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Make a Difference

Year: 2020

Christine Holgate and the Righteous Fury of the Mediocre

October 24, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Christine Holgate is the CEO of Australia Post. She has been in the news for the last couple of days after harsh criticism from Australian politicians and being told by the Prime Minister to stand down.

Christine is from the North of England. She is not from a privileged background. When she was fifteen she started a small business cleaning windows, and then purchased an ice cream van. She completed studies in business at the University of North London, working as a Christmas postie during her student years.

After various jobs in marketing and management, she became JP Morgan’s Managing Director of Marketing in Europe. She was the only female member of JP Morgan’s European executive team. She was head-hunted for Telstra in 2002, moved to Australia, and worked for Telstra as head of the mobile marketing team. Later her role was expanded to include leadership of business sales and marketing.

In 2008 she was appointed CEO of Blackmore’s, the Australian health and pharmaceutical company. This move was personal for her because her sister had recently died from cancer. While at Blackmore’s she focused on developing export markets, and among other achievements grew Blackmore’s sales in China from $1 million to $50 million per year.

She was one of only twenty world business leaders to be invited to the 2014 G20 summit. In 2015 she was listed as one of Australia’s top 100 most influential women by Australian Financial Review, and in 2015, she became the first woman to be awarded CEO of the year by CEO magazine.

In 2017 she was appointed CEO of Australia Post, on a salary half that of her predecessor. She immediately began visiting ordinary Post Offices and talking with staff. She focused on improving Australia Post’s relations in the community, and with staff and licensees. At the same time, she re-structured the entire logistical operations of APO, and introduced new technology and services. One of the key improvements, during her time, for both communities and licensees, has been the development of Bank@Post.

I have met Christine. She came to Kangaroo Island after the bushfires at the end of last year, and visited the Post Offices on the Island. She listened to concerns we had about service delivery, and talked about family, work, and plans for continued improvement in postal services and care for staff.

Australia Post faces some ongoing challenges in service delivery. It services a relatively small population in a very large and isolated country. Some of its communities are very widespread, and very remote. In many small rural communities, Australia Post is the only provider of banking and government services. Many of those smaller service centres are uneconomical, and would have disappeared under an “economic rationalist” regime. In spite of these issues, Australia Post is almost unique among national postal services in that instead of costing tax-payers money, it returns a dividend to the Federal government each year.

Then came Coronavirus. This impacted Australia Post in multiple ways. First, people stayed at home and ordered online. Within weeks of the first few cases in Australia, the volume of parcels began to grow, and continued to grow, until every day we received a similar number of parcels as had been normal only for a week or two at peak Christmas time. No system could have been prepared for such a massive, sustained increase in workload. New sorting facilities were rapidly developed, new staff employed, and others re-directed from letters to parcels.

At the same time as this massive increase in demand for parcel delivery, borders began to close, and planes stopped flying. This meant mail delivery to and from overseas countries became impossible in some cases, and difficult in others. Travel and transport within Australia was and is restricted. A farmer on the border of Victoria and New South Wales was told he couldn’t truck hay from a property on one side of the border to another, and he should just put it on a plane. Families were stopped from travelling for important occasions and even for medical emergencies.

Everyone has some sort of horror story about a failed or delayed mail delivery. I sent an express post letter from Adelaide to Sydney that should have taken wo days and took nearly three weeks. But those stories are the exception, not the rule.

Following high-speed re-organisation of resources and logistics, and recruiting and re-allocation of staff, Australia Post, again, unlike many other national postal services, has continued to provide reliable, cost-effective, and mostly timely delivery services around the country. This is an almost miraculous result in the face of both massively increased demand, and massively increased barriers to service.

There have been some plainly silly stories about Australia Post during this time. “They have told contractors they have to use their own vehicles!” Yes, that is how contracting works. “They have been calling for volunteers to work for free.” No, they have been advertising for new casual staff to meet increased demand.

