Month: December 2013

The Sydney Morning Herald – How Labor booby-trapped Australia’s future


This is a well written summary of why someone like me who once admired both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and also once thought highly of Kevin Rudd, came to the conclusion that Labor is not to be trusted at all when it comes to fiscal management of the country. Labor thinks the world owes it and its supporters a living.

Paul Sheehan in the SMH today:

When Joe Hockey was growing up and dreaming of becoming prime minister, he would not have imagined that his dream would lead him to joining a bomb disposal unit. Tomorrow, he will unveil the first bomb he must dismantle and it is almost nuclear in its capacity for destruction.

At 12.30 on Tuesday, Hockey, who has also been the stand-out thespian of the new federal parliament, will unveil the real horror, dysfunction and narcissism of Kevin Rudd’s contribution to Australian political history, disably assisted by Julia Gillard. Hockey will release the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, known in the trade as MYEFO, which will show a budget deficit much worse than Labor led us to believe, probably close to $50 billion, debt obligations much higher than Labor led us to believe, and unfunded liabilities that are so irresponsibly crushing the government will have to walk away from many of them. The most monumental folly is the National Broadband Network, whose economic rationale was worked out on a piece of paper by Rudd. The scheme subsequently created by former communications minister Stephen Conroy would cost more than $70 billion and never recover its cost of capital. The Abbott government will have to start again.

Rudd also authorised the spying on the President of Indonesia and his wife, a booby trap that duly exploded in the face of his Coalition successor. Rudd also poisoned the relationship with China, with his lectures to Beijing, which has also come back to haunt the Coalition government. Then came Gillard, who directed a decisive shift of funding and power to the unions. She exposed the Commonwealth to a massive unfunded financial obligation for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

She provided political cover for the disgraced union official Craig Thomson. And she set up and then stacked the Fair Work Australia bureaucracy with former union officials and Labor lawyers.

Labor booby-trapped the future.

It is also busy booby-trapping the present, putting improvised explosive devices everywhere, with the help of the Greens. Together, they have engaged in scorched-earth, rearguard, morally bankrupt obstructionism as if the 2013 federal election was a meaningless exercise, the will of the people has no moral authority, and the idea of a mandate, delivered by the only poll that matters, is an empty ideal to be ignored. The worst among equals in this cynicism are Labor’s leader, Bill Shorten, his deputy, Tanya Plibersek, and the Minister for Gutter, Anthony Albanese, assisted by the deputy leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt.

Contrast their scorched-earth cynicism with the response of the defeated Coalition government in 2007, when it conceded the public had rejected its Work Choices industrial relations policies and Labor had a mandate to create what would become Fair Work Australia. This was the great issue in 2007 (after the unions spent millions to make it so) just as the carbon tax and curbing people-smuggling were the great issues of 2013.

For the past year the Coalition restricted itself to a small but emphatic range of policies that clearly differentiated it from Labor: repeal the carbon tax, repeal the mining tax, re-introduce temporary protection visas (which closed off asylum status), re-introduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission and end Labor’s deficit spending. This was the message. These policies became the mandate when Labor was thrown out of office in a landslide and the Greens suffered an even more emphatic 28 per cent plunge in their vote and lost the balance of power in the Senate.

And what do we get? Labor and the Greens opposing all four mandates, and everything else, and some of Labor’s booby traps already exploding. Rudd’s authorising of spying on Indonesia’s President and his wife blew up on Tony Abbott, who suffered further damage as he doggedly covered up for Labor. Labor’s multi-billion-dollar expansion into school education, a state issue, also exploded when Education Minister Christopher Pyne ineptly fumbled his attempt to rein in its costs and impositions.

The government must now wait until July 1 next year, when the new Senate is sworn in, and hope the independents and the eccentric Palmer United Party senators are more moral and pragmatic than the Greens, who think 8 per cent is a moral majority and a mandate to obstruct everything. Everything, that is, except removing the debt ceiling, where the Greens sided with the government, but only because they feared if they did not the government would start slashing spending with a chainsaw.

