WHEN it comes to generosity, it is hard to beat Australians. They will dig deep into their pockets and donate for a good cause, especially a natural disaster.
Even young children will bring out their piggy banks and give up every cent of money they have saved for months or years. One six-year-old boy gave all his savings of A$136 last week as his contribution to fire victims.
That’s part of the characteristics of most Australians. They are prepared to help anyone who is in trouble or suffering from calamities.
Examples of their generosity have been proven in many ways in Australia as well as in other countries, and they have tried to help not only with cash but also with voluntary services.
The most recent example is the aftermath of Australia’s biggest ever firestorm, which destroyed more than 1,800 homes on 400,000ha of mountainous bushland in eastern Melbourne two weeks ago, killing 208 people and injuring hundreds of others.
Among the dead was a fire-fighter from Canberra who had wanted to repay “the debt of honour” to his fellow fire-fighters in Melbourne who had helped fight a big fire in his hometown six years ago.
He died when a broken branch of a burning tree fell on him.
Those who escaped the inferno, which spread at a rate of nearly 100kph and destroyed everything in its path, only had the clothes they wore. More than 7,000 people were made homeless and are now living in temporary tents or with strangers who opened their doors to them.
Despite the massive destruction and loss of everything they possessed, most of the survivors were determined to return and rebuild their lives in what is now a scorched and blackened landscape.
It was this spirit of survival among them that invoked deep feelings of compassion, comradeship and support from the community at large.
Within a week, the people had raised a total of nearly A$100mil throughout the nation. The federal and state governments also pledged A$10mil each to help them.
In just 24 hours last week, the Channel 9 TV programme named “Australia Unites” received 40,000 phone calls from people across the nation pledging A$21mil for the fire victims.
Television celebrities, film stars, sports figures and top models not only contributed to the donations but also helped to answer the seemingly unending telephone calls day and night.
Among the companies that have so far donated money was a big supermarket which gave A$5.13mil of its entire one-day takings, including all of its profit, last week. Another supermarket is planning to do the same.
Donations are still pouring into the Australian Red Cross (ARC) Victorian Bushfire Appeal as more concerts, TV shows and other fund-raising activities are being conducted.
And the ARC storage buildings and transport company warehouses are full of donations of canned food, clothing, shoes, furniture, toiletries, children’s toys and bicycles, and other gifts from other donors.
One transport company owner, Andrew Roughley, said the response was “phenomenal” at a time when the country is in a difficult economic situation.
“We knew that we would get a fair response because that’s the way Australians are, but it’s been overwhelming,” he said.
Students from schools in Melbourne made little things like pencil case gift bags, rulers and colourful pens for the schoolchildren in the devastated suburbs.
It was a heartwarming outcome that brought people from all over the country to offer what they could to those who have lost everything they owned.
ARC chief executive Robert Tickner said the response from Australians has been overwhelming, with the fund continuing to grow at a rapid pace.
According to Australian Council of Social Service President Andrew McCallum, a new study showed that Australians donate about A$2.7bil a year.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put it more succinctly: “It’s about courage, it’s about resilience and it’s about compassion – you know, looking after your mates and looking after your neighbours and people you haven’t even met before.
“And what I see across the response to … these terrible fires are all those great Australian values and virtues on display in a very practical Australian way. It just makes me feel proud to be an Australian.”
Not surprisingly, this kind of outpouring of generosity is nothing new to most Australians. In the past, they have shown their kindness and compassion to victims of natural disasters such as floods, cyclones and tsunami.
In the Dec 26, 2004, tsunami that claimed 230,000 lives in 10 countries across Asia, Australians were among the first to donate more than A$2bil for the survivors and volunteered to help rebuild homes, schools and hospitals.
Then there are individual tourists to Bali who, touched by the effects of the current economic downturn on the island, have returned home and organised garage sales and sent the money they collected for distribution to the Balinese families.
NO word could aptly describe the agony, shock and suffering of those who survived the devastation wreaked by last weekend’s deadly wildfires in southern Australia.
