Climate Change Archives - Page 2 of 2

Modest Expectations – Biblical Trivia

The Orange Toddler she calls him. She, our American friend, agrees that the vaccine should be tested, but the chosen vaccine should first be provided to the Great Leader. He has spruiked it – he must be made invincible. To mark the occasion in the Oval Office he must be surrounded by adoring people wearing white coats, but definitely without masks, unless made by his beloved daughter. There will be commemorative syringes for all.

That will give the American people confidence; he to bare his arm for America; the test as no other test has been seen by anybody; and then to cap it off, perhaps a couple of days, maybe a week later, who knows – the flock of white coats will be reassembled while COVID-19 is directly injected into the OT. Then he will turn, give the syringe with the Presidential seal to an adoring fan, saying that there has not been anybody ever, perhaps with the exception of Jesus Christ himself, who has done so much for America, to make it great.

No, you’re dreaming. That won’t happen because he says he has a deformity of his body, which precludes injection – too much Ancient Orange.

Maybe Sarah Cooper will be a suitable surrogate.

Hunted? Not quite

How predictable, the sanctimonious Hunt, the Minister for Health egged on by the Prime Minister, trying to blame Premier Andrews for the ills of Victoria, including the failed nursing home system. Nevertheless, a small history lesson is probably useful to dispel some of the information about Daniel Andrews.

The problem with Victoria is that for years now it has not had a Department of Health but a “Department of Social Reform”, reflecting a social service bias at the expense of public health. Health is hospitals – full stop. That was the conventional wisdom.

The Heads of the Department have traditionally not been medically qualified. The structure of the Health Department was separated into Health, Hospitals and Mental Health, then unified for a time under a doctor, Gad Trevaks, when he chaired the then Health Commission.

That was the last time, and the real source of the decline in public health was due to Premier Kennett and his agent John Paterson, who effectively destroyed any remnant of public health considerations in the State. At the same time regulations have been loosened and, as one insider has said, food regulation and the lack of public health surveillance of food safety will be another problem that Premier Andrews will have to confront at some time.

Thus public health was in a woeful state even before the minions in the Victorian Treasury insisted on so-called “efficiency gains”, which is just a way of reducing public funding.

Then there was the case of a former chief health officer who was largely invisible during the time of his appointment and nobody seemed to care. Raina McIntyre, an outspoken epidemiologist, has commented wryly: “… such a minimalist system can get by during the good times but will be exposed in the pandemic”.

As Andrews has emphasised, this is an area where political point scoring is pernicious. It is more laughable than pernicious to hear the NSW Premier saying that she has a public health department, which “was second to none”, when the Chief Health Officer, Dr Kerry Chant, who is responsible for public health, was lucky to keep her job after the Ruby Princess and Newmarch House debacles.

After all, she has been in the job for 12 years, and was an inheritor, as were her public health colleagues, of the work done by Dr Sue Morey when she was Chief Health Officer. Dr Morey not only supervised the introduction of the contact tracing system but also enabled the public health medical officers to be recognised as medical specialists. As a result, in relationship to Victoria the public health doctors in NSW are far better remunerated. Many of those NSW public health doctors were trained by Dr Morey, who had gained formal public health training, resulting in a Master of Public Health from the Harvard School of Public Health in 1980. She set in place the public health system that is now being described as the Australian “gold standard”; it did not appear overnight. It is after all only a tool and it demands competence in its usage.

Strangled by a Thread of Cotton

To me the Macquarie Marshes have always been one of the important bellwethers as to the health of the Murray Darling region. I have read much about them, but until this week had never visited. The marshes are located on the Macquarie River and lie some two hundred kilometres north-west of Dubbo, between Warren and Carinda.

To put them into context, the Marshes are an extensive wetland system covering more than 150,000 hectares, and the nature reserve covers 18,500 hectares of it. It is recognised as a Wetland of International Importance (but not by the NSW government). Most of the Marshes are in fact on private land.

The Marshes are arbitrarily subdivided into the northern and southern segment. There is more water in the latter. Importantly at present there is water in the marshes and there is abundant bird life. Black and white magpie geese swoop low as coots, ducks and a swan glide across one of the many lakes. The signs of the Marshes having periodically dried up are evident in the dead reeds where fires have wrought irreparable damage when there was no water. Across the water cormorants perch on the dead trunk, silent witnesses to the dying marshes.

Yet another sign of the degradation of the Marshes is the yellow rape mustard weed growing wild throughout the marsh areas that still are more or less dry.

The ultimate sustainability of these Marshes, even now after heavy rains have returned water there, is dictated by the cotton industry. The huge broad acres of black soil being prepared for planting near Warren attest to the nature of the enemy.

Originally it was the building of the Burrendong and Windamere Dams in the 1960s and 1880s respectively, which had diverted the wetland water to irrigation, and in so doing challenged the future of the Marshes.

That sets the picture for this almost lost resource.

We stop where the water is running across the track – 100 metres wide and from the flood post at a level of about 0.4 metres. A large 4WD lurching into a hole and then struggling out only to sink again in the running water before blundering through set the tone for the crossing. We did not attempt to cross, but had lunch at the edge of the stream. Another 4WD stopped on the other side had released a bunch of kids who set out their beach towels on the track and took advantage of a swimming opportunity.

A couple of ATVs containing a number of boisterous teenagers went by, charging into the water. They knew where to go, they clung to the right side next to the fence line. There were no holes on that side – no problems – across and gone with all round waves to those of us left behind. “Local kids”, the weathered face who appeared at the car window said.

He was a seasoned farmer who had stopped with his family, and came across to see who “these foreigners” were. He ran shorthorn Hereford cattle on a property north of Carinda – a place where he said the best cotton in the world could be grown. He was on an afternoon drive with his daughter who had brought visitors from Norway to see the Marshes.

However, the problem is that Warren always took the bulk of the water, and thus Carinda – 140kms further north – hardly received enough water to sow a crop – maybe once in ten years, despite its capacity to produce premium cotton.

His attitude is a microcosm of the problem of Murray Darling River planning. Nobody agrees. It is a free for all, with each person, each municipality, having no consideration for the people of the catchment as a whole. Why should they? Their role model – their various governments seem hell bent on fracturing the Federation. Why not add compromising the nation’s water to a deteriorating concern for country?

The Pub in the Scrub

It is but a speck on the map between Condobolin and Tullamore. Here there is a typical two-storied, corrugated iron roofed country hotel, with a bright orange tiled façade. It luxuriates in the soubriquet of The Pub in the Scrub. Its name, which also is the name of this hamlet, is Fifield. The hamlet is empty, apart from a murder of crows having a convention in the main street and a ute parked against the kerb in front of the pub.

Near the geographic centre of NSW, Fifield is surrounded by blazing yellow broad acres of canola. It was once the site for alluvial exploration for platinum and there is a sign nearby pointing to a place called Platina.

However, Fifield is a graveyard for car bodies. They are everywhere. There is an old barn, unusually with a chimney but now ramshackle, despite the incongruous new solar panels on the roof. Acres of car bodies behind the building are spread on the other side of the main road, the whole extent of which is hidden by trees. The fact there was a newish bright yellow Ford in front of the barn seems to confirm that the building was occupied.

The oval was covered in cape weed; there was once a tennis court, now overgrown, but with its net still in place and the rusted gate still visible. A disused wooden church on the corner with a handwritten sign which says “St Dymphna”, who can identified as the Lily of Ireland, the patron saint of mental illness.

However, on the road as you enter town there is a bright black and yellow sign exhorting the passing motorist not to dump rubbish – or else. Unless of course, it’s your car.

Ah, the wonderful irony of Australia.

Yuranigh

When I used to walk close to my old home among the trees which dotted the sloping land that had been preserved around the Melbourne Cricket Ground, I would come across a canoe tree where, before whitefella settlement, the Wurrundjeri people had carved a canoe from the bark.

Canoe trees were probably more common than have been found, but civilisation has a way of destroying heritage. Maybe many trees so used for canoes, shields, coolamons and other artefacts just did not survive. After all, before the whitefella came with his tree-felling prowess, there would have been open forest where the city now stands. Not surprisingly the river red gum with its stout trunk was a favourite source of bark. Bark was plentiful. Bark was the only resource they had for their canoes as there is no evidence that the dugout canoe of their Northern Australian brothers ever percolated south.

Yet the bark canoe was obviously important given the number of rivers and watercourses that flowed around and through the land which whitefellas labelled Melbourne. It is surprising so many of the trees survived so close to the centre of Melbourne

This reflection on tree carving was at the forefront of my mind when we visited the grave of Yuranigh. His grave lies a few kilometres east of Molong, a central west NSW town just off the highway to Orange.

The directions are well marked, the track is stony clay, there is a gate and a cattle grid, and then a short drive where old gnarled yellow box gums hold sway over a weed infested paddock. This is where Yuranigh is buried. Little is known about this Wiradjeri man except that he accompanied Thomas Mitchell to the Gulf of Carpentaria on one of Mitchell’s explorations.

Mitchell thought so much of this man that when Yuranigh died when still a young man, Mitchell paid for his grave and a marble headstone commemorating Yuranigh. It is apparently recognised as the one site in Australia where European and Aboriginal burial traditions coincide.

Around the area where Yuranigh is buried are carved trees, sinuous dendroglyphs etched into the heart of the trees – complex cuts given the tools that would have been used. The most prominent one of these is a stump protected from the weather, an extraordinary example of Wiradjeri art. It had lain for years on the ground, before being raised and now supported in a concrete base

There is another tree close by where the artwork can be viewed through a slit in the tree – the carving lying within the tree. There are four trees that define the corners of the gravesite, but some have defiantly repaired themselves and in so doing smothered the artwork.

We were alone at the site. Despite the complexity of what we were witnessing – an intertwined image where we could see original Wiradjeri work in all its complexity but only guessing as to meaning not only of the carving but also its placement in relation to Yuranigh’s burial place, I realise I know so very little.

Yes, I understand Mitchell’s tribute. That’s how we whitefellas celebrate dying in a world of grey – the compromise between white and black in our monuments and headstones. But the trees are not confected – they are real. In blackfella eyes Yuranigh obviously was a great Aboriginal man; the carvings denote respect. Otherwise who would take such care? “Sorry business” is such an important part of Aboriginal life.

John is not the Name

When I go to a bank or any other place where the interaction is usually with a younger generation, far younger than my “silent generation”, I find being addressed by my Christian name jarring to say the least. I quickly correct them on most occasions.

After all we have a surname for a reason, whether derived by being the “son of “, colour (white, black, brown), profession (fletcher, butcher, smith), location (London, Birmingham, Kent).

I come from a generation when every male at least addressed each other by “surname”. However, within the family and friends circle, we were called by our Christian names.

I find calling elderly people by their first name, as if they are children, unsettling. I would object to a stray carer that I have never seen before, calling me by first name. Using “John” jars just because they have seen that on some of my documentation, because those who know me call me “Jack”. Address me by my surname please.

Having thus aggressively put my point of view, my cousin told me a salutary story about his uncle. His uncle Jack went to get a job on the wharves.

He was asked his name.

“Jack,” his uncle replied.

“Look, feller, on these wharves we deal in surnames. What’s your surname?”

“Honey.”

“Well, Jack, it is …!” came the immediate reply.

One against me.

Mudgee Mud

It is about 40 years since we were in Mudgee. We came to the inaugural Mudgee Wine Festival. It was a spur of the moment decision. I asked her. She said yes. Now years later, the trip was not so romantic; you know, she said as we were driving there, “We came here in 1980. Have you been to Mudgee since?” I had travelled widely around this part of NSW and for a time I often visited Dubbo, spent time at Bathurst, found some delightful antiques at Molong and had been to Glen Davis on more than one occasion – but Mudgee?

Forty years ago, Mudgee wines were dismissed with the label “Mudgee Mud.” Give something a bad name and I doubt whether even after exposure of the wine at the Festival was sufficient for me to ever buy some. It was still very indifferent wine.

The dinner was an uproarious affair, as one of the guys who was a geologist had mapped the coal deposits around Ulan and was making or had made a financial bonanza out of his assiduous tracking of the coal deposits around those areas. At the time of the dinner he had secured the lease over the tail of the deposit. Forty years ago, coal as they said was king, and who had heard of climate change effects!

At the end of the night, we blokes had all got along so well, and there was so much bonhomie, that everybody was shickered. Out in the car park all the blokes got into the driver’s seats and the wives, who were by and large sober, were consigned to the passenger seats. There was one exception – the young lady whom I eventually was to marry years later – insisted on driving. Just as well.

The next morning I awoke, nursing a damaged head. We had stayed down the road at Kandos, famous for its limestone quarrying. Mudgee had been booked out. As we were leaving the motel owner noted that I was a doctor.

“Oh”, she cooed, “ We would love to have a young white doctor here in Kandos.”

Different times then, different times.

Mouse whisper

On the menu at the Italian restaurant in Griffith, it was stated that one could dine “al fresco”. Sounds authentic – just as the names of any the pastas or “il cotoletta Milanese” were authentic italiano.

The term al fresco is unknown in Italy. If you want to dine outside (fuori) or in the open (all’aperto”), you will be directed to that leafy courtyard.

Thus, il cameriere will scratch il sua testa if you say “al fresco”. He may misunderstand and instead bring you acqua fresca – cold water.

Modest expectations – The Forty-Niners

They come in their work clothes and their steel-capped boots, climbing on board the QantasLink plane at Devonport; or disembarking at the same airport. They are the FIFO miners who work on the ore rich West Coast of Tasmania. They have living quarters on the edge of Zeehan and in Rosebery while they are on work down the mine, since 50 per cent of the miners choose not to live permanently on site. Interestingly one per cent of Tasmanian miners are listed as working in the East Pilbara in Western Australia.

