Aged "Care" in Australia

Image courtesy Urbandeveloper

In witnessing the ongoing catastrophe that is Australia's aged care system, I'm reminded of my own experience in special education during the last 50 years. 

When I began working in disabilities in the school sector in 1971, post-Vietnam and discharge, the world inhabited by this particularly vulnerable group was very different from the current situation. Whilst there are still areas in special education requiring further reform, the following improvements have been made -

Staff are for the most part trained for their specialty and receive the specialist support they need. This support includes occupational and physiotherapy. 

The staff-student ratio is generally set at a standard that facilitates needs-based support. 

There are the same numbers of professional staff as paraprofessional staff. In most special schools, a group of five or six children will have one professional and one paraprofessional available at all times.

The paraprofessional staff (teacher aides) work to an award that brings their remuneration to a point well above the minimum wage.

None of these factors featured in the sector when I began working in it, but were introduced progressively as time went along, much of the improvements coming on the back of the Whitlam money which began to appear, based on human rights legislation, in the mid-seventies. 

This financial support was transformational.

And there lies the rub, of course. Nothing will improve for this vulnerable aged care sector until the money provided by the taxpayer supports care, rather than private profit.

I am reminded of this every time I drive past the very large aged care facility near my home run by one of the country’s largest private providers. The sight of the CEO's late-model Maserati in the staff car park is instructive.

Howard’s deregulation of the sector in the mid-nineties is largely responsible for the sad and sorry state it is in now. Once it became a licence to print money for investors, profit was all that mattered. 

The only sure-fire way of increasing profits (and pushing up the share price) is to cut staffing to the bone. Hence situations where there is one registered nurse on the floor for over one hundred residents.

There are three institutional sectors housing and supporting vulnerable people which should never be privatised for profit. They include prisons, special schools, and aged care facilities.

There is a stark need for a non-profit clause. This means that profits in the sector can only be derived from non-care aspects of the activity.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for this given the moral standing of the current federal administration.

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Some Reflections on Quarantine

 

Medical staff in Surry Hills, NSW, 1919. Pic courtesy NSW Archives

By now, every state in the commonwealth, with the exception of the Northern Territory has had to resort to at least one snap lockdown because of failures in the hotel quarantine system.

This system works most of the time, but when it breaks down, the results are not pretty, from the point of view of both health and economic outcomes.

Quarantine was used extensively in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, and to a large extent, it did help Australia to get through the episode with a much lower infection rate than many other countries at the time.

Historical accounts describe two different programmes, one maritime and the other land, the first apparently much more successful than the second. The land quarantine camps (as they were called) were set up adjacent to state borders, whereas the maritime stations were set up near embarkation points in the major cities.

All states had quarantine stations (North Head in New South Wales, Port Nepean in Victoria, Bruny Island in Tasmania, Torrens Island in South Australia, Woodman Point in Western Australia, and Lytton in Brisbane) but many more were planned in case numbers overwhelmed their capacity. In due course, temporary quarantine stations and influenza hospitals were set up to handle the increasing volume of affected Australians.1

The maritime stations were apparently relatively effective, but the state border stations were not. People frequently bought their way out or escaped because it was easy to do so. The maritime stations were often set up offshore or in inaccessible locations, so escape was often impossible. These places weren't remote, but they were designed in 1918 to be inaccessible.

Perhaps we can learn from history. Scattered throughout the country are a number of mothballed commonwealth owned and run facilities, mostly detention centres. they include Baxter IRPC* (Cultana SA), Christmas Island IRPC, Curtin IRPC (Curtin WA), Howard Springs Quarantine Facility (NT), Inverbrackie APD# (Woodside SA), and Leonora APD (WA). There are also facilities at Port Augusta and Port Hedland.

What they have in common with the quarantine centres used in 1916 is their inaccessibility.

Christmas Island (which cost the Australian taxpayer $180 million to be reopened when the medical evacuation legislation was passed by parliament) is almost empty. Currently, it houses a family of four from Sri Lanka, although was used briefly to quarantine repatriated Australians last year.  

Most of these facilities use pre-fabricated structures and resemble mining camps in that they consist of separate buildings that don't share ventilation and air-conditioning systems, unlike hotel accommodation currently used for quarantine in our state capitals. Virologists are telling us that self-contained and spread accommodation is much better at preventing the spread of virus than your typical multi-storeyed city hotel. 