The recent storm of self-righteous fury from some of our elected leaders is pure hypocrisy. It centres on gifts of Cartier watches from Australia Post to some of the key executives involved in negotiating and delivering Bank@Post services. This was a major accomplishment, and deserved to be recognised and rewarded. $20,000 for bonuses/gifts to executives who have achieved such an important goal, delivering massively improved services not only in cities but to some of our most remote communities, and improving Australia Post’s profitability at the same time (that profit is paid back to the government, saving taxpayers money) is nothing by comparison to other commercial gifts and bonuses.

You may think that the salaries paid to some CEOs and executives are ridiculous, even wrong. You are entitled to that view. But the reality is that there is a high and competitive demand for skilled, proven leaders like Christine. She could easily be earning more elsewhere. But she believes in Australia and in Australia Post, and in the services it and its thousands of staff and licensees provide to Australian communities.

Is it simply that someone is out to get her? She was not the recipient of one the watches. There was no personal benefit to her in those gifts. “But she has a nice watch!” was one of the media complaints. Yes. She has a nice watch that was a gift from her husband – so? “She has personalised number plates!” So do several people living in my mostly housing commission neighbourhood. Most of these complaints sound like spite and jealously. Some arise simply from a complete failure to understand how corporate remuneration works. All are petty.

Christine Holgate is a perfect role model. She is a decent, kind-hearted, intelligent woman, who through sheer hard work, insight and determination has gone from being a lower-class Northerner with the accent to match, to one of Australia’s most admired and formidable business leaders. We are lucky to have her.

Antivaccination Hysteria – Dangerous Evangelising Ignorance

August 29, 2020 / / 0 Comments
I have always regarded the anti-vax movement as either bafflingly stupid or deliberately malicious. Perhaps that is not entirely fair.
Some parents genuinely believe their children suffered serious adverse effects as a consequence of being vaccinated. In vanishingly rare instances they may be right. And some anti-vax propaganda is glossy and convincing. I remember the first time I encountered the argument that Japan had reduced its incidence of SIDS to zero by stopping early childhood vaccinations. It was well-presented and convincing, with carefully laid out photos, graphs and tables.
Of course it only took about ten minutes to confirm that the claim was completely false. During the couple of years in which Japan reduced its childhood vaccination programme, the number of children dying from SIDS increased, not decreased. What changed was that none of these deaths could be blamed on vaccines.
I understand parents whose children become ill a few hours, days, weeks or even years, after being vaccinated, wondering whether that illness was in some way connected. Some time ago I posted the story of a child taken to a paediatric practice in Perth for a routine vaccination. While the practice nurse was drawing the vaccine into the syringe, the child began to convulse. If this had happened a few minutes later, no one would have been able to convince the parents that the convulsions and the vaccine were not connected.
But children (and adults for that matter) get sick all the time, and sudden infant deaths occur during the period when most children receive their first batch of vaccinations, so it is natural that some parents will make a connection between the two. In the same way, no blame attaches to people who are initially taken in by glossy and apparently detailed anti-vax websites and publications. People are entitled to ask questions.
But it only takes a little effort to go to genuinely science-based websites or publications, or to talk to a paediatrician, and get factual answers. What people are not entitled to do is to pass on dangerously misleading and counter-factual propaganda.
I have a rule that I try to behave in online conversations as in real life conversations; to be careful and polite in all interactions. Anti-semites and anti-vaxxers are the two exceptions, both online and face to face. Both of those philosophies are so false, so dangerously false, and so easily checkably false, that anyone who contributes to their spread is either irretrievably stupid, lazy to the point of being maliciously careless with the well-being of others, or deliberately vicious.
If you have no medical or scientific expertise (and even if you do) you have an absolute moral obligation to check carefully, and ensure that you are not passing on falsehoods which will endanger the lives and health of other people. If you continue to forward information which is out of context, misleading, or deliberately false, as all anti-vax information is, then you forfeit any right to be considered a truthful or decent person.
One of the regulars in the anti-vax line-up is the argument that you can’t trust big pharma – just follow the money! But big pharma have been forced to admit their products are harmful in an insert to vaccine packaging. They just do it in a way that makes sure no-one reads it because it is in such tiny print. In fact, anti-vaxxers say, most doctors have never read a vaccine insert, or if they have and keep giving them, they are just in it for the money, so you can’t trust what they say either. Sometimes you will read a story of a brave mother who insisted on her rights, and demented, sorry demanded, the doctor read the vaccine insert before giving the vaccine to her child. At which point the astonished doctor realised the error of his ways, and vowed never to give another vaccine again. I’ll take things that never happened for $500, please Alex.
Another is the argument that vaccines are full of poisons. Anyone who makes this claim might as well put a big sign on their head saying “I know nothing about science and can’t be bothered learning.”
If you are interested in reality, as opposed to dark fantasies and conspiracy theories, here are a couple of science and research based web pages about vaccine inserts and “poisonous ingredients” to read through. Of course the anti-vaxxers won’t because 1. They don’t care, and 2. They prefer their loony Facebook posts to reality.
If you want the world to be a better place, reality is better.
And finally, I am pleased to be able to report that I have discovered the actual source of most Facebook anti-vax material. See photo below.
The stinky sewer of antivax propaganda

