www.nickhodge.com

In the midst of the 2010 Fed­eral elec­tion, Aus­tralian of the Year Pro­fessor Patrick McGorry has man­aged to place Men­tal Health on the national agenda. ABC’s Four Corners “Hidden Voices” ded­ic­ated a pre-election show to high­light depres­sion, men­tal health: both sig­ni­fic­ant factors in suicide.

Look­ing at the data, whilst sui­cide rates are fall­ing – the rates in males 25 to 45 is still way above the norm. And more people die by their own hand in Aus­tralia than on the roads.

Dur­ing the show, I tweeted the fol­low­ing: I suf­fer from Depres­sion. There. I said it.

For me this has been a long jour­ney. Thanks to excel­lent med­ical care, and can func­tion in employ­ment and society.

So, let me high­light: If you think you suf­fer from depres­sion, are feel­ing ‘down’ – seek help. Start with your GP. Call Life­line or sim­ilar ser­vice now. Do not be ashamed in seek­ing help. You are not alone.

Whilst there is still a stigma

Being depressed, and men­tally unwell is still holds a social stigma.

Whilst pub­lic accept­ance is on the incline: pub­lic­ally stat­ing that you suf­fer from depres­sion will have a neg­at­ive effect on your employ­ab­il­ity. Whether work­ing for a large organ­isa­tion or as a single con­tractor: people around you will treat you with sus­pi­cion. Depres­sion can be a dis­ab­il­ity that dir­ectly effects work per­form­ance; and the career pro­spects of individuals.

Or as is sadly all too com­mon: no job at all..

Whilst remain­ing a sup­porter of vari­ous Men’s men­tal health char­it­ies. Per­sonal dona­tions. Grow­ing mous­taches, I am going to leave much of my per­sonal thoughts to myself for the time being.

I have been rather quiet of late.

Reas­ons:

1. Day 5 of a man-flu. Just can’t shake it quickly.
2. For the fourth time, I am tak­ing a break from the Twit­ter stream. Fun­nily enough, life goes on without know­ing everything else that is going on.
3. Think­ing. There is a rather lot of things to think about, if you per­mit your­self to men­tally wander.

Same hotel as 2009, but on the hin­ter­land side of the building.

In a G’day world pod­cast I appeared on in 2007 I stated I was vot­ing Lib­eral. It should come as no sur­prise I am doing the same in 2010

At the begin­ning of Tony Abbott’s reign as leader of the Fed­eral Lib­er­als, I will admit I was uncer­tain of his abil­ity to be the Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia. Through this cam­paign, Mr. Rab­bit has shown a wiser and more mature head. Hav­ing met Tony in per­son, spoken to him one:one and in 2004 man­ning an elec­tion booth — I am cer­tain what we see with Tony is what we are going to get. Whilst I am no longer a mem­ber of the Lib­eral Party, I would con­sider myself a “small-L” liberal.

On one of the occa­sions where I met Mr Abbott when he was Min­is­ter for Health (2003 I think), we talked about the import­ance of Inform­a­tion Tech­no­logy. He was no more a tech­head as he was a Doc­tor; and was not con­vinced with my rant­ing on the power of the inter­net. A senior Lib­eral advisor stated firstly that all indus­tries lobby about their import­ance to the future. Inform­a­tion tech­no­logy is no dif­fer­ent. Secondly, that once the politi­cians care about your industry, it becomes a polit­ical foot­ball. Increas­ing con­trol, reg­u­la­tion comes with increased invest­ment. Wel­come to where we have been for the last 5 years.

This elec­tion Geeks have suffered a cog­nit­ive dis­son­ance: vote Labor, get a gov­ern­ment fun­ded National Broad­band Net­work (NBN) but with a coupled Filter/Censorship pos­i­tion. Vote Lib­eral, and you get no Fibre installed into your home but no Fil­ter. Greens sup­port­ers will make the obser­va­tion: “vote Greens”. They’re too pro­gress­ive and social­ist for a coun­try boy like me. Or, their attached policies are not to my lik­ing. Lar­ger Gov­ern­ment, more pub­lic ser­vants and more con­trol of our lives by a nanny state rubs against my grain.