Most are located close to airbases with runways of sufficient length to cater for international flights. All are self-contained with catering and laundry facilities attached.

The ADF has currently a strength of just over 85000 full-time personnel and active reservists across the three services. 

Combining personnel, these locations, and a realistic allocation from the defence budget, a number of these centres could be set up as quarantine facilities. They could be staffed with soldiers, sailors and airmen/women, who might be happy to work a FIFO stint for a limited specified period. Infantry soldiers (for example) might be grateful for beds and air-conditioning. Who knows - down the track, personnel who served in these locations could be rewarded with a special Covid medal, similar to that awarded to peacekeepers. I'm only half-joking.

The risk of staff working multiple jobs and locations would be eliminated, and the possibly infected travellers would be housed a long way from major population centres, not smack in the middle of them as currently arranged.

Those in quarantine would probably prefer a self-contained demountable to stuffy hotel rooms with balcony and corridor access off-limits. After all, if you're going to be stuck in quarantine for a fortnight, whether you're in a metropolitan hotel, or a donga in the bush is neither here nor there.

And breaches of security protocols amongst staff (the major cause of the transmitted infections) are probably a bit more unlikely in a military environment than a civilian one. There's always the threat of an A4.

This notion has already taken wings with a couple of entrepreneurs (Wagner in Toowoomba, and Fox at Tullamarine) which strongly suggests that it's feasible.

Strangely, immigration and quarantine are commonwealth responsibilities, but they have been duck-shoved, on this occasion, to the states. Using commonwealth facilities and personnel would put this process in the hands of the level of government responsible.

Anything has to be an improvement on lightning lockdowns.

*Immigration Reception and Processing Centre

#Alternative Place of Detention

1. The Navy and the 1918-19 Flu Epidemic, by Greg Swinden

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"Democracy" Saved

Image courtesy New Yorker magazine.

 This comprehensively researched article from Time magazine makes chilling reading.

It describes in detail how a loose coalition of concerned individuals saved the USA from what could have been the greatest threat to democracy across the Pacific since the Civil War.

It reminds me of Abraham Lincoln's prediction in his Lyceum address in 1838. 

Lincoln said -

"At what point is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freeman, we must live for all time, or die by suicide".

The "danger amongst us" was Trump's campaign to win at all costs, aided and abetted by a cluster of violent extremists who were prepared to stop at nothing. The closest historical equivalent were groups like the Blackshirts in Italy in the thirties.

The article begins by explaining why there was comparatively little reaction to Biden's win, except for the assault on the Capitol by the very extremists who were Trump's acolytes. That reaction turned out to be seriously counterproductive for the Republicans.

"A weird thing happened right after the Nov 3 election: nothing.

The nation was braced for chaos. Liberal groups had vowed to take to the streets, planning hundreds of protests across the country. Right-wing militias were girding for battle. In a poll before election day, 75% of Americans voiced concerns about violence.

instead, an eerie quiet descended. As President Trump refused to concede, the reaction was not mass action, but crickets. When media organisations called the race for Jow Biden on November 7, jubilation broke out instead, as people thronged cities across the US to celebrate the democratic process that resulted in Trump's ouster".

It describes how efforts to suppress votes, inject doubt into institutional trust, and use misinformation to muddy the waters, was countered by quiet and consistent work at street level by this informal, bi-partisan campaign.

Read the whole thing. 

It is, at the same time comforting, and chilling.

The USA has dodged a bullet. 

By the way, the quotation marks in the title are a reminder that, as any knowledgeable American will tell you, the USA is a constitutional republic, not a democracy.

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Published

 

Ever since I began reading motor magazines I've always wanted to be a motoring journalist.

Another calling emerged, and except for an interruption when the government decided to send me off to a foreign country in peacetime to help convince the locals that we knew what was good for them, it was a fulfilling and satisfying career. 

My second attempt at retirement (after failing the first one and working as an advisor for ten years) has provided me with time to try my hand at writing about cars.

You can check out my attempts, gentle reader, here.

One online car magazine runs owner reviews, so I submitted one.

They published it, although I'm not sure who is responsible for one piece of poor sentence construction. See if you can find it. I reckon it's their poor editing.

Anyhow, let me know what you think.

In the meantime, I'll add some pics to this post to make it slightly less featureless.

This is a very rare coupe, sold only in Japan

This was my first NB with hardtop fitted and matched.

This was the second NB on the day I sold it.