The key figures in dealing with Labor’s booby traps are Hockey and Eric Abetz, the leader of the government in the Senate. Hockey has shown the most ticker in dealing with debt and deficit, and Senator Abetz has carriage of the crucial reform agenda in industrial relations. After Hockey, he has the most bombs to defuse.

Crucially, in addition to restoring the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and tackling the tainted culture of Fair Work Australia, Senator Abetz must navigate the Fair Work (Registered Organisations) Amendment Bill into law. This is the bill that will drag the unions out of the 19th century. It establishes an independent watchdog, the Registered Organisations Commission, with powers modelled on those of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, to bring union governance into line with corporate governance.

The bill is designed to create a stronger, cleaner and more transparent union sector.

Labor and the Greens are opposing the bill at every step.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/how-labor-boobytrapped-australias-future-20131215-2zf8y.html#ixzz2nalkcAH3

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Sim and Mark


A benefit of social media like facebook is birthday reminders. So yesterday morning I was quick to wish my sister a happy birthday. I thought about what I wanted to say and was able to then quickly transmit those thoughts – almost instantaneously.

My sister is the “steady Eddie” of the family, or whatever the feminine equivalent is. She is the one consistently, steadfastly and unassumingly by the side of my parents, particularly my mother (even when my father was still alive).

Sim is 3 years younger than I. Her husband Daniel is the livewire of family events. An antique dealer, I once bought a really nice period piece of an Omega De Ville from him. “Bought” is a stretched term as what I paid him for it probably meant it was practically a gift from Daniel. Sim and Daniel live on Penang Island with their 2 kids. One often hears stereo typed remarks about Penangites being tight so maybe Daniel isn’t a true Penangite in that sense because he is often generous to a fault. Generous as he is, what comforts me is his very obvious love and devotion to Sim and the family.

Nicole is an intelligent and determined teenager. They visited Melbourne in 2010 (or was it 2009) when she had finished her primary school with a straight A’s assessment and we gladly rewarded her with an Apple iPod. We rarely have the opportunity to spoil them so it was the least we could do. Before we moved to Melbourne, we would visit Penang regularly. Nicole was a young girl then and I remember staying at the Park Royal in Ferringhi Beach, looking out a window with Nicole to see hot air balloons coasting the beautiful beaches. I said to her those were “hot air balloons” and I can still hear her mimicking me as she pointed at those balloons. I hope that image of her pressing her face against the window and pointing at those balloons, would never be erased from the every forgetful mind of mine. I now see her on her facebook pages, blossoming into a confident young woman. I’m very proud of her.

Isaac is Nicole’s younger brother and he too finished primary school with a flourish and we rewarded him in the same way, just as I promised when we gave her sister her reward. He’s a lovely, loving and lovable young man, with a low almost husky voice. When he was younger, he was sometimes teased with a “lau lang” (old man) moniker. Ticklish in so many ways and emitting a hearty laugh when tickled, his “Despicable Me” cover photo for his facebook page is thoroughly appropriate. He’s now at the venerable Chung Ling High School, one of the most prestigious schools in Malaysia which regularly produces top performers in public examinations. I’m very proud of him.

A schoolteacher, Sim’s facebook pages are often postings by her students who obviously love and adore her. Maybe her consistent and steadfast manner are by-products of her devotion to those around her, including her students. She is the embodiment of everything one would extol about Confucianism. What a loss it would be to Penang and Malaysia if she and Daniel were to move to Melbourne, but what gain to people here.

I miss Sim and her family. She has done so much for mum and everyone else. My brother and his wife visit them often and when they do, we are treated with pictures of their adventures – all on facebook of course. They were there recently and it was truly a treat to view those photographs. The modern day scattering of families to different corners of the globe has been made easier by the ubiquitous postings of local events on the global media. For all its ills, facebook has done wonders in this regard and I am so grateful.

