If Mandela had been a refugee.

At last I have established the name of my one loyal reader – he wants to be known as Archie. So Archie it is.

Now Archie asked me a very valid (if hypothetical) question. What would have happened, Archie wanted to know, if the late Nelson Mandela had arrived on a boat in Australian waters under the new government’s (rather grandiosely named) operation “Sovereign Borders” policy? What if Nelson Mandela had also arrived, on this boat, with no documentation or identification?

Would he have been immediately categorized as an “illegal” immigrant; would he have been immediately transported to an “off shore” detention centre on Manus Island or Nauru? Once there, of course, on these “off shore” detention centres, as has been widely advertised, the Australian Government has sworn that no “illegal” will ever come to Australia or become an Australian citizen.

What would Australia have done with this “undocumented” Nelson Mandela? Make an exception and give him a visa; put him on a plane straight back to South Africa; keep him waiting, possibly, for years before making some determination about his character and “worthiness” as a human being?

Archie knows as well as I do that this is a hypothetical question because the very well-known and widely respected world leader Nelson Mandela is no longer with us. But it is valid for three reasons:

Firstly: the current “Sovereign Borders” policy is allegedly costing us (the taxpayers) about AUD$1.00 billion to implement (but the Australian government is claiming “poverty” and will be making drastic cuts to the budget), and

Secondly: there is currently a paucity of people prepared to do the more menial and manual jobs in the aged and disability caring roles, in the hospitality and service industries and in the agricultural sector (fruit picking etc).

Thirdly: if “Sovereign Borders” is so important why not spend the AUD$1.00 billion on foreign aid to support the countries the “illegal” boat people are fleeing from?

So to get back to the original question, if someone did arrive without identification papers and was of a similarly high calibre moral standing as Mandela how would anyone know?

What would Australia have lost? What has Australia already lost with their “Sovereign Borders” policy? Many possibly, intelligent, well educated, high calibre people desperate to leave a dangerous country and who are prepared to make the arduous and possibly life threatening voyage from Indonesia to Australia in a small, ill-equipped fishing boat?

Not only is the current “Sovereign Borders” policy incredibly wasteful in monetary terms it is also wasteful in that most important aspect of all – Human Capital. Many Australian country towns are dying – young people are moving to the “big smoke” for education and more fulfilling work.

Archie suggests, and I concur, that we should let these people in with the stipulation that they spend at least three years in a country town and work!

Don’t waste any more money or “Human Capital” (Vale Mandela).

Now it is Assad for Syria – what if …?

Recent reports in the media indicate that analysts now consider the best option for Syria (and for stability in the Middle East) is if Assad regains control of Syria. Well now – isn’t that good news!

Ooops! Sorry we made a mistake!

I have said before (as my one loyal reader has pointed out) the Syrians are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. As I also pointed out it is very poor policy to try and pick winners when it comes to any country’s governance, but particularly in the Middle East. And then what about the one hundred thousand (and counting) Syrian casualties later?

For the sake of humanity and in the name of whatever you consider God to be, leave Syria to the Syrians and back off!

And now there is Afghanistan. The Afghanis are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. They have fought off invaders ranging from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to the more recent Soviet invasion and prevailed. Once more – trying to pick winners in this area of the world is an impossible, and pointless task.

In their recent history the Afghanis have lost many uncounted thousands of civilian casualties to the Taliban, the Soviets and NATO (read USA) actions. More importantly are the people any better off with NATO interference? 

The Afghanis are capable of sorting themselves out, one way or another. Just leave them alone. Back off!

Will this be another “Ooops” moment? You bet.

Now, just for a moment let us speculate. What would have happened if former President G W Bush and his cronies had come to a similar conclusion about Iraq? Maybe, just maybe, Iraq (and stability in the Middle East) would have been better off under Saddam Hussein. As afore mentioned, it is very poor policy to try and pick winners when it comes to any country’s governance, but particularly in the Middle East. And particularly for the five hundred thousand plus (and counting) Iraqi (and US and allied) casualties later.

Just like the Syrians and Afghanis, the Iraqis are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. Mesopotamia – the Land between the Two Rivers – was the cradle of civilization and extends at least as far back as recorded history, to about 3000 BC (remember the Babylonians?).

Ooops! Sorry we made a mistake! But was the mistake about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or was the mistake about invading Iraq in the first place?

Or maybe both? Why can’t we (that is the USA and the West) just leave well alone and back off?

Henry Ford was right!

I believe it was Henry Ford who famously said that “workers should be paid enough so that they could buy what they make”. This is actually quite a profound statement. It certainly applies today when retailers and manufactures of consumer goods are complaining that people are not spending money. And economists are lamenting the fact that the “economy” is not growing fast enough to reduce the rate of unemployment.

In business circles today wages are a bone of contention. The unhealthy imbalance between the highest paid and the lowest paid is causing concern worldwide. There is a widespread push to increase the minimum wage to a more reasonable level; fast food companies in the USA are being pressured to increase minimum rates of pay. This is being resisted by business and industry leaders as “unaffordable and unreasonable” (we hear the same argument in Australia).

Economists speak about the “economy” of a country as if it were some disembodied entity. They forget that the “economy” is made up of people – alive, breathing, hungry people. Economists develop "statistical models" that use a mythical "rational consumer" to test their theories. There is no such animal as a "rational consumer" - it doesn't exist!!

Now, as I understand what Henry Ford was getting at is that if retailers and manufactures of consumer goods want people to spend money and buy what they are trying to sell they (the people), rather obviously, have to have money to do so. Right?

But, if the economy is skewed (as it is in many countries, including the USA and Australia) with 5% very rich; with the, previously, large middle “class” shrinking in numbers because of the economic down turn and manufacturing moving “off shore”; with the current “minimum wage” kept low (at possibly a level arrived at many years ago) – where is the purchasing power going to come from? 

