It's been a while since I'm managed to provide an update as to our lives down here, for a range of reasons. We have been well, we have been busy and we have been enjoying ourselves. Sure, we could complain about how our winters are the same as the summer weather that you're enduring, how great the beaches are and how good cheap wine is but all of this has been said before. Another reason is that as we become more and more entrenched in our lives here, it seems much more like a routine and while life is certainly different down here for us, for better or for worse it is still just daily life.
Consequently the social observations seem to dull and what was once novel or foreign has become more commonplace. Fortunately there are still a lot of strange things to report back in various dispatches, so as your pickled minds lurch back to reality from the abuses that you visited upon them during Stampede, allow me to share with you our observations on the social state in Australia.
This is an excerpt from an e-mail that made it's way to me that provides at least an anecdotal antipodal comparison of the cost of living between two blue collar regions, one that is in the grip of a socialist regime and the other that is perhaps heading that direction thanks to some of the more recent Provincial leaders, but isn't there yet.
The email claims (although not verified by myself) as follows:
So when I was back home I took some photos in the grocery store to match some I took here before I left:
Price for New Zealand Kiwi fruit here in Brisbane:
In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (16,000 km away from here) ($3.86/kg)
Rack of Lamb here in Brisbane: ($44.99/kg)
Back over in Edmonton: ($29.99/kg)
Bundy Rum here ($38.95 for 700 mL)
Edmonton: ($32.75 – but then was discounted down to $28.75 at the till)
Fair enough that this isn't exactly the most robust of evidence, and in fact may have nothing to do with socialism or anything other than the fact that most people are willing to pay double for things just so they don't have to live in Edmonton. However, I think that it does suggest a certain socialist leaning of the Australian markets.
Note: Bundaberg “Bundy” rum is distilled just north of Brisbane in a town ubiquitously called Bundaberg and as you go further north in Queensland people drink rum to escape the heat in quantities that make them insane. Really insane. Other Aussies call it “going Tropo” (pronounced with an elongated “oooooo”, in reference to the Tropic of Capricorn).
Northern Queensland is supposed to be a magnificent place to travel, but only before it gets “too hot” or “too humid”. In Australian terms anything over 45C is “too hot” and anything over 97% Relative Humidity is “too humid”. For me the corresponding values are 30C and 75%, particularly for Northern Queensland, but 45c and 97% rel hum sounds like the unpleasant parts of Hell, so suffice it to say I’ve avoided that area.
Why? Well, because once the weather gets “hot” the blue bottle jellyfish “stingers” or “jellies” populate the coastal waters, and while their stings are not lethal, the paralysis that they cause frequently leads to drowning which is fatal. So, if the coastal waters are out of the question, then refuge may be sought in any number of the regions rivers, provided that you can out swim or our wrassle the crocs. So, copious amounts of rum it is then while you look for a place with A/C or get Tropo enough that it doesn’t matter. So conceivably, the additional local charges on Bundy Rum is to offset the local demands on social programs, but hold that for now.
I was raised, as most good Alberta kids were, to believe that “S____ism” is a dirty word. A “red menace”. A way of life or system of government for weaklings or vegetarians, but certainly not for enterprising freedom loving souls of hearty disposition that roam the Albertan landscape, those who aspired to stand on their own feet. Fair enough. Our parents had grown up during the Cold War and McCarthyism. They had witnessed the British government impose a capital gains type tax that destroyed The Beatles (before John claimed to be a socialist), programs of government growth, a crippling National Energy Policy, etc. so why wouldn’t they be guarded and suspicious.
Even the symbols chosen for socialism (and worse communism) were ominous, the hammer and a sickle. These weren’t the stars and strips symbolic of freedom and patriotism. This wasn’t the maple leaf famous for tasty breakfasts and big trees that only live in one small region of our vast country, no hammers crush and sickles maim. I guess, unless they’re used for other things….
For our parents, socialism was bad. It was wrong. I’m not talking about the kind of socialism that pays for your university education, or justifies you drinking all the beer in your friend’s fridge, but the sort of socialism that raises taxes, misappropriates wealth and builds government machines with insatiable appetites, machines that strip wealth from private individuals like locus in a wheat field.
Before leaving Alberta I had never lived under a socialist government, perhaps the closest that I got was a socially active conservative Provincial government or a Liberal Federal government, but that was more like living in the forest with Robin Hood, with Ontario and Quebec being the benefactors, not really socialism. Besides, Robin Hood was a good guy right, his cohorts were Merry Men, they didn’t deploy missiles into Cuba. Hood’s redistribution of wealth was heroism not socialism. Right?