Happy birthday again Sim, and thank you Mark Zuckerberg. 

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Home – Where The Heart Is


We were at Alex and Li Har’s on Sat night and left relatively early. Kiddo was arriving from Singapore the next morning at 6.30. Also, we’d been working on the garden a lot earlier in the day.

After a week of strangely cool and wet start to the summer, Sat was gloriously sunny and mildly warm. We were itching to start working as early as 8am but we thought we’d be inviting poor reaction from our neighbours if we powered up the tools that time of a Saturday morning. So we did some internal work – vacuuming and the like for an hour or so until we heard someone else up the street with his mower. So I stopped the vacuuming (Tress took over) and went out and started the hedge trimmer. That was just after 9am.

It was just after 1pm when I got into the house and after catching up with Mitchell Johnson’s heroics against England to have us sitting pretty to wind the second Test in Adelaide, I washed up and we went to Madam K’s as usual. After lunch we got the groceries we needed for the dinner at Alex’s, then went home and watched some more cricket before skyping with Kiddo before she pushed off to Changi Airport.

At Alex’s as is often the case, we caught up with some people we hadn’t met for a while but also made some new acquaintances. Malaysians continue to make their way to Australia and make a life for themselves away from the fecundity of corruption, bad practices, racism and bigotries that characterises the administration of the Malaysian BN government as well as the civil service. Having lived here for nearly 10 years, the novelty and the attached romanticism has well and truly be shorn off to reveal the warts and all that. And yet I’d sooner put up with such imperfections than cop the Malaysian malaise.

A family we recently came to know, and who have only been here a couple of days, have just told us their eldest son has been offered a postgraduate course in medicine. They are very happy – we met the young man before and he is a pleasant, courteous, responsible, hardworking and intelligent person. In other words, just another blot that represents that massive brain drain that has been taking place for decades now. I don’t think any of the families we met at Alex’s on Saturday night thought they made a wrong choice in moving to Australia.

We woke early on Sunday morning, made coffee and toasts, and just as we were about to leave, Tress read a face book message from Kiddo saying they had landed around half an hour earlier. She was making her way through immigration and customs so we shot out the door, got in the car with the little black jedi, and tried not to drive too fast as we headed to Tullamarine.

Kiddo ended up waiting for us, but soon we were home and it felt wonderful to have her home again. We had time to shower, changed and then went to church as always, to listen to a next segment on the Advent Conspiracy. ‘Spend Less” was the challenge and last night at home we had on the Better Homes and Gardens program and a segment was on getting gifts off the store of a sponsor, Big W. The message in church was ringing at the back of my head and I wonder how retailers would react to something like Part 2 of the Advent Conspiracy. Wouldn’t a thriving retail industry bring benefits to the society at large in any event? Wouldn’t the multiplier effect of some sort work its magic through the economy so that the intended beneficiary of “Spend Less” of the Advent Conspiracy would in fact be better off if people not heed the call and instead, do as everyone else does at this festive season – ie spend the average of $1,200 per person on gifts? There’s always a counter argument isn’t there?

And so I was glad when Jordan Hitchcock quoted CS Lewis in his sermon on “Spend Less’ segment of the Advent Conspiracy, and said our charitable work must be such that it impedes our own enjoyment of resources entrusted into our stewardship. Until we are prevented from doing something because our charitable work consumed our resources, we have not done enough. I wonder if this is simply a better challenge to meet than to simply spend less.

As soon as church finished we left. Kiddo had been struggling to stay awake, having been awake for probably more than 20 hours at that stage (could be more…) We went to lunch and when we got home, the lounge soon became a snoozing space, as even I, as I watched Day 4 of the Second Ashes Test in Adelaide, fell asleep. Surely Australia was going to win and I had been hoping we could do it in 4 days but Joe Root was resolute and the Aussie bowlers looked like they were starting to tire at the grind and proceedings became sleep inducing. I had a glass of tonic water drizzled with a tiny splash of gin so maybe that made it easier to join Tress, Kiddo and LBJ as they wandered through dreamland on a warm Sunday afternoon at home.

