw the constant flow of body bags coming back on the planes and boats, public anger and protests mounted to the point where Lyndon Johnson saw the writing on the wall and chose not to run for re-election. I wonder what might happen in a few months when over 300,000 people have died and everyone in the USA looks back at what happened and realises that despite having another 4-6 weeks warning of the looming problem, their government still made a far bigger mess of the situation than the rest of the developed world.

It's not that an important a consideration when compared with the tragic and preventable loss of so many lives but maybe, just maybe, this pandemic will do what Russian collusion, blackmailing of the Ukrainian president and numerous other scandals couldn't, namely get rid of this unqualified idiot out of the White House. God knows the Americans deserve a whole lot better leadership than this.

Everyone Loves the Government Now, Don't They?

As many of the things that make life worth living such as travel, going to the footy and rock gigs have stopped over the past couple of weeks, I've found myself watching a lot more television than usual... but not the news. All I can say is, thank god for "Better Call Saul" and "Succession". One thing I did catch however when I briefly flicked over to a news channel was the Chairman of the NRL Peter V'Landys making an impassioned plea to the government for a handout because without it, he said an extended shutdown would send the game broke.

On one level, you get that, because rugby league gives a lot of joy to people, no one would like to see the game fold and like a lot of organisations at the moment, everyone has to look at all possible ways and means of getting through the next 3 months until things hopefully return to normal. But on another level, I thought - mate, really?

Leaving aside the question of how a competition that's been running for over 100 years and turns over in excess of $500 million per year only has 4 weeks cash in the bank, this is a person who, when he was involved with NSW Racing, lobbied long, hard and ultimately successfully to reduce gaming tax in the state. So, if you're the government, how would you be inclined to react? Now Mr V'Landys, you've devoted a good part of your time and effort to taking away money we need to spend on things, like, gee, I don't know, dealing with the fallout from gambling addiction, but now you're in trouble, you want a handout? How does "go forth and multiply" sound?

But it's amazing how many people actually think like this. Working in the property and finance industry, I come across more than my fair share of "small government" zealots, and when I try and argue with them about why people need to pay sufficient tax and why business should stop the incessant lobbying for cuts, the conversation always winds up in bizarre and contradictory places. For example, they say "no more taxes" but then when asked about whether the government is tough enough on crime, they say "lock criminals up and throw away the key". Well... that's all well and good, but if the government can't afford to keep dangerous people locked up, what do you expect them to do? Sadly, we all know what happens, they give them a slap on the wrist and send them out on parole far too early, after which they go and do things like shoot people at the Lindt Cafe or stab a much-loved Melbourne restaurateur in broad daylight.

And I suppose that's kind of leads into my point. We all have a go at the government from time to time, but when bad stuff happens, invariably they're who everyone expects to step in and sort it out. A wise man once said, taxes are the price we say for a civilised society, and boy was he right. As anyone who's been to the supermarket the last couple of weeks can attest, it doesn't take much for people to panic and start behaving like savages. Without an appropriately sized and well funded government to step in and take control of the situation, I'd hate to think what might happen. So while like everyone else I like wince when I pay income tax at the end of the year and feel physically sick writing a cheque for stamp duty whenever I buy a house, if it means I can live in said house with enough toilet paper to last a week and without being broken into by a deranged lunatic who thinks he's on a religious crusade, then I'm kind of prepared to suck it up.

So what's to be done about the current predicament (which, thanks to my medico friends and relatives, I now fully agree is an excrement show of the highest order)? Whether they deserve it or not, in a crisis situation governments become imbued with large amounts of political capital and can take measures that would be normally unthinkable. Sometimes these actions create lasting good, like the time Howard pushed through gun restrictions in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, and sometimes they end in disaster, like after September 11 when Bush and Chaney spent trillions of dollars fighting a war on an abstract noun (as of this morning, when I checked dictionary.com, "terror" was still a word, so I don't think it's going so well, but I digress).

In this case, I completely agree with the government pointing an economic bazooka at this problem. No stone should be left unturned trying to make sure as many people as possible stay in work until this blows over, because if unemployment ticks up to 8% in the next few months, the economic and social consequences are going to be immense. So by all means, splash the cash, that's the easy decision. The more difficult one is how the hell are we going to pay for it, because what's needed could easily send the country broke. And again, for my "small government" friends who struggle with this concept, I'll explain this simply - governments are a bit like households, if they spend more than what they earn, they either go broke or run up debt. Which is a lot of the reason why the USA now owes China $22 trillion.