It was a weekend that completely shattered the lives of survivors and family members of victims in the worst fire ever in Australia’s history.
So far, 181 charred bodies have been recovered from the scorched earth and burnt-out vehicles across the 400,000ha of tinder-dry bushland in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
With information from the survivors, who escaped with only the clothes they wore, the authorities continued their search for more than 80 people known to be still missing.
The coroner’s office in Melbourne has reserved places for 300 bodies.
The fires, believed to have been deliberately lit in temperatures up to 45°C, destroyed more than 1,000 homes, mostly in Kinglake, Flowerdale and the mountainous Marysville, where almost every building was gutted to the ground. And it happened on the hottest day in the state since temperature records were kept in 1855.
Even fire-fighters, police, and army personnel seconded to the fire scene, described by the state government as “hell on earth”, were emotional with tears as they realised the grisly reality of what had happened.
For most of them, the most painful experience was finding the burnt bodies of children as young as six years with their mothers, fathers, or their old grandparents, who were caught in the unprecedented inferno before they could escape.
Among them were a parent and his disabled son whom he had tried to save. A woman and her two sons were found dead on the road – their car had crashed into a tree as they fled, apparently in panic, amid the thick smoke and roaring flames.
Some fire-fighters were seen weeping with their heads bowed in silence as they reflected on the dead children, and thinking of their own kids while taking their much-deserved breaks after hours of battling the firestorm.
The scene was like a war zone; everything in the path of the massive bushfire was destroyed and flattened. Some of the residents had survived by jumping into their swimming pools and farm reservoirs or hiding in their underground cellars.
One survivor likened it to the Hiroshima destruction in Japan after a nuclear bomb struck the city in 1945.
Fire-fighters said the blaze, fanned by 100kph wind, was so intense and fierce that many of the victims had no time to flee from their homes and were engulfed by the flames within five minutes.
While some died in their homes as they tried to gather their children or to save their frightened animals, such as horses and pets, others were trapped as the huge flames cut across the roads and burned them in their cars.
Anxious about family members and neighbours, the survivors helped fire-fighters and police turn over twisted metal remnants of cars, fallen zinc roofs and rubble, looking for the injured and those killed. Hundreds of people were injured.
Fire-fighters bravely fought the blaze in what is now dubbed as the “Valley of Death” to contain it.
Arsonists at large
But five days later, 20 other places were razed by uncontrollable fires, some of which were believed to have been ignited by arsonists two nights after last weekend’s inferno.
It is inconceivable – beyond the imagination of sensible people, actually – that anyone, after hearing the news and seeing on television the anguish and despair of the survivors, could deliberately light new fires in the vicinity on Tuesday night.
Frustrated fire-fighters, who had worked day and night to extinguish the wildfire that had also blazed the entire historic mountain village of Marysville at one stage, were simply dumbfounded.
But the new fires angered Prime Minister Kevin Rudd so much that he bluntly said when the culprits were caught, charged and convicted, “let them rot in jail”.
“What do you say about anyone like that? I don’t know. There’s no word to describe it other than it is mass murder,” he said.
A special task force, named Operation Phoenix, with 100 experienced investigators and forensic experts has been set up to search for clues among the vast areas of ashes.
Out of these investigations, and the subsequent royal commission into the fires to be held soon, may emerge some important lessons to be learnt on how to prevent such a disaster in the future, how to save lives and how to deal with the apparently incorrigible firebugs who have no regard for anyone.
Curiously though, there is a puzzle, small as it may be, in a photograph showing several burnt-out cars clustered at a spot in the middle of a road.
If they were not involved in an accident, as there was no sign of it, could the engine in each car or vital plastic/rubber-covered cables melted by the blazing heat have caused the vehicles to stall, stranding the owners and their families in the path of the approaching inferno?
It’s worth examining every aspect to find answers to last weekend’s unfortunate catastrophe.
HOW much should the government pay for consumer confidence in a nation with a population that is almost equal to that of Malaysia’s?