It occurred to me then, that we often did that while living in Malaysia – ie snoozed at home on a warm (hot) Sunday afternoon. Not for the first time, the saying that home is where the heart, rang through. Seeing Tress, Kiddo (and LBJ) snoozing in the lounge made me feel I was truly at home as I knew that was where my heart was then.

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Nelson Mandela and a legacy I think some can use


And so the great man, Nelson Mandela, has died. 95 and in so many ways, “not out”! Other than recalling earlier articles in British newspapers which alluded to his tendencies to be militant during his days in the African National Congress, I associate him mainly with the truth and reconciliation process he introduced to seek a united South Africa torn apart by apartheid.

That process has become a model for many countries. It ought to be provide some clues to Tham Fuan and the other leaders of the LifeGate Church of Christ. All that constant harping of Jason not coming to the table forgets one thing: they are not interested in the truth of what they did to Jason. Without that regard, reconciliation is a hollow call. One cant, I imagine, have reconciliation without truth. The truth here is they marginalised Jason over a period of time. Excluded him especially in talks to remove him. The question of whether this happened and why they did it, is a question which must be answered before reconciliation can follow.

Mandela was a great man. He left many legacies. Truth and reconciliation as two sides to a coin is one of them. It would do us good to pay attention and mimic this great man.

Ruse of Engagement


Tress has an offsite meeting at work this morning and planned to get into office early before that and today being my usual day-off gym for me, we decided to come in together early. I got in just after 7am and if I started work I’d probably be itching to leave the office soon after 4pm. So I decided to do some extracurricular work in the form of reading some material and before long my attention drifted towards some articles on The Sydney Institute website.

Soon I drifted onto the correspondence section and zeroed in on some exchanges between Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne. The latter is a chairman of the board for The Monthly and often contributes articles himself. In at least one article, he made some comments about Gerard Henderson who then griped about having no right of reply, with The Monthly having no letter to the editors section. The response was that there was a letter to the editor section exists in the online version of The Monthly but quite rightly, Henderson’s concern may have been I believe, that the print and online editions may have very different audiences and one who reads the print edition – especially a subscriber such as Henderson – would probably expect to be able to have a reply on the print edition.

A subscriber may only read the print edition and may never see responses to what has been written, if the subscriber does not read the online version. Cross medium readership must be a voluntary outcome, not compelled by any reason. Also, there’s always the chance that an online edition runs the risk of “tampering” later. In my (not quite Luddite) mind the print edition would have these readers’ feedbacks well, in print and therefore less subject to issues of veracity or integrity.

Robert Manne did give Henderson some back to be fair and quite a big swing too. He may have copped some beatings in many ways but more than anything else and as always, what I am heartened to see is the rigour of engagement. It’s like watching two footy players from opposing sides jumping, diving, running and jostling, intercepting and tackling to win and use the ball to kick a goal. In many ways the outcome is important only to appreciate the tussle which in itself gives life to an otherwise banal existence. It’s an engagement not to achieve one upmanship or as time fillers but as a corporeal fulfilment to an otherwise 2-dimensioal relationship. By engaging thoroughly to flesh out a contest a relationship takes on new dimensions, even new heights.

When I read earlier today of the carnage that still litters the lives of Jason and Mel I wonder yet again why there is such a lack of engagement to bottom out this debacle that has beset the leadership of LifeGate Church of Christ in Glen Waverley for so long. Why have the leaders there inflicted such damage on another erstwhile leader and thereafter extract themselves of any further engagement so that the injured leader is left to lick his own wounds? It would have beggared belief had this occurred in any other context. That it happened in a church, with the chief protagonist and top attack dog a full time paid senior pastor is incomprehensible. The rest in the pack were all leaders – members of the church board. All ganged up to inflict damage on another brother and fellow leader. How could this have been?

