Let's be frank about franking credits

Labor's Chris Bown arguing against refunding franking credits in 2019

 

In 2019, “franking credits” were the hot topic leading up to the federal election. What are franking credits? It's tax already paid by Australian companies on dividends paid to their shareholders.

In 1987 Paul Keating created the dividend imputation scheme. It was introduced to do away with the government’s double taxation. Before the scheme was implemented, a company made a profit, paid tax and paid dividends to shareholders who then paid tax again on the same dividends. In effect the government was double-dipping. Then in 2000 the then Liberal Treasurer Peter Costello expanded the scheme so that taxpayers whose franking credits were more than they had to pay in income tax would receive a refund cheque from the Tax Office.

It is this refunding of excess franking credits which the Labor Party was advocating to remove if it won government in 2019. Facing a backlash, it promised to exempt already existing pensioners on a government pension (even if only on a part-pension of as little as one dollar) but not pensioners who had retired on their own self-managed superfund (SMSF) nor future government pensioners. As Chris Bowen argued, "If you don't like it, don't vote for us!" And we didn't and they lost the election!

Chris Bown was Shadow Treaurer in 2019. The Labor Party has won the 2022 election and Chris Bowen is now the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. The Labor Party's new Treasurer is Jim Chalmers who has been wise to stay away from re-opening this particular can of worms.

I started my own self-managed superfund (SMSF) in 2005 on the strength of the then Liberal government's franking credit arrangements, first with Superannuation Accounting Services. I had read enough about concessional and non-concessional contributions to stop them from involving me in a huge tax bill - click here - and, having lost confidence, I switched to SuperHelp in 2007 who've given me excellent service since.

If you want to start your own self-managed superfund (SMSF), contact SuperHelp's managing director Sandra Lee. You'll be in capable hands!

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Banda, The Dark Forgotten Trail

 

This documentary premiered on July 31 2017, to coincide with the 350th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Breda, as part of which a coconut-fringed speck on the map, the island of Run, was swapped for the swampy island of Manhattan.

Today, Run, population of about 2050, is almost as inaccessible and isolated as it was 350 years ago. The islanders who appear in this documentary can't watch it. There is no movie theatre on Run nor is there Wi-Fi. Even the phone connection is bad. Electricity is only available between 6pm and 11.30pm, none of it provided by the government. Three years ago a Run native – now a successful Jakartan businessman – provided a diesel generator to supply the homes for five hours every night. By contrast, Manhattan today is, well, New York!

 

 

So what made the Dutch swap Manhattan for this less-than-one-square-mile-sized speck among the Banda Islands in Indonesia? In one word: nutmeg. It could be bought for a pittance in the Banda Islands but when sold in Europe its value went up about 32,000 per cent. And the Dutch thought they'd done the real estate deal of the millennium!

Strangely, none of this is mentioned in the book "The Island at the Center of the World" which I was about to buy on ebay when I found a copy on www.archive.org. The twenty dollars saved may go towards the long-wished-for trip to Pulau Run.

 

 

In the meantime, I will have to make do with these video clips.

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P.S. If you want to read more about the spice trade, read "Nathaniel's Nutmeg". BORROW it for free by JOINing UP and then LOGging IN. It mentions the 'swap' of Manhattan for Run on pages 363 to 365.

 

P.P.S. Reading and writing about the island of Run, I'm reminded of when my old mate Noel Butler came down to Sydney in late 1972 and asked me to join him on an island-hopping adventure through the Indonesian archipelago. I had just accepted a big "promotion" to Group Financial Controller and yet, having spent a very difficult six months kicking off the company's Bougainville contract, I was due for a break and could easily have asked for a couple of months' leave but put my career first. Noel left without me, and I left Sydney anyway early the following year. Fifty years later, my career no longer counts for anything whereas two months hopping from island to island would still be a treasured memory. Regrets, I've had a few ...

 

I cannot remember all the books I have read any more than all the meals I have eaten

 

And so I had almost forgotten that I had a copy of "The White Tribe of Africa" in my library, as well as "White Tribe Dreaming", one of the best books ever written on South Africa's history, both of which are now on my bedside table.

The author of "The White Tribe of Africa" also produced a prize-winning BBC television documentary of the same title as his book but there's no sign of it on YouTube. All I could find was the above "The White Laager".

 

Read it online here

Read it online here

 

Watching Sandra Laing's moving story in the movie "Skin" made me again reflect on South Africa's horrible apartheid regime and read more about it, even though I had lived there long enough to experience it first-hand - as an oppressor rather than as an oppressed but such regimes are hard on both groups (although perhaps not on the Afrikaners who were being told from the pulpit every Sunday that they were the "Chosen People").