Paradoxically, the Mt Lyell mine at Queenstown, the largest settlement on the West Coast, has been closed down for nearly five years. Its Indian parent company in the same period closed its copper smelter in India, but claims there is no connection between the two decisions. However, Queenstown exists as the local government centre amid denuded hills, a settlement desperately clinging to its existence. The beautiful King River, polluted for over 70 years by the mine tailings from Mount Lyell, is said will take 200 years to restore, but at least a start has been made to cover the riverside that was yellow with sulphur with sedge and other littoral plants. Over the last 20 years you can see that change.

It’s a bit sad to see that the old anti-climate change warrior from Tasmania, Eric Abetz remains solidly behind the coal lobby given how little coal mining contributes to the Tasmanian economy – less than 100 jobs. Eric moreover was outed for spending $3,000 on a trip to go to an Australian Mines and Metals Association conference in 2018 in Melbourne. He is reported as saying his travel was appropriate “given the undisputed importance of the sector to Tasmanians. Tasmania’s Mt Lyell mine has been the sole continuous AMMA member”, Abetz said. As the report noted as a postscript, as Eric should have known, “it was no mean feat, considering the mine had been mothballed four years before the gala dinner.”

But then Eric comes from Hobart and I wonder how often he has visited the West Coast – if ever. There is much mining – zinc, iron ore, gold, tin – but no longer from Mount Lyell. There are mines near Zeehan, Rosebery, Tullah and up on the Savage and Henty Rivers. However, if you live in Hobart, the Tasmanian West Coast may as well be on the moon.

I have been going regularly to the West Coast for more than 20 years and yet those towns look the same as they were then, except for the increase in hostel-like accommodation for the FIFO. In other words, these towns have not boomed in population as Queenstown did after the discovery of copper and silver in the late nineteenth century. The need to transport the ore resulted in Strahan on the Macquarie Harbor becoming the conduit port (again the population reached 2,000 then) and the revolutionary Abt railway was the means to transport the ore over the mountains and through the rain forest along the King River from Mount Lyell.

Strahan is now a tourist resort and the Abt Railway, which was closed in 1963, has been rebuilt as a tourist attraction. Strahan also still functions as a fishing port – crayfish and abalone – and in the harbour, salmon farming. There are the leatherwoods, the flowers of which provide the nectar for the distinctive honey found here. Even with the mining, there is still this extraordinary temperate rainforest of myrtle, native beech, sassafras, blackwood and the remnant clumps of pine unique to Tasmania – huon, king billy and celery top pine.

Because the changes in the mining industry from the stereotype beloved by those who never go to a mining town, it is difficult to imagine a settlement to have a life once mined out. But people like Abetz would throw money at Mount Lyell in the mistaken belief that it would result in more jobs, irrespective of the return. In most part the company would probably just pocket the subsidy.

As I said, there is still a healthy mining industry – the whole of the West Coast is a mineralised area, and taking just one mining industry, that of zinc mining at Rosebery (population 713) and Zeehan (population 708), it yields about a third of Australia’s output in zinc; and Australia produces about 30 per cent of the world’s zinc. Unlike coal, zinc is unlikely to be replaced because of its recognized use not only in sunscreen but more importantly in galvanizing iron and in the development of electric batteries for cars.

However even with such important mining activity, the resident population of these two mining towns on a rough calculation is equal to the number of FIFO. It should be added that 30 per cent of the zinc is recycled and here, in employment terms, the Swiss-owned smelter near Hobart at Risdon has played an integral role. The problem with mining in Tasmania is that the West Coast is the last area of untouched temperate rain forest in Australia, brought into stark relief – literally – by the bushfires along the east coast from Queensland to the Victorian border. So mining is a case of treading carefully, having learnt from Mount Lyell as an example of what not to do to the environment.

Wind turbines being placed at Granville Harbour are providing 200 jobs during construction, but for maintenance only 10. That, together with the FIFO, means that in the end it is not the technology nor the resources which provide the essence of life anywhere.

Tourism brings 300,000 to the North-West and West – people are the life blood, especially as the Macquarie Harbour boat trip and the reconstructed Abt Railway are the prime attractions, with Strahan the prime place to stay.

Oh, by the way, dear Eric, you should witness the huge wind turbines being moved down the Murchison Highway, round the corner through Zeehan and on up the road to eventually reach Granville Harbour. Wind and rain are the West Coast’s resources to be exploited, and soon the mighty wind resource of the Forties gales will be added to the Tasmanian power grid.

However, given how irrelevant coal is to the economy of Tasmania, I presume your time as a “coal war warrior” will soon be over, your task completed, but as you drive your Tonka tip truck off into a smoked filled sunset, remember your West Coast and its wonderful diversity.

The Martini

I enjoy a gin martini. My wife makes a very good martini and this blog was prompted by an article on the (alleged) best martini maker in the world opining on how to make the best martini. However the Best Martini was somewhat different from that of the expert.

First of all keep the gin in the freezer. This ensures that you’ll know if the gin has been watered down, because if it partially freezes you know there is dilution. Also if you keep the gin in the freezer, it makes the question of shaken or stirred irrelevant.

Next, “vermouth” the glass with green Noilly Prat; here there is no disagreement with yon expert, but it is a question of the amount. The Best formula calls for one in eight and then the gin from the freezer is poured into a chilled martini glass. And again in agreement, the lemon twist is the best addition to this opulent drink, but if you want to fiddle then if you must use three olives on a gold stick. Gold is important as it gives the olives a certain je ne sais pas quoi dire.

However, the problem is the cost of such a drink and the level of sobriety after two if you forsake the ice. There is no dilution if you pour straight from the freezer.

Which reminds me of that hoary old joke beloved by Latin teachers: Cassius Brutus clanks into the Vinum Bar in Rome and asks for a Martinus. The bartender responds: “surely you mean a martini?” to which Cassius Brutus said: “if I wanted two I would have ordered so”.

The best martini apart the uxorious one described above I ever had was a cucumber infused martini in New York. It was not the faintly cucumberish Hendricks, but a more full flavoured version. The nearest I could find was the Gordon’s cucumber infused gin in the green bottle, but I think I must have bought the last bottles in Australia. You garnish with a partially peeled piece of cucumber.

Have not seen any sign of the Gordon’s Green; only its seeming replacement of pink gin…only in Raffles in Singapore please, as I slightly shudder.

Bernie Sanders Heartland

A 78 year old who has had a heart attack, who now won’t release his medical notes – bad sign, Bernie. In the information vacuum, the obvious first thought is that he has irreversibly damaged cardiac muscle and therefore a heart at risk.

Then we have a President who mysteriously disappeared into and out of the Walter Reed Hospital. Nobody knows what incantations were said while he was in the hospital. However, Trump’s cupboard is probably the most comprehensive collection of skeletons known to man or woman such that another one as the grim reaper would feel at home.

These old crocks are the marvels of modern American medicine – particularly cardiac care where investigative procedures, stenting and improvement in medication are first rate. American health care (as distinct from the system in which it exists) at its best is probably as good as you would get in the world, if you can afford it and go to wise doctors.

You see modern medicine has enabled an obese, insomniac narcissist with a poor diet and the other who looks madly stressed as if he going to blow a fuse every time he speaks, to be President of the USA.

Just as Nixon thrashed McGovern in the 1972 election, if they survive until November, Trump should win the battle, even though Sanders may appear to be a better bloke.

The other man Joe Biden is just a broad grin, which hides a mediocrity clearly demonstrated by his propensity for plagiarism. His major advantage is he seems physically fit, but old age is not a fair hand in the card game of life.

They said how poor Bloomberg was in the recent debate and how politically incorrect he had been in the past. He does not have the populist orator skills that the others have, with their confected outrage. He is old but he wears his age well without panda eyes or comb overs.

His responses where he was allowed to answer were sensible given that the moderators were appalling. He brings a sense of surety, that on the major policies he will see them through. Like many quiet men he carries a big stick, and Trump just will be no match for him, the longer the campaign goes. He knows how to deal with serial grifters like Trump, and if he secured the nomination he will drive Trump mad with his quiet probing, and as he may say if he was as vulgar to Trump – the fact is that, Trump ol’ boy, I have a bigger one than you have – war chest I mean.

But Bloomberg also is no spring chicken, although he has the gravitas that even in four years he may be able to resurrect America from its policy shambles. It is all very well to have a world economy built on gambling , even if there are fancy names for it, such as stock markets, hedge funds plus all those indices, which may as well be on a bookmaker’s chart. Of course, Bloomberg has built his empire as the steward of these goings-on.

If the Democrats come to their senses, and if Bloomberg is selected, then Pete Buttigieg should be considered for his Vice-President running mate, to test whether an openly gay married man will be acceptable to the majority of Americans. Buttigieg is smart and personable, but not this time, brother.

They who read the blog may say I’m a “typical male who has ignored the two women”. Simply put, America needs a different woman prototype to appeal to the whole electorate. Warren, with her artificial outrage would gain votes, but she suffers from a lack of sense of humour and her candidature is now on life support. The problem with the plethora of women who thought of doing a “Hilary” and have progressively dropped out is that their presence has obscured how impressive Governor Klobuchar is, but she too is in danger of disappearing.

To me on the stump if Trump and Sanders are the 2020 presidential combatants they are equally repellent, but then I do not have a vote, only an opinion. That doesn’t get you anywhere; but the prospect of candidates dying on the campaign trail is too macabre – and frankly, just a bit too close to reality. Moreover, it is not the time for old men.

They will not be around to be cheered or booed at the end of 2050 if the world is still belching the same level of pollution and progressively destroying the world that we have known, but will not live to see. The same can be said for all those old men, as well as Elizabeth Warren.

The Price of Never Being Wrong

The problem with epidemics is they thrive on ignorant national leaders, who have no idea of public health, suppressing inconvenient information. This increasing government secrecy is coupled with the modern version of the courtier castrati, people without ideas but with perfumed phrases whispering into the ear of national leaders who have lost the ability to apologise.

I once wrote a small monograph entitled “The Dilemma of the Public Health Physician” in which I attempted, as I said, “to help public health physicians to work through the situation which confronts many professionals when they are in possession of information which others perceive as ‘sensitive’ or valuable in any respect.”

I went on to argue that all public health information should be freely available. The problem is that many public health physicians exist for the collection of data and not for the best way to make it available to the community. But communication skills have never been emphasised as they should be, because even over 20 years ago I wrote; “there is an increasing tendency for the political walls to be daubed with the graffiti of misinformation”.

This current epidemic will test those countries, especially China and Russia, whose leaders’ powers lie in secrecy and misinformation, to become more open. This epidemic will not be the last, given that the world with rising temperatures throughout, is increasingly becoming an incubator for exotic diseases.

Added to this viruses jumping from one species to another, mutating, being always ahead of the game … so no more pangolin penis eating in the restaurants of Asia, please. I assure you it doesn’t help virility only the possibility of a new virus – that is if the pangolin revenge is not already been enacted across the world.

On reflection am I just succumbing to daubing those political walls? Well, that is the point – public health expertise is being allowed not only to languish but to be ignored as an inconvenience. But as many politicians have found out in the past, “wishing an inconvenience would go away” is not a solution.

Having said that it seems we are fortunate in Australia not only to have the calming influence of Brendan Murphy, but also his unheralded deputy Paul Kelly who, unlike his boss, is a public health physician. Their influence on the government where there is a high level of ignorance is, and will continue to be, important. After all, as I wrote they have an imminent dilemma, which I have previously canvassed, which is when is Australia going to lift the ban on unrestricted entry into this country?

That is why the public health physician is as important as members of the police in enforcement of the basic requirements of public health, even down to all Australians washing hands as a matter of course.

Mouse whisper

I am sorry but I cannot let this recent comment by Sanna Marin, the Finnish prime minister, go by without applauding:

“We Finns have our sauna. And traditionally, it is where we make decisions. So now we have five women in charge, we can all go into the sauna together and make the decisions there.”

“Ei vain miehet vapauttavat kuumaa ilmaa”, says my old Finnish great-grand father mouse Aarvo.

That is the last comment he will ever make. They will be after him with birch branches.

Modest expectations – The Invincibles

Ah, the delightful Matthew James Canavan saying that Malcolm Bligh Turnbull should come to Collinsville and face the people there, with or without a caravan. It is one of those “what are you?” moments that are part of the Australian psyche when you know you have the mob behind you, especially if the mob is composed of guys you would expect to be unionists with eureka flags on their working clothes.

What a statement. I may as well respond and issue a similar invitation, “Mr Canavan, please come to the electorate of Kooyong, where I have a property and talk to my fellow constituents about the need for more coal-fired power stations. I am sure Minister Frydenberg would be overjoyed to see you and then direct you to the electorate of Higgins and then perhaps on to Chisholm and Goldstein. Don’t forget to bring a lump of coal to remind us what it looks like.”

Ever been to Victoria, Mr Canavan – you know Northern and Eastern Victoria to shore up the seats of Mallee, Nicholls and Gippsland. I am sure your fellow Nationals there would be anxious to pass around your lump of coal with the media in attendance, and your Queensland persona rampant?

Now, Mr Canavan, I note your ancestors come from a place called Lozzo di Cadore – a beautiful area in the Italian Alps near to the Austrian border. Ever been asked to be on the show who do you think you are?” But perhaps you already know that Lozzo di Cadore translates as the Stench of Cadore. There are 28 commune, as you probably know, in the province of Belluno, and for whatever reason your ancestors came from that one named Lozzo di Cadore. Perhaps a coal-fired power station there would enhance its meaning.

