~ how to get distracted

I was spending every available second on my play, desperately working to ply some shape into tens of thousands of words of dialogue, when, without too much warning, I am in some toilet, daubed in body paint, presenting as a Na’vi tribesperson. Again, the vicissitudes ...

With others of my species, I spent time outside Rio Tinto’s Lair of Evil in Collins Street, generally protesting the cruel, ethic-poor behaviour displayed by the company in their ravening quest to wring unobtainium from the flesh of the Earth - and, in particular, their outrageous, but unsurprising, action in locking five hundred workers out of a vast, open-cut borax mine in California and bussing in masked scabs.

To paraphrase Jenny: they make the most successful film in history. It’s seen by a vast number of people. It comes down very hard on the side of the environment, scolds corporate greed, compares the barking violence of the machines to the encompassing beauty of nature ... and what changes? They walk out of the cinema and nothing changes ...

Well, at least by planting ourselves, thus attired, outside the offices of one of our more conspicuous Resource Development Administrations we might go a little way towards helping people recognise a link between reality and what they see on screen.



And .... something I photographed in the tea-room of the Melbourne Museum Moreland annexe.

~ dominion

After many failed attempts, Robert has at last identified and plugged the hole through which our possums were gaining ingress to the roof. Around dawn, the noises of frustration began and continued for hours. Perhaps the creatures have at last accepted that the well-appointed possum-box - carpentered for them lovingly by Robert - is a more sensible choice of lair. Perhaps not. Yet for a while at least, there will be no scratching and squalling in the walls around sunset, and Polly - whom the noises freak out - will sleep easier.

I can remember the things that used to terrify me at night. I remember tensing for the touch of the skeleton approaching me in the dark. Or the vampire. The nagging fear that something deadly, perhaps a tiger, was lurking beneath the bed. The indistinct forms of dinosaurs in the foliage outside the window ... I guess that’s what Polly’s going through at the moment, but the intensity of her fears is beginning to worry me. The sight of a spider on the couch is enough to elicit screams of primal terror. Thunder and lightning drive her into wild panic ... if she picks up a storm warning on a television forecast, she will be nervous and wary throughout the following day.

*

Sometimes I find myself ignoring the dreadful things that are happening to our world. Sometimes I need to take a break from the unremitting gloom. Likely it’s a self-defensive action, as to focus without pause on such things is a recipe for depression.

But lately, wherever I look I’ve been faced with outrageous scenarios in which humans are carelessly and criminally exploiting the Earth and its less fortunate inhabitants. After reading into Coke-a-Cola’s behaviour in Plachimada, India, I have - in an admittedly futile gesture - eschewed my morning Diet Coke for Pepsi. The actions of Coke, who set up a plant in an impoverished region of India and proceeded to suck free water out of the ground until the locals’ wells went dry, is not only inexcusable but depressingly predictable. Thank goodness the victims seem to have achieved some success on the legal front.

Then there is the noxious, criminally evil notion of Human Achievement Hour. I was scarcely able to believe my eyes when reading about this alternative to Earth Hour in The Age during the week. Inspired by climate-change denying Australian senator Cory Bernardi and championed by extreme right wing think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute, this wildly irresponsible concept formed icicles in my heart. There are people who truly believe that climate change is a left wing conspiracy. There are people who pay venal scientists to uncover hiccups in the data and inflame them into ClimateGates. There are people who believe it is a political issue not a scientific one. There are people who truly do not care about future generations. There are people who truly believe that man sits above nature and that he has, by right, Dominion over the earth.

Then I watched Mike Moore’s Capitalism - A Love Story and, although all his characteristic biases were in evidence, if even half of what he presented was accurate then we live in a miserable world indeed. The leaked Citibank plutonomy documents were near beyond belief. There is a 1% elite, at least in the US, who, in controlling 95% of the wealth, believe Dominion is theirs and bemoan their command of only 1% of the vote. Not a word about climate change. Collapsing fisheries. Animal extinctions.

God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth".

~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning

The monstrous entity that is ABC Learning seems at last to be on the skids.

Readers of this blog may recall a couple of posts dedicated to the corporation and its venal progenitor Eddy Groves, and I feel obliged to wind things up with some sort of eulogy

My opinion was, and remains, that something as delicate as early child care should not be run for profit. As I understand it, a publicly listed company must by law attend to the needs of its shareholders before all others – yet the others in this case are very young children in the most formative periods of their lives.

Eddy Groves lived the high life, feeding off this teratological outgrowth of the free market system. He owned basketball teams, luxury sports cars, before, in September, he was at last removed from his position as head of the failing company amid reports of ‘dishonesty’. To my mind, he deserves rotten tomatoes and the stock. A ghastly parasite that would happily fatten itself on our very young ...