I have asked Jason to walk away – shake the dust off his sandals and head to another pasture. This callous group does not deserve anymore of his time. But relationships are hard to be extricated from. My 8 years in that cauldron took me nearly a year to shake off. My dear friend had 15 years there. It would take him longer for sure but this total lack of engagement from this couldn’t care less group is doing the worst possible thing for my friend. It didn’t start that way of course. Pastor Tham Fuan Yee had given them the impression he was eager to work with them, and had called them “God-sends” but alas, that engagement was a mirage which has turned out to be an absolute desert that parches. I once called Pastor Tham Fuan Yee a curse that kept on cursing. I am inclined to think that continues to be the case.

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Brooding and contemplating


It was a stinking hot day yesterday and we were glad we had the air conditioning put in recently – it worked a treat. Tress and I had a very good barbequed whole snapper with a delicious salad and after that we had watered the plants to soften the impact of the heat when the little black furry ball started chasing birds in our lawn. There’s probably a nest somewhere because as I moved to the front lawn, he darted out towards a bush and then straight through across the road towards the park. I had to chase him down and drag him back before he tore into the poor thing. We took him out to the park and oval later anyway but his interest was firmly fixed on those birds.

Summer means the regular tv programs have stopped and so last night we were half expecting programs like Four Corners to come on at the ABC but a Rick Stein India offering came on instead. It was probably just as good but I was then reminded of Heston Blumenthal being interviewed by Ross and John at 3AW where Heston was asked why Britain produced a disproportionate number of celebrity chefs, with sneered remarks on Nigella Lawson who was recently reported as being a coke user.

I first started enjoying all these cook shows when the Chinese American (or was he Canadian) Martin Yan had his show which was screened in Malaysia on Sunday afternoons. His tag line “if Yan cook so can you” was goofy but catchy and I have playfully used it every now and then while in the kitchen. Then it was that eccentric British Floyd, who was habitually inebriated, sometime overly so even in front of the camera. But he was loads of fun and even though my culinary education wasn’t a key outcome of watching those shows, it gave me some broad/basic ideas of ingredients, styles, methods, etc. Now, there’s a plethora of these chefs on tv and other than news and sports, they continue to form the bulk of my tv watching hours – which is all a bit of a time waster to be honest so it is something I hope would not last beyond this year.

I’m hoping for an incremental involvement in my local church in 2014. We’ve been there since May this year and so we’re into our eight month now. When activities resume in February we’d be closing in towards a year so hopefully we’d be a little more than just a Sunday morning presence.

I wonder what 2014 holds generally. More of the same probably and I hope the art of doing the same thing repeatedly becomes something I acquire and appreciate. It would be a big step for me in many ways. I have to say while I do not dread the things I do, they no longer provide me with the level of excitement or satisfaction they once did. I don’t mind doing it still – for as long as the foreseeable future requires – and much as many people would experience, I too would have to come to terms with the fact that for the most part, life is an uneventful experience. The occasional event that gives an elevated sense of being or experience is precisely that: occasional event.

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Summer is here, building blocks, etc


After Tress and I had a quick dinner on our way home last Friday night, we caught up with Jason and Mel over some chocolaty dessert in the newish choc shop in the Forest Hill Chase shopping centre. Sammi came along and relayed some good news – she has made it through her second year in Uni (really well) and has lined up a summer holiday job in a retail food outlet. We had a laugh over the second piece of news as it was the same retail food brand which had copped some bad press earlier in the day, with serious food hygiene challenges!

We chatted a little bit about a recent meeting Jason and Mel had with a young couple – a couple with whom they had been close, helped and supported for a very long time, before the events earlier this year caused so many issues and turned their lives (Jason and Mel’s) upside down. It appeared what we had said before is slowly proving true i.e., the leader makes the member. With a leader that is superficial in engagement and adopts a “touch and go” attitude members slowly become the same. They make general statements in a passing manner, never stopping to consider the meaning, import and impact of such statements. Often they are meaningless. It’s a sad outcome but these are independent able bodied and healthy adults. If they choose to think and behave like so, it is their prerogative. I suppose it can only prove our decision (to leave) right.

