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.

I’m not looking forward to the next few weeks when our TV screens will be filled with the Olympic Games.  I’m not a sports fan.  I was never good at sport and I have very little interest in most sport.  Many of my fellow Australian males think this makes me a homosexual at worst or an eccentric at best.

I understand the benefits of sport.  Sport can be a good way to get exercise.  It can be a good way to learn teamwork.  It can be a great social experience and it can be fun. 

There are also downsides.  It can be a good way to get injured.  It can foster over competitiveness and encourage judgemental sectarianism, with communities split in their fanatical loyalty to one side over another.

It is, of course, an activity in which human beings engage and as such is as flawed as the humans who engage in it. 

My problem with sport in Australia, and it is at its worst during the lead up to and running of the Olympic Games, is that Sport is given a status far in excess of other valid human activities. 

We shall hear over the next few weeks how “We” have done in the medal tally.  We shall see ordinary sometimes very flawed humans lauded and criticised all over their success or otherwise in physical activity.  A success largely dictated by random genetics. 

“But” I hear you cry “These athletes slog their guts out to achieve their medals”.

They do and they should be praised for that and proud of themselves.  My point is that we do not give the same treatment to other people who slog their guts out working for charities, working for their families or even working to achieve greatness in the arts, business, politics or other fields.

I’m not proud that most Australian’s can’t name our VC winners but they can name the captains of the cricket team.  That they speak of Warnie as a hero, but don’t know who Weary Dunlop was.

After the 2000 Olympics in Sydney Gold Medal winners were awarded the order of Australia medal.  People work in charity their whole lives and don’t get an AO.  In my opinion this was a devaluing of the Order of Australia, but it does illustrate my point about where our society’s values lie.

I suspect that part of the obsession with the Medal Talley is that we can see our country’s name on a comparative level with the big guns of the USA and China.  This in itself annoys me.  We are not a world power with those countries, however much we want to be, and Olympic Medals don’t stack up beside economic or military power.

So I wonder if there are any good DVD’s in the shops to get me through the next few weeks!

I think it’s a bad idea for children (or even some young adults really) to be allowed to have photographs taken of them in the nude.  A photograph is a very permanent thing.  I don’t think I would want a photo of me naked to be available for anyone to see, even of me naked as I was at 13 or 14.  Children need to be protected.  It isn’t fair to expect them to be able to make decisions that will effect them for the rest of their lives until they have the wisdom of life experience to equip them to make the decision.  I would even go so far as to say such photos should be illegal, even with parental consent.  Sometimes children should be protected from their parent’s stupidity.

So why don’t I support Hetty Johnson?  Hetty is the lady who made the complaints to the police about the photographs taken by Bill Henson.  She expressed her extreme disapointment that the police and prosecution authorities had decided no charges should be laid.  She says this decision will mark Australia as a haven for pedophiles.  She says the photograph is evidence of commercial sexual exploitation of a child.

I don’t support Hetty because she is a scary extremist.  The photograph that I have seen shows a 13 year old girl.  She has what appears to be the start of breasts, (these have been blacked out in the photo that I saw), the lighting and position of her hands prevent any view of her genitals.  It was an artistic photograph and beautifully composed and to my eyes it was not sexually explicit.  I’m not sexually attracted to children and the photograph didn’t make me start to think of 13 year old girls in a sexual way. 

I’ve seen photographs of Daniel Radcliffe, posed naked with a horse.  It was a beautiful photo, Radcliffe is a very good looking young man.  I’m not attracted to men, it didn’t make me gay.  Pictures can’t do that.

It is never helpful in any debate for extreme views to overwhelm the discussion.  Almost every person in our community wants to protect children from all forms of abuse, but’s let’s be quite clear there is a big difference between nudity and pornography.  If we scare our children into thinking that nudity is shameful and dirty what will happen when they get older?

Our beloved Prime Minister wants public servants to work harder.  Lots of people in the community believe that the public service are lazy, you’ve possibly heard the old joke?
Two public servants were waiting for a lift when they spotted a snail. One of the P.Ss violently stamped on the snail and crushed it.“Why did you do that?” asked the second P.S. “That thing has been following me around all day!” said the first.

I voted for Kevin Rudd. I live in his electorate so I’m someone who can actually say that I personally voted for him. He always seemed an intelligent man, standing for the time honored labor traditions of a fair go for workers.  He’s also a Christian, I believe.
There are a number of things about Mr. Rudd’s statement that make me sad and surprised that he made it.

It’s dumb to insult people that you should be trying to inspire and lead to greater productivity.
It’s hypocritical to campaign on a platform of standing up for working families and then expect the workers in the families to be at work for long hours.

It’s a cheap political shot, that panders to the uninformed in the community who think the public sector really is inefficient and lazy. Rudd knows that that stereotype is wrong he was a public servant.
I have voted labor all my life and been a member of a trade union for my entire working life. I heard horror stories about Rudd’s treatment of the Queensland Public Service before the election and was a little concerned.
This statement was a bad mistake. Let’s hope that it was a mistake in communication and not a true reflection of Rudd’s personality and plans.

Susan Hetherington, a regularly featured commentator on ABC local radio in Brisbane this morning proudly announced a scheme to pay 10cents per litre less for petrol.  She happily announced that because the new Woolworths loyalty card was offering a 10cent discount for new card holders she would be getting as many new cards as she could.  Each time she gets a new card she gives a different email address, creating a new GMail account each time.  “Aren’t I clever?” she seemed to gloat.

Is this fruit cake for real?  Week after week we hear her sanctimonously ranting about various organisations who haven’t lived up to her level of expected customer service or ethical standards.  Can’t she understand that her proposed scam is totally unethical.   Woolworths are doing a loyalty program that they have, no doubt, allocated promotional budget to fund.  This means that they will making back that money by selling groceries.

So just to spell it out to you, Ms Hetherington, the fuel isn’t free.  Someone is paying the 10cents, I wonder who?  Maybe it’s me when I go and buy my groceries from the shop who’s loyalty card you are abusing.  

Tonight’s episode of Media Watch has me thinking.  It is terrible that a completely unsubstantiated allegation can be be published in the media.  In the case of Tania Zaetta allegedly having sex with Australian soldiers in Afganistan what is the big deal?  I don’t mean that she shouldn’t be upset about the false allegation, I mean why is it a story that a woman has sex?

It’s just sex.  I don’t know for sure but she’s seems to be single.  I don’t know who the soldiers were (they were fictional anyhow), but I assumed they were single men.  Even if they weren’t, that’s sad for their partners, but it’s hardly news that people sometimes commit adultery.  It’s also not a crime.

The newspapers and TV publish stories but we read them.  If we were more accepting and worried less about judging other this would be a non issue.