Here's an idea. One thing we know for certain whether it's a killer virus, earthquakes, bushfires or floods, there are going to more disasters to deal with in the future. So what about setting up a discrete fund similar to the way the New Zealand government treats its earthquake relief fund, and into it pay a means-tested contribution in addition to income tax. Being in a discrete fund for disaster relief, the Federal government wouldn't be allowed to touch it to do dumb stuff like the Victorian government does, like pay Lend Lease $ 1 billion to NOT build a road, or hold a state funeral for someone who was collateral damage in an incident Andrews wanted to create panic about.

We could even get a professional fund manager to run it instead of a public servant or union official, and in that event, it would stand a fighting chance of making decent money. Even better, it could be run independently of the government, so that decisions on distributions from the fund are properly assessed on their merits rather than misappropriated to "disasters" in marginal electorates. And like when Jeff Kennett introduced the temporary State Deficit Levy, you'd probably find the country's finances were restored in next to no time.

It would be a bold move, but after the horrendous start we've all had to 2020, would anyone seriously raise an objection?

Anyway, I'm off now to watch the rugby league while the competition is still solvent. Stay safe and try and be a bit nicer to everyone while this is going on. Hard though that is sometimes.

For Every Over-reaction, There's Usually a Worse Chain Reaction

OK, so it's not exactly in line with Isaac Newton's 3rd law of motion, but it's the best paraphrasing I could come up with in the circumstances. I thought of the title when I was musing over the events of the last couple of weeks and grappling, as I often do, with how little I understand modern times. In particular, I have been puzzling over how individuals, organisations and governments now react to bad things and how this has changed drastically from when I was a child growing up in the 1970s. You tell young people the story about how when someone in your school class caught chicken pox, parents would rush to organise a play date with the infected child so you could catch it as well and get it over with, and they observe you with horror and look like they want to report your now nonagenarian relatives to the child support agencies. For the record, there's no hard feelings Mum.

Nonetheless, for whatever reason, community attitudes to risk have swung around from a fairly relaxed stance 40-50 years ago to an almost zealous avoid-at-all-costs viewpoint. Don't get me wrong, I am all for any form of non-intrusive initiative which reduces the risk of danger to the community, such as compulsory seat belts in cars and increasing the SPF in sunscreen to a level where it is actually going to stop sunburn. However it's where a measure that is taken to stop or prevent something happening is either clearly ineffective, insulting to one's intelligence, or generates a worse effect than the thing it is trying to stop, that's when my grumpy old man blood starts to boil.

Dealing with banks is a great case in point. As anyone who's applied for a business loan recently would know, due to worries about money laundering or bank accounts being used for illicit purposes, the process that they put you through to apply is completely out of control. I have personally spent hours and hours filling in a bunch of forms that are supposedly meant to inform the financier about the borrowing entity and stop this sort of thing from happening. And yet, due to internal incompetence at the banks, the problems continue. Both CBA and Westpac have recently been involved in massive scandals as a result of customers using accounts for all sorts of illegal and immoral purposes. Is it any wonder people get exasperated by having to conform to a tortuous regime some officious compliance drone has dreamt up but is a complete waste of time?

Some friends of mine who still work in large organisations also get frustrated with the increasing number of compulsory seminars and training they have to attend about things like workplace sexual harassment and occupational health and safety, and which distract heavily from the main purpose of their job. 20 years ago when I worked at Macquarie Bank, they had the balance fairly right. By law, they had to put you through this training so you were aware of your obligations as an employee, but then by and large they left you to go about your business. If you then went and groped a colleague at the bar later on without their consent, then you'd been warned and you'd face the consequences. However the butt-covering mentality is now such that companies feel obliged to treat their employees like 2 year olds. For god's sake, most people are clever enough to realise that if some milk gets spilled in the kitchen, they might slip if they walk in it. You don't need to pay some health and safety officer $250,000 a year to point this out.

And don't even start me on air travel. The notion that some neanderthal waving a wand in your general direction or making you put a lid on your shaving cream is going to make your flight more safe is complete nonsense. However, if these people insist on looking down your underpants and you react in a way you normally would if someone did that to you, namely by abusing the bejesus out of them, they won't let you on the plane. To quote a great line from Jeremy Clarkson about this very issue, it makes your teeth itch with rage.

Which leads me to the current brouhaha we are facing with the Coronavirus. Are the measures that are being put in place around the world an overreaction to the threat? Much though I would like to say "yes", in fairness I think it's probably too early to tell. You can however compare statistics from the current epidemic to past strains like SARS (2003) and swine flu (2009) and the numbers of reported cases and deaths worldwide certainly suggest this is more serious and nasty strain. On the other hand, according to Department of Health statistics, the death rate is quite low (only been 3 deaths so far in Australia), yet a normal flu season kills on average between 2500-3000 people here each year. However, it is not the usual practice to do things like shut down major events or ban travel during a regular flu season, so you could argue, why is this so much worse that we need to do it this time?