In the 2007 elec­tion, Rudd prom­ised $4.7b for Fibre-to-the-Node NBN. This expan­ded into $43b Fibre-to-the-Home; span­ning 93% of Aus­trali­ans as a mech­an­ism for coun­ter­ing the GFC. Whilst there is no pure busi­ness plan to spend $5.37b per year over 8 years, Labor has failed to sell a com­plete social plan for the need for an NBN. There is no vis­ion. Whilst the Min­is­ter in charge is shackled by the Fil­ter debate, the geeker­ati will not help.

To illus­trate the import­ance of inter­net access, this elec­tion Lib­er­als are prom­ising to invest $6.7b (I think) into inter­net con­nectiv­ity. Not as gen­er­ous on fund­ing, and there­fore speed – but within their budget con­straints. To the Lib­er­als, the lar­gesse of the NBN is a place to grab for­ward com­mit­ted funds to reduce debt. They have no vis­ion for the use of the inter­net and how it has the poten­tial to trans­form. The Lib­er­als best war­rior, Mal­colm Turn­bull, has been side­lined. I would hope that Mal­colm gets re-elected and we find a prag­matic policy that is afford­able. A cut down NBN; cop­per con­duits pur­chased from Tel­stra with smarter nego­ti­ation. And with a vis­ion for its use 30–50 years out.

Fibre, along with wire­less, is the future. Both. This is not an either-or.

Oh, and if Labor get back in, the Fil­ter will arise. Games and apps for phones and other like devices will require expens­ive clas­si­fic­a­tion. With or without a won­der­ful fibre NBN, our cre­ativ­ity will be throttled at the bor­ders. Even if the Greens hold the bal­ance of power in the Sen­ate, Mr Con­roy (if Com­mu­nic­a­tions Min­is­ter) will find another way to imple­ment his filter.

But the NBN is not the main game as far as I am concerned.

My con­cerns with Labor is its propensity to plough Aus­tralia into more debt. Bad man­age­ment by both Rudd, but also Gar­rett et al have res­ul­ted in sig­ni­fic­ant wastage of my tax dol­lars. Less sov­er­eign debt will leave Aus­tralia in a bet­ter pos­i­tion to deal with the shock of a slowly col­lapsing US and Europe. The argu­ment that a Gov­ern­ment can always tax more to repay debt: this is on the assump­tion that busi­ness is healthy enough to be taxed (and employ staff to be taxed) and there is a healthy world eco­nomy that con­sumes Australia’s exports.

Apart from spend­ing hand over first, Labor has a track record of wastage. Reports on the Build­ing the Edu­ca­tion Revolu­tion (BER) state a low wastage %. This is cer­tainly not the case with the Insu­la­tion pro­gram, another GFC pro­gram. Gov­ern­ment pur­chas­ing should be effi­cient and not waste tax­payer dollars.

Inter­est­ingly, the most pro­gress­ive policy that taxes the big end of town this elec­tion comes from the Lib­er­als: Paid Par­ental Leave fun­ded by a levy on large busi­ness. I think that it is import­ant that women can both have kids if they choose, and con­tinue to work if they choose. Within the eco­nomic real­it­ies of today, the Lib­er­als have the most attract­ive policy.

Like all elec­tions, those mar­ginal elect­or­ates are receiv­ing the most atten­tion. This is our sys­tem work­ing. You have to make your elect­or­ate a mar­ginal elect­or­ate if you want the same atten­tion. Simple.

I am not so con­cerned with the “men in smoky back­rooms” or vot­ing by ran­dom party mem­bers that con­trol the levers behind our Fed­eral politi­cians. It is the same on all sides of polit­ics. Con­tinu­ing greater trans­par­ency on dona­tions and lob­by­ists would be nice. But nice never wins.

My wish is for all parties to reduce middle­class wel­fare, and reduce tax­a­tion. Or, at least, fun­nel money into places where the mar­ket will fail. Roads, Hos­pit­als, Education.

And here lies the drum. Both parties are using the flow on tax to wrest con­sti­tu­tion­ally state-based con­cerns (Edu­ca­tion, Health) into the Fed­eral sphere. If this reduced the man­age­ment over­head, I would sup­port this. The model that seems to be cre­ated to increase bur­eau­cracy. More wast­ing of money. Both parties need to not waste money on overhead.

