Living Down Under

Free money - a cure all?

What a week to be in Australia ! With the credit crunch hitting, the Victorian bushfires, a spate of shark attacks, flooding and landslides in Queensland, heatwaves and thunderstorms and now a day of rain…. It’s enough to make you wander whether to get out of bed.

Finally, after hearing all about this mysterious credit crunch - which I heard called “a recession for people who read Heat magazine” - Australia got crunched. We were under the impression we were bullet-proof. The credit crunch was something we heard about on the news, or in my case, when I made a visit back to the United Kingdom , to be met by long faces and longer queues at the unemployment office. Nobody seemed to be doing anything extravagant. Holiday plans were cancelled and spending curbed. The weather was rubbish, the food was as bad as ever, the service worse…..it just wasn’t a nice place to be and an expensive one at that!

From my understanding of the issue, it all went wrong when American mortgage brokers decided to give unrepayable loans to trailer trash. These loans went bad and were either unsecuritised or secured against the value of the asset, the home in this case. As property prices fell and loans went into default, the bank weren’t able to realise the value of the loans. The lender didn’t have the credit available, or the funds were too expensive due to high interest rates, and lenders hit the wall.

Australian financial analysts sat on their hands and said we’d all be OK. We were decoupled form the US economy and had forged strong trading links with China ; it wouldn’t be an issue if America went under. Towards the end of last year, people started losing their jobs and companies tightened their belts and changed direction to concentrate on balance sheet and liquidity. The bottom fell out of the ASX, Australia ’s stock market, only five minutes walk from my office. Oil prices spiralled out of control and generally everything went wrong at once. So months after the rest of the world, the new Rudd government started bickering, as is their wont, over financial stimulus packages where every citizen will receive a $950 handout, or a $900 handout, or no handout, depending on who you listen to. It has been in and out of parliament and senate several times and re-drafted more times than I can keep up with. Many will be using the handout to pay off debt, so whether it will achieve the goal of getting the public spending again is debatable. Free money, as most see it, has to be paid for somewhere. Whether taxes cover this or the Treasury has to go into hock to finance the stimulus package and whether they can afford to, was something being heavily debated by parliament with Treasurer Wayne Swan, seen as the bad cop, after the draft policy was announced by the Prime Minister, prior to approval. There has long been debate on what Joe Public does with government handouts with the government actually instructing the public not to blow the baby bonus (a payment made to all new parents of around $5,000 AUD) on a plasma screen TV. This big brother advice was in evidence again, although how many plasma screens one family needs is questionable.

In the past few hours senator Nick Xenophon announced he had finally agreed to terms with Treasurer Wayne Swan overnight and Rudd’s government needed the support of all seven crossbenchers to push its package of six bills through parliament. The Senate voted 30-28 to approve the package. I haven’t done my Aussie citizenship test yet, so I don’t understand all the various levels of government, but we’re nearly there. I have just seen Senator Xenophon interviewed on Channel 7. He was asked how negotiations went He answered "As Shakespeare said, `All's well that ends well'." This is Aussie psyche all over. Ned Kelly is a national folk hero, he was a bushranger who killed three policemen and was finally arrested in a homemade suit of armour and hung. His last words were, “Such is life” – now a popular tattoo for 'patriotic' Aussies. If there is any obstacle placed in your typical Aussie's way, a typical can-do response is “She’ll be right”. I’m sure we will be.

500 atomic bomb-strength firestorms ravage South Australia

Australia is a country in mourning. The bushfires which have raced across country Victoria, engulfing entire towns, sparing few and destroying lives. A trail of destruction, devastation and grief has left lives shattered. Many of the rural residents had not insured their properties and lost everything. The vox pops on the national news shows have been both devastating and inspiring at the same time. There have been chilling tales of individuals trying to outrun the fires, only to be swallowed up by flames, the lucky ones made it to emergency rooms, others weren’t so lucky. Not one person interviewed has complained that they have lost everything, just lucky to be alive. Several of the tragic interviews had an almost 9/11 aftermath feel. Individuals attempting to call loved ones, only for the line to go dead, or people being ordered to stay back as fire destroyed their homes, not knowing if their families had made it out in time. The most chilling interview was with a father who had lost his wife and children. “They’re all gone.” He repeated over and over again, unable to comprehend the horror.