Kevin Rudd thinks another A$42bil will probably do the job, and he has put his political career on the balance in his controversial plan.
But the Prime Minister, worried about the continued effects of the global economic meltdown, wants to prevent Australia from becoming a victim of the recession that emanated from the United States and is now spreading in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.
With the collapse of several companies, the shutdown of some factories and their consequential job losses, the abandonment of commercial property owners by foreign lenders and, not least, the severe drop of resource and energy exports to China and India, morale of the public and consumer confidence in the Australian economy is probably at its lowest ebb.
If this unsettling situation continues without proactive efforts to change its course, the economy will decline into negative growth over the next two quarters, putting the nation into the dreadful recession.
But what exactly can be done to stop this?
Some politicians believe that pumping more money into the pockets of consumers, as Rudd is doing, is a waste of taxpayers’ dollars. They want tax cuts and greater employment-creating programmes.
History has shown, however, that tax cuts and plans for promoting employment, by themselves, are not enough to boost a lagging economy. For example, during the Great Depression, US President Herbert Hoover, a former mining engineer with a focus for business, did exactly that and failed dismally in his efforts.
It was then up to President Franklin Roosevelt, Hoover’s successor, to rebuild American capitalism and restore consumer confidence. His greatest inspiration to the Americans was his explicit declaration that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.
One of his sweeping reforms for the recovery of businesses was to allow big deficits in the national budget, which was against the concerns of even his political advisers.
Rudd’s challenge
Perhaps this is part of the basis of Rudd’s urgent stimulus package to provide more bonus handouts to low and middle-income families for spending to boost the economy, despite an accumulative deficit of A$118bil instead of an estimated surplus of A$79bil.
His new package involves splashing A$12.7bil cash on families, giving A$14.7bil for school upgrades, A$6.6bil for public housing, A$3.9bil on energy efficiencies and A$2.7bil on business tax reliefs. Hence, a big deficit is unavoidable.
Arguing that the package was irresponsible, Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said his party would reject the Bill in Parliament this week, possibly creating a different kind of crisis.
This is despite the Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, released last week, showing retail sales for December improving by 3.8% – the highest monthly increase – due, in part, to the spending by consumers receiving cash bonuses in the pre-Christmas A$10.4bil package.
The controversial issue in Federal Parliament now is the bonus of A$950 for each of the 8.7 million workers earning less than A$100,000 a year and for parents with school-age children.
Rudd rebutted the argument, saying that his plan was all about creating and protecting 90,000 jobs in addition to the 75,000 others in the previous package. It was also about encouraging consumers to spend in the economy to keep recession out of Australia.
“If this is a plan of unprecedented scope, that is because the challenge we have been delivered by this global recession is also virtually unprecedented,” he said.
Rudd knows perfectly well how serious the financial crisis is.
In a 7,700-word essay for Australia’s politics, society and the arts magazine called The Monthly, published last week, he described it as a crisis that has “become one of the greatest assaults on global economic stability in three quarters of a century”.
He called on governments across the world to rise to the challenge of developing a practical policy response that would rebuild shattered economic growth.
And he would like to see “a robust analysis of the social-democratic approach to properly regulate markets and the proper role of the state in a new contract for the future …”
Most importantly, he believes that the analysis should be integrated with unprecedented imperative for global cooperation if governments are to prevail in their task.
Obviously, Rudd is amazed at how some top executives in the financial sector in the US were paid an average of US$10.5mil each in 2007 – 344 times the wage of the typical American workers.
In fact, he was shocked that the top hedge-fund and equity-fund managers received an average of US$588mil each – 19,000 times the pay of typical workers.
What’s more, the biggest Wall Street firms paid bonuses worth a staggering US$39bil – huge payments to the executives whose investment banks have since been bailed out by American taxpayers.
Rudd described these payments as “greed of epic proportions” and called for international support for a global financial system that “properly balances private incentives with public responsibility” in response to the grave challenge of the current financial crisis.