Polit­ics is never simple: A vs. B; black or White. It is grey with mul­tiple dimen­sions. This leaves us all wiggle room to argue and dis­cuss; he said she said style con­ver­sa­tions. Prom­ises kept; changes in pos­i­tion. Hypo­thet­ic­als. Rhet­or­ical con­structs. It is great to live in a coun­try where we can openly dis­cuss, argue and most import­antly: vote.

As I hold a por­tion of my wealth in US$ and loc­ally in cash — higher interest rates and a lower exchange rate that a ALP/Greens Gov­ern­ment is likely to induce. And Fibre to my home, paid for by you bug­gers at $5000, sounds good too. But it is not good for the future of Aus­tralia. That’s why I am vot­ing Lib­eral. As I am now in Mr Rabbit’s elect­or­ate, he has a safe vote in my hands.

My key­note at Pycon-AU. It is good to be back doing what I do best. Present­ing deep tech­no­lo­gies to tech­nical audiences.

From Richard Farmer’s “Chunky bits” in today’s crikey.com.au:

I know that Lord Acton had papal infal­lib­il­ity in mind when writ­ing to Bishop Man­dell Creighton in 1887 but given the flaunt­ing of their Chris­tian­ity by our two altern­at­ive polit­ical lead­ers that per­haps just makes his words more appropriate:

“I can­not accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favour­able pre­sump­tion that they did no wrong. If there is any pre­sump­tion, it is the other way, against the hold­ers of power, increas­ing as the power increases. His­toric respons­ib­il­ity has to make up for the want of legal respons­ib­il­ity. Power tends to cor­rupt, and abso­lute power cor­rupts abso­lutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exer­cise influ­ence and not author­ity: still more when you super­add the tend­ency or cer­tainty of cor­rup­tion by full author­ity. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanc­ti­fies the holder of it.”

Only the para­noid sur­vive. Even the para­noid have enemies. And the list of para­noid quotes goes on.

Within the last 18 hours, I’ve had two exper­i­ences with twit­ter that are worth shar­ing. If only for twit­ter brag­ging rights.

Firstly, whilst ABC1’s Media Watch was shown last night – what I con­sidered a long “advertorial” piece about tab­let devices and their impend­ing saviour status for news­print. I tweeted:

Someone should #mediawatch#mediawatch for 15 minutes of “Apple iPad” advert­ise­ment. NOT F***KING HAPPY MARK SCOTT

Within an hour, the host of Media Watch, Jonathan Holmes, respon­ded:

@NickHodge ah! U work for Microsoft! Wondered why u were SO upset!

Oops, sprung. Well almost. My twit­ter bio is clear about my employer. As I had already respon­ded to the iPad shills, I respon­ded sim­il­arly to Jonathan. The ABC must be above spruik­ing products; it is a part of their edit­or­ial policy. I will admit that my tweet is tain­ted with the per­spect­ive of my present employer: for sure; no-one is truly inde­pend­ent from their source of income. But I do expect all com­mer­cial organ­isa­tions: includ­ing Microsoft, to be treated equally in terms of pub­li­city on our ABC.

A thankyou, Jonathan, for being con­cerned about your show and look­ing at “the stream of conversation.” This shows you care.

Second incid­ent. Only a few hours later, in response to Tony Abbott appear­ing on ABC TV’s Q and A: a prom­ising TV show that has fallen below my expect­a­tions. Tony, in response to a ques­tions on Cath­olisism men­tioned that another leader, Kristina Keneally – the NSW Premier, being not so har­angued about her faith. My tweet:

ooh, @KKeneally is at least a ser­i­ous Cath­olic as @TonyAbbottMHR ..#opusdei !!!

Very early this morn­ing, 5:47am Sydney time, the Premier responded:

@NickHodge hi Nick this is an old and false rumour. I’ve never been a mem­ber of opus dei. My area of interest is fem­in­ist theo­logy. Cheers

Oops, sprung again. My response to her was a pub­lic, hope­fully grace­ful mea culpa. I doubt that I would vote ALP in the next State elec­tion – but that fact that Ms Keneally took time out to respond to mine – and other ques­tions on twit­ter shows a level of care. And she spelt rumours correctly.

So, two fam­ous people respon­ded to my rather cheeky, spe­cious and snarky tweets. In both cases, apart from the indi­vidual tweets these people do not know me. Nor the some­what satirical/childish nature of my tweets.