Who will buy the goods and what with? The wealthy don’t buy expensive items and consumer goods every day. Sure they buy food, but what they buy does not compensate for the reduced purchasing power of the rest of the population. In any country.

So to carry on with Henry Ford – pay those who are at work enough to buy what they make and Bingo, money starts to circulate. People start buying, factories are re-opened to start manufacturing again – more employment – more money – more items purchased. The housing industry picks up – more consumer goods – more money – more items purchased.

The problems are created by people who “hoard” money; people who want more than they need. This creates a “blockage” which reduces the amount of money in circulation. The less money in the economy, the more the “hoarders” resist spending and the more they try to hold on to what they have, at any cost. Employers reduce staff numbers or reduce wages and so the cycle starts all over again!

Henry Ford was right! And don’t believe the economists. Economists read statistics not the mood in the streets!

QANTAS trashed

In October 2011, when Alan Joyce, the CEO of QANTAS, shut the airline down and grounded all aircraft – wherever they were in the world – thus disrupting the travel plans of thousands of (innocent) people, I warned that he risked trashing the famous “brand” QANTAS. He took this action because he had a “stoush” with the various unions in airline and aircraft industry and claims he won.

I lay no claim to being a soothsayer but even I could envisage the damage that would accrue to this famous airline. Likewise I make no claim to being an “expert” on the airline industry but I do know that if any business follows “just” money and not “service” they will fail.

I will quote some of what I wrote then:-

“No businessman worth his salt would consider such an action without some sort of plan and without a time line. Without this timeline the crisis could (and most probably will) reduce the airline and the name QANTAS to a shell – something of no substance. Why?

Because of the action taken by the CEO a few thousand shareholders may applaud the improved value of their share portfolio but who else does? The passengers stranded in airports around the world and Australia? People forget – wrong – EVERYBODY forgets that a company is a service organisation. No matter what the company does it serves someone. A mining company serves the purchaser of the ore; a shipping company serves whoever entrusts them to transport their goods and an airline company serves the travelling public. These are PEOPLE.

The service aspect MUST come first. Provide the best possible service and people will pay. Therefore money follows service. It always has and it always will – not the other way around. Service does not and cannot follow money. Service means serving people. A machine, an aircraft, cannot provide a service, only a person can. This is where humanity comes in. Money serves no one – it is a medium of exchange – made of plastic, paper, or whatever. The number one priority is (or should be) people not money.”

I stand by what I said then because I have been proved right. Alan Joyce has reduced the investment value of this once profitable airline to “junk status” according to various rating agencies. And now he has no capacity to raise any more money!

Alan Joyce says that the “market is soft” which I take to be shorthand for “people are not flying with QANTAS”. I suggest that the travelling public (who have long memories) no longer trust the QANTAS brand – because of what happened just over two years ago.

Trust takes a long time to create – but can be lost in an instant. Through his actions Alan Joyce has lost the public’s trust in QANTAS and so have the investors - there is an element of poetic justice in this! It has been reported that in the five years since he became CEO the share value has halved.

I wonder why?

Problems with water

(Amended - 10/09/2019)

Watch this space! Water, or rather the lack of it, is going to cause us all a great deal of trouble in the future. And I don’t mean just in Australia, with the problems over the Murray/Darling river complex (with various States accusing each other of drawing too much water for irrigation purposes).

We treat this vital resource with scant regard. Each country with shared resources wants it for itself and this is where tensions arise. There are already tensions over the Jordan River which has its source in Lebanon and flows through Israel, where water is drawn off for irrigation. 

Then there is the mighty Mekong River in South East Asia, shared between China, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia – tensions are rising there too, principally because of accusations of dam building without regard for other users of the river – or the effect on the river’s eco-systems. 

The ‘blue’ Danube in Europe is not what it once was – it passes through quite a few countries before it reaches the Black Sea and is heavily polluted. In Russia the Aral Sea is now but a fraction of what it once was – what were once ports are now ‘towns’ many kilometres from the current shore line. Similarly many waterways in Russia are heavily polluted – a legacy of the old Soviet “industrialize at any cost” approach to development.

China has environmental and ecological problems with silting in the newly constructed ‘Three Gorges Dam’ on the Yangtze River and people down-stream who relied on the annual flooding for nutrient soil have now to use fertilizers. Many other rivers and waterways are now so polluted that animals are dying (there are reports about thousands of dead animals found floating in various waterways). China is only now waking up to the consequences of their “industrialize at any cost” approach to development which they inherited from their former communist mentor – Soviet Russia.

 Africa generally has huge problems with water quality and supply – there is just not enough, and what there is, is generally badly managed. The high Aswan dam on the Nile has stopped the annual flooding which, for thousands of years, has provided the nutrient rich soil in the flood plain; it has also killed of the fishery industry at Nile delta. 

Cape Town, in South Africa, recently had an unprecedented water shortage. Other parts of Africa, such as Zimbabwe are similarly affected.

The USA is not much better. A recent Environmental Protection Agency statement reported that data from 2,000 rivers and streams in 2008-2009, the most recent figures available (that I can find), showed 55 percent of waterways to be in “poor condition for aquatic life” with a dearth of vegetation which worsens erosion. 

Mexico City relies on underground aquifers and has drawn so much water that parts of the city have subsided (and are still subsiding) causing massive disruptions to the provision of services to parts of this city of fifteen million people.

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital is sinking because of the over use of ground water. The Indonesian government is embarking on an ambition plan to relocate the capital to a new city on a “green fields” site in Borneo.

It has been predicted that as populations increase the adequate supply of potable water will be a primary cause of future conflict between nations. Those that have it will protect their sources and those without will have to fight to get some. 

So, as I said earlier, watch this space!