In fact, there are a few of us who are thinking of targeting some of these Victorian seats with an anti-coal message and you wouldn’t mind us using pictures of you and Mr Joyce – you know big overpowering photos of you beside a cart load of coal personally handled by you or Mr Joyce – alongside the photo of the local member. We shall make sure your photos will show you both grinning just to show the sunny if somewhat smoky side of your nature. After all, it would give full meaning to the term “Coalition”.

Tom Reeve

Collinsville is in the Bowen Basin. Even though I have been to many coal mining towns in Outback Queensland, I don’t remember ever going to Collinsville. But the name has stuck in my memory. Why? Because one of Australia’s greatest thyroid and parathyroid surgeons, Tom Reeve, did a stint at Collinsville 18 months after graduation. It would have been around 1949. After that he moved to surgery and never looked back, as they say in the classics.

However, his reminiscence of his stint on Collinsville below in an article he wrote in 2004 for the Medical Journal of Australia showed the value of career development in rural Australia. Tom was a University of Sydney graduate and I remember him saying to me that it was somewhat of an experience getting off the train in Collinsville unknown to the locals and yet knowing you were there for at least a year. In fact, he stayed for 18 months. I have always used his experience to illustrate that time as a rural doctor can lead anywhere.

As the only doctor in town, I enjoyed 18 months of rich clinical experience. Post-term obstetric deliveries, head injuries, critically ill children, motor vehicle accidents and accidents involving horses all hastened my clinical maturity. I remember a young jackeroo with a perinephric abscess after a nasty horse-related accident. As we were stranded by floods at the time, a surgeon in Mackay took me through the operative steps by phone. All ended well.

The community was full of reliable, loyal Aussies with enormous hearts. They were openly friendly and had a great bank of skills, and gave their local doctor the comfort often absent today.

An outbreak of croup in some young children was the most formidable of my experiences. They desperately needed steam inhalation, but I was a little nonplussed as to how to supply it. One father spoke with his boss at the mine workshop, who rapidly produced a large galvanised watering can with four arms, each capped with a watering-can rose. Placed on a primus stove, this device effectively dispensed steam to four mosquito-netted cots simultaneously. Problem solved!

Tom Reeve AC CBE became a giant in surgery. I once asked him to review surgery at Broken Hill Hospital when the late Ross Webster, himself the Foundation Professor of Community Medicine at the University of Melbourne, was Medical Superintendent of the Hospital. There are days indelibly remembered, and one of these days was when we three lunched at the old Menindee hotel, south of Broken Hill. This was the actual building that Burke and Wills stayed in on their way North. The hotel has since burnt down, but the one unusual and unexpected thing I remember was the solitary red hibiscus flowering in the corner of courtyard.

No symbolism – just a dash of colour on a courtyard to be remembered.

Parasite is not only a Korean film

Should the people working in a minister’s office hidden from public scrutiny given their integral public purpose? Public records note the cost and number of ministerial office staff, but the government guidelines don’t require publication of appointments, as has to occur with the public service. With the Prime Minister’s 58 staff averaging $233,000 in 2017 and the Opposition Leader’s 39 staff averaging $193,000, is there a need for more scrutiny?

Silly question. When I was Principal Private Secretary to the Leader of Opposition, his advisers numbered six. Add three assistant secretaries, who could write shorthand at 120 words a minute and type at least 80 word perfect a minute and put up with us males; and that was the office, plus of course the electorate secretary. Ten all up.

We worked very hard, but then it was by choice. The long hours and the need to become an essential part of the policy process rather than just political games were complemented by the fact we all lived cheek by jowl.

Why has the Leader of the Opposition’s office grown to 39? In the old Parliament House there would not have been enough room for that many in the cramped quarters. I have always thought the new Parliament House was an example of Mussolini brutalism. Compared to old Parliament House, there is so much space. Whereas in the old Parliament House, King’s Hall was accessible to the public and politicians and the people mixed together. However, with this mania for security and the extravagant amount of space so that you could run a Formula one around the corridors means that the public gets excluded from consideration except at election time; and the party branch structure for politicians is a “tiresome” token of connectivity with the electorate.

Added to this is the claque of advisers without any experience except in the brutality of factional politics and a taste for authority – if not authoritarianism. Some advisers are very good, and there was no doubt that Arthur Sinodinos as adviser to Howard was one who was essential dampening down the negative side of the Prime Minister’s personality.

However, having had to deal with advisers and having seen how others deal with them, the environment which they inhabit gives them a sense that in the name of their boss they can imitate the same bad behavior – the obscenities, the verbal assaults, documents thrown, the demeaning treatment of experienced experts, the endless bad temper, the sexual harassment, the cynical misuse of entitlements, all in various degrees of toxicity depending on the office. Worst of all is the time waiting, because there is a cohort of politicians who are perennially late. This is a topic for a separate blog.

The extent as with the number of advisers has grown – let us not say “exponentially” because though I may hypothesise that the contents of the Trough are increasing in this manner, there needs to be someone to present the evidence. In all, Parliaments are rubbish cultures, not the least because they are divorced from the world in which their electors live.

The problem is when there is an explosion of entitlements, then Opposition is nowhere in the Parliament – nobody is going to blow the whistle and not take the money. All the politicians on this issue are on the one side of the House.

The problem of course is that the amount and nature of expenses come out, and then there may be an outcry if someone has been too greedy, but the lid snaps shut on the Trough. Feeding time is over, and we mug punters do not have any further knowledge – it is asymmetric information par excellence further obscured by the piety of politicians invoking confidentiality measures and security reasons not to be frank with the people who elected them.

The current unfolding behaviour of some elements of the National Party and the Prime Minister’s office in relation to the grants may have vented some aroma from a hole in the Trough, but the government has Gaetjens and Associates, expert Lid Repairers by Appointment on the job, brought in to seal the leak.

In the past I have identified the three elements of this political toxicity, but no-one takes any notice because it is inconvenient: sleep deprivation, isolation and boredom. However, it is probably time to revise what I wrote an age ago from personal observation.

Boredom is still an important factor. Let me quote from a definition of the Mafia consigliere – 95 per cent hanging out and five per cent ultimate brutality.

Here in Parliamentary Australia the brutality may be just factional brutality – consigliere credentials honed sharp by the advisers from their student politics days. Never had a real job, just hanging around the particular Party of their persuasion slicing their way to the top.

Boredom? I always remember the implication at the heart of beauty was evil. Baudelaire may have said something like that because he was a master at pitting unlikely scenarios together: “As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.”

Hence, although Parliament House may give the impression of a hive of activity, at the heart of this inactivity is boredom – doing the same thing over and over again, leaking, evening up all scores and new ones also, pettiness cloaked as activity.

As I asked rhetorically earlier: why does the leader of the Opposition need 39 advisers. Perhaps someone could volunteer to tell us publicly what they all do. How do they evade boredom for instance?

The problem is when courtier expansion has no brake, and when each incumbent has his or her own idiosyncrasy translated as a need for a new specific post such that when the incumbent changes the post is not necessarily abolished. Why? There is nobody to ask what that position was doing there in the first place.

It is the same with any dynastic institution – it’s called tradition. Not that it is all expansion. For instance, until the coronation of Queen Victoria at each Coronation there was apparently a Royal Gruel carrier, presumably because one of her predecessors became peckish during the ceremony and needed a bowl of porridge.

I once floated the idea that there should be cohort of ministerial advisers who would go out and live with the community and learn what were the pressing problems on the job. I had learnt from experience that living close to a problem helped to solve that problem. For instance when we wanted child care for our infant children we started a co-operative (still running today) where the parents ran the show employing the staff and making sure it was properly resourced. Problem alleviated. I came to being a ministerial adviser with a large amount of outside work experience.

Put another way, how many of the Ministerial Advisers were seen helping out during the bushfires in the early part of the year – on deck or there in the aftermath? It would have been useful for an adviser to suggest to their boss, the Prime Minister to take hampers of “loaves and fishes” to Cobargo, for instance. I heard though that they were allegedly too busy undermining the Premier of NSW, while the State burned. Sorry, that does not count.

The Patron Saint of Blackbirds

I always remember the headmaster announcing to the school that several lads in dark blue suits had been seen trashing a theatrette in the city.

Now Melbourne Grammar School boys in those days wore blue suits, but there was also another school, where the students also wore dark suits. The words “St Kevin’s” rippled through the audience. The headmaster droned on telling us that he told the owners of the theatrette and perhaps the police that it could not possibly be Melbourne Grammar School boys. They always wore their caps. Such was our headmaster’s presence that they went away and did not bother us again.

The point of the story was that essential identifying component of our uniform was the school cap, which we kept on everywhere we went in public. OK, pull the other leg, but that was uttered as school dogma in those halycon days.

At the time, St Kevin’s was firmly ensconced on the second rung of Melbourne private schools, but because it existed in the nether end of Toorak, we Grammar boys used to run into them from time to time emerging from their Gardiner Creek base.

Private schools in my time reflected the sectarian divide of Melbourne, and Roman Catholic schools in heart of Protestant Melbourne breached this divide. Thus running into them did not mean co-habitation, especially because of their status we never played sport against them. However, how unfair it may have been, St Kevin’s already had a stigma as so tellingly portrayed on Monday night.

What I noted in the Four Corners program was the almost subliminal reference to Scotch College and Xavier College, two of original Melbourne private schools, which are still single sex. Each of these schools has had its problems, but not to the same extent as St Kevin’s. Hmmm?

Thus, if the Victorian premier is ordering the review of one, why stop there with St Kevin’s and not have a review of all these supposed premier schools. It would be interesting to see how the culture compares between the single-sex and co-educational schools.

As is becoming clear, it is not a question of boy versus girl and the interaction between the two, which was how the debate was set in my years of school for co-education denial. The debate is now about whether single sex schools act as a magnet for paedophiles.

There was a degree of prescience in the chant we Melburnians had to endure when I was at school: “if you can’t get a girl, get a Grammar boy”. That is Melbourne Grammar – I’d hate to implicate Geelong Grammar as a butt for such mockery.

Mouse whisper

My mausmeister told me of a couple of his supposed bon mots. He said them first in an interview he did when he had his brief period of Warhol glow.

One he said was that once 50 years ago what was accepted as God’s will is now described as medical negligence.

The second: when two or more doctors are gathered together you have a new medical specialty.

Modest Expectations – Palladium

In 1633, the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church forced Galileo Galilei, one of the founders of modern science, to recant his theory that the Earth moves around the Sun. Under threat of torture, Galileo recanted. But as he left the courtroom, he is said to have muttered: “all the same, it moves”.

Last week, 359 years later, the Church finally agreed. At a ceremony in Rome, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. The formal rehabilitation was based on the findings of a committee of the Academy the Pope set up in 1979, soon after taking office. The committee decided the Inquisition had acted in good faith, but was wrong.

In fact, the Inquisition’s verdict was uncannily similar to cautious statements by modern officialdom on more recent scientific conclusions, such as predictions about greenhouse warming. The Inquisition ruled that Galileo could not prove “beyond doubt” that the Earth orbits the Sun, so they could not reinterpret scriptures implying otherwise.

This extract is reprinted from a 1992 issue of New Scientist when the Roman Catholic Church at last accepted that the Earth was round and we were heliocentric. However, what is remarkable is that the Pope asked for advice on the subject, which should have taken no time at all to resolve. Instead it took from 1979 to 1992 for the Report to be acted upon by the Pope.

I do not think we have three centuries for ratification of climate change.

I am not sure that we can as yet class our Government as the modern day equivalent of the Inquisition – high on strigine intolerance; low on intellectual enquiry.

Nevertheless, we are in the grip of the “anti-science” virus, simple in structure but extremely virulent.

In an effort to contain its spread, I would be interested if anybody in the media has asked the Prime Minister whether he believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible, whether the starting date of Earth has been set as 4004BC, as given to the Garden of Eden. Also would he care to interpret the Book of Revelations in terms of his government’s policy?

It is sad that those naïve followers believe this whole sorry contribution of the Prime Minister to this summer’s tragedies will not be repeated; that for the next two years Morrison, with a shepherd’s crook in hand, will guarantee us Australians green pastures and forget this summer ever happened, while Santos contaminates the already over-stretched aquifers of northern NSW and we have the next severe bushfire season in the offing.

Coronavirus – Another one for our Pentecostal Juggler

The coronavirus has been labelled “deadly” in the news bulletins. The whole doomsday scenario is compounded by people looking like white aliens wandering around being ominous. The facts: 13 cases of coronavirus in Australia as of February 1. Nobody has died in Australia. In fact, those infected have left hospital and infection is said to be mild. Doesn’t sell newspapers this last line.

In contrast, last year in Australia there were 217,000 cases of influenza and 430 deaths.

The difference is that there is a vaccine for influenza and none for this coronavirus. In other words, there is no defence except quarantine. Yet there is no hysteric reaction to these dreadful figures in relation to influenza, although single cases are singled out.

Then we have the anti-vaxxers who have been somewhat silent during the coronavirus, but why shouldn’t they be. After all there is no vaccine to complain about as yet.

Returning to the coronavirus, the rule of thumb says 14 days is the incubation period. Therefore there is a logic in locking down the world for 14 days or wait until 14 days after the last case. This is an expensive solution.

That is the problem with blanket bans selectively on person-to-person contact. When you do you lift the bans? The number of university vice-chancellors having Chinese withdrawal symptoms must be an imminent public health emergency in itself and while you have a ban on all Chinese people, then when will it all end?

After all, what is the difference between quarantining the Australians for 14 days in Wuhan rather than the expense of quarantining them on Christmas Island? What was the problem of sending public health experts to Wuhan, and making a list of those already there? Two questions? Have the Australians in Wuhan been there for 14 days? Have any Australians currently in Wuhan contracted the infection? Just arrange a quarantined conduit out of the country making sure that there is no wild animal meat in the luggage. That was apparently what has happened, and there is this scattering of people across the outer reaches of Australia with all the inconvenience that entails.

