My choice, or not my choice, Part 2

Part 1 looked at owning a home or renting; working or staying home; smoking or not smoking; getting drunk or drinking with care, and driving fast or driving carefully. Part 2 now looks at fighting a war or despising war; using violence or living with love; your own religion or all religions – or none, and maybe a few other things which upset me.

Were you ever in an army – or a Defence Force – either from Australia or from your previous country? I was. I spent 5 years in the New Zealand Army. Our team, 141, included the first women trained in Waiouru other than Burnham, south of Christchurch. Waiouru was a small rural or desert town with a large army base. 

Way back then – 1977 – women were not allowed to use SLR rifles or grenades, but we had to fight fires set by the RNZAC (tankies) practicing out in the field. (We had to ride to a fire in M113 armoured personnel carriers – not the best transport.) Women were not allowed to do training in Fiji (no female toilets) or Singapore, although if we wanted to go there we could buy very cheap tickets over, as long as we bought full price tickets back. We weren’t included in overseas war – Vietnam had finished in 1975 and the Gulf War didn’t start until 1990 – but we had what, at the late 1970s and early 1980s, seemed to be a good life. 

I think that my army life was pretty easy. The NZ Army didn’t have to choose all the wars that Australia took on. Since 1990, NZ only went to 7 wars and peacekeeping operations. Australia went to 11, including the very recent Syria. Some of those that were attended were with USA, not looking after other Commonwealth countries. Why did either NZ or Australia fight them? Were women included in the front ranks?

In 1950 the WRAAC (Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps) was set up. By 1975 women were included in Australia front ranks but were not permitted in direct combat units until 1992. In 2011 PM Julia Gillard demanded that Defence dropped the ban on women, and by 2016 Defence said that recruitment into direct combat was to start.

With debate between the public and politicians, the government stuck to sending defence forces to – primarily Middle East – wars. In 2001 John Howard, the LNP PM, agreed to send troops to Afghanistan at the request of USA, pulled them out in 2002, and sent them back in 2005. In 2014, Julie Bishop said: “We will adopt the usual convention of past governments and that is that the government of the day has the ultimate responsibility for making decisions involving our military.” That upset a lot of voters who didn’t think that Australia needed to be in any war which didn’t involve the country. If what Bishop said, do we still despise war, or are we supposed to support it? I despise it. What is it fought for? For us? I don’t think so.

Despite having been in the NZ Army, I was not allowed into the Goodna RSL for Anzac Day 12 years ago. The NZ Army was – and has been for years – part of ANZAC. I was a past soldier. When I attended an Anzac Day commemoration I joined the troop which was placed in corners of the memorial; we used to rest on our own weapons turned upside down on our left boots. It was a very old ceremony, yet RSL didn’t seem to care at all if I had been in that years ago. Why treat past soldiers like that? Maybe that’s when I truly started to see how my walking away from the army too many years ago was when I really realised how worse we were.

Domestic violence support began decades ago, but is much wider now. Wikipaedia defines it. The government defines it and lists two (alleged) links, Government and community support services and Keeping safe online – except that both links take you right back to the same page you started from! There are a few organisations mentioned on this page, but does not include some of the bigger ones that the public might be aware of, including Reach out, Australian Women Against Violence Alliance (AWAVA), Our Watch, Rape & Domestic Violence Services Australia (R&DVSA) and others. 

White Ribbon is a male organisation and is against DV. There is a White Ribbon Day on 25 November, against DV. They were quoted by SBS about how DV stats haven’t reduced. Have a read of that – published 21 November 2017. 

How do you fight DV? Are you male or female? When you, a male, hear females complain about men, do you get angry? Or do you understand what women are saying. When you, a female, hear males complaining that DV is women hitting men, what do you say? Do you – or don’t you – believe it? I haven’t provided any stats here because there are a lot of people who don’t agree with them. An Australia Personal Safety Survey is accessible here. I recommend you read that.

Domestic violence, whether men hitting women or vice versa, is absolutely unacceptable. Please read, please support the groups, and fight it just with words, not your fists. Maybe have a look through these websites which offer suggestions before DV might happen.

Religion, it seems, is concreted into this country – and most of the globe, regardless of what they see as “religion”. I’m in my 60s, and throughout my youth I found out how bad religion was – and how ministers of religion support their own bad people. Recently there have been court cases against the shocking behaviour from Catholic priests – and yes, even nuns – against children in Catholic churches. In 2016 the Census showed that more than 30% of the population have said they have “no religion”. I am atheist, so that includes me. Presently only 52% of the population show that they follow Christianity. I hope that will continue to fall as people find out the reality about religion.