Australia Day

Image courtesy CEFA.

Last Tuesday was a public holiday.

It’s a public holiday because two hundred and thirty three years ago, a convict settlement was established at Botany Bay by the British.

When you think about it, being granted a public holiday seems a strange way of remembering the opening of a penal settlement. If it was, say, a school, or a hospital, perhaps that would be grounds for celebration. But a jail? 

We should commemorate a national day. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on what being Australian actually means, and to understand our history, and what makes this country the best place to live if you value a great quality of life.

But if you understand our history, it's difficult to rationalise the choice of January 26th as our national day.

Back in 1788, the first fleet arrived over the period of 18-20 January 1788. Between the 25th and the 26 January 1788 they moved from Botany bay to present-day Sydney. It was very much an arrival in dribs and drabs.

The significance of the 26th January lies in the fact that this was the day when Phillip, after a reconnaissance on 21st January to find a more favourable spot than Botany Bay for a settlement, planted the Union Jack at Port Jackson.

If you had asked the redoutable Arthur Phillip what exactly he was doing, I doubt very much that "establishing a nation" would have entered the conversation. He was carrying out his orders, dutifully setting up a penal settlement, because the loss of the American colonies had shut off earlier options for detaining prisoners.

A new location had to be found, and Port Jackson was suitable. Let's not kid ourselves. This was nothing to do with nation-building. It was an exercise in developing a jail.

The first time the term "Australia" was used on anything official was by Matthew Flinders in a chart he compiled in 1804 whilst imprisoned by the French in Mauritius. It wasn't until 1824 (36 years after the arrival of the first fleet), that the British Admiralty finally accepted that the continent should be known officially as Australia.

So calling 26th January "Australia Day" because of the significance of the date is an ahistorical misunderstanding.

So if not 26th January - when?

That really is quite straightforward. 

That date of Federation (1st January) is an obvious choice.

The move toward Federation was a long time in the development, marking, as it did, the growth of a sense of national identity felt by native born Australians.

The Tenterfield Oration, given by Sir Henry Parkes on 24 October 1889, is generally recognized as the beginning of the Federation process.

The argument against 1st January as unsuitable because it is already a public holiday is a distraction. If having a day off is so important, the holiday could be taken at some other time. Beyond that, almost everybody is already celebrating the New Year on that day, so adding a national commemoration won't spoil anything.

As for the "Invasion day" controversy - perhaps moving the emphasis from dispossession (as signified by remembering the planting of the Union Jack), to celebrating the creation of a new federated nation might take some of the heat out of that.

The flag planted on 26th January 1788 was not, after all, the Australian flag.

It is the flag of another nation entirely, a nation that had rejected and imprisoned the majority of those who witnessed its unfurling back then.

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The Democracy Sausage

Pic courtesy Wikipedia

Across the pacific, the tumult and the shouting has died, and the captains and the kings have departed, or at least the noisiest has.

Most of the noise surrounding his departure was generated by controversy about the outcome of the presidential vote, and allegations, by the losers, that the outcome was fraudulent. The repetition of this allegation, without any proof, chipped away at the trust the American people have in their electoral system, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's difficult to imagine this kind of discord developing in this country. That's a blessing, and you should always count your blessings.

It might be useful to compare the electoral systems in the USA and Australia, and to identify and count those blessings.

The first blessing is participation.

The most fundamental difference is that voting is compulsory in Australia, and voluntary in the USA. Straightaway, the exercise of democracy in Australia maximises participation. When Abraham Lincoln described democracy in his country at the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg on November 19th 1863, I doubt he was talking about random sampling. 

He said -

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

He did not qualify his remarks by saying "some" of the people, so it's a reasonable assumption that he meant "all" of the people.

Democracy is enhanced by participation. Even in the 2020 US November 4th election, which generated the highest turnout for decades, only 66.7% of eligible voters actually cast a ballot. Compare that with 91.9% in Australia's 2019 federal election. These figures mean that in the USA, one in three eligible citizens had no say in electing their president for the next four years. It also means that nine in ten Australians have a say in who governs them.

Another blessing is ease of voting.

A major contribution to participation is to make voting easy and straightforward. Because voting is compulsory in this country, there is a requirement for government to remove all conceivable barriers. This is done by allowing (and because of the pandemic encouraging) postal, absentee and pre-poll voting.