What was interesting was the admission by Len Notaras on the ABC on Tuesday morning that the Qantas 747 had been specially fitted with air conditioning to purify the air in the cabin. Well, if I had been interviewing you, Les, I would have asked why did it have to be specially fitted. You mean Les the current crop of planes are bags of viruses?

It is something I had always suspected, travelling by plane is an excellent way of picking up airborne disease. Maybe whatever was done to this flight should be done to all flights, whether domestic or international. Wake up, Australia. This admission means that flying currently is a public health risk.

However, lets hope nobody gets coronavirus while they are clustered together on Christmas Island, in “discrete” family cluster rather than the “discreet” family cluster as set out in the ABC media release

The problem is that you can impose a ban with your jaw jutting out as if you are a person of resolve. Let us see the same chin jut to show the same resolve in lifting the ban.

At present, the World Health organisation is giving the Prime Minister an out by saying the travel bans are unnecessary. He could take the advice and say Australia will be lifting the ban as soon as everybody is released from Christmas Island. Strength against hysteria is the stuff of leadership, rather than being swept along.

How many cases?
When was the last case reported in Australia?
What has been the outcome of those diagnosed in Australia?

Report to the nation on the facts.

Just an Opinion?

Chris Brook

Polymath & serial blogger

I first met Malcolm Turnbull in person in the First Class International airport lounge in San Francisco.

I was there as an accidental intruder. I had not long entered the hallowed space and thought it strangely small for a Business Lounge, but having realised the airline’s mistake said not a word.

Suddenly, and breathtakingly, a little whirlwind entered, comprising Malcolm Turnbull and a praetorian phalanx of trim bespoke young men (his preferred tableau I later learned).

At once he began declaring that he was a very important person and had come to America for just one day as a very important person – hence the Gilbert & Sullivan rendition from the Pirates of Penzance.

Although I am a large man, I can be remarkably invisible when I choose, and so that is what I chose.

What transpired in my mind’s eyes were the lyrics from Penzance, sung in front of his claque of fawning courtiers which commences (sic):

“I am the very model of a modern Major-General

I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral

I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights

Historical

From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical…”

It can be an astonishingly satirical tour de force.

I immediately enjoyed the rendition, yet horrified by the spectacle, and decided that I had stumbled upon a Gilbert & Sullivan tableau in this airport lounge. Whether he actually completed the above rendition or not, Turnbull struck me then the most arrogant person I had ever met.

Many other politicians and indeed Prime Ministers have taken the stage since then.

Roll forward to the Centenary of Federation at the beginning of 2001 and my second meeting with Turnbull. My son was a youth ambassador and a recipient of the Centenary Medal. As a loving parent I accompanied my son to the celebration.

This time Turnbull was more formal, he may have been one of the presenters, but there was no dent in his confidence even given his trouncing in the 1999 Republic referendum.

It was all about Malcolm again rather than those being presented with their medals, an attitude reinforced when I briefly met him.

So I concluded at that time that his hubris was so great that a public career was unlikely, but he survived metaphorically a bloody pre-selection. Yet in spite of all his personality quirks, he is (and was) a very appealing man – highly intelligent, articulate, a real thinker and financially successful. Like many others I wanted him to succeed when he eventually did become Prime Minister.

Time passed and his world changed several times.

Australia adopted populism early, very early, and has more experience than many other nations of its impact, whether bad or worse (I’m afraid there is no “good” on this scale).

And so we have had a blizzard of failed Prime Ministers.

As for Turnbull, in my opinion he failed miserably even though he became Prime Minister against my expectations.

I am still puzzled though, as to why he subverted his entire belief system to the trolls in the Liberal/ National coalition only to trigger “his own suicide vest” when he realised he had utterly failed.

And I am still wondering.

Stop the Train. I want to get off.

I was reminded of a journey I made on the Indian Pacific once. The number of British TV celebrities who seemed to have traversed the continent in a bubble of fine wine and food recently has prompted this memory.

However, when I boarded the Indian Pacific all those years ago, my destination was not Perth. It was Ivanhoe in Western NSW and was the most convenient way to get to Wilcannia where I had a series of meetings. I did not want to drive that long way from Sydney nor was it convenient for my host, the late William Bates for me to fly to Broken Hill. However, he could pick me up in Ivanhoe in Western NSW. It just so happened that Ivanhoe was a station on the Indian Pacific Railway. It was not a regular stop.

Ivanhoe is a hamlet of about 300 people, but William said he would pick me up if the train could stop there. The problem was that the Indian Pacific passed through Ivanhoe at two or was it three in the morning. The train agreed to stop. One lone person with a suitcase alighted – me.

Now, Ivanhoe has another problem, which having been there before, I knew about. The station was about one and half kilometres from town. This was because the train stop was originally a fettlers’ camp rather than being part of town.

So if William Bates had forgotten to come or was delayed because of other business, I had a bit of a walk to town, even though I assumed William would have made a booking at the local pub.

My fear of being forgotten was soon allayed. A pair of headlights dazzled me. William was waiting for me. He got out of car and helped me with my luggage.

“I hope you don’t mind sharing a room with me, doc. The local member has come to town and taken all the other rooms.”

“I hope you don’t snore,” was all I said.

Let me say that the mattresses in the Ivanhoe Hotel reminded me of the kapok ones upon which I slept in my youth. I remember that we did have an early start, so sleeping was a brief interlude. In the morning when we emerged from the Ivanhoe Hotel, confronting us was the local member complete with his election-friendly, hail-fellow-well-met demeanour. We chatted as we waited for the café to open, since it was the only place you could get breakfast. William thought the member was a bit of tosser, but he was nevertheless helpful.

Then leaving the electioneering member, William and I departed along the Cobb Highway, a wonderful name for a dirt track through the Manara Hills with their amazing Aboriginal stencilled hands, until it joined the paved Barrier Highway, just out of Wilcannia. Now that is a journey. In fact, of all the road trips in Australia I have made (and they are many) the trip through the Manara Hills has some of my fondest memories – but that is another story.

William Bates was a Barkinji man, and I was privileged to know him. I met with him often in those days. A good man; when I mixed with many Barkinji he taught me a great deal about his Nation. The problem with so many white fellas is they tend to see Aboriginal people through a lens not a prism. I do not know whether, since that the Barkinji shaft of light has diminished with the cultural encroachment, which has occurred.

Darren Chester

I must admit that the emergence of Darren Chester is one of the most sensible happenings since the demise of gun-toting Bridget and the attempted Assumption by the Penitent Joyce. McCormack has survived but it will be Littleproud who will eventually succeed to wear the Golden Akubra, assuming the numbers remain as they are and the party does not become an overseas branch of Bharatiya Janata Party.

During the East Gippsland bushfires, Chester was there in the bushfires, showed a steely but compassionate resolve, and like the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, acted as a leader. He lives on the edge of the bushfire area in Lakes Entrance. At times, the fire would have come perilously close, I imagine from my knowledge of the area.

It is obvious that he has been appalled by Barnaby’s antics and those of his coterie of loud-mouthed Queenslanders. Pauline Hanson spooks the Queensland nationals into eating coal at every meal to exorcise themselves. To some extent the spookiness carries over into the NSW Nationals with the Shooters and Fishers Party triumphantly taking the last Murray cod from the river to show who is boss – us or Nature. The mantra for this party seems to be that to be a conservationist is to be sissy. However, if Ricky Muir’s showing in the 2019 Senate election is any guide, this party has very little traction in Victoria.

Chester is far enough away from these sideshows to be an objective voice.

He once had plenty of timber in his electorate, and still has. The timber industry, with its penchant for chopping down one of the climate change antidotes will have more than its normal axe to grind. There is so much harvesting of burnt trees to be undertaken particularly the pine before the bugs beat the industry to it that they will hardly be able to cope.

Notwithstanding, the forestry industry is a longstanding culprit in leaving behind wood and scrub remnants after the logging. Hazard reduction is more that burning a bit of undergrowth. It is an industry in itself, and Chester’s constituents won’t be impressed if this means a pall of smoke over his electorate for most of the year. Have to become smart!

Yet in a perverse way, the bushfires assist Chester not only because he showed courage in face of fire but also he has the chance to assure proper conservation policies and oversee if the sustainable logging mantra can be turned into a win-win situation.

Nevertheless, he must help assure the country that his Party does not remain Coal Comfort Farm even though he is speaking from his Veterans’ Affairs portfolio. There is much more to be said.

Darren Chester was once a journalist. So were John Curtin and Alfred Deakin. Role models are very useful when you have to withstand bullying and anti-intellectualism.

Mouse Whisper

Disaster One:

Bushfire smoke hangs like a pall over Parliament House as ACT burns.

Disaster Two:

Hail stones as big as golf balls litter Parliament House lawns, broken car windows, bureaucratic sobs heard as far away as Civic.

Disaster Three:

Politicians return to Parliament House to find Trough no longer in full working order having been sabotaged by gun-toting Girl from the Bush.

All in 30 days. Wow! This climate change sure is something!

Modest Expectations – Overlord

This is one for the arsonist-is-the-cause crowd that sit in the Conspiracy Corner of the Coalition Party Room. On a recent day of complete fire ban with the North-East Victorian bushfire front near at hand, some idiot was out there with a slasher cutting dry grass. Not the first time he had done this on a day of complete fire ban. Inevitable spark and a grass fire erupted. Fortunately the fire was brought under control before it could threaten the herd of prime cattle up the road, not to mention the residents.

It is a bit immaterial how this joker voted but obviously by his actions he was a climate denialist in as far as denying hot weather should have been hampering his stupidity. However, not much better than mining for coal on a complete world century ban on temperature rise.

Let’s play Premier

One of the reasons nothing gets done is that everybody is always in meetings. One of the frustrating things is that the person with the current designated responsibility seems to be positively Arthurian in the number of round tables around which he is perching.

In Tasmania, a former auditor-general, Michael Blake heads the review of fire services. He replaced a real estate agent as head of the review in early 2019, the initial report having been made in 2018.

He has headed reviews before, which means that in the parlance for appointment to such positions, he either is seen as a “safe pair of hands” or else someone who “won’t rock the boat”. In reviewing the 2016 Huonville floods, he wrote presciently:

“Finally, and I raise this with no particular view about the causes, perhaps greater attention may be needed to agencies we establish or why bother to set them up? I refer to agencies like the Tasmanian Climate Change Office. Its research indicates temperatures will rise and rainfall will remain unchanged but there will be more intense rainfall events. The implications of this research need to be considered for the benefit of all Tasmanians…”

However, the current fire review does not give one a sense of anything being done – and hence does Tasmania have to have a catastrophic burn before anything is done?

Last year, a review of fire services regulations was initiated, with 35 questions asked and 39 responses (plus 4 appendices) received. Let us quote from the short response of Sustainable Timber Tasmania:

Agree the Act should be amended to exempt hazard mitigation activities from LUPAA. Given the Statewide Strategic Fuel Management program is based on tenure blind treatment of fuels, and TFS, STT and PWS are partners in the program, any provisions to TFS in the Act should also apply to STT and PWS when undertaking hazard reduction activities on private land (where these provisions are relevant and appropriate).

Concentrate on tickling the regulations and one gets bureaucratic, acronymic obfuscation – and no commitment and no money.

Instead, let’s lay out a plain sheet of paper. You, the reader are now the all powerful, all knowing Premier of Tasmania.

It is not conventional bushfire season; there are probably only four months in the year when bushfires are unlikely, and thus we have to choose a time when it is furthest away from bushfire season to get a lead time to accomplish a preventative strategy.

You, the Premier for the point of this exercise, lay out the topic of bushfires. You call in the 29 local councils to show you their fire plans and you ask them to detail individual budgets and resources. You know Central Highlands, West Coast and Huon have the lowest density population but the greatest “pristine wilderness” – the signature of Tasmanian uniqueness, which you know has been continually under threat by the timber cutters and the engineers who do not care a dam. Tourism meanwhile is cast against the image of a scantily clad model frolicking with a stuffed thylacine uttering jolly Australian obscenities. These images are the dilemmas that you, dear Premier, face.

There is another more pointed dilemma. It was understood that rainforest on the west coast had not had fires for hundreds of years. However, man has been careless in allowing weeds to grow – gorse, blackberries and bracken for starters. We also do not want fire in the peat that underpins so much of the button grass, whose tannin residues wash into the creeks and river to give the tea colour. Peat bog fires can form an eternal flame in front of which Tasmania weeps. But enough of your tears, does Tasmania have the expert advice on how to isolate the weeds in any removal and then the will to do so?

A timber industry representative arrives at the table advocating tree thinning. Tasmania has already suffered from the euphemisms of timber predators. And judging by their current contribution to the fire services review they know one course of action – woodchopping. Where are the groves of huon, king billy and celery top pine? Let us show who’s boss by cutting down the tallest trees we can find; after all is that not thinning?

OK you’ve cut down the trees. I presume you are not leaving any detritus on site – it’s not about cutting down trees to leave fuel for bush fires? In good industry parlance, you’ve cut down the trees and now you want the government to give you permission to do what you have already done. Sorry, didn’t you get the message that times under my government have changed?

As I have said to those who may be tempted and then get caught for malfeasance such as looting or deliberate arson, I will allow them to cut down one tree – the one upon which he or she will be hanged.

Finally, there is also the major question raised in the report on the 2009 fires in Victoria about the danger of electricity delivered above ground since it was shown that powers are a source of fire. The question arises therefore, in vulnerable areas, of placing the powerlines underground, where they may have a life of up to 80 years before needing renewal. This again is a consideration that you, as Premier for the day, need to consider.