Black Lives Matter. Just not to BLM.

June 11, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes it is not only reasonable, but morally imperative, to point out that the lives of a particular group of people matter. It would have been right in Turkey in 1915 to shout as loudly as possible that Armenian lives mattered. In Germany in 1944 that Jewish lives mattered. Or today in South Africa that white farmers’ lives matter, or in Indonesia that Papuan lives matter.

Wherever a particular ethnic or cultural group is being treated as less than human, anyone with integrity should not hesitate to say “These people are human too. Their lives matter.”

That is the claim that is being made now in relation to black people in the USA, and aboriginal people in Australia. That the way they are treated by police and prison guards demonstrates that they are considered less than human. A cartoon panel circulating on Facebook makes this claim: Black people are considered expendable by police and the governments that employ them.

If this claim is true, then we all ought to be horrified. If people in the US are stopped and murdered by police simply because they are black, and the police involved routinely face no meaningful consequences, and if 434 aboriginal people have been killed by prison guards in Australia since 1991 with not a single criminal charge being laid against those responsible, then we should all be on the streets shouting “Black lives matter!” and demanding change right now.

If this claim is not true, however, then we should be almost as horrified, because it is a vicious and dangerous libel against our government, our society, and the prison and police officers who work to protect us, often at considerable risk to their own safety. Dangerous because repeating those claims, as much of the media and many politicians and celebrities have done, leads not to hope and healing, but to hatred and division. It creates a view that our police and prison guards behave exactly like Nazi concentration camp guards, and that if the government won’t take action, then perhaps a violent response is justified in order to bring about real change.

Are black lives endangered by police and prison guard brutality, and white people who are either complicit or simply don’t care?

In the USA, black men comprise less than 7% of the population, but they commit 52% of murders, 38% of other violent crime including bashings and rape, and 60% of all robberies. They are also more likely to resist arrest and to respond to police with violence. In any encounter between a police officer and a black suspect in a violent crime, the police officer is 18 times more likely to die during that event than the black perpetrator. You might think that this would make police more apprehensive, and more likely to respond with fatal force. Although regrettable, that might be understandable. But it is not the case.

In 2019 US police shot and killed 1004 people. All of these were armed or posed a threat to police or members of the public. 235 of those, about a quarter of the total, were black. This is a far lower proportion than would be expected based upon the number of police interactions with violent criminals or suspects. Black and hispanic police officers were more willing to use the same levels of force against black offenders as they would with white offenders than white police officers, suggesting white officers hesitate for fear of being denounced as racists.