Polling stations are plentiful, and well-staffed, and are open from 8am to 6pm. It is rare in this country to have to queue for hours (or even minutes) to vote. Every effort is made to make the process streamlined and efficient, and processes are consistent across the country.

Whilst in twenty-first century australia, the weekend is no longer sacred, the fact that voting occurs on Saturday also facilitates the process.

Another blessing is efficiency. 

Compare our pretty efficient situation with what happens stateside.

Voting in the USA follows a mish-mash of methods determined at state and county level. There is no Electoral Commission (state or federal), and everybody does their own thing. 

Unlike the time-honoured lead pencil and paper ballot combination used in Australia, you might you might fill in a bubble sheet (like the ones you got with tests in school) or you could push a button on a machine, which punches holes in a ballot. (which was responsible for the "hanging chad controversy in the 2000 presidential election which finished up in the supreme court). You might even vote digitally at a machine.

The pencil and paper system is used here because it is simple and foolproof, and does not rely on technology which can go wrong.

Another blessing is accessibility.

In the US, you will vote on a Tuesday, which is not a public holiday. If you are a single parent, or holding down two jobs (as around 5% of Americans do) getting to a booth can be a challenge. There is a long tradition of voter suppression amongst minority groups (Latinos and African-Americans) which is only just being overcome by political organisations. 

I won't get into the more complex issues gerrymandering - indulged in by both sides, and the elephant in the room, the Electoral College which can and has allowed candidates winning fewer votes Than their rivals to gain power. These are important issues that haven't been addressed successfully for over a century in the USA.

It is possible for Australians to elect a government which commands a majority of seats, but not a majority of voters, but our preferential system (unknown in the US) compensates somewhat.

Perhaps the best way of avoiding further controversy in the US in the future is a root and branch overhaul of their electoral system. It is, after all, held up by Americans as the best example of democracy in the free world.

They could learn a great deal from us which might ensure the maintenance of that precious democracy into the future. Right now it looks pretty wobbly.

And we should definitely count our blessings.  

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An Epiphany

                                                        Image courtesy of Getty Images

What we witnessed in Washington last Wednesday is an epiphany, a wake-up call..

We saw a mob ransacking the Capitol, after a pep talk from Donald Trump, who had addressed them, urging them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue to prevent the certification of the Biden presidency.

Such an assault hasn't occurred since the war of 1812, but that incident involved British troops, not American citizens.

What has created a situation where American citizens feel that it's OK to attack their seat of government and prevent the democratic business of the day from being conducted?

To understand the origins of this behaviour, which is cultural, rather than political, you need to examine the digital environment surrounding individuals who behave in this way. Whilst many of them are complete lunatics (obvious from the images), many of them aren't. Many of them are otherwise solid citizens who believe they are doing the right thing.

Voltaire is quoted as observing - 

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

He's on the money.

Here are just a few absurdities believed by many who ransacked the Capitol last Wednesday -

Members of the alt-right and many conservative journalists, spread a conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan and Twitter contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party to child trafficking. A number of pizzerias were named including the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington.

Then there is the meme claiming that the pandemic is a hoax, or if you don't like that one, that it is a CCP plot.

Then, if we read Qanon or 4Chan, we hear that 5G carries the Covid-19 virus, that lizard people have infiltrated all levels of the US administration (except for Trump of course) and that Pearl harbour and the Oklahoma bombing were false flags operations.

The frightening element of all this is that polling indicates that many of these conspiracies are believed by a significant proportion of Americans.

Absolutely no evidence is presented for these narratives, but that doesn't seem to matter. In any case, even if there is no evidence, an avalanche of blurry videos which are interpreted with no context are substituted.

The most heinous of these memes, and the most dangerous, is the election fraud fantasy. It's heinous because it has been comprehensively debunked by electoral officials (many of them in Republican administrations), dismissed in the courts (often by Trump appointed judges) and the recounts and audits that have been conducted have shown all results are valid.

It is dangerous because as David Kilcullen noted, it has white-anted the trust that many citizens have in their government. This trust is essential for democracy to survive. A few thousand of those citizens marched on the Capitol last Wednesday, and a few hundred broke in, attempted to harm their elected officials, and trashed the building. Some carried zip ties (apparently to kidnap congress members or senators).

Last Wednesday's event, instigated by a pathological liar, are deeply troubling.

But the most significant factor which brought the US to this point is the proliferation of dangerous online garbage. It needs to be cleaned up.That is the challenge for not only the US, but free countries worldwide. 

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