Once upon a time a young fellow could spend his vacation time in the bush fire-spotting. How can drones substitute? Are they the best way to detect the first signs of smoke? Drones? How many drones operating around the clock or when the probability of lightning strike is high are needed? Is the technology up to it?

Accessibility by roads: have our forest trails been graded and are they able to take increasingly large vehicles and what of bridge loads? What about access to water? How many training exercises have you done since last summer? I can ask the fire chiefs that.

What vehicles do we need? It seems that these new fire vehicles can also clear a passage into the forest to the seat of the fire and some are able to evacuate people in emergencies. What are you doing about that?

And the fixed wing aircraft including seaplanes and the helicopters, how many do we need permanently and on lease from the beginning of summer? Or is the beginning of summer already too late? Are our landing strips sufficient for these aircraft to land as close as possible to the fire and in emergencies?

What about boats? The current array of defence force boats seems unwieldy to be of much use. Can a ship the size of the S.S Adelaide be able to dock in Macquarie Harbour or any of ports around the coastline? After all, to paraphrase that Minister of the Crown who famously said: “Tasmania is an island surrounded by water.” Therefore, up front the sea should figure in any plans, not as an afterthought.

Now that most valuable of resources – fire fighters. Each of your communities provides the people to fight fires. How many do you have? What is the optimum number? How easy is it to get reinforcements from elsewhere in the State and outside the State.

And what of the community – you know those who don’t have house and contents insurance and bludge on those who do (not forgetting that the fire levy is part of the insurance premium). Sorry to use the word bludge but if you build a dwelling without having insurance, and then presumably hope the community will bale you out … It shows a degree of irresponsibility (although who will bale you out in you are burnt out is probably not a conscious thought when the house is built or bought). In this worsening climate, the luxury of being uninsured is no longer an option. And there is the other side of the two edged sword: for the majority affected by bushfires, probably since 2009, the building codes in fire prone areas have become so much more rigorous that even those with basic home and contents insurance will not be adequately covered to rebuild in the same area.

Now submit your answers, and we shall excuse errors of omission and commission, because the answers will not remain gathering dust, or is it ash.

The Progress of John Barilaro

Canberra Times 9 April 2019: The report of Mr Barilaro’s announcement on postponing any brumby cull in Kosciuszko National Park (“NSW puts ‘immediate’ brumby cull on hold”, April 8, p.7) exposes his approach to facts. Mr Barilaro: “before we can determine how many brumbies are to remain …”

Fact: an exhaustive process in 2015-16 determined how many brumbies should remain. The answer was 600 to 750.

Mr Barilaro: “a draft management plan needs to be drawn up”. Fact: a draft management plan exists and is available on the web – the Kosciuszko Draft Wild Horse Management Plan of 2016.

Mr Barilaro seems determined to keep asking until he gets the answers he wants, even if this involves spending the tax-payers’ money on yet another committee, another report, and another survey. The broad-toothed mice and other species whose existence is threatened by feral horses in Kosciuszko National Park are running out of time.

Canberra Times 26 July 2019: Acting Premier John Barilaro has launched an extraordinary on-air attack at ABC South East NSW, appearing to encourage people to stop listening to the station. He also heatedly exclaimed he would not leave politics while the independent broadcaster continued to operate.

Canberra Times 13 November 2019: Mr Barilaro had a spat with a union after his party was accused of hindering bushfire preparations across NSW with “crippling” staff cuts. A political blame game has broken out – even as bushfires continue to rage – with Mr Barilaro criticising the National Parks and Wildlife Service for not doing enough hazard reduction in the lead-up to the fire season.

The Public Service Association, which represents park rangers, hit back by saying Mr Barilaro was “tastelessly blaming” public servants after his government slashed staff numbers. The PSA says there’s been a 35 per cent cut to fire-trained positions in the state’s national parks, which are now being managed by “skeleton staff”.

But the NSW government says the number of firefighters in national parks has increased from 1050 in 2011 to 1226 in 2019. Mr Barilaro refused to back down when he was grilled in State parliament on Wednesday. “The truth of the matter is that we still live with (former premier) Bob Carr’s legacy – lock up the forest and let it burn,” he said. “I make no apology for my comments. The PSA went out and fibbed in relation to the reduction of rangers dealing with fires in national parks.”

Mr Barilaro in a separate statement said he wouldn’t be lectured by those pushing a “green-left ideology”. “There are things to learn out of every bushfire emergency and what’s clear is that more hazard reduction work needs to be done during times where it is safe to do so,” he told AAP. “We can’t be dictated to by a green-left ideology that advocates locking up bushland and leaving it.”

PSA acting general secretary Troy Wright said politicians should focus on preparedness – not political ideology. “If the origins of these catastrophic fires across the state are in national parks then it is the National Party and part of the Berejiklian government that are responsible for the lack of preparedness,” he said in a statement. “It is the complete absence of proper funding, not some mercurial green movement as the Nationals allege.” Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Daniel Walton is calling for an inquiry into firefighter staffing levels in national parks. “Every day we are hearing from members across the state about how their resourcing is poorer than it’s ever been and the knock-on effects that’s having,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The AWU has been warning for years that fire services are grossly under-resourced. We just don’t have adequate resources to deal with catastrophic events that are becoming increasingly common due to climate change.

I thought the call by Mr Barilaro to stop listening to the ABC particularly tasteless, but then he was in London on holidays while the South Coast burned. Without the ABC broadcast, there would have been nothing, no communications, broadcasters putting themselves in some risk, but then the Savoy (was it?) does not take the ABC.

Now Mr Barilaro, you can weep for your beloved feral horses, but weep also for the koala and other native animal habitat that the horses have destroyed or by land clearing which had been done to increase their vulnerability.

Hazard reduction burns, well your majority in Queanbeyan may be slashed when the few remaining days of the year are coated in smoke, year in and year out. I’ll assure that everywhere there will signs saying Barilaro Hazard Reduction Burns, if and when it happens.

As I leave you bouncing hyperactively on your bar stool, some might hear one say you are full of la cacca di toro or would you prefer merda in the first degree.

I’ve worked in a town that speaks Italian, but correct me if my Italian is wrong.

However, the Premier has seen fit to anoint you to clean up the mess, but while you were away in London determining which chianti you wanted from the rack, remember Andrew Constance, your fellow Minister was there, every day, coated in bushfire ash, a true Australian – in every sense.

Mouse whisper

Has any estimate been done of how much vermin has been killed in these fires – foxes, rabbits, feral cats and dogs, deer, wild pigs – and of course those feral horses?

But hopefully there are still alpine dingoes. Somewhere. They seem to be forgotten in the destruction.

G’Day

The late Robin Day once came to Australia to do a BBC Panorama program to get the everyperson Australian view of the prospect of the UK entering the Common Market. He wanted an Australian view and he sought advice from Zelman Cowan, the then Dean of Law at the University of Melbourne, to gather a group of students whom he could interview. We were gathered before while he talked to us, and his belittling tone reminded me of why we of Irish descent had some difficulty with the monarchy.

Later in the filmed interview, he turned to me and asked my view. The substance of my response… “I’m a republican. I couldn’t care less what the UK does.” and unexpectedly from the front row someone piped up “And I don’t like the Poms too”.

A shaken Day was led away by Zelman Cowan, who was heard to say “Totally unrepresentative opinion.”

The next year, I happened to come into the student common room at the maternity hospital, where I was doing my obstetric term as a medical student, and there he was on television – Zelman Cowan coming off the Shrine steps burbling something about the indissoluble ties between Australia and the Mother country. I did not wait for any further balm and went out to deliver another baby.

I wrote this following poem in memory of Robin Day and Zelman Cowan and all those people who have been unable to dissolve the indissoluble ties.

Australia Day

Once upon a pastured lawn 

The Pom called Robin Day did ask 

To serried ranks we stood

Respectful 

Should we seek republic

And the answer unexpected

To knees once genuflected

To Day we all said aye.

 

January 26

A day of Independence 

When India

Grew up and threw away it swaddling clothes

A cope with mace and orb and sceptred crap

Lie shattered upon brown flattened earth

For a people confused by Battenburg

But now Republic Day they all say aye

 

January 26

A good man stood on Botany shores

Sent from porphyric hungover king

Possession gained with jack of Andrew, Patrick, and of George

But no place for David, no daffodils nor leek

Yet this Southern harsh and sunburnt land earmarked for gaols

He christened green and pleasant New South Wales

In homage today we whitefellas celebrate that day

 

January 26

Summer invasion to those not tanned

To frolic in illusory freedom

The Jack still flutters

A cornered eye

The Southern Cross is overseen.

By stiffened queen

To celebrate a day of smoke and sand and foaming ale 

 

Robin Day is long since dead

That rank of 61 or was it 2 now thin and worn

Who once called aye for change

Yet Her of steely Albion eye

Or He of fumbling foreign voice survive

Shall we now spent and grey

Not live to have a true Australia day

Which we can call our own

 

A lone voice rings out

Make September First Republic Day

Is it not the first day of Spring

Is it not when wattle bloom 

A sprig for all

Is it but a symbol of youth and vigour

This day which is

The First of September.

Modest Expectations – The meaning of Life

Stop Press: Premier Andrews will strive to lead Australia out of the charred wilderness at the next Federal election. He is a builder.

Anthony Norman Albanese will make a great Governor- General.

Yet it is reasonable to believe prophecy is just one step ahead of fake news.

Nevertheless, what is going is eerily reminiscent of the Liberal Party Coalition in 1972 when it entered a period of policy paralysis – Vietnam and China being two unresolvable problems. Despite the apparently huge wave of support generated for Whitlam, he did not win a huge majority in the 1972 election. Despite the narrow margin to Whitlam, the two unresolvable were immediately resolvable.

On the other hand Rudd did have a landslide, and in the process the man from which Morrison is seeking advice, John Howard, lost his seat. Australia was prosperous and yet the Prime Minister lost his seat. This had not occurred since 1929 when Australia was struggling economically; Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce was intent on confrontation. He lost his seat of Flinders.

Over the years the fickle nature of the electorate has come to resemble Queensland where there have been electoral landslides over the past 50 years. Queensland is unicameral and thus landslides are not complicated by a House of plush red seats. Rudd and Abbott both won large majorities, but the Senate – the house of the Red Plush – can muddy the policy waters and in between even in the lower house when there are slim margins and independents calling the shots, policy goes out the chamber in a gust of deals.

So bugger bushfire policy, sweetmeats for the privileged and the rent seekers is the go, with parliament a sandpit.

But underlying Dante’s Australia are the climate change denialists.

Young John Howard was a protégé of John Carrick and Bob Cotton, two guys out of Florentine casting, and he was their Chosen One, but it took from 1974 to 1996 for him to achieve his aim – Prime Minister Howard. To be so single-minded requires a certain sort of brain. But John you are 81 and I admire you for your tenacity. You actually made a much better Prime Minister than I thought possible, because you had principles. Many of my achievements were achieved under your watch, although I am not sure you would acknowledge that.

However climate change is reality, just like getting out of Vietnam and recognising China was a reality so long ago when we were both young. And I sure I know where you stood on these two issues, Young John, just like climate change.

Don’t get it wrong again otherwise Daniel Andrews is a real threat to your protégé, Scotty.

In the meantime, read on …

To market, to market, to buy a plum bun, Home again, home again, market is done.

Everybody is concentrating on Scott Morrison in these extraordinary times because politics Australia has never seen such a transparent calculating self-marketeer as its Prime Minister. In this season of the bushfire, his prime aim is that he must not let it consume his base – the Liberal Party of NSW.

He has been wrong-footed, and there is discontent within the ranks. Worse, the country is watching and listening to the ABC and not the Murdoch publications, and Alan Jones, the parrot on his shoulder, is also away. The belated announcement of the call up of reservists, the deployment of aircraft and ships are all good anchors on which to embed images of a forceful leader.

Undermining the NSW Premier is an essential strategy. She and her head of fire fighting have been criticised unsurprisingly with the Daily Telegraph implicated, especially in the plotting. Shane Fitzsimmons has the temerity to say nobody told him of the deployment of defence force staff. Then the blame is smudged in the need for all to come together. Nobody wins by personal spats at a time when the country is burning; but seeds are sowed for a time in the future when social media starts to be infected by stories about what could have been done better before the intervention of the Marketeer.

In marketing terms, the emphasis must be taken away from the States – the fire fighters, which are the Premier’s responsibility and thus the essential ingredient in halting the fires. The emphasis must be transferred to men and women in uniform, his responsibility. The fire fighters only have fire trucks and a few aerial helpers, but the real toys are held by the Defence forces. The Defence Forces can provide the imagery of might, even if they in the present circumstances providing a very public but, if analysed, marginal impact.

A good marketeer demands images and big ships and big aircraft with attendant servicemen and women helping the small child onto a helicopter conveys both concern and relevance. “Army heroes” – The Daily Telegraph shouts on the front page – is ferrying people away in helicopters heroic? Soldiers doing their job – but heroes? In these Telegraph front page images, there is not a firefighter in sight.

After all, the community wants good news stores of heroism and the Defence forces – a federal responsibility – coming to the rescue is the story.

Now the images are collected and the Murdoch Press assured, control of the ABC is the target. Reading the hostility towards Morrison on Twitter by prominent ABC employees will test how strong Ida Buttrose will be under the inevitable “ember attack” by the Murdoch claque. A strategy of inserting a number of friendly commentators repeating the Prime Ministerial mantra into the ABC reporting schedule is underway. I suggest one look at some of the commentators based in Canberra who show the first signs of this phenomenon – earnestly repeating without commentary the government’s media release. Once this is done to the ABC seen as untouchably “independent”, then media control is complete. The ABC becomes a loyal servant, and who cares about a journalist without an outlet.

