National jealousy Day in Finland.

National Jealousy Day, Finland.

 

It’s a well-known fact that through the decades the social democratic nations of the world consistently outperform most other democracies. And this outperformance is not just based on money only but includes social cohesion, societal levels of fairness and equality, empathy for others, acceptance and tolerance of differences, lower incarceration rates. Those social democratic nations are mainly concentrated in Northern Europe and the Scandinavian countries, including Finland.

Each year on the 1st of November, Finland publishes the names of all taxpayers and lists  all their earnings and the amount of tax they have paid. On that day, very early in the morning many people have spend hours queued up to get their first glimpse of those that have paid the highest amounts of taxation. It s seen almost like an honour to have paid the highest taxation therefore helping paying for the things that Finland strives for  to improve the country. Under the freedom of information Finland decided to lists those details in order to inform people of how much, where and by whom the taxation is paid for.

Have a look; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/11/finland-has-just-published-everyone-s-taxes-on-national-jealousy-day/

In Australia we don’t publish a list of taxpayers but instead we have the annual list of the richest which seems to be shamelessly published each year. We seem to tolerate with a nudge and wink how most of those very rich are happy to evade taxation and there is a  sense of admiration on how in Australia we treat taxation as an evil best avoided and lowered as much as possible. Apart from the US I know of no other country where taxation is held with such contempt, all richly manured and egged on by our shallow lot of politicians.

Indeed, with the present race for a national election of Government, it seems essential by most parties to lower taxation and give back taxation to the people and seen by many as a Trump card to win Government.  At the same time we witness almost on a nightly basis, TV footage of the brutalisation of our elderly in our underfunded understaffed and undertrained ‘Aged Care’. Each time the Australian Government gives a tax cut, your mum and dad will suffer the consequences in Aged Care. Your son and daughter will suffer in education, and the pensioner will eat Spam and Gruel.

Think about it! Look how in the US, Donald Trump is twisting and turning in order to avoid making his financial records public. Is that true democracy or is this a disgrace? Look at how in Australia many private hospitals are now listed in the tax havens of the Cayman Islands. How is this allowed to happen?

We used to be a fair nation!

A peculiar lack of Empathy.

The new member of Parliament in the Federal seat of Wentworth is now Dr Kerryn Phelps.  She is an independent. A stunning victory whereby this seat held since Federation by the Liberals has changed for the first time overcoming a 19% majority held by the previous ex-Prime Mister, Malcolm Turnbull. He vacated the seat after he was turfed out by his own Government. He quickly left Australia for NYC.

Dr Kerryn Phelps was known for her strong stance on Same Sex Marriage with Wentworth being one of the most progressive pro SSM seats during last year’s referendum. She now wants the Government to take notice of climate change. The refusal to act on climate change is partly due because the right wing of the Liberals, including the present PM, Scott Morrison, don’t believe in climate change. The right wing of the Liberal party primarily believe in keeping the status quo. They like nothing better than sticking to burning coal and a fearless unrelenting punishments for off-shore held refugees.

The present Liberal-National party has lost their one seat majority. Things are going to be difficult to pass legislation with the independent cross benchers now holding the strings.

Dr Phelps promises to  use her independence to get the Government to take urgent action on climate change, and to bring the refugees home to Australia. At present they are held on off-shore islands; Manus, Nauru and Christmas Island. A petition signed by thousands of doctors presented to the Government is demanding that the children and their parents be allowed into Australia for processing. http://medicalrepublic.com.au/doctors-unite-drive-change-refugee-policy/17267

The Government might well have to be forced to take action on the refugees. The rumblings of international criticisms of our present policy on refugees are getting louder. The abhorrence on learning that children of ten are googling how to commit suicide, the sacking of all Medicine sans Frontier personal from Nauru is pointing out the cruelty of off-shore detention.

The Government is now also finally heeding the offer from New-Zealand willing to take 150 refugees from Nauru. So far the Morrison and previous Turnbull Government have refused to consider this proposal.  They argue, that it would give the refugees a ‘back-door’ chance to visit Australia. However, the US has taken a couple of hundred refugees without this apparent condition being attached to their freedom from the Nauru hell-hole! Is it so much more difficult to come to Australia from the US as it is from New Zealand ? The mind boggles.