The rural fire volunteers have been rightly hailed as heroes. There is a real community feel of everyone pulling together in times of tragedy, as entire towns have been evacuated to relatives’ homes and leisure centres. Everyone seems to be pitching in with offers of bedding, food, water and money. Blood donations have sky rocketed and the Red Cross are inundated with offers of financial assistance.

The other parallel with 9/11 is that the senseless loss is someone’s fault. Amazingly, the fires were started by arsonists, during the hottest weekend on record. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has rushed a bill through parliament to offer unlimited access to Australian Army resources and any assistance, without cap, to Victorians who have lost their homes. Just today, the Prime Minister instructed insurance companies to pay out promptly and instructed social welfare department, Centrelink, to pay emergency funds without requiring identification, after a prominent journalist on The Australian lost everything and was told he could not receive any government support as he did not have any identification – which had been lost in the destruction of his home.

There isn’t much that can be said. Australia is in shock. As I look out my window in the centre of the city, flags are at half mast. There is a respectful tribute, with the cricket, soccer and hockey teams all paying their respects before international fixtures this week.

Tragically, even the most prepared had no answer for the incredible speed the flames were travelling, carried across bushland by hurricane-force winds, dry trees and scrub. The death toll climbed to 181 overnight, but with dozens still unaccounted for it is expected to exceed 200

We are all visitors here

Obviously when foreigners think of Australia , they picture tanned, fit girls in bikinis and muscled surfer dudes in board shorts, both with tousled hair and perfect bodies. The stereotype also dictates a laid back personality. Whenever Australian are captured in film, they invariably are wearing flip flops, a vest and a hat with dangly corks – Crocodile Dundee for our 80s film fans. I had the pleasure of meeting Baz Luhrmann at a party to celebrate the post-production of his epic “ Australia ” starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. His vision of Australia, albeit fifty years ago, is more accurate. Australia is a hugely multicultural country. There is still massive tension between the current population and the native aborigine people, who are still very much on the fringe of society. In one of the first acts as Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd apologies to the aborigine people, specifically, the stolen generation, who were taken from their families and placed with white families as a way of assimilating them into modern society. A really emotional moment, especially after Mr Rudd's predecessor, John Howard refused to apologise to the stolen generation. It's a really thorny issue here as you would imagine.

Sydney is a major business orientated city and it's rare to see Aborigine people outside of the touristy areas where a few appear with their didgeredoos to hawk CDs and earn a few dollars busking. Baz Luhrmann has cast several Aborigines in Australia and Brandon, the child who features heavily in the plot is the pick of the performances. As well as stealing the show, the young actor stole Nicole Kidman's heart and if what I hear is true....Oprah Whinfrey's! Oprah had Hugh and Nicole and Baz on a special Australia episode of her show, championing the film although it failed to impress audiences and critics and flopped at the box office which was disappointing.

Although I don;t claim to be an expert in Aussie sport just yet, there are several Aborigines actively involved in rugby league, the countries man sporting passion. I don't follow the aerial ping pong of Aussie Rules Football, but there are many young native Australians competing at an elite level. Yvonne Goolagong won seven tennis grand slams. Perhaps most famously Cathy Freeman, the 400 metre runner was selected to light the Olympic flame when the games were held in Sydney.

Aboriginies seem to be a marginalised people in their own land. This is a real shame, although it does make me feel better about being "an outsider". I would have thought the more recent arrivals (POMs - Prisoners of Her Majesty's pleasure) would feel a real sense of guilt for what their ancestors have done in the raping and pillaging of the Aborigines land and culture. This does not seem to be the case. If anything, they are seen as a pest and sadly, the stereotype is of alcoholics causing trouble and sleeping in the street during the day. I must admit, I have never seen any of this with my own eyes and they seem to get a bad reputation. This seems a shame. History is always written by the victor's point of view. To conclude, I hark back to Australia Day last year when I went to Australia's Big Day Out - a massive travelling music festival, similar to Perry Farrell's Looloapalooza festival in USA during the 90s. English folk singer Billy Bragg performed an odd pantomime about the settlement of the world's largest prison and wished the well oiled tattooed crowd "happy invasion day". This stoked the fire for the headline act - Rage Against the Machine. You can imagine what they thought of this, although they managed to blame most of Australia's problems on George Bush.