In the con­text of “social media” for organ­isa­tions – can per­son­ally respond­ing to indi­vidual tweets like mine scale? Whilst NSW has 6 mil­lion res­id­ents, only 4000 fol­low her on twit­ter. If twit­ter goes main­stream like Face­book, one could expect a Premier of NSW to have up to 2 mil­lion fol­low­ers (30% of Aus­trali­ans are on Face­book) . No one, magical per­son can respond to them all.

Here at Microsoft in Aus­tralia, a few product groups have been exper­i­ment­ing with social media mon­it­or­ing tools. Watch­ing the con­ver­sa­tions, and respond­ing where appro­pri­ate in a formal way. This also involves an escal­a­tion pro­cess for response to quer­ies that include PR, Cus­tomer Ser­vice and Evan­gel­ism. I know of other organ­isa­tions doing sim­ilar for their products and ser­vices – Inter­node, for instance.

So, be care­ful out there. You are being watched. And if your com­ment is not satir­ical, hope­fully respon­ded to. Personally.

In Toy Stor­ies, James Maybuilt a life-size house out of Lego. It was awe­some. On the DVD of the TV series, he skulks around the base­ment stor­age of Lego HQ where there is a box set of every box set Lego has ever made. He pops open 1973 and shows this Lon­don Bus set, which he details as “the most per­fect Lego set”. Someone gave me this set in 1973.

I remem­ber this set well as it acci­dently ended up at the pawn/second hand shop in Lobethal, South Aus­tralia. Being of a tender age, I had care­fully packed my Lego with other items I thought were going on a trip. Nope: they were old items what we no longer needed. My treas­ured Lego bus was gone! Thank­fully, some brave adult retrieved the bus. I remem­ber the incid­ent, and this kit well.

I was born a Prot­est­ant. I will more than likely die one, too. Intense excav­a­tion into fam­ily his­tory has shown me that my genes are Prot­est­ant for at least 8 gen­er­a­tions on both sides. Bap­tised and con­firmed a Lutheran, I was taught a thing or two about the most suc­cess­ful (not the first) split from the Cath­olic Church by Mar­tin Luther.

Dur­ing pub­lic school man­dated “religious edu­ca­tion”, I was taught by the local Cath­olic Priest. He seemed nice enough; kindly tak­ing us through the New Test­a­ment book Romans. It took many years for me to real­ise that this was an attempt at turn­ing me from my heretic ways to the true canon. If I recall, he didn’t even use the Revised Stand­ard Ver­sion of the Bible. Yes, Peter and Paul: the fath­ers of the cath­olic church.

After trav­el­ling to Europe in 1997 and 2004, I saw enough Saints’ rel­ics: shrunken heads, fin­gers, toe­nails and shrouds to last me a life­time. Large cathed­rals raised in the name of the Vir­gin or some Saint across the cit­ies of Europe show the folly of man, attempt­ing to reach for ter­restrial god status. The ven­er­a­tion of Saints and other popery not only rubs me the wrong way: I am sure my ancest­ors turn in their col­lect­ive graves.

So as Mary MacK­il­lop has moved through the man-made pro­cess of can­on­isa­tion within the Cath­olic Church, my genes quiver.

We hear that the church wants old and young to travel to Rome to wit­ness the can­on­isa­tion cere­mony. That will fill the cof­fers of the Romans.

I also heard many dis­cus­sions on the “brand” of Mary MacK­il­lop being valu­able. Like a product. Even our ABC both on radio and TV seems to have caught the “Mary MacK­il­lop” fever. So much for edit­or­ial independence.

And that is exactly what this can­on­isa­tion is about. Money. Never get in the way of a large cor­por­a­tion and money.

Luck­ily the Cath­ol­ics re-admitted her to the church. Oth­er­wise they would have missed out on their cash.

This tra­di­tion and hun­ger for money is not new. Saint­hood and pil­grim­ages have cre­ated many a city in the world as sup­plic­ant masses crawl on their knees to assuage their mor­tal sins. Pay­ing money for Indul­gences, as done in the Middle Ages, and more recently with spe­cial vis­its to ran­dom vir­gin sightings.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not anti-personal faith.

But please sep­ar­ate Mam­mon from Mary. She was, and I high­light was, just a not­able Aus­tralian woman who did more for the down­trod­den than any group of Car­din­als, Abbotts or Bish­ops ever did. And I would argue, ever will.