Where does this urge to keep punishing those vulnerable refugees come from? I found some observation by the Australian Author and academic,  Jill Kerr Conway enlightening. Jill Kerr Conway was the first woman to take the Presidency of the Smith College in the US. She found Australia to be lacking in appreciating women for top jobs and moved permanently to the US. She died a few months ago, aged 84. Her book, ‘The road from Coorain,’ is a masterpiece.

She seems to argue that the hundreds of  thousands of emigrants who left their European homelands to go to the US, Canada, and Australia, must have keenly felt the pains of being up-rooted  suffering aching alienation. The children of the great European migration made up for this loss by, in the US at least, making Hollywood the purveyor of happy endings. This convention was a comfort for those who might have felt or were unwilling to face the possibility that the journey was not worth the uprooting.

In Australia I always thought that the migrants made the best of it by going wildly overboard by the ‘own-home’ on ‘own block of land’ achievements. A peculiar Australian phenomenon. It seems to have calmed down lately. Many young people are happy to ditch this form of idealisation and are now happily renting.

In any case, not much seems to have been studied on how this migration has been part in forming the Australia psyche. How many have studied the history of how it felt like to be transported to Australia, by the convicts, or the children of men and women condemned to forced labor? Has this early convict start and continuation of it by those hundreds of thousands of migrants milling around the fore-shores and migrant camps given the foundation to this ‘muddling through’ within our own political milieu?

Again,  our Prime Minister Mr. Morrison has reiterated that if some of the refugees were to be transferred to New Zealand from Manus, its (New Zealand) Government must give an iron clad guaranty that none of them or their children, will ever be given or allowed a visa to Australia. Not even for a holiday.

Ignoring why refugees would even want to visit the land of their torturers, how insanely revengeful is this proposal? It shows how deliberate and wilful the utter degradation of refugees, so desired by some of our politicians, has become. What have the refugees done?

Let’s all hope Dr Phelps will help to make an end to this sad history and restore Australia’s world standing.

Where does the cruelty come from though?

 

Australia day, where is the ‘joie le vivre?’ It seems a bit lacklustre.

 

The night before last we watched our PM Malcolm Turnbull, lavishly praising himself while handing out the ‘Australians Of The Year Awards.’ Sam Kerr who won the  Young Australian, was my favourite. There is just no one like her, and she has put soccer in the limelight not seen since Dutch Abe Lenstra in the fifties. Of course, the Quantum Computer builder, Michelle Simmons is the worthiest recipient of this award ever since it was introduced. And what about the other two recipients? Eddy Woo. Amazing, an inspiration to all. The taciturn Senior, Graham Farquhar was outstanding, such talent.

Next day, Helvi and I got up early to go out and sample the exuberance of Australia Day in Bowral. There could be no doubt, there would be music and all-round jollity with neighbours forgetting old feuds, congratulating each and all on the all inclusive and diverse nature of this lucky brown sun-kissed land of Australia. But, it was all eerily silent and quiet. No tooting of horns nor flag waving. We noticed many shops were closed and the few elderly people that were about looked a bit lost. I quickly hovered over the idea if they too were struggling with accessing ‘Aged Care’ and perhaps had lost their ID numbers!

Some years ago, canny estate agents had put out little flags stuck in lawns in front of every house. Not this time. In fact not many flags at all. We went home and had a coffee, pondering about what the reason was for this lack of Australia Day fervour. Was it the previous heatwave that had sapped remaining energy already depleted through over-indulgence during Christmas? I know I had witnessed mothers loosing their cool with kids’ demands for ever more ice creams or mango slushies. I overheard one mum telling her son, ‘wait until I tell your father’, an ominous warning for the poor boy.

I suggested to Helvi we have another go at sampling Bowral exuberance some time late in the afternoon, when heat had sunk below horizon giving people time to re-charge and give outbursts of National pride a fair chance. I also suggested to Helvi I might ask some of the passing pedestrians how they celebrated this momentous event and it if they knew where there might be music or even public dancing?

We waited till about 8,30pm, and for the second time went about sampling Australia Day. The evening was lovely and balmy. I wore sandals without socks. It was almost dark anyway. Again, there were not many people about. The main street was empty and a black crow was screeching its head off sitting on top of a telegraph pole. At least the bird was giving festivities a bit of a leg-up. There was no music. In the distance we noticed three people coming our way and I had my question ready. When we were level with each other, I noticed they looked dark, possibly Indian. They were three men with one of them wearing a large dark coloured T-shirt with AUSTRALIA emblazoned across it.