On October 5 2019 a female police officer in Chicago was beaten unconscious by a suspect in a car crash, who repeatedly bashed her face into the concrete and tore out chunks of her hair. She survived and said later that she refrained from using her gun because she didn’t want to become the next viral video in the Black Lives Matter narrative. Police officers are at far greater risk from black offenders than black offenders are from the police.

If anything, this disparity is even greater in Australia. Although aboriginal males make up just over 1% of the Australian population, they account for 15.1% of homicide victims, and 15.7% of perpetrators. Black Americans commit seven times as many murders as might be expected from their numbers in the population. Aboriginal Australians commit more than 15 times as many. Aboriginal women are 25 times more likely than women of other races to need hospital treatment for domestic violence, and in some aboriginal communities, 90% of children are reported as victims of neglect, or of physical or sexual abuse.

In Australia, as in the US, the rate of lethal force used against aboriginal offenders is lower than would be expected from the number of interactions with police. The main cause of complaint in Australia, however, is the number of aboriginal deaths in custody. Since 1991, 434 aboriginal people have died in prison or in police custody. It is often assumed by protestors that this means 434 aboriginal people have been beaten to death by psychopathic racist police and prison guards, and they point to the fact that no one has ever been convicted in relation to any of these deaths as proof that there is systemic racism in Australia, from the government down.

Quite frankly, that claim is simply silly. People do not stop suffering from heart disease or diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as soon as they get into prison. They are not suddenly immune to cancer or strokes. People in custody mostly die from the same things that would have killed them if they been outside. They just don’t die as much. The death rate in the general Australian population is about seven people per thousand per year. In the prison population it is 1.7 per thousand for aboriginal prisoners, and 1.8 per thousand for prisoners of other races.

The difference between 1.7 deaths in custody per year for aboriginal prisoners and 1.8 per thousand for other races is hardly significant. But when you take into account that aboriginal prisoners have lower general and mental health, are more likely to be suffering the effects of long-term drug and alcohol abuse, and are more likely to become involved in violent altercations with other prisoners, it is clear that far from carelessness or targeting aboriginal prisoners for racism and violence, prison officers take extra care to protect and support them.

Part of the explanation for the difference in mortality rates in prison and out is age. The older you are, the more likely you are to die, and there are few prisoners over seventy years of age. Also, far fewer prisoners die from road or sporting accidents or drowning than the outside population. But two more factors are required to explain the lower death rate for people in custody.

For members of some demographic groups, the mortality rate declines while in custody because in prison they have good nutrition and good medical care. Many in those same demographic groups are more likely to survive in prison because prison is far safer than their home communities.

In 1999 the Guinness Book of Records named Palm Island as the most violent place in the world, outside of actual war zones. Nothing much has changed in the last twenty years, despite vast expenditures of money, including, for example, the announcement last year by the Queensland government of expenditure of $893,000 (for a community of 3000 people) on new domestic violence support services.

Are black lives in the US and aboriginal lives in Australia in danger? Definitely. Everyone who cares about black lives wants that to change. Policies to bring about positive change are only effective to the extent they are based on reality. The empowering reality for black Americans and Australian aboriginals is that that danger comes from within their own communities, and consequently, that they have the power to stop it.

COVID19, Wuhan, Coronavirus, the Chinese Virus – the case for a Lockdown

April 1, 2020 / / 0 Comments

As at this morning, 1st April, there have been 855,941 cases of novel Coronavirus around the world. Of those, 636,964 are still active, and 218,977 have run their course either to recovery or death. Of these, 42,069 (19%) ended with the death of the patient.

The infectiousness of this disease, combined with this frighteningly high mortality rate for known cases, is what has convinced me that a tighter lock-down, though horrifying costly (more on that later), is the most responsible course of action.

However, there is a large and possibly growing body of thought that very restrictive government actions are not necessary, and even that those so far implemented are doing more harm than good to overall health and well-being.

