Sermons and Confessions

I love the old codgers who phone talk back radio.  This morning there was a guy who thought that way to solve the health issues in Australia was to get rid of all the beaurocrats and replace them with health workers like doctors and nurses.
 
These thoughts are so shallow they almost don’t need a rebuttal, but they persist in our community so for what it’s worth…
 
There are more jobs than just health care in a hospital.  Staff have to be paid, patients records have to be kept, stock levels monitored and ordered, bills paid.  This is before the government reports that have to be submitted so that we, the public, can be comfortable that things are being run correctly. 
 
A reduction in clerical and administrative staff does not result in a free up of resources for more nurses.  Rather, it results in already overworked nurses having to cover admin jobs.  A friend of mine recently returned to nursing after a few years in an office job.  One of the first things he had to do was employ his clerical skills at the nursing station and fix up a spreadsheet.  This is surely a ridiculous use of a highly skilled professional person’s time.
 
Public service bashing is a common practice at the moment.  As employee of a government owned corporation I have been the recipient of it myself.  In fact the public service can’t be as bad as they are made out to be.  Where I live the trains run, the roads are fixed, the births are registered.  Most government employees that I know are moderately hard working people who are dedicated to their jobs.  They are generally paid at a lower rate than they could command in private enterprise, but this is offset by more flexible working conditions and hours. 
 
Let’s not forget, too that the government is the largest single employer.  So chances are when next your public service bashing at least one of the people you are talking to is a public servant.
 

My employer and my union are currently negotiating a new enterprise bargaining agreement.  There is, as always, a lot of B.S.  coming from both sides.  It particuarly annoys me when the union says inflammatory and insulting things about my employer.  They don’t seem to understand that having been with my employer now for well over 10 years I have a loyalty and a respect for the institution.  I’m not against them, I spend my working life being for them, trying to make their business as successful as possible.

It particularly annoys me at union meetings when they get up and address us as “Brothers and Sisters”.  I mean, come on, this is not a 1930’s communist uprising. 

So why do I stay a member?  I’m not naive enough to think that a large organisation cares particularly for me.  They’re not my family, they are my employer.  I don’t think that we would have anywhere near the offer that we do have were we required to bargain as individuals.  I pay my money to have a professional negotiator sit down with the professional negotiators employed by my boss.  It puts me on a level playing field and ensures my services are sold at a fair price.

Of course, if I wasn’t a member, the unions would still exist and the negotiator would still sit down, and my pay and conditions would still be improved by the same amount at the end of the process.  I retain my membership because I don’t think it’s fair to stand back and let other people fight for benefits that come to me.

Unions have lost touch with their members, but the answer is for employees to join unions, demand reasonable union behaviour and vote no to strikes and industrial action they don’t agree with.  That way we maintain a strong voice to stand up for fair pay and conditions and we reserve the right to industrial action in extreme cases where employers behaviour is genuinely unfair.

A friend of mine is a “stay at home dad”.  His wife is a solicitor and they made the choice that as she would be earning more money he would give up his very highly paid career for a few years to look after the kids.  It seems to have been a successful move for them. 

I was shocked when he told me that every year he has to prove to the Family Assistance Office that he has no income.  It seems that because he’s a man and his wife has earned a large amount of money he must by definition have earned more.  What hope for the community when the government agencies are sexist in their approach?

Each year for the past few years a group of us have gone to the Bunya Mountains for a short break.  There were four families this year.  All around the same age and most of the kids at similar ages too. 

These were the same people I used to go away with for drunken weekends at Coolum.  We always stayed at the Coolum pub and regularly swam nude in the pool, late at night.  (It was very dark, so nobody saw anything.)

It’s really very comforting to see that they are facing the same issues we are.  Balancing lifestyle and income.  Working at careers and spending time with kids.  Finding time to spend on their relationships.

We were up there for four days.  It usually takes me just about that long to get sick of people and want to retreat to my introverted normality.  I didn’t get that feeling this time.  I think I could have happily stayed another week.  Bring on next year.

My two little boys are into building shops at the moment.  They get some chairs and form them into shelves and then have elaborate construction games where all sorts of rules are set up about what can be bought or not bought etc.

The Sith Lord decided to give his brother a bit of a present recently.  He found a blank certificate and wrote it out.  Then put a big green star on the side and wrote the award.  Beautiful writing for a not yet eight year old.  It’s a pity that the shop doesn’t actually sell grates.

Former Howard Government Minister for Immigration, Phillip Ruddock has stated that it is only due to the Howard Government’s tough policies on immigration that the current government can afford to take a more lenient stand on illegal immigrants.

Listening to him I was reminded of the Doctor who says to the malpractice enquiry.  “The patient was complaining of a pain in his arm.  It was only because I took his arm off that another doctor could diagnose the heart attack and perform the triple by-pass!

The way Australia has treated Asylum seekers over the last few years will remain as a permanent scar on our history.  There is never an argument for inflicting mental torture.  By locking up already traumatised people many of them children, we did just that.