ABC’s fall into receivership gives our ostensibly socialist government an opportunity to shift early child care out of the private sector. Sadly, I've heard Julia Gillard say that ‘we are not in the business’ of child care - yet perhaps actions speak louder than words as the Federal Government – albeit of necessity – is providing grants to keep the centres running. We have a government run education system, do we not? What is so strange about extending its boundaries?

Somewhere along the way, it may be discovered that providing good child care at a reasonable price is difficult enough without skimming off the top. Always there will remain the question: should this dollar go to the shareholders or to the children? I caught a news-bite yesterday saying that 40% of the individual ABC centres were unprofitable. It’s curious, as financial overextension has generally been given as the prime reason for the corporation’s downfall. Who knows? Probably, along with the company itself, the structures that generated the appearance of adequate childcare - and they must have been complex – are themselves collapsing. In time, perhaps the receivers will learn the true costs of proper child care ...

Just woolgathering here, I’d like to make clear.

If parents choose a centre run by a company like ABC over a not-for-profit community or council-run centre, they are buying discount child care. The investors expect to be paid off. The skim money has to be found somewhere. That is why, for instance, staff are paid a minimum. In order to restrict expenditure, I am told, ABC centres buy their toys and general supplies from designated providers with whom the company has formed an agreement. One would assume that cost would weigh more heavily than quality in these relationships.

As the company crumbled, I read many articles and analyses. Pundits from the business desk treated it as they would any other company, in those terms. It could have been mining, IT, retail or pharmaceuticals. Where are we as a society, if we include childcare in that lot? Happily, amongst it all, I did hear one commentator question, in general terms, the worth and the morality of corporatised early child care. The Greens have suggested ‘that the government use the opportunity ... to lift child-care standards by running centres itself and turning others over to the community sector.” Right on.

Consider: as our children grow, we have the choice of sending them to private or public schools. If we choose private, it is almost always because we expect a superior grade of education. Imagine taking an ordinary old state school – like Pinewood Primary, where Polly goes – and running it for profit

I was going to suggest, with gladness, that this will be the last we hear of the monster Eddie Groves – but, once the forensic accountants have been through his books, we may yet be treated with the spectacle of his punishment.

~ eddie groves' evil empire
~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ more pernicious mischief from eddie 'the milkman' groves

~ thoughts of the tadpole

There is so much entrenched greed in this world that I wonder if anything short of a revolution will put an end to it.

Staring blearily out of my shadowy room, I am overwhelmed by its extent and by my own impotency. I am a tadpole with big gloomy eyes and a scrunched up mind, there is little I can do.

When I heard that ebay were banning all forms of payment save those through its wholly owned partner Paypal, I began to feel spiritually ill. One person told me their profits will double overnight. My own profits as a [possibly ex] ebay seller will almost evaporate. There’s a reason I don’t use Paypal – the fees take too large a bite out the little I do make to justify the drudgery involved.

There is no good justification for it. ‘Safety’ is all they could come up with and if people want that, well, they can use Paypal already, can’t they? Ebay have a submission with the ACCC, asking for an exemption, as their plans are technically illegal. Yet they’ve already announced the commencement date. How does that work? How do they know what the ACCC will say? For the record, I made a submission detailing my thoughts, but I’m sure that if Ebay has gone to all the trouble they have, then they’re pretty sure the verdict will go their way. Even the Reserve Bank of Australia is complaining, but no matter, Ebay will have their way. Their profits will double.

They will have an even larger cash pile to invest on the short term money markets, much of it gotten by deliberately delaying payments. Like the banks do. I thought internet banking might extinguish that nefarious habit - holding onto funds in order to invest them - but no. The money disappears from your account and reappears in the other account a few days later. Where does it go? Why, it’s put to work.

I don’t see how this can be legal, but it’s been happening as long as I can recall. The banks will tell you they’re ‘validating’ or ‘checking’ or some such nonsense, but it’s all a lie.

On the David and Kim show the other morning an Ebay rattlesnake was trying to sell their case, but his body language was wrong. It made his words seem apologetic, as if he was fully aware how thick and rich was the crock of shit he was spouting. Ebay Australia is the unfortunate test case. Obviously, they’re taking orders from on high. The Ebay gnomes in the US have chosen their Australian minions to make the Paypal scam float. From here, it will radiate out into the world, and thence to America.

Ripples of greed, consuming the world.

~ more pernicious mischief from eddy the ‘milkman’ groves

'The board of directors “must act in the best interests of the company as a whole’ with their main task being "to drive the performance of the Company" - ABC Learning Annual Report 2004, p. 32'

And how far down the list of priorities are the children?

Can’t stop myself. Sorry. But it isn’t every day a bone fide capitalist swine meets a sticky end. With his brown winkle-pickers, his Ferrari and his basketball team [the Brisbane Bullets], he is the corporate vulture to end all corporate vultures.