Prince Valiant coming to save the damsels in distress with an audience of faithful knights and yeomen is a perfect marketing morality play. However, the Prime Minister has a long path to cement that role given the uncertainty of his out-of-town rehearsals, but there is always Jon Shier as producer.

However in deploying the defence Forces, Mr Fitzsimmons recognised the problems when a group untrained in fire fighting are dumped upon him, and he went public. I am sure if he had been informed he would have suggested an appropriate role, but normally outwardly calm, he was obviously irritated that he was not told prior to the Prime Minister’s announcement.

After all, the current Minister of Defence, Linda Reynolds should know. She has had an interesting career. She has had an astonishing rise to one of the major portfolios has this Senator from Western Australia. However, she had two parallel careers: one working as a employee of the Liberal Party and the other as a member of the Army reserve from the age of 19 years, rising to the rank of Brigadier and being awarded the Conspicuous Service Cross. This is a relatively recent award given for conspicuous “non-warlike activities”.

She was wrong footed in taking the Prime Minister’s lead by going to Bali with her family, while Australia burned over Christmas, and leaving her portfolio to Minister Littleproud.* Modest Expectations Joel 11/10/19

Having been in the Army Reserve for 29 years, she would know the capability of the reserve forces. Given the gravity of the present situation her first response was surprising in seeming to criticise Mr Fitzsimmons rather than indicating she wanted to cooperate.

However, she made a big deal of the deployment of reservists when the Prime Minister announced it as unprecedented. The obverse question is why the reservists have been left idle domestically for so many years; again, Minister Reynolds should know. Hence if she thought they could contribute why did she delay any recommendation given that she would be well aware that mobilisation of such resources takes time. Or did she recommend in a suitable time that they be deployed and her advice was initially rejected. I presume she is not a muppet, saying nothing when all these disasters were unfolding.

One of tasks foreshadowed for the reservists is burying dead stock; and I think it a bit harsh when my friend said when that is finished they may be asked to bury the Government.

Somebody who knows

Chris Brook PSM FRACP State Health and Medical Commander (Emergency Management) Victoria 2009

You don’t need an analysis of the response to the 2009 Victorian Fires or the 2010 Queensland Floods. It’s all on the public record and in people’s living memories. What you also already know is that the then PM Kevin Rudd was front and centre from the outset in both events and was praised for his initiative.

That’s not to say that his promises were prudent, nor even fulfilled in whole, but he was everywhere.

In both cases there was a massive rebuilding and recovery effort, largely due to the important work of the States continuing long after Federal intervention had come and gone.

But this misses the real story of the here and now.

It looks to me as though Morrison is set to reinvent himself, as he must, to get through this. All of the anti-climate change rhetoric and anti-socialist left tirades do not change the fact that he has lost the respect of a good part of the community – although the hyper partisan Murdoch press remains staunchly supportive.

He must by now realise that his precious wafer-thin budget surplus is gone and that long term economic damage has been done.

For the fire affected coastal and alpine communities the damage to domestic tourism – their lifeblood – will last for years.

So he will pivot embarking on a huge rebuilding effort; a stimulus thus cunningly concealed. If he’s clever the cost will be described as a capital injection (from borrowings but no one will worry about that) and he can still claim that we are in surplus on the current account.

Gorse – an example of Government indifference

Janine Sargeant – Tasmanian ratepayer & regular blogger

Recently I wrote to the Premier of Tasmania because I was concerned about the rapid spread of gorse along the Zeehan to Strahan road on the west coast of Tasmania. Its spread is symptomatic of the disregard of the environment by all levels of Government, given that gorse as well as blackberry are two of the biggest invaders on the west coast.

If an example of where fuel reduction is needed, this is one hell of a big one.

Fuel reduction is but one element in what should be a comprehensive Statewide fire management plan; the lines of responsibility are clear, readily accessible and the expected results can be easily tallied against the actual achievement.

On Tasmania’s west coast, it rains – a lot. However, it is now clear from the NSW South Coast experience that temperate rain forest can burn. The only thing that prevents it occurring in Tasmania is the level of rainfall, which this year has been about two metres. By way of contrast, the NSW South Coast’s rainfall this year was about half the expected rainfall, between 40 and 60cm, as it was also last year. Much has been said about the desperate lack of rainfall across much of Australia in what is the driest and hottest year on record.

However, despite the rainfall, Tasmania is vulnerable and the gorse invasion is just one symptom of Government’s neglect of the fire risk.

I would hate to have to quote this next summer because nothing has been done and the West Coast has been burnt – with gorse being a prominent culprit.

DIPWE defines the spread of gorse on the west coast as “widespread infestation”. Gorse is a declared weed under the Tasmanian Weed Management Act 1999 and “a Weed of National Significance”. Government’s response is supposed to be to “prevent further spread”, a response in word only as there is not action. Gorse is a major issue in a region that is heavily dependent on “wilderness”, native forests, wild rivers, spectacular scenery and unique fauna – these define the reasons why tourists come to Tasmania.

However, apart from being a hugely damaging invasive weed environmentally, gorse is a major fire hazard, because of its oily content and tendency to shed its dead wood as it grows.

Some years ago there was a gorse eradication program in this area, which seemed to be keeping this weed in check, but there is no evidence of anything being done recently and as a result, the spread of the gorse has gone unchecked. There is no evidence that agricultural contractors, utility maintenance crews, road and earthmoving contractors and other people visiting the areas infested with gorse, are required to undertake basic hygiene measures to prevent spread of seed; this doesn’t happen. In fact it is reported that the roadside mowing that occurs from Zeehan south towards Strahan is actually spreading the infestation closer and closer to Strahan due to seed spread because the vehicles are not being cleaned.

There needs to be an integrated control approach with a combination of methods: herbicide, mechanical, burning and biological control, for maximum chances of long-term success.

Tasmania’s environment, wilderness and forests are an incredibly rich resource that must be protected and in the face of what has been happening across NSW and Victoria, the Tasmanian Government needs to sit up, take notice and act before Tasmania too is wiped out by fires. The gorse invasion is one element of a potential major fire problem that being ignored. My letter to the Premier is ‘being considered’; I hope the response is a little more enthusiastic.

Mouse Whisper

My marsupial relatives, the dunnarts on Kangaroo Island remember that during the 2007 fires there were over 800 people, seven fixed wing water bombers and an Elvis Skycrane Helitanker, all assisting in firefighting efforts.

Now dunnarts smell smoke; and run at the first whiff.

Thirteen years later I have asked on DunnartMail how are they and if the resources committed in 2007 are different from that committed today. The fire in 2007 was contained quickly and the Dunnarts replied to my query.

Unfortunately, this time I have had no response. Communication has been lost.

There may be 500 firefighters, with about 50 of the Reynolds reservists there as back up, and there is at least one 737 waterbomber. Maybe the response is comparable to the 2007 effort and has not slipped backwards. Probably not. Who would know. But what of my cousins?

Now they may be extinct – a terrible, terrible outcome.

I weep for them – they were such a close-knit community.

Modest expectations – The Roaring

As I’ve mentioned before (ME18 Pale Waves), we have friends in Lubec on the Maine-New Brunswick border, overlooking the Bay of Fundy. You can drive from the United States border to Campobello Island in Canada – an instructive exercise in itself. However, driving across to have a lunch of lobster is a good enough reason to go to the Island once one has tramped around the Roosevelt exclave. The house has beautiful views over the Bay of Fundy. Driving across the Canadian border is no problem, but coming back the other way across the United States border, even with your American friends you are liable to be greeted by an officious, albeit offensive, border official, who more often or not will want to look very closely at the boot of your car, if not to frisk you.

An old fish shed on the Bay of Fundy at Lubec

This is an aside to an observation that was made to me that a United President would not dare vacation outside the United States these days. Campobello island was where Franklin Roosevelt had the family holiday house; it was where he came to unwind as a young man; it is where he was stricken with poliomyelitis.

Later in his Presidency he used to relax at Warm Springs in Georgia and rarely went to Campobello after he became President.

The United States Presidents know that there are beautiful places to vacation in the United States and even Campobello island is only spitting distance away, but note: after he became President Roosevelt he went to Campobello only once a year until 1939 and then that was it!

Now just why did Fran Bailey sack you?

Where do you start with Scott Morrison?

I always remember when Prime Ministers took their Christmas break they holidayed in Australia, even when the rich lent them a place in which to relax.

Look Prime Minister, I’ll come clean. I took a trip to the United States with Leader of the Opposition at the same time of the year you went to Hawai’i. Let me say, we did not tell the press gallery, but there was an important task to be sorted out. It was late 1974, just after Bill Snedden had survived the first challenge to his Leadership by Malcolm Fraser, and that and accompanying machinations had been kept away from the Press. Even Laurie Oakes did not get wind of it – nor Alan Reid. So not telling the press is legitimate, on the grounds of when it does not ask, why tell. The smart journalist will generally work it out.

Our visit to the United States was brief and Snedden was back and able to go to Darwin to view the devastation caused by Cyclone Tracey on Christmas day. The reason he went to the United States merited some degree of discretion, but for God’s sake a holiday with the wife and kids. Why the secrecy?

The only residual question is who paid for the holiday? The reason he did not disclose where he and the family went? Was it because it was somebody’s private luxurious pad? Now the reason for the secrecy has been cast against a backdrop of security.

The Prime Minister was reported to have returned via Hawaiian Airlines. I have flown Hawaiian Airlines as probably a number of you have too. Friendly environment, but hardly the most secure. When one of the pilots wants to go to the toilet, the cabin staff block the aisle with food trolleys. Also, unless the holiday was on Oahu, there would have been intermediate air travel, which would have accounted for the time lapse. The whole process shouts “Swiss-cheese” security.

I would have thought that the damage of being absent in an undisclosed location had been done. Finish the holiday and come home with the family. However, the whole episode has an element of panic, and given that the Prime Minister seemed to have difficulty with communicating anyway, he may have been on one of those beautiful resorts, perhaps on an outer island.

Now, Prime Minister, you are back in the country at a time when increasingly the whole nation knows you have ignored warnings, scoffed at global warming, sat on you hands in relation to water, and have no environmental plan to combat climate change. It seems that you remain defiant. The nation may view you as just stubborn to cover impotency, because you have done nothing but treadle the looms of the marketing flack that you once were.

One of the reasons you took the holidays is that you intend going to India and Japan in January to meet two of Australia’s pinups – Modi and Abe. The whole exercise shouts “Coal”.

I doubt if nature will call a truce for you while you go calling on them. But at least we shall know where you are when the fires are burning. I suppose if you will be doing your best to ask them to reduce their country’s contribution to World pollution and from Modi in particular tips on how to enact religious freedom, then it could be viewed as genuine contrition and be excused. But not if you are doing a coal deal and the flames are licking the edges of the Shire.

Let me say I am more concerned with how the volcano burns victims are getting along, especially when there is the potential for the health system to deal with more serious burns victims from these fires.

And one more thing, if you really looking for a really exotic location for “you, Jenny and the kids” go and keep the Biloela family company on Christmas Island; still part of Australia.

Everybody, Prime Minister, should have a road to Damascus moment.

Personally, I did not feel any anxiety about you being away. From reading the notes scattered on that road and the anger generated, you will be lucky to have Murdoch still supporting you – after all, he gave McMahon away as a bad job. The only thing you have on your side is time until the next election and the fickle nature of the attention span of the Australian to wash this incident away.

The Boy from Wagga Wagga

I have met some impressive National Party leaders, but the current one I have not met. However, from a distance Michael McCormack is not impressive.

In his fumbling response on climate change he mentioned three factors that he thought were important. McCormack is reported to have said that: “dry lightning strikes, arson and self-combusting piles of manure” were among the causes.

At least he peppered his invective with an attempt to diagnose the problem – somewhat thin, but a statement which raises the question of whether they are relevant elements to be pursued by government. Now that is the genesis of a policy.

In the background however, among his followers infected by the Hanson bacillus , bushfires are all about the Greens – it’s their fault not allowing for hazard reduction and allowing all those wicked national parks to stay in existence. Unfortunately, I was talking to a friend and he repeated the nonsense.

The mayors of five local councils in NSW, one of which is Randwick, are members of the Green Party, and there are 58 Green Party members scattered across 31 councils; hardly a coalition of obstruction. One can criticise the Greens for being conservative heritage protectors, but they are not the only people trying to retain “old growth”.

Yet the right wing columnists spread conspiracy theories about the Greens manipulation as reasons for the fires. For God’s sake we have conservative government both federally and in NSW and the lack of policy and planning in the face of climate change is not due to obstruction by the Greens.

It is our governing politicians doing nothing.

The problem with many politicians is that they do not have the capacity to read – they are functionally illiterate. They have to be told because they cannot read. If they could read then they would look over the science and see that although there are a few areas of scientific fact in contention, there are agreed facts.

Read what the science says: once fires get to a certain temperature then it doesn’t matter how much hazard reduction one does, the country still burns. The burnt vineyards in South Australia were manicured and easy to access, and yet the fire still ripped through the vines.

How you build a national bush fire policy is to mitigate risk. The first statement from McCormack in this interview was “put the fires out”. The unquestioning outcome, but a Hillsong prayer is not the only option.

Science says it is unwise to build on steep slopes, ridge hilltops and riverine bush, where access roads are minimal and where access are cute cul-de-sacs. The fires came eventually to a friend’s house sweeping off the ridge and engulfing this holiday home. Hazard reduction won’t change the vulnerability of gutters with overhanging eucalypts if the fire front is charging down the slopes and the tree crowns are exploding. Before the fire, the ocean views were extraordinary; there were koalas in the trees and the house nestled snugly on the slope had only one access road. New building regulations have seen the house yet to be rebuilt after four years.