A GLIMMER of hope, perhaps, is emerging in the quest to find a global solution to the worst recession that is now threatening every nation on Earth.
Or perhaps it is “the audacity of hope”, echoing US President Barack Obama who used the phrase as the title for his second book, which was published in 2006.
However one may describe the ways to tackle the latest global economic situation, most of the Australian business community view the “warm” and “positive” telephone call from Obama in the White House to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Canberra last Wednesday morning as “heartening”.
In a 25-minute conversation – the first time the two leaders spoke to each other since Obama’s inauguration – they discussed the complex global economic crisis and resolved that coordinated action through effective fiscal stimulus was needed to deal with it.
More significant is the fact that the phone call came as Rudd was preparing to launch yet another stimulus package worth several billion dollars to prevent more Australian companies from collapsing and sacking thousands of other workers.
More than 40,000 workers have already lost their jobs in recent weeks despite three stimulus packages just before Christmas – the A$10.4bil (RM24bil) injection into the economy, the A$6bil (RM13bil) aid for the car industry and the A$600mil (RM1.3bil) to build new infrastructure for local councils. These measures were intended to boost the economy and also help people who were at risk of redundancy.
Now the retail industry that employs more than 1.5mil workers is considering reducing its workforce.
In addition, a A$4bil (RM9bil) bailout plan for commercial property which, according to Rudd, will save 50,000 jobs in commercial projects, is facing strong opposition from the Liberal-National coalition in the Senate because they believe it “will simply prop up bank profits and property values”.
So the big challenge for Rudd is how to protect jobs since his previous measures have not really achieved the desired results. Should his government provide companies some kind of funding or incentives to retain their employees?
If this is the type of measure that will help save jobs, what criteria should be applied for companies seeking such assistance? And would this set a precedence in the industry as a whole?
Its implications and complexity are probably far-reaching. But something more effective than the previous plans has to be formulated to prevent companies from becoming victims of the global recession.
While Rudd and his Treasurer Wayne Swan were putting the stimulus package together, his Deputy Julia Gillard last week met welfare groups who are asking for at least A$300mil (RM690mil) extra funding to help those worst affected by the economic crisis.
These groups have been dealing with people queuing up at their offices for help to pay their mortgages. Most of them are in the previous middle-income brackets and are, without doubt, worried about losing their homes.
The welfare groups are also seeking a dialogue with the banks to ask that those who have lost their jobs be allowed time to repay their mortgages. They also seek bank expertise on planning family budgets.
Positive meetings
Gillard found the round-table meeting, particularly on local community views, anxieties and expectations of the current economic situation so useful that she decided to have another discussion next month.
“I think the discussion about financial counselling and financial expertise being made available to people who need it is an interesting idea that the banks may well respond to positively,” she said.
The redundancies began in Australia when China’s economic growth slumped dramatically in recent months, leading to its reduced imports of Australian raw resources.
China’s growth projection for this year, according to available statistics, shows a drop by US$200bil (RM720bil). This means that Australia’s exports to China will fall by a massive A$5bil (RM11bil).
The immediate effect has been the sacking of more than 3,000 mine workers by BHP in Ravensthorpe, Western Australia, which is now almost certain to become a ghost town.
With more job losses expected in other places, Australia’s unemployment rate is expected to rise from 4.5% to 6% this year and then to about 7% by the middle of 2010.
NAB chief economist Alan Oster believes that despite China’s economic growth of more than 6% this year, Australia will still be hit by reduced commodity prices.
Other economists believe that Australia is not riding on a gloom and doom pathway, but “there is still a bumpy ride ahead”.
“We’re seeing expansion of housing credit and we have a lot of business investments in the pipeline,” explained HSBC chief economist John Edwards, who is convinced that most of the projects would start to take off in the second half of this year.
But the Australian Congress of Trade Unions is pushing the Rudd government to consider the kind of new green deals as promised by President Obama, such as energy saving projects that would reduce the power bill of every household by between A$300 (RM690) and A$500 (RM1,150) a year.