For example, over the last few days:

Associate Professor of Medicine Eran Bendavid, and Professor Jay Bhattacharya  of Stanford University:

https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/coronavirus-deadly-they-say

Oxford Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1

Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, infectious medicine specialist, former head of the Institute for Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz:

https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2020/03/an-expert-says-the-current-response-to-the-coronavirus-is-grotesque-absurd-and-very-dangerous.html

And just yesterday, a more cautious article in The Lancet:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30257-7/fulltext

Those who claim immediate shutdowns are necessary need to acknowledge these variations of opinion, and the widely varying advice being given to politicians.

It is not good enough simply to snipe from Facebook, calling politicians names, or suggesting a lack of integrity, or repeating slogans. Doing so convinces no one, especially decision-makers, and begins to make it look like those in favour of a shutdown have no real case for their point of view. Otherwise, why not make that case instead of throwing insults?

There also needs to be acknowledgement of the horrific cost of restrictions implemented to this point, and a genuine accounting and balancing of the cost of further restrictions.

Simply repeating “Health not wealth” will not wash. The huge improvement in lifespan over the last century, and our amazing good health into much older age, are a product of our prosperity as a nation, and the benefits that flow from that; the ready availability of fresh food, easy access to good medical services, improved working conditions, etc, etc. Undermine the nation’s wealth, and you undermine the nation’s health.

To give just one example of how this works in practice, the latest astonishing cash splurge sees income support for a broad range of workers to the extent of $130 billion. This would be enough to build and staff 200 new regional hospitals in Australia, or to renew and re-equip 300.

It is not only the loss of massive amounts of cash for crucially important infrastructure which needs to be considered, but the impact on business. Again, to give just one example, two days ago the government decreed that no one, and no business, could be evicted for the next six months for non-payment of rent. For businesses, rent can be deferred. But the income from which that rent needs to be paid has not been deferred, it has been lost. It is not recoverable. Even large businesses like Westfield, with billions of dollars invested in shopping centres, do not have large cash reserves. If rent is not paid over an extended period, they will fail. Repeat this a few times, and superannuation funds will collapse, leaving another massive hole government will be expected to fill.

On a more personal level, retail rents are not trivial amounts. The rent on the business Kathy and I have purchased in Townsville is $84,000 per year. Rents in higher traffic shopping centres can be much higher. Businesses will go bankrupt. This ripples out causing further, sometimes breaking point, difficulties to other businesses. There will be massive unemployment and all the evils that go with it; reduced general health, increased domestic violence, family breakdowns and suicide. And of course, further demands on a now massively under-resourced government. Then there is the fact that much of our self-esteem and energy comes from feeling useful. The long term mental health impacts of an extended lockdown/extended period of unemployment are potentially disastrous even without considering other factors.

People in favour of a complete lock-down, which would be even more costly in all these ways than measures so far implemented, also need to recognise and factor into their explanations the fact that a lock-down is not a solution. The virus will not magically disappear. Infection will reoccur and spread, and further lock-downs and restrictions will need to be enforced.

If, on the other hand, if it can be demonstrated by reference to policies and outcomes elsewhere, and known data about infection rates and mortality, that this draconian course of action with no clear end in sight will result in significantly better outcomes for most people than less costly and less disruptive options, then it should be implemented.

Despite everything above, this is still the view I hold.

All of the four articles linked above have one key flaw. They assert mortality rates in some cases more than an order of magnitude lower than the figure for known cases so far. They do this on the assumption that for every one case that has been diagnosed, there are ten or more which have not been. But this is simply a guess, with modelling based on that guess. Just as it is not good enough for people in favour of a complete shutdown simply to assert that a shutdown is required and expect national leaders to fall in line, it is not good enough for researchers with a different view to ask leaders to base life and death policy suggestions on guesses with no discernible basis in reality.