I was the oppressor not by commission but by omission but how could I have done anything in as small a community as Lüderitz in South-West Africa where you either conformed or you left? I left before the system corrupted me as well, not only because I detested it but also because I felt that it would never change as long as the white man was in charge.

As the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1850, "Experience teaches that generally speaking the most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppressive rule, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects. Patiently endured so long as it seemed beyond redress, a grievance comes to appear intolerable once the possibility of removing it crosses men's minds."

That the end of apartheid was achieved with 'consummate statecraft' is perhaps due to one man more than any other, Nelson Mandela, now rightly regarded as the "Father of the Nation" of the new South Africa.

We tread many tracks in the sand dunes of life but in the morning the mighty wind has blown them away. Everything is transitory except the care for each other and each day's grace from above. Good morning. Enjoy your day.

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Good-bye, my friend, and rest in peace.

Little Rover born November 2002 passed away 30 August 2017

 

On this day five years ago, at around ten past seven in the evening, the life force that had bounced little Rover - Mr Onederful! - through life for almost fifteen years, left him.

We were both with him, talked to him, stroked him, and comforted him, and his big beautiful eyes were still looking up at us, as he took his last laboured breath.

Pets, it turns out, also have last wishes before they die, but they are only known by veterinarians who put old and sick animals to sleep. One veterinarian said without hesitation that it was the hardest for him to see how old or sick animals look for their owners before going to sleep.

Veterinarians ask owners to be with the animals until the end, but most owners don't want to be in a room with a dying animal without realising that it's in these last moments of life that their pet needs them most.

"It's inevitable that they die before you. Don't forget that you were the centre of their life. Maybe they were just a part of you. But they are also your family. No matter how hard it is, don't leave them. Don't let them die in a room with a person who's a complete stranger to them. It is very painful for veterinarians to see how pets cannot find their owner during the last minutes of their life. They don't understand why the owner left them. After all, they needed their owner's consolation."

Don't be a coward because it's too painful for you. Think about the pet. Endure your pain for their sake. Be with them until the very end.

We were with litte Rover until the very end. We placed him in his little sleeping box, covered him in his favourite jumper, and gave him a tearful burial minutes before midnight.

 

 

Good-bye, my friend, and rest in peace. We will never ever forget you.

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Now you know why I didn't stay in South Africa

"SKIN" is one of the most bizarre and moving true stories to emerge from apartheid South Africa: Sandra Laing was a black child born in the 1950s to two white Afrikaners, unaware of their black ancestry. Her parents were rural shopkeepers serving the local black community, who lovingly brought her up as their 'white' little girl. But at the age of ten, Sandra was driven out of white society. The film follows Sandra's thirty-year journey from rejection to acceptance, betrayal to reconciliation, as she struggles to define her place in a changing world - and triumphs against all odds.

 

I was searching YouTube for a trailer, perhaps even a full-length copy of the Australian movie "The Skin of Others" when I came across this one, "Skin", a British-South African 2008 biographical film about Sandra Laing, a South African woman born to white parents, who was classified as "Coloured" during the apartheid era, presumably due to a genetic case of atavism.

 

Click here to read the online book (SIGN UP - it's free! - LOG IN, and BORROW)

 

Based on the book "When She Was White - The True Story of a Family Divided by Race" by Judith Stone, it displays all the ugliness of the apartheid era. This horrible and often quite arbitrary racial segregation still existed when I lived and worked in South-West Africa in 1968/69, and it made me leave again despite the great beauty of the country.

When apartheid came to an end, there was renewed interest in Sandra's story by the media. Sandra's mother saw Sandra interviewed on television and wrote to her to tell her of her father's death two years earlier. The letter provided no return address nor any other clue as to her whereabouts, but receiving it prompted Sandra to renew her search. She found her mother living in a nursing home and the two were happily reunited (although her two brothers continued to refuse to see her).

Oh, and Sam Neill does a passable imitation of the Afrikaner accent!

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The Theatre of the Mind

 

Remember radio dramas? I do! I was fortunate enough to grow up when there was no and later little television; when we sat in front of our BLAUPUNKT radio at night, with the magic dial glowing in the dark, listening in on the world outside.

The radio drama was our entertainment which still is in my opinion - although I may be seeing it through sepia-tinted glasses - superior to nearly every television series. The use of sound effects was truly amazing in its ability to conjure up vivid images and changing settings.

