Category: Friday on My Mind

Self-service gets our enterprise for a bargain

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You may call me a peevish old man, but these self-service supermarket checkouts give me the pip. I only encounter them when venturing out of the village, as our service-oriented IGA does not as yet have automated check-outs. Not so a certain Brisbane supermarket which, around 5pm, seems to have nobody staffing its numerous checkouts and only one person ‘helping’ people scan their own groceries. I usually ignore the self-service corner and will wait an…

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About Nauru your petitioner humbly prays

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I could count on the toes of my feet the number of petitions I have signed in this life, but I could not refuse the Kids off Nauru campaign. More than 100 human rights groups, churches, charities and organisations, including World Vision, Amnesty International and the Australian Lawyers Alliance are behind Kids off Nauru. The e-petition to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten leaves no room for negotiation. Children in detention on…

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Multiculturalism under siege

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My plan to write something cuddly and wholesome about Multiculturalism Month in Queensland was derailed somewhat by the egregious maiden speech of crossbench Senator Fraser Anning. One of our newest politicians, he chose his maiden speech to call for a return to the White Australia policy, suggesting that a plebiscite be held to ask Australians if they want ‘wholesale non-English speaking immigrants from the Third World and, in particular, whether they want any Muslims’. Politicians…

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Queensland ramps up renewable energy

For some time I’d been harbouring a suspicion that Queensland was a laggard when it came to renewable energy. That may have been the case in the past – wind and solar generation increased only 3% between 2006 and 2016. But a recent national survey by the Clean Energy Council found that eight of the country’s top 10 domestic solar panel users are in Queensland. Bundaberg, which has some 11,060 households with solar panel installations,…

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