I congratulated them on Australia Day which surprised them. They smiled and I quickly asked them if there were any celebratory events they might be looking for. I explained we too were celebrating Australia Day and were looking to share this. ‘It is very quiet,’ I said, and followed this up, ‘where are the celebrations’? And there was this immediate response of recognition. ‘Oh, always very quiet,’ Australia is quiet country,  one man smiled broadly. ‘Maybe across the road in the pub is a bit of life,’ another offered.  It was true.

We all had reached common ground.

And now for the good News

 

The last few posts have been the work of the curmudgeon supreme. Jerimiah seems to have  reached a new level in delight and joy, highlighting the never ending stream of all that is going wrong. Sorry for the bleakness, but somebody had to do it. I don’t know why I watch the news. Relentless Trump and Turnbull. Neck on neck trying to outdo each other in a race to the bottoms-up, dehumanising their patch. Surely, there is something more cheerful to write about. Those grim purple faced bishops fronting the Royal Commission. Footage of one eminent church leader dipping a large feathered brush in Holy water sprinkling the congregation. Oh, such folly of voodoo and chicken feathers dressed with mitres and in flowing robes. Are there Technical tafe courses in becoming agnostic?  I am sure many are now queuing up.We need many more doubting Thomas’s.

 

The good news came from our National Library of Australia in Canberra.  ” Dear Gerard Oosterman.” “We would be DELIGHTED to receive a print copy of your book  ‘Almost there.’ Our records showed that this title is now published.”

Can you believe it? All this apart from both my books also having been entered in two of the State Library literary competitions. I am so happy that, after I posted the book at the Post office, I promptly shouted myself a nice  micro-wave heated up sausage roll. The word ‘delighted’ really did it. It was about time somebody got delighted.

I walked with my fat sausage roll to a park bench in Corbett Gardens, Bowral. The same park where the three elderly sisters were hit by  lightning  last week.  I sat down with Milo. He looked keenly at my poly-styrene package holding the sausage roll. It was a mini celebration. I would like you all to share in my joy.

I gave Milo about half my treat.

It was so lovely and good.

This blight of being normal.

 

The grandsons Jan, 2013

If you are ever told that you are mad, rest assured you’re on the right track. No greater praise can ever be given. I generally try and avoid normal people. They often listen to  radio’s shock jocks, look at commercial TV and put on re-runs of ‘I love Lucy’. The jury is still out on those wearing knee socks, especially when combined with sandals but  is ok with raglan sleeved jumper. Only this morning I noticed a man sitting on a park bench reading The Daily Telegraph. Now, there was a normal man if ever there was. Milo sorted him out though, walked up to the bench and cocked his leg resolutely while trying to catch the man’s eye. I felt that my contempt for that newspaper was well warranted when I noticed car stickers with ‘ Do you think that is true or did you read it in the Daily Telegraph?

 

The country is getting excited again. The normal state of torpor is rapidly vanishing. Neighbours are smiling to each other and saying ‘gooddayehowsitgoing?’ again. In another eleven days the NSW state is having an election. The greens have just announced preferences ,bar a few seats they could win on their own, will be given to the Labor

More Salvia

Party above that of the conservatives. Both the Greens and the Labor party are opposed (vehemently) to selling off the Poles and Wires. Things are looking up and H and I will be glued to the screen watching how the previously safe seats of the liberal- national party will fall into the warm, soft and welcoming bosom of Labor.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-17/nsw-election-2015-labor-greens-preference-deal/6324726

You can tell that the Liberal-National party are run by very, very normal people. They had hoped that passing legislation with a matching budget that lowered prosperity, especially for the impoverished end of town, would be received with great enthusiasm and  given standing ovations by all. The pension would be lowered from 25% of average wage to 17%. They would introduce a lovely co-payment for each visit to the doctor of $ 7.-, each time. As icing on the cake, deregulating and making university independent from government funding would also be introduced. Universities would be allowed to compete and charge according to what they see fit. Students would be paying off the fees for many, many years, but only if they got a job. All very normal.

It is almost time for the next budget and last year’s budget is still hanging in there. They blame an obstinate senate not passing those lovely bills. And, even now at this late stage, no one of the normal LNP club dares to look in the mirror of reality. They should know that selling public assets is now truly on the nose but with their persistence in trying flogging off the power grid, they seem to have exceeded all forms of normality.

Thank goodness for all those ‘normal people’ who will put Labor back in the seat again. ( We hope)