But Australia, as we so often see, is different and even though the factions within the same political party fight, it is still a Labor government that rules the land and these guys are socialists. “Labor government” is a term that always makes me think of Jimmy Hoffa, but again, this is different here. It would be like Jimmy Hoffa as a laid back surfer who only really wanted to work flex time, and only wanted to do the rhetoric and not the intimidation. Probably the kind of Jimmy Hoffa I wouldn’t mind standing up to. But at the same time, the average guy on the work crew is empowered to such a degree that it wouldn’t surprise me to see a surgeon walking around in a blue wife beater, just to get some R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
But still, I didn’t really know what to expect from politics when I got here and over two years later, not much has changed. Although until recently I would have admitted that I was still suspicious of socialists. That’s all gone now.
During the course of the last two years and some odd months we have gotten used to the laws of the land, the statutes and practices. To describe the plethora of laws here would be like imagining what it would be like if the Vatican merged all of its rules with those of physics and verb conjugation. So basically, three groups of rules and laws about things that I have no understanding of, in fact I think I can describe how valences in Bromine function easier than what it takes to get a dog license in Brisbane. Having said that I am currently undefeated in my defense of parking tickets, resulting in a savings of over $500.
Between the Commonwealth, State and Municipal governments that is a form, a policy, a help line, a statute or practice, all with fines backing them up for virtually every aspect of your life. Minimum wage is set around $14/h and the Commonwealth government has implemented both an increased royalty regime / mining tax as well as a carbon tax. A red menace indeed.[1]
During our time here, we have discovered one particularly important set of municipal regulation. This regulation focuses on the timing and duration that your garbage and recycling bins may be placed on the curb for collection. Failure to comply with said regulation results in immediate fines, because you can’t miss an opportunity to bolster the state coffers.
So it was with great consternation that I discovered one morning that a ‘tradie’ (short for tradesman, but applied to all working class blokes that shoulder the honest labor burden for the Great Commonwealth of Australia while the nere’do’well lawyers, engineers, doctors, dentists etc all fritter away ……) had left my bins emptied, but turned over and with broken axels. As I tried spiritedly to wheel the dysfunctional bins back from the curb, the broken axel gouged the turf leaving a tear in the sod.
Exasperated I thought, “What environmental statute have I breeched now? Is there a defense? Due diligence? Misadventure? Necessity?” But then also was also the thoughts of how I going to get the bins replaced? This was the sort of thing that needed immediate attention. Fines for lack of compliance, garbage that needs to get to the curb by the following week, pests getting in to the bins, etc. I thought of the logistics of taking two dirty bins in a small car to wherever I needed to take them, and then wait for repairs and transport them back. And then what of the costs? What if I get all the way there with these bins that don’t even fit in our car only to find out that I’m not entitled to request a repair, because I’m a tenant and not the property owner? As my despair was becoming complete, I sought refuge in the only place that I can really count on, the Internet.
I looked up “Wheelie bin repair” on the Google powered search found on the Brisbane City Council page and was directed to an on-line form that I had to complete as you would expect. “Address of bins” “contact phone number” “Type of bin damaged” “Type of damage / repair required” and so forth. Within 5-6 minutes I was completed the form and hit “send” (ok, after three attempts at the captcha phrase).
Ok, what next? Moments later, I received an e-mail advising me to make sure that the bin(s) were on the curb (fines wouldn’t apply) and that the repairs would be conducted on site within two working days.
TWO WORKING DAYS!!!!!
REPAIRED ON SITE!!!!!
I LOVE SOCIALISM!!!!
That was mid-morning Wednesday that I was launched like Spunik into an orbit of socialist love. Sure, you pay some taxes, but you get good roads, good hospitals, good schools and bins repaired at your curbside. Repairs were needed without delay. How bad could socialism really be?
After a whole other series of misadventures: nocturnal creatures that turned our garden into Fight Club; someone driving into our neighbors fence; and our daughter waking up with a nightmare; at 5 am Friday morning, the M_#$(* F_(#*ing Socialists turned up with their rubber mallets (not even the real hammers of the USSR) to carry out the curbside repairs on the bins. WTF? Could these repairs wait? 5 am? What was the rush?
Our parents were right to be wary of the Socialist. I now know why you can’t have firearms here, because people would take them up against the early morning red menace.
[1] Incidentally the Red Kangaroo is one of the largest of the species. Unconvinced? The Aussie coat of arms has both a kanga and an emu, pretty damning evidence of a socialist connection.