Saturday was 30 November – the date of my dad’s passing. It’s 7 years already. I woke very early for a Saturday, and when I couldn’t go back to sleep, I got up and started our usual weekend activities. After an early and leisurely breakfast and an early drop at the dry cleaners’ (I was the first customer and they had just opened), Tress and I went to the Strawberry Point fruit and veg shop on Canterbury Road again to get our green groceries and get ready for the salad we were bringing to the Hipos’ that night. We then popped into a medical lab to get my blood test done – the doctor had ordered it as a periodic check to gauge the outcome of a year’s consumption of allopurinol.

When we got back around 9.30am, I started pottering around the outside of the house. It has been a while since I got onto the roof of our home, and the gutter clearing activity took me up there again. Just before noon, gutters cleared, Tress and I cleaned up and went to Madam K’s. After lunch we came back and after another coffee, we went back to working on the gardens. The spate of rainy days and warm weather had provided great conditions for the lawn to grow out of control, and the mower was strained by the thick growth. I realised the oil level was low when I checked to ensure the heavy workload wouldn’t blow the mower, so I took a quick trip to Bunnings’ and picked up a few things in addition to the engine oil, came back home and got the rest of the work done.

It was close to 5 and I had just come into the house, and then Kiddo messaged us asking to skype. We did that for the next hour or so, which was great and even when I went away to clean up and Tress nicked off to the shop to pick up some food for the Hipos, we kept the call going. It was just like she was physically in the room with us. I’m just so grateful we have the privilege of access to all these modern communications. We often reminded her during our time it was maybe a couple of dollars for every minute we were on the phone with someone back home in Malaysia. One year back in the 80’s I was at my uncle’s home (Thomas) in Sydney for Christmas and I got a Christmas present from them. I opened the box and there was a slip of paper and nothing else in there. The message on that slip of paper was I get to make a call to Malaysia… I was courteous and kept the call to only a few minutes but a 10 minute call would have cost more than $20…

The dinner at Gerry and Jesslyn’s was very pleasant as always. “Hipos” was the term of endearment they coined for themselves (combination of their surnames). We have known them since their early days in Melbourne more than 5 years ago and their 2 young girls (3½ years and 3 months old) are both like young nieces/wards of ours. Other than just being their friends however we don’t usually have to do a lot of heavy lifting as they such competent, confident and smart young people. Their wherewithal to deal with life’s challenges is fully matched by their warmth and humour at every turn.

On Sunday a missionary couple spoke. They work with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. They work in the western region of Papua New Guinea, where the development index lies somewhere between the lowest and second lowest countries in the world. The theme of isolation and the issues that presents, was framed with the message of battling Goliath as the metaphor.  Just as God used the most unlikely person in David to deal with “the Philistine”, God can and will use anyone to deal with apparently gigantic issues like isolation in the Papua New Guinea western region.

Sometimes simple messages like this can come across as banal but as in many things, life is often about getting the basics right. Perfection is getting many basic tasks right over and over again, it has been said. Lessons shared by this young, hardworking, compassionate missionary couple would be significant building blocks for their lives and ministry going forward. They simply need to stay focused and faithful and it would in the end, be lives so rich they can joyfully say they have run good races and fought good fights. I sincerely wish I too can lay claim to such deeds when my time comes.

It was the first day of summer and people – young and old, in church and everywhere else – were decked out in shorts and sandals. Tress and I spent the afternoon just pottering around, taking the little black furry fellow on walks and generally just enjoying the very warm day. We put up some minimalist Christmas decorations, and finished the day with some cooking (for the dinners this week) and getting my lunch ready. One more week before Kiddo comes home for a few weeks, and only 4 weeks before the year is over.

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