Since my earlier post on the subject, I’ve learnt some more things about Groves’ operation which I just have to share. In Sunday’s Age a financial commentator named James Kirby discussed his fall in a wider context. The piece was far too apologetic for my taste - concentrating on Groves' impact on the business world rather than on our society - but Kirby did point out some of his failings – hubris was the word he used.

In 2003 Fast Eddie sued the child-care union for defamation. It began with his insistence that carers [then on $10, now on $14 an hour] wear uniforms and pay for them themselves. The LHMU [Liquor Hospitality & Miscellaneous Union] reacted with an ‘Uncle Scrooge’ campaign. distributing ‘defamatory’ pamphlets at his centres. Groves spat the dummy, “they made it personal and they are going to regret it. I'm looking for $500,000 in damages.” He refused to meet with the union, and the case, though it did reach the courts, seems to have fizzled out.

In a 2003 article, Kirby wrote that ‘big profits are drawing free-wheeling entrepreneurs into the industry’. One financial adviser commented, 'I'm 77 and the child-care business is the best business I've ever seen in my life. The Government pays subsidies, the parents pay you two weeks in advance and property prices keep going up."

Kirby tells us that ‘diamond miners, dot-com pioneers and real estate agents are getting on board.’ but it does trouble him that due to a lack of appropriate regulation ‘anyone in any business, from cigarettes to strip joints, can buy a chain of child-care centres’. That was four years ago. I wonder if anything has changed? It does tell us that Groves was not the only one with his finger in the pie – he just stole the biggest slice.

Claire Kimball [a ministerial advisor to Howard's Minister for Children Larry Anthony] was quoted as saying. "There is no regulation of ownership and there is no reason to believe there should be."

Astonishingly, the maleficent Michael Kroger [and, for a time, father in law Andrew Peacock] also got involved in the child-care industry. I wonder, would someone like him be in it for the money or the children? Or, a more pertinent question, would you put your children under his care? Kroger’s company Child Care Centres of Australia would up getting into hot water with ASIC and pulling its horns in.

While on the political angle, The Age also draws our attention to the aforementioned Larry Anthony who, after he lost his parliamentary seat in the 2004 election, was appointed to the board of ABC Learning. Anthony was Howard’s Minister for Children. He was instrumental in the creation of the 30% government child-care rebate, which was largely responsible for those ‘diamond miners’ jumping on the childcare milk-wagon. Labor accused him of a conflict of interest. Anthony would give Groves ‘unparalleled access’ to the Howard government. Indeed, I recall reading that a new defence Department building had chosen ABC to manage their in-house crèche.

I have also come across a very revealing 2006 report by The Australia Institute, a left-leaning think-tank based at ANU. It was gratifying seeing many of my perceptions and suspicions given weight by a scholarly paper.

Though there is much disparity in the quality levels of ABC centres, they are generally deficient compared to independent or community based centres. There are poorer staff-to-child ratios. Staff have insufficient time to develop relationships with the children. Some centres have no cleaners, and the staff must pick up the slack, as well as wrangling a large amount of paperwork - leaving too little time for their primary responsibility.

There is often insufficient food or it is of poor quality, or lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables. Qualified cooks are poorly paid. ‘Equipment budgets appear to be adequate but… staff felt limited by the fact that these budgets must be spent at an ABC Learning-owned toy company that does not provide a wide enough variety for programming which is developed for individual children.’

‘Staff were ‘expected to present a professional program without being paid or treated as professionals. A number said that they and other staff regularly complete tasks at home. Some said that they were not paid for set up time, clean up time, or for evening staff meetings. One said that since the introduction of the Work Choices legislation, staff had been told that they were no longer permitted even to claim time-in-lieu for these necessary tasks.’ [Some familiar Work Choices horror scenarios follow].

In my previous post, I quoted many ex-staff members who felt obliged to lie. Something similar crops up here. ‘Staff appear to be discouraged from raising any concerns about the operation of ABC Learning centres outside the company itself.’ The report goes on to suggest that since so much public money is paid to these centres, then the public has a right to know what’s happening in them. They conclude, wisely in my opinion, that the government ‘should consider the wisdom of allowing any further expansion of corporate chains in the long day care sector’

It’s a detailed paper and I suggest you look at it, if you’re interested in the subject. It reports that ‘children are secondary to concerns regarding efficiency and cost-containment’, and warns that if there is pressure on the share price – as there is now - these strictures will tighten.

You may wonder, where did this all start? Who let the dogs out? Well, perhaps you can guess.

‘In 1997’, quoting Kirby, ‘the Howard Government scrapped special subsidies to non-profit child-care centres and in a single stroke, child care was changed. Privately owned and non-profit child-care centres could charge roughly the same fees. Now… the reality of a privatised child-care sector is hitting home.’

I couldn't sleep at night if one my centres was not up to scratch – Eddie Groves.