And now we also have audio books which are a real treat for sore eyes! www.archive.org has some of the best collections of BBC Radio Shows. Click on "TITLE", then on a letter of the alphabet, to search for the title of the book you want to find. The The LibriVox Collection has more titles but I have a real problem listening to those American accents.

 

Want to read along? Click here

 

Right now I'm "reading" Jenny Colgan's charming book "The Bookshop on the Corner". You may wish to join me; click here and close your eyes.

But you're not tied to your computer! With every radio now having a USB connection, you can click on one of the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS, save the mp3 file to a memory stick, and plug it into your radio. Happy listening!

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Books that made us

 

Australia's novels lie at the heart of the country. Capturing everyday lives and exceptional dreams, novels have held up a mirror to the nation, reflecting the good and the bad. In this companion book to the ABC TV series, Carl Reinecke looks at the history of Australian culture through the books we have read and the stories we have told.

 

 

Touching on colonial invasion, the bush myth, world wars, mass migration, the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the emergence of a modern, global, multicultural nation, Carl examines how these pivotal events and persuasive ideas have shaped some of Australia's most influential novels, and how these books, in turn, made us.

In a panoramic account of Australian fiction stretching from Marcus Clarke to Melissa Lucashenko, Patrick White to Peter Carey, and Henry Handel Richardson to Michelle de Kretser, this is a new history of key authors and compelling books that have kept us reading and made a difference for over 200 years.

If you long to discover new stories or reacquaint with old favourites, this book is your guide to what was also an amazing TV series which you can view here.

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A Speck in the ocean

 

Last week during my usual visit to Vinnies, the little old lady behind the counter complained about the miserable weather. Listening to her accent, I said, "Well, not as miserable as the weather in England." "English?" she remonstrated. "I'm Irish!"

And so began our conversation during which she wanted to know what my accent was. Hearing that I had been a German in the past, she piped up, "Did you know about that chap who paddled all the way from Germany to Australia?" She was a passionate ABC Radio National listener and had heard about Oskar Speck on "Conversations with Richard Fidler".

Very few people in Germany have ever heard of Oskar Speck, and here's this little old lady in an op-shop in Batemans Bay who seems to know all about him, on top of which she's like me a dedicated ABC Radio National listener. A friend for life -or at least whenever we'll meet at Vinnies!

 

Illustration from "mare" magazine; they got the idea for the article from me;
I get this illustration from their article; it seems like a fair exchange

 

I had first heard about Oskar Speck when I lived and worked on Thursday Island in the Torres Strait where he had made landfall after having spent seven years paddling his tiny kayak from Germany to Australia. There was no internet in those days and it was impossible to find out more.

Only in recent years could I put together enough information to do a write-up in April 2005 - click here. Kayakers from Germany contacted me and I was happy to share with them the material for their own publication. I also suggested to the German magazine "mare" that they publicise Oskar Speck's amazing feat. I had no reply but was pleased to see this article appear in their December 2021/January 2022 issue.

 

"Odyssee im Kajak - Von Ulm nach Australien"

 

Since those early days when I could find hardly anything about Oskar Speck on the internet, I've been pleased to note that the number of entries has steadily increased as this man deserves a whole lot more publicity. Wikipedia now mentions him, and the NSW Sea Kayak Club has turned it into a three-part story.

 

 

The Australian Maritime Museum, which still keeps some Oskar Speck memoribilia, devotes a whole webpage to him, and I could even locate the ABC Radio National recording that the little old lady in Vinnies had listened to just four days ago - click here.

 

 

Oskar Speck never left Australia again, and was perhaps too busy getting rich from dealing in precious stones to ever write the hoped-for book.

 

Sydney Airport Arrival Card after Oskar Speck returned from a three-month-trip to Germany on 17 August 1970. There are several papers documenting Oskar Speck's arrival on Saibai Island in the Torres Strait and his subsequent internment at the Tatura Camp in Victoria on naa.gov.au. Click on "Explore the Collection", then on "RecordSearch", type in keyword "Speck", and click on "Digital copy" of any of the four entries marked Oskar Speck.

 

Another German adventurer of his time, Heinz Helfgen, had from 1951 to 1953 cycled round the world and written a hugely popular book, "Ich radle um die Welt" (I cycle around the world), which Oskar Speck could easily have bettered with his very own "I paddle round the world".

Luckily, a Tobias Friedrich has stepped into the breach, and wrote a fictionalised version of Oskar Speck's record-making paddle under the name "Der Flussregenpfeifer" which has just now appeared in German bookshops. For a "Leseprobe" (if your German is up to it), click here.