There are no answers. We are in for a long, depressing haul no matter who is right, and no matter which course is decided upon. The best we can do is listen, put our views as clearly and with as much evidence as we can, and be respectful, caring and supportive of people around us, including our leaders.

On the Vilification of Prime Minister Scott Morrison

January 2, 2020 / / 0 Comments

There has always been an unpleasant edge to public discussion of politics. It is much easier to vilify people who see things differently from you, than to engage with them and to see this engagement as an opportunity to learn.

The rise of Facebook and Twitter have exacerbated this tendency to personal insult and hasty dismissal instead of reasoned discussion. It is not uncommon for posts on political issues to be met with one word responses: “Fascist!” “Racist!” “Redneck!” “x, y, or z Phobe!”

It is just as common to find these words used to describe politicians or other public figures, as if screeching names or slogans said anything about the person referred to or issues at stake.

One of the most obvious recent examples is the media’s calling down of a rain of fury on the Prime Minister, because he took a short break with his family.

Fire and emergency management are, of course, the responsibility of the states. Despite this, the Prime Minister met with state leaders to talk about strategies and resources, and offered them everything they said they needed. He has visited affected communities, and talked with families, farmers, and firefighters.

So why should he not take a break with his family, his first since becoming Prime Minister, during school holidays when he can spend time with his children? There is no reason at all.
“But it’s a bad look! He doesn’t care!”

Rubbish. It is only a bad look because the media says it is a bad look. The Premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews was on a longer holiday, while the Premier of Queensland, Anna Palaszczuk, decided to pack up and go on a cruise. But fire and emergency management are their responsibility, not Scott Morrison’s.

I couldn’t care less about Andrews or Palaszczuk having a holiday. What is alarming is the hypocrisy, and the extent to which people are willing to be outraged simply because the media tells them they should be.

Scott Morrison recognised that volunteers are not in it for money but because they care about their communities. He is also the first political leader to recognise that while small businesses want to support, they cannot pay wages indefinitely to people who are not working, and volunteers need to pay bills and buy food for their families. Consequently he has offered the states money to compensate fire-fighters and others who are off work for extended periods of time.

Again, it is worth noting that this is despite the fact emergency services are a state responsibility.

It is interesting to look back on the media reaction to former PM Tony Abbott’s actually being on the frontline of fire-fighting. See the article from The Guardian below. There is no pleasing some people. Because for some people the issues are not the issue, it is about the tribe.

The Guardian berates PM Tony Abbott

The Guardian berates PM Tony Abbott

Should Tony have stopped volunteering and focussed on running the country? Should Scott never go on holidays, and stop eating and talking to people and focus on running the country?

He seems to be doing a pretty good job of that.

Australia faces economic challenges, including high energy prices, global trade tensions and a devastating drought. Yet Australia has maintained its AAA credit rating.

Australia has first current account surplus in 40 years, and the lowest welfare dependency in 30 years.

The budget is in balance for the first time in 11 years. Inherited debt is being paid off. Over four years, this will mean $13.5 billion that no longer needs to be spent on debt interest.
More than 1.4 million new jobs have been created in the last five years. Record amounts are being invested in schools, hospitals, aged care and disability support.

Following the biggest tax cuts in twenty years, household disposable incomes have had the fastest increase in a decade. This means more money can be put into building a strong future, and caring for Australians in need. This includes $4.2 billion in accelerated infrastructure projects, $1.3 billion in increased support for drought relief and 10,000 more home care packages for older Australians.

Is everything perfect? Of course not. I still have major issues with some government policies, including the absurd decision to buy slow, noisy submarines which are not only untested but will be out of date before the first one is delivered. Our defence forces deserve the best equipment we can afford, and for resources to be allocated according to an evidence-based, long term strategic plan.

But it is also important to recognise what is being done well, and to acknowledge that most politicians on all sides are decent, hard-working people, who want to make Australia and the world a better place.

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