Christmas seems to be a huge problem, because, even if it’s a religion, the celebration seems to be commercial. Years ago, about a hundred years ago, even workers didn’t have any holidays. Unions fought for them and won them, yet unions have now reduced in memberships, and many workers are being treated as they were 100 years ago – no extra pay when they work on a holiday, and nowhere near pay. Of course, that didn’t stop ‘rich’ people from getting additional pay – recently 30 ministerial staff got more than $28,000 added to their previously high salary: obscene from PM Turnbull. If you’re on a salary, where would you go for your Christmas holiday? What would you buy your family for their Christmas present? At 1 July 2017, the national minimum wage went up to $694.90 – three times the Centrelink benefit. Do you have any idea what a person on the national minimum wage would spend on a holiday or presents? Do you have any idea what a person on a Centrelink benefit could spend on a holiday or presents?

How does Christmas work with every other religion in this country? Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism? Do you know anything about those “other” religions? Have you ever looked them up and read about them? Or non-religion: atheism or agnosticism? There’s a website from Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy which looks at atheism and agnosticism. Have a read. Why do employers take their own Christmas holidays, yet expect low paid workers work on the holidays, and would not pay them any extra if they could get away with that? Who started that??

I said at the start of this blog that this might look at a few other things which upset me. This week, today, I am sad and distressed about what has happened very recently in my life and family and friends who have left this world. None of them chose to leave, but they still did. No ‘war’, no ‘god’, no ‘devil’, they all lived with love and life.

Love and life.

RIP, Jordan, Lesha and Aaron.

My choice, or not my choice: Part 1

Owning a home or renting; working or staying home; smoking or not smoking; getting drunk or drinking with care; fighting a war or despising war; driving fast or driving carefully; using violence or living with love; your own religion or all religions – or none. Have you voted LNP or Labor or Greens or One Nation? Are you anti-poverty or pro-rich? Do you think of what you do? Do you get angry when you read comments by people who don’t care about what you care about? What would you say to them?

Last year The Conversation published an article titled Why a population of, say, 15 million makes sense for Australia. This was included in their series, Is Australia Full? The article spoke about what the population should stick to – 15 million. Unfortunately, even since I came here in 2005, it has grown by more than 4 million – that’s just under 20% increase. 2005 was 20,328,600 and 2018 is 24,772,200. That’s too much. I agree with The Conversation. There is a breakdown in this country from too many people, and too many conservatives.

The globe has 7.5 billion now. It has tripled since the 1950s, when it was 2.5 billion. Where is it growing? Worldometers lists 233 countries or dependencies, and Australia is 54^th for their population. The first, of course, is China, with 1.5 billion, and India is second, with 1.4 billion. The third, the USA, only has 326 million! Worldometers also has a list of all population in Australia – and some graphs showing the increase from the 1950s. It’s tripled since then, same as the globe. Perhaps, if you feel like it, you could look through Worldometers for the population increase around the whole world. What caused it? Why did it happen predominantly after WWII? 

So why would ‘my choice’ work for me – or not? Why are too many people – globally – living in poverty, but the ‘rich’ is also growing?

I owned homes over the years, but now I rent because I have to. Prices for houses have jumped enormously since I had my first home. I sold it for $74,000 in 1985; these days it would sell for at least 5 or 6 times that. An earner, like me, who used to earn around $25k per year way back then should now earn around $150k – 5 or 6 times what I earned back then. I haven’t earned anywhere near that. How would I have afforded a mortgage today? Ninety percent of Australia’s population live within urban areas: why are those areas now so expensive? 

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has a long list of year increases in income, titled Average Weekly Earnings. I chose November each year from 2005 (when I came here) to last year. 2007’s November didn’t have a link, so I used 2007 August. I’ve put these in a graph which shows the increase in percentage. Income in this list is 33% higher in 2017 than 2005. That is, of course, if you didn’t change your job for a better paid job in that time, or if you were made redundant. It is also shown just for full-time adult workers, so it would not include casuals, part-timers, parental beneficiaries, disabled people, job seekers, youth, apprentices et al. (Do you know about redundancy? I might add that on the list of subjects in the future.)
  

The house price averaged $338k in 2005, and has increased by more than 100% to $681k in 2017. How can that relate to our income, when our income has only showed as increasing 33% in that same time? 