Turning to the matters McCormack raised. Evidence suggests that about five per cent of fires are started by lightning strikes. Here the Hillsong prayer may be the only option.

Arson is difficult to prevent. True pyromania is thought to be rare, and laying to one side insurance and criminal arson, the other arson profile that the fire brigades looks out for are the “hero” arsonist; a profile that in the United States is predominantly white males between 16-30 years of age. There is another potentially very dangerous group – the revenge arsonists where there is a fine line between revenge and terrorist.

I was in Valparaiso, Chile, in August. Driving by the quaint houses clinging to the steep slopes above the city proper where access roads are narrow and poor, I didn’t think about bushfires. However now these suburbs are burning, as this coastal city goes up in flames – as does the surrounding country side with its forests and picturesque vineyards. There are reports that these fires have been deliberately lit.

On the third matter, waste management is an increasing matter for national policy and not just how to dispose of paper and bottles. The mixture of bacteria and the oxidation process of substrate such as cellulose are an ever-present problem. Trying to develop a national policy on waste management, where incineration is one solution, means that fire control should be a priority. That does not factor in the development of illegal waste dumping of flammable toxic materials in remote unsupervised bush lands. Mr McCormack, waste management policy is not just about picking up cow pats on your property before they explode into fireballs.

A report from California that is instructive is saying that most human-caused fires are accidental and avoidable, such as a burning cigarette carelessly tossed out a car window. But Californian fires can also start from “fireworks (the odds of a California wildfire double on July 4), improperly extinguished campfires, out-of-control burn piles, hot vehicle parts making contact with dry grass, power lines rubbing and arcing in windy conditions, and a variety of other causes. A surprising number of fires start when trailer chains or wheel rims strike pavement and send sparks flying.” This last situation is the likely cause of one of the most deadly Californian wildfires. The Californian attitude is far more cavalier than that of the Australians, and universal bans on lighting of fires are harder to enforce. However, there is an increasing recognition that there will be longer and hotter periods as summer merges with spring and autumn. The end result means a drier and drier landscape.

Hazard reduction by all means – but have we a systematic nationwide policy on hazard reduction and one that will become increasingly narrowly focused when climate change has rapidly reduced the available days for hazard reduction, and the community will increasingly become layered in smoke from fires spreading over those remaining days. The nation will become very impatient with a government that blames the Greens.

The bushfire is a complex challenge; it demands coherent policy; it also demands the funds to efficiently and effectively manage the challenges and, given the way the water policy has been corrupted, to also deal with the other factors that affect how we as a nation can respond to widespread bushfires. What happens when there is no water to fight fires?

Perhaps the best form of hazard reduction would be to remove the rent seekers and the other parasites that bug our political system. The problem at present is they wield the levers of power not the hoses. Barnaby Joyce’s bizarrely berates the government and demands it get out of his life – well, yes, but first the government should give us back our water, then it should have to courage to develop some decent policy recognising that we are in a different climate ballgame now (yes, the Prime Minister can take his baseball cap off to that) and then everyone might get out of Barnaby’s life.

However, all revolutionaries by their nature are optimists. I am and always have been an optimist – even now one foot away from a minha cadiera de rodas

Christmas on the move

Christmas was never a good experience when I was young. We generally went to my grandmother’s place, and the day generally ended in unpleasantness, as one or other family argued among themselves – and when I was young I generally engaged in fighting one of more cousins at some stage during the afternoon. The item of consumption that sits uppermost in my memory was my grandmother’s obsession with making Yorkshire pudding to top off the roast bird. It was one of Cook’s lesser legacies to Australian cuisine.

While I had my 1956 Christmas in the Sea of Japan on the S.S Taiping, my nomadic Christmases started in the 1980s – different year; different place. However, the only time that I remember snow in any quantity was Christmas in Santa Fe. Snow was a foreign experience to me, and so trudging through snow covered streets lighted by farolitos – candles stuck in sand in paper bags. In the freezing cold we were part of the congregation at an outdoor Navajo Mass. The mass was memorable with its Navajo interpretation that included the final benediction of a sort – the man close to us raising his rifle and firing a shot into the darkness.

All part of celebrating the miracle of Christmas wherever you may be.

And given it is Friday 27 December, may I wish you all the Best for the Feast of St Stephen – at least east of Rome.

Mouse Whisper

The ultimate put down.

Asked if he liked Melbourne, Augustus Woodley Bernal replied:

“Immensely. But don’t you think it’s a little too far from town.”

Bernal spent some time on the Bendigo Goldfields as a Commissioner in the early 1850s.

Chortle, but remember it was people like Bernal who came, saw and went back to Britain – just leaving the questionable imprint of the British gentry.

Modest Expectations – John Buchan footprints

I wonder as NSW is being swept by bushfires how the person inured to arm waving, hallelujah clapping and glossolalia would respond to Revelation 8.7.

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

Of course it is not climate change; it’s the Bible, stupid.

I have always wondered whether this last book of the Bible was written by some guy on qat such is the imagery. I have never understood the fascination with this final book, as though Christianity needs to have fear as a motiving force for belief and intolerance.

However, these bushfires in Australia are no joke. We are not going to be consumed this year by the fires of Hell, but I do not want to live in an environment of smoke for half the year, where a hundred fires burn and where the population is worn down – and the important Samaritan element of a voluntary brigade of fire fighters become exhausted.

It provides a reason for the need to mobilise the population able to cope with the increased capriciousness of nature as the planet warms.

The Australian Defence Force bluntly states it is not trained to fight fires on the ground outside their installations. How long that dictum will hold is problematical.

However, that is not to underrate the current amount of assistance being provided by the Defence Forces, especially given the water bombing by fixed wing and helicopter has been such an important factor in limiting the spread.

However, eventually water runs out and fire retardants have unspecified long term toxic effects. In the end, the potential outcome just reframes the delusionary Revelation. No need for the angel; our Prime Minister will suffice in sounding the instrument – perhaps the whimper of a claypipe blowing bubbles. However there is still the one bubble of denial in which Morrison is encased. Not the best way I would have thought to fireproof the country, one way or another.

Bushfires in Australia

One of the images of Sydney I have always had is that of the frangipani. Normally, it is just too cold in Melbourne for frangipani to flower; it is the same in most parts of California. Frangipani is the flower of the tropics – Hawai’i being closely associated with it.

Sydney is thus typically sub-tropical. Therefore, it should have two seasons – hot but wet and humid in summer; dry in winter. The oppressive humidity and summer rain is the normal antidote for bushfires from the Illawarra northwards along the coast.

To me the frangipani is the totem of this climate; they may grow in Melbourne but not flower normally. The winter cold and frosts kill them.

Melbourne has a Mediterranean climate – very hot and dry in summer with a beautiful autumn, cold wet winters and a blustery spring. February has traditionally been the time of the catastrophic bushfires. Ever since Melbourne almost burned in the February bushfire of 1851, late summer is the perfect time for major bushfires not only in Victoria but also in Tasmania and South Australia.

I remember driving down the Hume Highway to Melbourne in February 2009 the day before the most deadly of all bushfires swept across the highway on its way to the incineration of nearly 200 people. When the wind comes from the north and the air is so dry then you know Victoria will burn at the slightest ember from a discarded cigarette or spark from an overloaded power line.

Yet as a child I can remember there being a huge bonfire to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day piled up in front of our house. It was November 5. Catherine wheels attached to letterbox, jumping jacks and tom thumbs exploding across the grass verge, rockets disappearing into the night sky. Fireworks everywhere. Fire everywhere.

Two months later there was always a fire along Gardiner Creek in the rye grass, and one year I remember it scorching the fences alongside the reserve. It was all very exciting to have the fire brigade coming with the bells ringing. Memories from one’s childhood stick and may become enlarged. However, it does take a shift in climate to make a bonfire in November very unwise.

The question thus which needs to be answered – is the shift in the fires in line with a change in the climate pattern?

I read today that: “Bush fires raged on the outskirts of Sydney today as the heat wave continued. Metropolitan fire brigades received 40 calls before noon. The temperature rose to 98 degrees by midday – at 9 am it was 93 degrees, a record early morning mark for November. There are few towns that are not menaced on the Blue Mountains and grave anxiety exists throughout the tourist areas. Fires are also burning at Linden, Blaxland and Hazelbrook as well as at Springwood, Glenbrook, Leura and Katoomba. Shortly after noon a huge wall of flame advanced on Glenbrook…

The newspaper report was 6 November 1936. The Blue Mountains is the touchpaper for bushfires in New South wales.

Frangipani do not grow well in the Blue Mountains – the climate is too much like Victoria. Too dry; too cold in winter.

But I note the frangipani in the backyard this year is losing its flowers prematurely. Maybe when the frangipani stops blooming, the fires may come to the coast.

However, while the frangipani may be an intuitive bellwether, even more germane is the fact that: “1951-1952 could possibly be one of the worst on record for eastern Australia when more than 8 million ha were burnt.” This is a reliable quote from a CSIRO 1976 appraisal. This reported: “The season began in late October 1951 with a series of lightning fires in southern central Queensland around Charleville. About 2.8 million ha were burnt in these fires. These were followed by very large fires in northern N.S.W. in November and in late January and early February many fires were reported in southern N.S.W. and Victoria.”

The similarity is there with 2019, but hopefully the possible further outcome will be avoided.

The one obvious conclusion is that bushfires are part of the Australian character. The population has become used to them – but not every year as may be predicted by a continent running out of water and ill-prepared in people and machines for this to occur on an increasingly regular, perhaps annual basis.

Are we expected to cope with catastrophic bushfires every year, until there is nothing left except a charred remnant of what was a beautiful unique land we all have been given a variable amount of time to enjoy?

However, training the defence force to defend the nation against fire would be a good start, joining the career fire fighters in helping to alleviate a stressed volunteer fire fighting force. I would think it more useful for our army to do that rather than killing pushtuns in far off Hindu Kush.

Getting more aircraft able to bomb the fires seems a good idea, especially if we have a yearly bushfire season , but where do we get the water?

I would hope that if fire retardant is increasingly used, its toxicity, both short and long term, is tested and continued to be monitored.

Hazard reduction? Now what does that mean? I remember well when a hazard reduction exercise resulted in a shed containing many of our belongings was burnt down, due to the “Department of Sparks and Wildfire” as it was called through gritted teeth.

What is a community centre to provide a haven against fire – a nuclear fall-out shelter; underground refuges akin to those along “Tornado Alley” in the mid-western states of the United States; fireproof concrete bunkers; a clean room facility where children, the aged, the susceptible can seek shelter on days when the smoke is so heavy?

Then there are the questions of what we do with people who want to commune with nature, with or without growing a bit of “weed” living in uninsured wattle and daub houses surrounded by bellbird and bush. No phone reception. Romantic until it burns.

I love living surrounded by bush, but I have spent money to clear the bush around the house and create a firebreak with a wide drive separating the house from the tea tree. The local “firies” had prior to this work, designated it as a “red flag” house – in other words don’t bother trying to save it if there is a bushfire. And this house is on the West Coast of Tasmania, parts of which have not burnt for at least 500 years and where the annual rainfall exceeds 100 cms. However, temperate rain forest is now vulnerable.

As I have said many times before, Australia is a land that demands respect; ignore that dictum at your peril. After all, it is all about frequency – bush fire season piled upon bush fire season without remission.

I do not know what the solution is but in any event this Government with the Book of Revelation under its arm is not prepared to listen; and may I say that does not help.

Barton is the Name; I did quite make the Game

Gordon Barton is a name that would hardly resonate with anybody these days. However in his time in the 1960s and 1970s he cut a dashing figure as he strode across the business landscape. A libertarian, he parleyed transporting onions across State border into IPEC, then the largest express transport company with over a thousand trucks.

Very early on he had taken an anti-Vietnam War stance and a group formed around him, initially designated the Liberal Reform Group which eventually became the Australia Party. He was the epitome of the new force on the conservative side of the political spectrum, prepared to tackle the Whig element embedded in the Liberal party.

His party picked up almost 3 per cent of the national vote in 1972 which, when cast against the rise of Steele Hall in South Australia and Rupert Hamer in Victoria, suggested that the reform of the Party was high on the agenda of a cadre of Party members and Business.

After the Coalition debacle as portrayed in the media and self-appointed opinion leaders (the days before influencers), Barton further promoted the Australia party, which would occupy the centre of the political spectrum. He dabbled in setting up newspapers which represented his free-flowing views.

He believed that there was a place for a political force to occupy what he saw a defeated coalition team, which had seen debilitating stoush between Gorton (Victoria) and McMahon (NSW), with McMahon being the Prime Minister who lost the Coalition Government to Labor under Whitlam after 23 years.

There was however another force emerging, who did not just dabble in the media, he immersed himself in it. This was Rupert Murdoch. He supported Whitlam in the 1972 election, where he obviously developed a taste for power broking.

Billl Snedden (Victoria) then won the ballot for leader of the Opposition from Nigel Bowen (NSW) by one vote. Bowen had enough then having been in Parliament for less than a decade and soon departed to the judiciary.

Snedden had grown up in Western Australia, but after a stint in Europe he had settled in Melbourne and won the seat of Bruce, which he was to hold until he retired in 1983. The Victorian Branch of the Liberal party still had a significant cohort of people who thought the unquestioning fawning over royalty, domestication of females as a definition of animal husbandry and retention of capital punishment were viable policies. Snedden determined that he should take the party out of the aspic of the previous years in government.