One good thing I suppose is that unlike their ham-fisted handling of bushfire season, the government is this time listening to experts and acting on their recommendations. However, they also need to be very aware that if these extraordinary measures stay in place for any length of time, the consequences for not just the economy but for people's every day lives are going to be extreme. Already job losses are mounting heavily in the tourism and hotel sectors, some people are going to lose their houses, and if schools shut the disruption to families trying to manage both jobs and school aged children is going to be horrendous. As someone with a daughter doing VCE this year I really don't want to think about it.

Much though it fills me with dread to say these words, I just hope the government knows what it's doing.

Phone Calls Might Soon be Finished

There are many things that are much, much worse about the modern age relative to past times. Politicians, quality of beer, ease of dealing with utilities / government departments, traffic, grammar, bartenders, music and television programmes are just a few. But to be fair, there are many things that are a whole lot better. The one thing I am most thankful for is how easy it is to communicate these days, and more importantly, how many different ways are now available to contact someone (or even a number of people at once) quickly and efficiently. Because for me, technological advances are helping to eradicate one of the big irritants in my life - the unexpected phone call.

Those of us who grew up in the time before E-mail and the smartphone were invented all know the feeling. You're either sitting at home relaxing or in the office working away and all of sudden, the clarion call of the telephone starts up. Straight away, a level of anxiety kicks in and a million thoughts go through your head. "I'm not expecting a call, so who can it be calling? Is it a family member to tell me someone's died? Is it a client ringing to tell me off for being late with a document? Or is it some windbag with nothing better to do calling to drone on for half an hour about nothing in particular and waste my time?"

You really don't want to pick up, but because it might be important, you sort of have to. And also, in the days before answering machines, if you didn't pick up, you know the bloody thing is going to make a racket for a good 2 minutes more, so you might as well deal with whatever it is now rather than having to listen to that again.

Of course, most of the time it was usually OK, and you could often deal with what needed to be discussed quickly and get back to what you're doing. But it was those odd occasions where the caller kept me on the line for way longer than I cared to be or the tenor of the call was quite unpleasant that has forever made the telephone my least favourite medium for communication.

You can call this an over-reaction if you like, and it's not true in all cases, but making an unannounced phone call to someone is an inherently selfish act. Sure, the time might be convenient for you, and you know what you want to discuss, but the person on the other end of the line has no idea what's about to hit them. Also the timing might be completely bad for them, and with the advent of mobile phones, they might be in a place where it's just not possible for them to talk. Many is the time I've been travelling on a jampacked tram or worse, at a urinal taking care of business, and bang, the phone has gone off in my pocket. Hardly a good time to run through that 70 page agreement now, is it? Also you wouldn't suddenly barge into someone's house and start talking at them while they were taking a shower, but until recently it was quite a common thing for people to jump dripping wet out of the bath to go answer a call. When you look back at it, it's quite bizarre how this malign piece of plastic kept us all in its thrall.

Happily, whether it was for these types of reasons or just coincidental technological advances, about 30 years ago communications started to improve out of sight and helped mitigate the worst aspects of telephone calls. Answering machines meant that if the phone rang at 2am, before getting up to answer, you could lie in bed and wait and see if it really was a death in the family or just another blind drunk friend who'd arrived home from the pub. Later on, call identification let you see who was ringing you, thereby giving balance to the caller-recipient dynamic and allowing the recipient to make an informed decision about whether to answer or not. The call blocking feature enabled you to enjoy the happy experience of eliminating telemarketers from your life. And best of all, with the advent of E-mail, you could answer all those pesky little questions in a fraction of the time that it used to take on the phone, and without all the attendant pleasantries talking about the weather, footy and how little Johnny is going at his new school.

Over 25 years plus of working, I've observed too how people's methods of communication have changed to accommodate and embrace the new technology. E-mail and short form messaging services like Whatsapp, SMS and Wechat are great for disseminating information to a large group of people in a speedy and efficient manner, and also allow recipients the courtesy of responding when it suits them to do so, rather than on the spot when they are not ready. Video conferencing software such as Skype or Facetime are starting to become more prevalent. These types of media also overcome another severe limitation of the phone call, in that it is impossible to read body language by engaging with a disembodied voice down a phone line and frustratingly, means that you can't properly grasp the caller's reaction to what is being discussed.

Of course, the telephone will still be around for a good while yet, but pleasingly most people are starting to use it with a bit more etiquette. It's just good manners nowadays to message someone with "Is now a good time to talk?" and if it is, and I get that message, then like most people I'm generally happy to chat.

But for the telemarketers, the people who ring when you're in the shower or in the dunny, and those of you who ring at 2:30am after you've had a skinful .... you'd better get used to a lot of voicemails and disconnected signals in your immediate future. We are your no longer your patsies, and you can not make us answer your calls.