Apparently the numbers of smokers have decreased over many years that taxes have been added on, but I think that it mostly happens when the tax runs the smoker out of income. Is that why the government has done it? In 1976, according to a 2010 article from ABC, smoking was due to 43% of men and 33% of women. By 2007 it had dropped to 21% of men and 18% of women. ABC also wrote about it in 2014 and looked at 50 years since smoking was connected to cancer. Every packet of cigarettes or tobacco are now covered in anti-smoking advertisements. The cancer ones frustrate me when they say “Smoking kills”, but there are very few other ads for anything else which advertise what can kill. This packet should, in my opinion, say “Smoking may kill”, but the anti-smokers will think I don’t know what I’m saying. Taxes have risen to more than 100% of the cost. Is that legal? There’s a book available online, from the Cancer Society, and from Tobacco In Australia’s website. If you think that tobacco is addictive, then read this. If you prefer to smoke because you enjoy it, then ignore that. I haven’t read it. I have smoked for 40 years – why should I be taxed out of my choice now?

So far I’ve only found one Nicotine Anonymous, in ACT. Really? Their website is based in USA. Why isn’t there anything in Australia? 

According to ABS, in 2014-15 “16.9% of males and 12.1% of women smoked daily”. The government website gives information on deaths from smoking but can they prove it? Have a look through this. I think this is written for those who don’t smoke. Better Health website in Victoria says 14,900 die from smoking-related disease, but the Cancer Council pushed that up to 15,500. They say that “[s]moking leads to a wide range of diseases including many types of cancer, heart disease and stroke, chest and lung illnesses and stomach ulcers.” Really? What proof have they got about this? What other causes do they use for cancers? What types of cancer do they say are caused by smoking? 

Heart Foundation’s website spoke about risk factors for women for heart disease, saying that a 2010 government report said “that the most common risk factors affecting women were high cholesterol, high rates of overweight and obesity and high rates of physical inactivity. Research also shows that smoking, poorly controlled diabetes and depression are greater risk factors of heart disease for women than men.” Why bring smoking in at the end of this, after the “most common factors” were listed out separately and did not include smoking? ‘Research’? 

Why hasn’t the government increased tax on alcohol? There are many ads around these days which try to stop people from driving after drinking. Domestic violence happens after drinking. Rape happens after drinking. Killing someone can happen after drinking. So why doesn’t this government increase tax? Alcoholism has increased in Australia – according to My VMC, “[a]lcohol dependency is the most common substance use disorder in Australia”. Alcoholics are not called alcoholics, yet smokers are called smokers. Why? 

According to an article published in News.com.au in 2014, 15 people die every day from alcohol. That’s 5,500 a year – and possibly more since 2014. Funny though, because there are a heck of a lot more drinkers in society than smokers. Accordingto ABS, “[a]round one in four (25.8%) Australian men exceeded the lifetime risk guideline in 2014-15, [and o]f women, one in ten (9.3%) exceeded the guideline.” News.com.au also noted that “430 people are admitted to hospital for treatment for alcohol-related injuries or disease every day.” So that adds up to 445 people a day – 162,425 a year with alcohol problems. Oh dear. Where’s the ‘research’ on that? Why hasn’t this government add tax on alcohol? Is that because they drink?

Driving fast or driving carefully seems to be a huge problem on the roads. Very recently there was a reported road rage where a car pulled up behind the car he’d followed and they beat that driver up with a dirty crowbar. The victim ended up in hospital fighting for his life. You can Google any of the stories on that between when it happened in February, up to now. Quite a lot of writing. But were the men who were charged with beating up, driving ‘carefully’? Why did they beat the victim up? What else happens out there, every day? 

Car Advice website had 11 reasons in their article which listed why Australian drivers are “among the worst in the world”. Some of that didn’t surprise me – Australians don’t drive very well – but I feel frustrated that I have to react to some of these same drivers who treat me like that! I’ve driven for more than 40 years. I wonder how long too many of the bad drivers have driven? Oh, and do you know how many ‘L’ or ‘P’ stickers these days?? Still, News.com.au reported about how “[c]urrent draconian speed limits on big modern highways are actually making things worse.” I actually agree with that, but for good drivers, not those who think they’re good.

Road crashes happen too often, and too many result in death. In January this year ABC had a very good article which was done in a different way, to show us the people who died in road fatalities since 1989. They say that “[w]hile head-on collisions are perhaps the most widely feared type of crash, road deaths are more likely to involve just one vehicle.” Driving might be a problem, but why you are driving can become a problem, especially if you have had too many drinks. I suggest you look at it, read it and understand it.

Part 2 of this blog will look at other subjects mentioned at the start of this: fighting a war or despising war; using violence or living with love; your own religion or all religions; politics; anti-poverty or pro-rich.

Have a great week.