~ eddie groves' evil empire
~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning

~ eddie groves’ evil empire

For some time now - probably since I became a father - I’ve been tracking the fortunes of baby-faced, sports-car-driving Eddie Groves, the ‘high profile’ unconscionable bastard who prides himself, with his wife Le Neve, on making millions out of early child care with his company ABC Learning.

Now it looks like his evil empire is turning to shit. It seems the hedge funds, sensing his vulnerability to the current debt crisis, have invoked various arcane stock market mechanisms to bring him down. The sharks are eating the sharks.

In the beginning, Eddie must have scanned the business horizon, looking for a place to stake his claim. He chose to make his millions out of early childhood development, not pausing to consider that it might be inappropriate, that there might be just a few ethical considerations to take into account, that it might make him a vulture …

The image of Mr Burns taking candy from Maggie Simpson comes to mind. What caring person would deliberately set out to become a child care mogul? And if he’s suspect in this way, I doubt not, with the current crisis, that it will be too long before more putrescence comes to light. Already the spectre of HIH has been evoked.

My daughter Polly spent two years at Brandon Park child care centre. It was a terrific place, community owned and run, but I was left with the distinct impression that money was always tight. This is what makes me wonder what Eddie Groves is doing to extract his profits.

Rumours abound and none of them are good. Brandon Park had its own cook and food was prepared on the premises, but at ABC, it is said, canned or frozen foods are used and children are allowed two slices of bread, but never a third.

‘They try too hard to make it look like this big colourful, educational centre but lack in the caring, friendly personalities they should have.’

‘Some parents who send their children there think they’re great, but you will never come across a former staff member who would agree. Perhaps because one of the worst things about them is that staff are consistently instructed to lie and hide things from parents.’

‘There’s too much emphasis on making things look good for the parents; they seem to have lost track of the fact that they are there to provide high quality care to the children. It’s all about keeping the parents happy; what they don't see won't hurt them.’

‘I know one woman who took a demotion from Director of an ABC to Group Leader of a not-for-profit centre just to get away from the stress of constantly lying and covering up to both parents and certification authorities.’

'I'm an early childhood teacher and have worked in a number of ABC centres and I would never ever send my child there … I have seen babies left crying on the floor or in the cots screaming when they obviously are not ready for bed.’

The horrors stories abound. I don’t have room for them all.

As independent centre operator Patricia Wilschefski has said the biggest difference between her centre and ABC's is the personal attention. At Brandon Park, parents were at the helm, involved in board activities, money raising, working bees. At ABC Learning, because it is a listed company, the shareholders are the priority - not the parents, not the teachers, not the needs of the children.

Then there is the Sunshine incident. A child escaped an ABC centre and the company was fined $200. ABC challenged the decision, attempting to set a precedent that it was the worker not the corporation who was responsible. If they had succeeded, this would have allowed them to get off the hook virtually no matter what happened in one of their centres.

All the money, none of the responsibility. That’s the ticket. That’s where they come from.

In 2006, as part of their aggressive expansion, they attempted to buy out independent Sydney centre Moore Park Gardens. The parents waged war against a behemoth that sometimes pays as three times the market price to put its competition out of business.

Director Alice Voigt said she “‘was worried about the potential impact on staff and children’. A centre she worked at two years ago in inner Sydney changed dramatically after it was bought by ABC. ‘The effects on the staff and the children were quite severe,’ she said. ‘I would feel extremely threatened that our staff numbers would be reduced. I just don't believe in what ABC child-care is about, which is making money.’"

One parent at Moore Park Garden was quoted as saying "If ABC was actually committed to child-care they would not be operating on minimum staff ratios.” A parent from a different region writes, ’ABC built 3 centres all within a 5 min radius of my home this year. In the process they also bought my son’s centre and 2 others and shut them down in matter of weeks with no respect at all for the parents or children.’

I wonder how we would react if a greedy business started taking over primary schools and making them uniformly compliant to their business formula? Not positively, I suspect. Well, guess what? In 2006 ABC established up a satellite company called ‘Independent Colleges Australia’ and began taking enrolments for its first Primary school in Narre Warren. In Caroline Springs - one of the desolate McMansion parks on the outer fringes of Melbourne - property developer Delphin allocated land to ICA ahead of a proposed Catholic school. More schools have followed, most in similar suburbs. ICA claims to be not-for-profit and independent of ABC, but no one believes them.

Basically, it appalls me that anyone could see a profit to be made out of children at such a delicate and crucial stage of their development. To apply brutal unforgiving business models to child-care is capitalism at its ugliest, and if Eddie Groves is about to go to the wall, then I, for one, am mightily pleased.

~ an exercise in physiognomy
~ more pernicious mischief from eddie 'the milkman' groves
~ the sweet death knell of ABC Learning