Yet Snedden had never been seen as progressive. He had gone along with the Party line and at the time of the election defeat had been Treasurer. Nevertheless, despite the narrowness of his victory as Leader and the misgivings of some of the party, he was approached by a well-credentialled group from the business sector to set up a “think-tank”. It was early days in 1973, when much of these discussions were occurring that Gordon Barton in his role of maverick reformer came from the sidelines to chat with Snedden. Whitlam had taken a certain amount of energy from the Australia party with his withdrawal of Australian forces from Vietnam.

Barton not only owned trucks but he diversified into other areas including Angus & Robertson through his company, Tjuringa Securities, but his Australia party, fizzled, changed into other centrist groups trying to to accommodate the “wets”.

As David Owen, the British politician, who himself broke his links with the Labour party to become a founding member of the SDP in the UK, once said to me: “Beware the soggy centre of politics” by which I took it to mean that it was the dedicated authoritarians, whether of the left or right, who would drown you. In retrospect, “wet” was an only too true a name for the group.

Recently Owen was quoted as saying: “There was never any question that the SDP was going to be a left-of-centre party. The project, bluntly, was to replace the Labour party; to be a centre-left party shorn once and for all of the hard left.” So he has not shifted his suspicion of the centre but he still recognises that there should be a place for a political force away from the extremes.

Barton in the end became bored with Australia and decamped to the Netherlands to expand his business worldwide, which failed and he slowly faded away until he died in Marbella Spain in 2005.

For a while under Snedden the Liberal party toyed with a progressive agenda, but inter alia his failure to win the 1974 election snuffed that out.

Murdoch meanwhile has never got bored with the fragrance of power and the political chessboard.

A commentator in one of the Australian newspapers recently bemoaned the rise of Trump and Johnson, and the ingredient in their success has been Murdoch. From a young guy, who was both radical and republican, Murdoch had become the genius of the authoritarian right, where now lurk many who would have been equally at home as they would have been under Franco or Mussolini.

However, the particular Murdoch genius is to define an enemy. It may be a mythical enemy, but one nonetheless which had its seed in his treatment as a boy at Geelong Grammar School, as a young man tolerated by the English upper-classes as “Red Rupert” at Oxford, a man embittered by the treatment of his father by “the enemy.”

The Murdoch legacy is that those who believe the political process is about policy are hopelessly wrong. The political process is about coercion and power.

The commentator forgot Canada where the Murdoch infectivity is low. How the survival of Trudeau plays out may be a blueprint for how any political force handles an uncaring authoritarian elite. The current crop of independents in the Australian Parliament may represent a potential core, but it becomes too easy to become comfortable and acquiescent.

Australia is not Canada, but the two countries have the same sort of parliamentary system and the same question applies: why is anyone in parliament?

The political picture in Australia may be depicted as a division between Capital and Democracy and Labour and Socialism accentuated by the adversarial way the parliament had been arranged according to the rules, which govern the British parliament at Westminister. Nevertheless, there were certain traits which cross traditional party lines, in particular xenophobia expressed through the “White Australia Policy” and the “Tall Poppy Syndrome” where individual excellence is consumed by the destructive collectivism which is called “mateship”.

So the whole system is set up for brawling, now that the oratory powers of the politicians, so important for debate, have waned from what they once were – and now also parliament is about deals, increasingly hidden from public view.

Therefore, there have been periods when the time is right to set up a political force in the centre. Australia is restive, but what about the group of independents in the Parliament. Has the system of coercion, subtle often as it may be, sucked them in? Are they the genesis of this third force? We shall be looking at them individually as to whether they see themselves as a potential coherent force, or just another group of dealmakers absorbed into the Canberra culture.

Trudeau has been instructive, whether deliberately or not, but he has the conservative forces well defined on his right; and on his left a motley group of Greens, New Democrats and may I suggest Quebecois. Why the left? This group is not going to vote for the Conservatives but do provide the illusion that the Liberal party is what it says it is – and in the slightly moist soggy centre.

Combine that structure with a Bartonesque figure with the pugnacity of Rupert and we may have a goer.

Ça donne à réfléchir peut-être.

Mouse Whisper

All is not lost, Jeremy, you won the Cambridge seat and the people have obviously heard about Boris in Oxford. You won one of the seats and the LibDems the other.

And the LibDems losing their leader got a bath – quite literally as well as retaining the seat of Bath.

Modest Expectations – Klinefelters

Robert Mugabe, that unpleasant man from Zimbabwe, died recently at 95. I remember one of those Rhodesian types, I could see him elegant in a safari suit sipping a Pimms in a Bulawayo club in the days when Cecil was a remembered name. This guy voiced what I had wondered about for some time. He said that it was an open secret that Mugabe suffered from tertiary syphilis – or in more specific terms that variation known as general paralysis of the insane.

For some years after he assumed power in the new Zimbabwe carved out of the old Southern Rhodesia, Mugabe was viewed as a being a reasonable ruler of an emerging country but slowly over the years he was transformed into a tyrannical paranoid despot prone to grandiose ideas – and it was also noticeable that he was increasingly having difficulty with his balance.

The problem is that dementia has many manifestations, as does syphilis, which in its clinical manifestations is the great chameleon. While primary syphilis is relatively easy to diagnose, as the causative spirochete agent then wanders away from its genital base through the body and across the blood-brain barrier, syphilis can manifest itself clinically in many ways.

In a post-graduate examination may years ago, I was presented with a specimen of a large aortic aneurysm, which fortunately in my discussion I said could be a tertiary manifestation of syphilis – not the paretic but the luetic form. My examiners then launched into a thorough menu to find out how much I knew about syphilis. The specimen was just the amuse-bouche.

Syphilis is very well treated by penicillin if diagnosed, as the spirochaete does not or cannot conjure up any defence against the drug. However, the disease can disguise itself well, once the primary focus is healed. One of my recollections is that of a guy bought into the emergency department comatose and with these strange lumps over his body. One was biopsied and showed masses of plasma cells and then when stained appropriately, there was coil upon coil of spirochete. Syphilis unmasked and I believe once penicillin was administered he lost his lumps and became alert. Syphilis cured. However, it showed how deceptive syphilis can be.

However, penicillin availability has not cured the disease. Syphilis still prowls the community often strand in strand with the HIV virus.

Once upon time in the 1950s and 1960s, if Australians wanted a US visa, they needed to have a Wasserman test to show they were free of the spirochete; and before World War 11 some of states of the US, at the urging of the then Surgeon General, instituted mandatory testing for syphilis before a marriage license could be issued. How that was enforced is an area of speculation, but data did show that those about to marry was not necessarily the area where the Surgeon General should have been looking.

Now the Amazon behemoth is moving into heath care data collection with Alexa chirruping from the Bezos hip pocket. So what happens now if the data find the deceptive spirochete coiled up the policy maker brain? What of this person? Increasingly irrational you say – maybe we should wait till the person in question starts to fall over – literally. Then Mr Bezos may have the answer for us.

Not on my Kisser

I have always preferred shaking hands when greeting anybody, but I was taught as a boy to shake hands with a person of the opposite sex only when she proffered her hand. Relatives were different. As a small boy they would come at one at different angles to kiss me. Apparently, that was an acceptable trespass.

I agree very strongly with Leigh Sales about the unwanted kiss, especially when it lands on the lips whether dry or oozing with saliva. However, it applies for both sexes. As presumably Leigh Sales does, I like to control my personal space – those that come into it are only licensed to do so. Personal space varies; you know roughly how much you have. For me, it varies with the mount of grog I have drunk; and thus when one drinks too much that space is more easily invaded and vice versa.

I not only dislike being kissed by someone where the feeling is not reciprocated, but I also avoid the hug as much as possible. The hug makes me feel very uncomfortable, and here again personal space is violated unless it is consensual. In one TV chat program I watched, someone proudly said she was a hugger as though that gave her a complete license to do so.

Personal space I found out long ago is variable. Having tested it, if someone comes up to me, and wants to shake my hand, I have no problem with distance of the outstretched hand. I have been known to grasp the arm to regulate the greeting distance. If someone comes up to me aggressively, I generally do not back away.

People coming up behind me whether putting their hand on my shoulder or not do not worry me, but this is one area of personal space where many people feel most vulnerable and hate the person coming up behind them and touching them.

And of course it depends on the venue – a back lane at 3.00 am or an office at 10.00 am are somewhat different. Therefore, context is always important.

Being male gives one an advantage in maintaining personal space integrity. You develop strategies, but I would imagine a high profile person as Leigh Sales is, has many, but the ambush is difficult to manage especially if the assailant is someone you believe should have known better.

Eye Gouging

The National Rugby League recently inflicted an eight-week penalty for eye gouging on a Canberra Raider, but the Australian Football League slapped the wrist of a GWS player with a fine. Irrespective of the history of this player on the field, I found the defence by his captain ironic. He is alleged to have said, in reference to his colleague: “sometimes that means people look at stuff that he’s involved in in a light that’s probably not neutral”.

I agree if the eye gouging had resulted in blindness his victim would be in a light that was probably not neutral. He would be blind.

I am not an ophthalmologist but perhaps such a specialist could more eloquently tell the community of eye gouging leading to retinal tears, dislocation of the lens, vitreous haemorrhage, globe rupture, traumatic optic neuropathy or fracture of the orbital floor – and of course blindness is always an option.

I have a simple remedy. Ban eye gougers for life from the sport and call in the police.

After all, look at the penalty meted out for sandpapering a cricket ball. A cricket ball versus an eye!

Caribbean storm

This time it is the Bahamas; last time Puerto Rico. These are high profile remnants of hurricane fury. Battered by hurricanes of increasing intensity, the Caribbean is increasing liable to become a tropical rubbish dump.

The funny thing is that these events seem to be increasing in intensity while the climate changer Canutes are clustered on the shores of their indoor swimming pools sipping their strawberry daiquiris and watching the clouds roll by.

This troubling development is not going away, as these micro-nations, which are exploited either as reservoirs for the black economy whether money laundering or drug trafficking or for the tourist playground. There is a huge discrepancy between the living standards of the tourists and the ordinary citizens with many living as little more than subsistence farmers.

Climate change is real, and in countries which are as vulnerable as most of those in the Caribbean, these events of Nature, whether they be hurricanes or volcanic eruption like the one which destroyed most of Montserrat, have not the financial capacity to do much.

Then Haiti is the classic failed State. Ruthlessly exploited by the Duvalier regime, classically described by Graham Greene in The Comedians, Haiti was subject to a massive earthquake in 2010 which killed 300,000; followed by a cholera epidemic; followed by two hurricanes. What chance has that country got to be anything but a pile of impoverished rubble. In my recent visit to Chile, I noted a number of black people roaming the streets obviously in low paid work. They were Haitian refugees. There are over 150,000 of them in Chile alone, about 10 per cent of the immigrant population.

However, only in one Caribbean country can you detect any systematic response to what will become a regular summer hazard – and unsurprisingly that is Cuba. In an article after hurricane Irma in 2017 devastated a 300 kilometres swathe across the island, affecting 90 per cent of the population, Jon Anderson noted in an article in the NYT:

Taking part in preparations for the defense of the island from the vicissitudes of hurricane season may have a practical imperative, but this, too, is framed as a revolutionary duty. For decades, beginning under Raúl’s late brother Fidel, Cubans have conducted annual drills to prepare for hurricanes, resulting in a national disaster-response system that has saved many lives during past storms.

As another source noted about Cuba: These attributes are: (1) actively learning and incorporating lessons from past disaster events, (2) integrating healthcare and public health professionals on the frontlines of disaster response, (3) proactively engaging the public in disaster preparedness, (4) incorporating technology into disaster risk reduction, and (5) infusing science into risk planning.

None of the other countries have invested the way Cuba has in guarding against Nature’s invasion. There is no doubt that in disaster planning centralised control has its advantages as long as the people are part of that control. Cuba has had to live within constricted means because of the United States’ embargo. Although, like a growing number of people, I have visited Cuba, but for my part as a “working tourist” on an American delegation flying out of Miami in an unmarked Delta jet. I have sampled Cuban tourism, but it is not the mainstay as it is in the legitimate economy of other Caribbean nations.

Granted that Cuba is the biggest island but only 25 per cent more in land mass than Hispaniola which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. So size does not necessarily equate to economic stability.

Tourism is a fickle contributor to the economic health of the community. You can see the consequences of damaged resorts left to rot after experiencing a weather catastrophe. Nearer to home, just wander up the Queensland Coast. In the case of the Caribbean countries, which country of the G20, say, is prepared to go guarantor to rebuild after Nature has had her way? Certainly not the United States, the nearest and wealthiest neighbour. One just has to see the continuing plight of Puerto Rico, which has been left as a wreck by Trump – despite the fact that it is part of the United States, with even one non-voting resident commissioner in the US Congress.

In other words, the Caribbean is very much going to be the bellweather of climate as small nation after small nation is knocked over until even those of us reaching for a third daiquiri may be concerned that the increasing pile of rubble is blocking the view – and then there is that stench from a decayed economy!

But then it will be too late to do anything, and we, the generation who have caused it, have gone on our way out of earshot from the curses of the future generations for the legacy that we have left.

Mouse Whisper

The Modest Reflector loves conundra, and the title is Klinefelters – you know, the syndrome where people who can look a bit like women because they have XX sex chromosome, in fact have the attributes of men through their “Y” chromosome. And one Y trumps XX when it comes to sex.

Klinefelter’s syndrome has caused all sorts of problems in working out in which gender a sporting person with the XXY chromosome should compete. There is some suggestion before chromosomal testing was available, that a number may have competed as females in various Olympic Games, despite having the male sex chromosome.

Well, why is modest reflections Klinefelters? 25 is XXV in Roman numerals. Now take the stalk off the Y … not even original and he promises not to do it again.