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The Bookshop

 

I loved "The Bookshop", and both the book and the movie are equally wonderful. It’s a strange book and film: small, sad (without being tragic) and yet sweet without being syrupy. It doesn’t lend itself to an easy explication. Like all the best novels, its meaning is to be savoured, not summarised.

 

 

Based on a 1978 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald, the story is set in the mid-1950s in a small English town where most people don’t read. The movie itself is a wonderful pretext to watch three great actors do their thing: Mortimer, as the film’s mousy but surprisingly formidable heroine; Clarkson, as her smiling adversary, Violet Gamart; and Bill Nighy as Mr Brundish who is the town’s reclusive loner and only voracious reader.

Perhaps Brundish puts the paradox of this film best when Florence Green asks him to advise her on whether it’s really a wise idea to try to get her customers to buy "Lolita". "They won’t understand it," he warns her. "But that’s all for the best. Understanding makes the mind lazy."

 

 

Strangely, there is no mention in the book of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" despite its prominent appearance in the movie. I had never heard of "Fahrenheit 451" - which somehow augurs the film’s climax in an unexpected way - and ordered it immediately. Thank you, "Bookshop"!

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Readers are warned that this post may contain images and words banned in polite company.

Remember that all-too-ubiquitous warning appearing on your television screen every day? "WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander viewers are warned that the following program may contain images and voices of deceased persons." Well, here's my warning: "Readers are warned that this post may contain images and words banned in polite company."

 

The other night I was listening - as I do every weeknight - to Philip Adams' Late Night Live when his guest Matthew Campbell, co-author of "Dead in the Water: Murder and Fraud in the World’s Most Secretive Industry", also mentioned Rose George's book "Ninety Percent of Everything" - click here - which is about shipping.

I've always been fascinated by ships and professionally involved in the formation of the Pacific Forum Line in Western Samoa, as a consultant to the Penang Port Commission, and in the setting-up of the accounting systems for Ok Tedi's tug-and-barge operations in Papua New Guinea.

 

 

Searching www.archive.org for "Ninety Percent of Everything" (published in the U.K. under the title "Deep Sea and Foreign Going"), I discovered that the author Rose George also wrote "The Big Necessity - The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters". It's quite a jump from shipping to shitting, if you ask me, but I'm going to read it as soon I've read "Deep Sea and Foreign Going" which I've ordered on ebay.

 

 

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Instant recall

 

Last night, after yet another of my more frequently occurring "Pinkelpause" - look it up! - when I had trouble falling off to sleep again, the movie "The Beach" - not to be confused with "On the Beach" - with Leonardo DiCaprio entered my mind.

It is, of course, based on the book of the same name by Alex Garland, and one of the few instances where I watched the movie before I ever read the book (with the book usually a far more satisfying experience).

"The Beach", both the movie and the book, are thought to be a remake of that other book and movie about a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempts to govern themselves. That books, as every kid who had to read it at school knows, is called ... there I was, at four o'clock in the morning, and not being able to recall one of the classics of English literature.

I've always prided myself on a good memory and almost instant recall, and yet, despite willing my brain to come up with the title, it simply wouldn't obey me. It was only when the first light came filtering through the curtains and I heard an early fisherman passing on the river, that I gave up the fight, switched on my smartphone, tapped on the GOOGLE icon, and typed in "Golding" - yes, I had remembered the author's name but not the name of the book! - and there it was: "Lord of the Flies".

Of course! How could I have forgotten! From now on I shall always associate "Lord of the Flies" with sleepless nights which is perhaps as the author had intended it to be. Watch the movie for an instant recall.

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All tuned in!

"It was a piece of furniture and a thing of beauty"

 

I grew up with the written word in books and the spoken word on the radio, and had already mastered all twenty-six letters of the alphabet (plus three German umlauts and the "ß") before the world was reduced to just two letters: "TV". Books, the thicker the better, and radios, the older the better: I love them both.

At home we had a radio which was full of valves and housed in a walnut cabinet. It was a piece of furniture and a thing of beauty, and I would spend whole nights sitting in its soft glow to listen to the world outside.

You can't buy a radio like this anymore, but there are some clever retro-look facsimiles, with UBS, CD player, bluetooth, and stereo, that let you step back seventy years to what seem to have been happier times.

My favourite shop ALDI had this little beauty on offer for a mere $129, and it took me only a day - and a little opposition from Padma who wanted to know how many more radios I wanted to collect - to pick one up to put on my bedside table for my nightly dose of Late Night Live.

I'm all tuned in for hours of happy listening!

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